"Poole, switch to the cute-girl look."
"Okay, Master Levos…" Poole answered weakly.
Thump.
With a muffled pop, Kefrolly's body softened into the form of a blue-haired girl.
Levos finally exhaled and immediately had Majin Buu patch her up.
"Good work, Vice Captain Ginyu."
Ginyu lowered his head. "It was my duty, Lord Levos."
Levos then ran a quick experiment, using several captured Darklings as test subjects. He tried stowing them in his personal space. It worked. Wrapped in divine power, both living beings and objects could be taken in.
There was pushback though. From Darklings he could feel a clear resistance. If they were not completely incapacitated, they would be hard to store. Inside, time crawled almost to a standstill and there was no matter of any kind, so normal people could not survive within it. Overall, he was satisfied. For now, it was a colossal storage vault, and also a prison for enemies who had lost the will or ability to fight. Later, once he learned to alter the flow of time, he could turn it into something like the Hyperbolic Time Chamber. Someday, if he mastered harvesting entire planets, he might even create a miniature cosmos within.
Next, he paired off the remaining Darklings and forced Potara fusions. Then fusion on top of fusion. In the end, he produced two triple-fused Darklings.
One more step and a quadruple-fused super Darkling would be born.
They were at the critical point. If he used the twentyfold multiplier he had observed with the Mini-Cells, then a quadruple fusion would mean at least one hundred and sixty thousand times the power of a single Darkling. Using "Dark King Cold" as the baseline, the super Darkling's base power would be on par with Dark Gogeta. After all, Dark Gogeta had two fewer fusion layers, and Kefrolly had two and a half fewer.
The process carried real risk. Fortunately, there was no body-swap step now, so he did not need either Darkling conscious. Both were badly maimed and out cold.
Levos drew a slow breath. As long as he did not give the super Darkling time to transform, his Mechanical Form should be able to suppress it. Even so, he added one more layer of insurance.
"Poole, become chains and bind them."
"Yes, Master Levos."
Once Poole cinched the Darklings until they were sealed tight, Levos finally raised the Potara and clipped them to each ear.
Swish.
The instant the super Darkling was born, Levos struck at its weak point.
"Damn…!"
The new being awoke at the moment of completion, feeling power without limit, yet unable to move at all. He glanced down and discovered a chain locked tight around his body, crushing the breath from his lungs. He strained. The chain did not budge, and the more he struggled, the tighter it bit.
"How can this be? A mere chain, holding me down?"
There was nowhere to run. He could only watch as Levos's fist crashed into the side of his neck.
Crack.
The spine gave way. Control over the body vanished.
"Poole, clear the path."
Poole flashed into a huge net behind the target, blocking any hope of retreat.
No hesitation. Levos's tail unfurled, dropped like a curtain, and swallowed the super Darkling whole.
His tail arched and writhed. The captive thrashed violently, but Levos's heart stayed calm. The enemy was too injured to draw out even one percent of that power. Escape was impossible.
Sure enough, the resistance dwindled. Pure, towering energy poured into Levos's body. At last, he did not have to fear bursting from within. Guided by divinity, the surplus power flowed into his personal space, expanding and hardening it.
"Divine power really is special," he thought. "It lets internal energy exceed the output ceiling of the body, and it can draw in strength from outside as well. So this is the difference between gods and mortals. The pity is that divine power must be accumulated bit by bit."
When the last of the super Darkling dissolved, Levos took stock.
"My mental strength has grown a lot. The 'god-route' has advanced significantly, but it still feels half missing. Is that because the Darklings lack true divine bodies? The good news is I gained a large amount of Godly Ki. If I spend it, I can take on that heaven-filling giant-phantom form. According to Chronoa, Godly Ki refines your cells, and refined cells produce divine power. I wonder if I can train to gain more. I cannot rely on absorbing Darklings forever. In any case, both Godly Ki and divine power deplete with use, so they cannot be counted as regular combat power."
He checked his genetic track again. Still no re-evolution to Ultimate.
"I have absorbed enough Cells that the materials should be more than sufficient. Could it be tied to potential? Bulma and Android 18 had their limits drawn out past the maximum by the Elder Kai. When I absorbed their fusion, maybe that buff was part of the catalyst."
Thinking of 18's strange attitude lately, Levos felt a headache coming on. Such a perfect evolution material, and of course there had to be complications.
"I need to figure out what is going on with 18," he decided.
A rainbow tore the sky. A tall, elegant silhouette appeared before him.
"The Grand Priest is summoning the Angels, Supreme Kais, and Gods of Destruction from all universes," Vados said without preamble.
"So it begins," Levos sighed inwardly and returned to his base form.
The moment that would decide the fate of Universe 7 had arrived.
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