"No surprise our acknowledged leader keeps his crown, no one's ever seen the bottom of his power," the Lord of White Night narrowed her eyes over a half-open fan, genuinely impressed.
The Holy Son, God, and the others who had once lost to Riku could only sigh. To think they'd traded blows like equals back then, he clearly hadn't even been serious.
The Twin Goddesses' expressions wavered hard. They fixed on Riku, fingers tightening around their divine sword. If he'd used this power in their last clash, escape wouldn't have been impossible, but it would've been very unlikely.
Daode Tianzun and Lingbao Tianzun fell silent. Had this been the "mode" Riku showed them earlier, the outcome wouldn't have been as mild as "sealed."
This power felt outright illegal even to two digits.
"We can't let this go on!" Yuanshi Tianzun's gaze turned grave. Immortal qi surged as he drove the Pangu Banner to its utmost: the laws of Breaking, Establishing, and Forbidding roared to their limits.
Shakyamuni understood as well. He unleashed his divinity in full, pushing the Simulated Star Map, [Three Thousand Worlds], all three seals pressing down at once to seize this last chance.
Riku, meanwhile, stood in a strange state.
The instant they moved, his body reacted before he thought.
He simply raised both hands, one to the Pangu Banner, the other to [Three Thousand Worlds].
Two silver lances detonated from his palms, rattling the cosmos and punching through time and space, obliterating everything in their path.
Boom!
Even the Pangu Banner and [Three Thousand Worlds] were overturned and crushed in that heartbeat. The chaotic world burst; [Three Thousand Worlds] shattered to ruins likely unusable again for a long while.
"Brace impact incoming!"
Faces blanched across the field. Everyone threw up combined defences against a power that could unmake all things.
When it ebbed, swaths of black holes scarred the sky; space lay in fragments that refused to knit.
Above, three figures hovered: Riku, wreathed in a calm silver aura; and Yuanshi Tianzun with Shakyamuni, both battered and ragged.
"This power, this form… It's beyond the scale," Shakyamuni said, face set. The oppression rolling off Riku pressed even him to the edge.
And he wasn't wrong. Though Ultra Instinct is a state rather than a form, its amplification is terrifying. In Dragon Ball Super, Super Blue + x20 Kaioken couldn't hurt a holding-back Jiren; full Ultra Instinct beat Jiren at 100%. Jiren, whose strength is said to surpass a God of Destruction.
Riku moved again, pure instinct and was simply there in front of Shakyamuni, silver light trailing. Even the Buddha Lord failed to register the motion. The speed was that unfair.
A single punch.
Crack!
A hole bloomed through the golden dharma body; Shakyamuni's chest ruptured, gold blood geysered as he was blasted away.
Even if not dead, he was grievously wounded by a single blow.
"What!?" Gasps rang out. The Lord of Buddhism, a top-tier two-digit, had been one-shotted. God-kings felt their scalps go numb; fear flooded their cores, their divinity shivering.
The Demon Kings of Disboard and the yokai could only stare in blazing awe.
Riku's eyes slid, serene, to Yuanshi Tianzun, whose heart spasmed under that calm look as if death itself had drawn near. He jolted himself back to focus.
He hurled every defensive immortal treasure he had, heedless of overload. Every offensive treasure he owned, he flung at Riku as well. The second strike that felled Shakyamuni, an immortal, was weak in close quarters, he could not have reacted to.
Immortal tools filled the air. Riku's face didn't change. He slipped through them as a silver streak; Ultra Instinct made the body act before the mind, and not one artefact so much as brushed a hair as he traced impossible arcs, then appeared point-blank before Yuanshi Tianzun.
He punched.
Boom!
Crack!
A rain of immortal treasures shattered. Even the tool that had bent aside Riku's full-power Super Blue strikes blew apart under that fist; Yuanshi Tianzun was hurled away in a spray of immortal blood.
Shakyamuni, Lord of Buddhism, and Yuanshi Tianzun, head of the Three Pure Ones, both fell in succession. The shock of it outstripped even the Dawn Era.
Every being on the field could only stare, hollow with disbelief.
"This time, it's over," the Twin Goddesses said flatly.
If Riku were alone, a dogpile might still hold a sliver of hope. But he led Disboard, the apex Demon King alliance and now their two main pillars had been instantly crushed. Not dead, but ruined.
They had no path to victory.
Then the sky split and something appeared that made every onlooker lift their eyes.
Riku's head tilted up a fraction he'd already noticed.
From the torn firmament, a roar shook the heavens, hurling stormfronts across the battlefield and forcing many to brace.
"Oh? Even they came," the Lord of White Night squinted, smiling with real delight.
"Well, Shakyamuni's identity does invite… special guests," the Halloween Queen murmured, amused.
A shape blotted the sun so vast it stole breath.
A dragon. Not a mere pure-blood drake, its unique divinity blazed with solar radiance. The aura wasn't Omnipotence; it was Full Authority.
"The dragon that bears a world…!" Tank, himself a pure-blood, stared upward, voice gone thin.
"A World Dragon," he managed, reverence edging into awe. Among dragons, this was an object of veneration.
A two-digit, Full Authority World Dragon.
"Didn't expect that support," the Twin Goddesses noted, flicking a glance at the stunned Shakyamuni. His face, despite the awkwardness, finally found a smile. In such dire straits, any ally of this calibre was a blessing.
Even the Three Pure Ones frowned, then exhaled a wry laugh.
The World Dragon roared again.
Solar divinity burst; a stellar breath condensed in that colossal maw and speared down at Riku.
Riku's answer was simple: fire against fire.
He lifted a hand; argent power flashed forth.
The beams met in a microsecond that rattled the world.
And then the dragon's breath was driven back, overrun, and crushed. Silver light hurtled on, straight for the World Dragon.
Even a World Dragon couldn't match Riku.
At that instant, another divinity unfurled above golden rain poured from the heavens. The rhythm of gold held a miracle that would not be moved.
A golden barrier enfolded the World Dragon, catching Riku's strike.
Impact hammered the shield in ringing waves, but it held.
"So even that one came," Shakyamuni said, pallor easing into a broader smile.
The gold cohered into a monumental silhouette opulent, and magnificent silhouette, suffocating in presence.
Lines firmed a great ark. A golden vessel vast enough to match the World Dragon, its pressure alone squeezing lungs tight.
"A ship?" someone whispered.
"No. An Ark to be precise, a Casket-Ark. A golden craft that bears a world," the Lord of White Night said coolly.
"The Ark and the World Dragon… of course, they were roused. The community of Solar Kings, [Avatāra]," the Halloween Queen shook her head.
"At this scale, it'd be stranger if they weren't," the Lord of White Night replied.
Vishnu's ten incarnations Daśāvatāra in the Little Garden are ten god-kings, forming one of the top communities: the Solar King legion, [Avatāra].
One of those incarnations is the Fish (Matsya), the god-king whose colossal merit is saving humankind from the Flood. He drags the Ark, ferrying humanity's forebears through the deluge. That merit became his boon in the Little Garden, making him the earliest-born of [Avatāra]'s god-kings, and once its greatest fighting force.
-
Manu, son of the sun-god Sūrya, was an exceptional ascetic.
His ascetic power surpassed father and grandsire alike. For a thousand years, he trained on the banks of the tumultuous Jujube River, hair coiled, sweat soaking his threadbare robe.
One day, as he practised, a tiny fish swam ashore.
"Venerable one," it pleaded, "I am but a small fish. Fierce fish devour the weak without end. You are true to your vows. Please grant me refuge. If you save me, I shall repay you."
Moved to compassion, Manu lifted the fish into his water jar and tended it well. The fish grew.
Soon, the jar and the water within could no longer contain it.
"Venerable one, please find me a new home," the fish asked again. Manu carried it to a pond; there it grew free and easy.
Time passed; the pond, too, became too small.
"Venerable one," said the fish, "the Gaṅgā is queen of rivers. Please take me there." Manu obeyed, releasing it into the Gaṅgā where it grew larger still.
When he met it again, the fish said a third time, "My body is too vast. Even the Gaṅgā cannot hold me, please bring me to the sea."
Keeping his word, Manu bore the fish to the ocean and set it free.
As he turned to go, the fish spoke once more. "You have guarded my life with care. Now hear my warning and do as I say. Soon, the earth and all that lives upon it shall be destroyed. The age of the Flood will come, and none shall escape its waters.
"Do not fear. Have men craft a mighty ship; bind stout cables to her. Board her with the Seven Sages of the Great Bear, and take aboard the seeds of all plants, well kept. When all is ready, wait for me. I will come with a horned crest. You will know me. Do exactly as I say."
Manu gathered every seed and built a ship of peerless strength.
The Flood came; all was drowned. Manu's ship rode the waters. Then a mountain-sized fish approached the horned fish of his vision.
Manu lashed the ship to the fish's horn. The fish swam on and on through the white vastness; years passed amid roaring waves.
At last, beneath snowy peaks, the fish bade them tie the ship high and said:
"I am Viṣṇu."
"No god in the cosmos stands above me. In fish-form, I have drawn you from death's shadow. Hereafter, all beings, deva, asura, mortal, animal and plant, the world entire shall be begotten through Manu.
"Continue the harshest austerities; I will grant you grace so that folly clouds you not as you bring forth creation."
With that, the fish disappeared. Manu landed a fish and offered ghee, milk, whey and curd. From this sacrifice, a woman came to life and said she was Manu's daughter. Together, they created the world.
This is the merit borne by the First Incarnation of [Avatāra]: taking fish-form, towing the Ark, saving humankind and preserving its lineage. In the Little Garden, that vast merit becomes the Ark.
[Simulated Star Map — Boat of Manu Amid the Flood!]
A power of "absolute defence" that turns aside all attacks, the First Incarnation's ultimate art. The World Dragon is the Second Incarnation, the dragon that bears a world upon its back.
Even Shakyamuni is the Ninth Incarnation, Siddhārtha the Liberated.
Every incarnation of the Solar King Host, [Avatāra], steps beyond the common scale—peculiar, peerless, and overwhelming. Small wonder the community itself ranks among the pinnacle. And that they would come to aid Shakyamuni, their Ninth Incarnation, is hardly surprising.
This, too, is why Daoism and Buddhism have remained evenly matched.
"Are you Disboard? Such reckless arrogance," the World Dragon roared down, voice like rolling thunder.
"Reckless? Hah! You say that to Demon Kings?" the Perpetual Motion Engine scoffed. "Our stances are destined to clash, and you're nothing but the stepping stones we'll grind to dust."
"Hmph. Such conceit," the World Dragon rumbled, divinity pressing on the firmament.
The Ark moved; golden light fell and wrapped the grievously wounded Shakyamuni and Yuanshi Tianzun.
Riku moved as well. In Ultra Instinct, stray thought is pared away; only the imperative to crush the enemy remains. His fists blurred silver fist-pressure, chaining into a river of starlight and hammering the Ark.
Even that absolute bulwark shuddered violently under the storm, but it did not break.
[Simulated Star Map — Boat of Manu Amid the Flood] earns its title: absolute defence.
"As expected of the Ark. Ordinary can't even scratch its history's strongest defence," the Lord of White Night said, almost admiring.
"But as 'Heliocentrism,' I have no ties to human history. To break it, all I need is enough power." Her eyes sharpened; her divinity of [Heliocentrism] roared as if to strike the Ark.
"Your opponent is me," the Twin Goddesses stepped in. "Don't even think about it."
"You misunderstand. I won't intrude," the Lord of White Night replied evenly. "Cutting into the Riku's duel would be disrespectful. Besides… for a mere Ark, he hardly needs my help." A smile pure confidence.
Inside the Ark, the World Dragon inclined her head to Yuanshi Tianzun; he returned a small smile. Then she faced Shakyamuni.
"Shakyamuni leave [Avatāra], found your own Buddhism, and look at you now," she snorted.
"Don't even get me started on the insults. What we need to talk about is how we deal with Riku Dola," Shakyamuni sighed. "Even with the Ark putting him off, it doesn't solve anything. Riku, the Perpetual Motion Engine, and 'Heliocentrism' we can't handle them as they are."
"No reminder needed." The World Dragon's eyes narrowed. Even as powerful reinforcements, they could not flip the board alone. The enemy advantage remained crushing. "Tell me everything. His bottom line."
Shakyamuni nodded and poured memory into her. The more she learned, the deeper her shock. She had seen his strangeness and strength, but to also wield things like [Three Thousand Worlds] and the Taiji Diagram? Worse on their side, those very trump cards were damaged; even Yuanshi's Pangu Banner was compromised. With so many aces blunted, the outlook darkened.
"…But there may still be a path," she murmured, eyes flashing as if struck by a thought.
Before she could voice it…
"Not good!!!"
Riku's fist-storm cracked the Ark's "absolute" defence.
Disbelief rippled across the field. A two-digit tied to human history shouldn't be able to pierce it… and yet a fissure yawned in the golden hull.
[Simulated Star Map — Third Stellar Particle Body]
It wasn't over. Riku's silver-grey eyes stayed tranquil as he lifted his right hand. Pure, natural silver ki poured in the extreme beam blossomed.
This Third Stellar Particle Body was brighter, heavier, deadlier than ever before, an executioner's world-law that shook the Little Garden itself. The ground spider-webbed; the sky split in twain; even the starry vault looked ready to tear apart.
Impact.
In less than a microsecond, Riku in Ultra Instinct drove his greatest beam into the Ark's golden hymn.
Strongest spear met strongest shield, and the shield lost instantly.
Golden fragments fountained skyward; the legendary Ark was bored clean through, its shards scattering into dust.