fanmtl Chapter 496: Zarbon Appears! Locking onto the Radar
Chapter 496: Zarbon Appears! Locking onto the Radar
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Akainu halted his movements.
His Observation Haki, honed across countless brutal battlefields, caught a trace of extreme danger. Someone had approached him silently, closing the distance to a hair-raising degree.
Slowly, Akainu stood straight and turned around.
A figure had landed less than ten meters behind him. It was a green-skinned man wearing a high-grade Frieza Force combat suit. He wore a device resembling a headband and had a long, green braided ponytail trailing down his back. His facial features were exceptionally handsome, bordering on the exotic and alluring.
He didn't wear a monocle-like scouter. Instead, he simply stood with his arms crossed over his chest, sizing Akainu up with the gaze of a predator eyeing its prey.
"How surprising. To think there's a warrior of your caliber on this backwater planet of Namek." The braided man's lips curled into a cruel smile as he elegantly adjusted his cape. "A power level of seventeen thousand. No wonder you handled those pieces of trash so easily."
He slowly uncrossed his arms. An immense aura, far surpassing the soldiers from before, erupted from his body. The sheer force of it sent the surrounding rubble flying into the air.
"A pleasure to meet you. I am Zarbon, a servant of Lord Frieza. That little trick of yours is quite amusing—turning your body into boiling mud like that. However..." Zarbon's eyes narrowed. "In the face of absolute power, all parlor tricks are futile."
Akainu stared at the handsome alien. He could feel the terrifying energy contained within the man's body. It was a power even more condensed and berserk than the Four Emperors he had faced in the past.
Akainu's expression darkened completely. His hands transformed into boiling magma once more, the molten rock dripping onto the ground with violent sizzles.
"Are you their commanding officer? Then I'll melt you down with them beneath the weight of absolute justice."
.....
Namek's sky possessed a sickly, eerie green hue. The air was heavy with moisture, carrying a faint, fishy scent.
High above, hidden within the thickest layer of clouds, Doflamingo stood suspended in mid-air, his feet resting on threads so thin they were completely invisible to the naked eye. The air at this altitude was even thinner than on the ground, forcing him to take deep, greedy breaths. His pink feather coat fluttered gently in the weak atmospheric currents.
Kaido, that brainless beast. And Akainu, that mad dog who only knows how to bite. Doflamingo ruthlessly mocked his two temporary teammates in his mind. He had clearly seen the terrifying energy blast erupting in the distance. A disturbance that literally tore the sky apart—it didn't take a genius to figure out it was Kaido's doing. In an alternate world crawling with unknown monsters, making such a high-profile scene was practically begging for death.
He, Donquixote Doflamingo, was an elegant businessman. And a businessman's core principle was exchanging the smallest possible cost for the maximum possible profit.
Shop Manager Blake's rules were simple: survive for three days, or obtain a Dragon Ball.
Fight head-on to steal one? Only a fool would do that.
He raised his hand and tapped the scouter secured over his left eye. This little gadget was a bonus item handed out by Shop Manager Blake. The screen was currently flickering with heart-stopping red numbers.
Twenty thousand, thirty thousand... there was even a terrifying reading exceeding five hundred thousand in the extreme distance.
Doflamingo's eyelid twitched violently at the sight of that five hundred thousand. He decisively manipulated the scouter, filtering out all the absurdly high values and setting the search parameters strictly below five thousand.
He didn't have the free time to risk his life against genuine monsters. He was looking for isolated weaklings. As long as he could snatch a Dragon Ball from the weak, he would earn back the cost of this dungeon ticket. Not only would he break even, but he'd also get a prime opportunity to show off in front of Manager Blake.
Suddenly, his spread-out Observation Haki caught a disturbance below.
It was two extremely faint energy signatures. Yet, despite their weakness, the energy was incredibly pure—like tempered steel, completely devoid of impurities.
Doflamingo lowered his head, peering through the gaps in the green clouds.
Below lay a cluster of bizarrely shaped rocks dotting a cratered expanse of blue turf. Two figures were carefully crouched behind a massive boulder.
The scouter's screen immediately flashed with two numbers. One was exactly one thousand five hundred. The other was just a little over one thousand five hundred.
Doflamingo's mouth stretched open into a wildly arrogant grin. "Found you. Two little lost mice."
He carefully scrutinized the pair. One was a short, bald man without a nose, dressed in a highly conspicuous orange martial arts gi. The other was a little brat with a bowl cut wearing the exact same outfit, complete with a strange kanji printed on his chest.
No matter how he looked at them, they didn't seem like indigenous inhabitants of this planet. They looked more like acrobats who had run away from a third-rate circus.
But Doflamingo didn't care about their identities in the slightest. All he needed was for these two to become his marionettes.
Doflamingo slowly raised his right hand, his long fingers curling slightly. Several microscopic Parasite strings silently dropped from his fingertips.
This was his favorite and most proficient technique. Back in Dressrosa, he had used this exact move to control countless self-righteous strongmen. As long as these strings connected to the central nervous system at the back of that bald shorty's neck, the guy would become a slaughtering machine entirely under his command.
The thin threads descended slowly through the air, making absolutely no sound and failing to disturb even the slightest breeze. They were less than half a meter away from the back of the bald man's neck.
Doflamingo was already prepared to relish the look of horrified despair on the man's face once he realized he was being controlled.
But right as the Parasite strings were about to brush against the skin, the crouching bald man violently shuddered. Like a cat whose tail had just been stepped on, he whipped his head around without any prior warning.
He didn't even look up at the sky. Instead, an invisible, white wave of ki erupted violently from his body. The shockwave was frantic, carrying a pure, overwhelming repulsive force.
Snap!
A faint severing sound echoed in the air. The Parasite strings, tougher than tempered steel, were shattered into several pieces by the sheer force of the ki burst.
Doflamingo's pupils shrank to pinpricks. A piercing, bone-deep pain shot through the tips of all ten of his fingers. Ever since he awakened the String-String Fruit, this was the first time someone had broken his Parasite strings in such a brutally straightforward manner.
Without a shred of hesitation, he severed all the threads attached to his hands. His legs pumped with explosive force as he kicked off the clouds, rocketing hundreds of meters higher into the sky.
Hiding deep within the thick cloud cover, a layer of cold sweat beaded on Doflamingo's forehead.
What kind of sick joke is this? These two only have a combat power of a thousand! How is their danger perception even more terrifying than those battle-hardened veteran pirates in the New World?!
He replayed the scene in his mind. That bald shorty absolutely hadn't seen the threads with his eyes. He had sensed the killing intent entirely through some near-instinctual intuition. This level of sensitivity to energy and danger completely wiped away any underestimation Doflamingo held.
This world was riddled with bizarre anomalies. If even small-fry with a power level of one thousand were this tricky to deal with, he had to be cautious.
Doflamingo steadied his breathing and peeked his head out to look down again.
The bald shorty was looking around frantically, highly tense. The kid beside him had also dropped into a defensive stance.
"Uncle Krillin, what is it?"
"I don't know, Gohan. I just felt this really gross sensation coming from above. It felt like something invisible was trying to bore into my body."
Listening to the conversation below, the corner of Doflamingo's mouth twitched violently.
A gross sensation?
He, the majestic King of Dressrosa, the absolute overlord of the Underworld, Joker... was evaluated as "gross" by a noseless dwarf.
But he quickly threw that sense of humiliation to the back of his mind, because his eyes were drawn to an object the bald man was holding.
It was a flat, circular device with a green grid screen. Several bright yellow dots were blinking right in the center of the display.
Doflamingo's mind raced. He instantly connected the device to the mission objective Manager Blake had issued.
Finding Dragon Balls.
Searching aimlessly for seven orbs on a planet this massive was literally looking for a needle in a haystack. But what if there was a radar specifically designed to track them?
The gloom on Doflamingo's face vanished instantly. He couldn't help but let out his signature, eerie laugh.
"Fuffuffuffuffu..."
He deliberately suppressed the sound in his throat so it wouldn't reach the ground. He finally understood why these two weaklings dared to run around on a planet crawling with monsters.
What they were holding in their hands was absolutely the key item needed to find the Dragon Balls.
"The heavens are truly helping me."
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