"That towering tree that looks like a World Tree is the legendary Tree of Might. It really is something that defies the heavens. I can feel the life energy of this planet being absorbed by that giant Tree of Might. And those fruits on its branches contain quite a lot of energy. Eating them will definitely enhance one's strength." After bidding farewell to the Grand Elder of Namek, Meruem immediately set off for the Tree of Might's location.
The Bigao Star doesn't move, nor does it have any desire to. So Meruem had no plans to provoke Bigao Star for now. At present, he wasn't sure he could seize the Bigao Star.
Those mechanical warriors it produces are beings with power surpassing "super," and while that level of strength is undoubtedly linked to Cooler, Meruem wasn't about to get involved without an absolute advantage.
If he tried to steal the chicken and ended up losing the rice—getting turned into metal by the Bigao Star—it wouldn't be fun.
But the Tree of Might was different. Although Meruem had Turles's current location, Turles could move, and who knew where he would go after devouring this planet's Tree of Might.
So he had to get the Tree's seeds and fruit before Turles left this world.
"Huh? Look, there's actually someone alive on this planet."
"He doesn't seem to have much battle power. Why don't we just kill him?"
Meruem had gotten too close to the Tree of Might and was spotted by several of Turles's subordinates. But since they hadn't eaten the fruit, the strongest of them only had a few thousand in battle power.
"Noisy." Meruem couldn't even be bothered to acknowledge small fry like this. He simply flicked a ki blast at them and blew them to pieces.
"Who's there?" As their leader, Turles naturally knew when his men were killed. He was also equipped with a scouter, and given Meruem's complete lack of concealment, it pinged at once.
Beep-beep-beep-beep.
"Only one hundred in battle power? What a joke. A power level of one hundred took out Daizu and Amond? Oh, I see. You're one of those races that can suppress their battle power, aren't you? First time I've seen one." As a surviving Saiyan, Turles had roamed the universe for years and seen all sorts of oddities.
"But even if you suppress it, you're no match for Lord Turles." Arms folded, Turles spoke with confidence.
He'd already eaten a Tree of Might fruit once, greatly boosting his power. He was no longer the lower-class Saiyan whose battle power barely reached five digits.
"Hand over the Tree of Might's seeds," said Meruem.
"You bastard… you're courting death!" The Tree of Might was his greatest secret. Regardless of who this man was or why he was here, he had to die.
Turles hadn't reached the near-hundred-thousand combat power he had in the original movie, but he was already in the tens of thousands.
Even across the universe, that counted as a high-level warrior. He didn't think Meruem could handle him.
"That's your punch? Soft and weak. Is that all?" Turles slammed a fist into Meruem, but Meruem didn't react at all and even mocked him.
"How is that possible? Your scouter shows only one hundred…" Turles.
"Die! Die! Die!" He kept flinging yellow energy spheres at Meruem with both hands.
If the opponent had been Son Goku, Meruem might have been interested in playing along. As a martial artist, Goku had plenty worth appreciating.
But with Turles, Meruem had no interest at all. A guy who fought by flailing with brute force held no appeal.
"Pierce." A red beam fired from Meruem's fingertip and punched straight through Turles's chest. This was Meruem's imitation of Frieza's finger beam—the "piercing ray."
"Damn it." Meruem hadn't gone for the kill, so Turles could still stand, but he was already on the verge of collapse.
He hadn't pierced Turles's heart, but he had damaged his internal organs.
"Pierce, pierce… pierce." Several more rays shot from Meruem's fingertip, this time targeting Turles's arms and legs. After all, Turles was a Saiyan. He might be a lower-class warrior, but Saiyan genetics were prime material.
It was a physique even Meruem coveted: after receiving grievous injuries and recovering, their battle power skyrockets.
During the fight against Frieza, Vegeta used this trait to jump from tens of thousands to hundreds of thousands, even toward a million.
A true Saiyan prodigy. Broly was a Legendary Super Saiyan, so he didn't count. Turles couldn't compare to Vegeta in that regard, but he was a Saiyan nonetheless.
In the entire universe now, only Vegeta, Nappa, Son Goku, Tarble, Raditz, and Turles remained. And of course, the Legendary Super Saiyan Broly and his father Paragus—but Meruem didn't dare provoke those two, so they were off the table.
The only one alone, unknown to the world, and irrelevant to the main plot was Turles—so unfortunately, Turles drew the short straw.
"See? Something as precious as Tree of Might seeds—of course you'd carry them on you." Meruem pulled a small pouch of seeds off Turles right in front of him. Whether lower-, mid-, or upper-class, Saiyans were all blindly confident in their strength.
They would only carry something as valuable as Tree of Might seeds on their person.
"Hand him over to the research unit. And do not heal him—at his level, none of you can stop him otherwise." After giving orders, Meruem turned his attention to the gigantic Tree of Might.
"Let me try it first—this wondrous fruit that defies the heavens." Still, for all its marvels, the Tree of Might did run against the will of heaven. To grow and bear fruit, it demanded the life energy of an entire planet and all its living beings.
"It can even boost my power…" The fruit tasted rather like an apple, but more delicious. Even without the boost, it was a fine fruit. But for it to enhance someone at Meruem's level—though the increase was a drop in his ocean of energy, it still made him stronger.
For someone else, that same energy could add tens of thousands of battle power.
However, this planet where the Tree of Might was planted had relatively little life energy, so the harvest was small—only a dozen or two fruits. It couldn't compare at all to the hundreds or thousands grown on Earth in the movie.
It seemed that to produce more fruits and stronger boosts, the tree had to be planted on a world rich in life energy with abundant biodiversity.
"Tree of Might, GET~!" Meruem actually allowed himself a faint smile. Three years from now, he finally had one more thread of confidence against you, Frieza.
The Tree of Might wasn't all he was counting on. Don't forget Earth's other miraculous tool for unlocking potential—the Ultra Divine Water.
On the very edge of the universe, in a desolate region known as the graveyard of spacefaring vessels, stood a peculiar planet made entirely of machinery.
The Bigao Star—the heaven-defying world that could retrofit Cooler and churn out hundreds of Metal Coolers in the original.
Only this time, instead of lying in an unclaimed sector, fierce battles were raging all around it.
A group of bizarre-looking "monsters" were fighting the Bigao Star's endless mechanical soldiers.
Look closely and those strange beings weren't just firing ki blasts—one of them was even weaving hand signs. Yes, you read that right—actual hand signs.
"Fire Release: Great Fireball Technique!" Flames that shouldn't exist in vacuum roared from the mouth of a bat-like creature.
That's right—those "monsters" were Meruem's Chimera Ant army.
And their mission now was to take the Bigao Star. As for how they could fight in space—that was thanks to the native genes from a planet Meruem had previously conquered.
It was a species capable of surviving in space. There are plenty of races in Dragon Ball that can battle in the void—nothing strange about that.
At first, Meruem hadn't planned to tangle with this apex of mechanical tech. After all, he didn't yet have the certainty to face someone on Cooler's level. But later, he realized the Bigao Star wasn't at its movie-era peak. Its mechanical soldiers had solid battle power, but nothing as absurd as hundreds of thousands, millions, or Frieza-tier.
On average, they were only a few thousand to over ten thousand. So Meruem ordered relentless assaults on the Bigao Star.
Partly to train his forces, and partly, of course, for the Bigao Star itself.
"Bigao Star, this is your last chance. Submit or be destroyed." Meruem appeared above the Bigao Star in overwhelming fashion, a massive sphere of gathered ki in his hand.
He was one word away from a fight to the death—and this move was absolutely capable of obliterating the Bigao Star.
"I don't want to be destroyed yet."
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