Chapter 132: The Tournament Begins
The shift from the salt-stung cliffs to the Null Realm was less a journey and more a dislocation of the soul. One moment, Bruce felt the weathered stone under his palms, Camille’s fierce grip, the howl of a terrestrial wind. The next, his senses were flooded with silent, antiseptic vastness.
The platform was a polished obsidian disc, floating in a featureless burgundy void. Gravity was a suggestion here, flickering between feather-light and crushing in unpredictable pulses. Bruce’s feet, still bare, gripped the impossibly smooth surface, his body automatically adjusting to the shifts. To his left, Lena gasped, her hand flying to her stomach as the pressure tripled for a heartbeat, then vanished. To his right, Briana stood poised, her cessation field a subtle, steady hum that seemed to stabilize the space immediately around her.
Around them, in a vast ring, were other platforms. On each stood teams from the other universes—a riot of alien shapes, auras flaring like hostile suns. He felt the collective weight of their power, a discordant symphony of threats. His eyes scanned, assessing, categorizing. Then he saw the small, pink figures on the highest, most ornate dais.
The Omni-King Zeno floated slightly above his throne, his large, childish eyes wide with curiosity. The Grand Priest stood beside him, impassive. Zeno pointed a stubby finger directly at Bruce.
"Ooooh! A new strong one!" he squealed, his voice tinny and amplified through the void, devoid of malice, devoid of anything except a vacant, overwhelming fascination.
The Grand Priest's voice was calm, melodic, and carried absolute authority. "Contestants. Welcome to the Null Realm Tournament of Power. The rules are simple. You may employ any tactic. You may form alliances. The only objective is to remain. Those knocked from the platform are eliminated. If all members of a universe's team are eliminated, that universe is erased by Lord Zeno." He paused, letting the finality sink into the humming silence. "The last universe standing is spared. Begin."
No gong sounded. The attack was immediate and total.
From the platform of Universe 9, a trio of lupine warriors, the Trio de Danger, exploded into motion. They moved as one, a blur of fangs and fur, aiming not for Bruce, but for the perceived weakest link—Jake, who stood slightly apart, his energy still churning and unmanifest.
"Jake! Down!" Susannah's voice cracked like a whip.
Jake dropped, not out of fear, but from a lifetime of Roland's training. A scythe of dark energy passed over his head. Before he could rise, Bergamo, the largest wolf, was upon him, claws extended for a killing blow.
Bruce didn't move. He didn't need to.
Lena was a silver streak. Her Potential flared, amplifying not her own speed, but the inherent kinetic energy in Bergamo's lunge. He rocketed forward, his own momentum now tripled, overshooting Jake completely. As he flew
He rocketed forward, his own momentum now tripled, overshooting Jake completely. As he flew, a spike of obsidian erupted from the platform's edge, impaling him through the chest with a wet crunch—a hazard from Universe 11's strategic rearrangement of the arena floor. The wolf gurgled, dissolving into light before his body could hit the void below. One down.
“Cheers for that,” Jake muttered, rolling to his feet, his heart hammering against his ribs. The elimination made it real. The scent of ozone thickened, now underscored by the coppery tang of spilled energy.
Lena didn’t respond. Her focus was shattered by a new pressure. From Universe 6, the Saiyan Caulifla descended in a blur of crimson hair and wild laughter, her fist aimed not at Lena’s face, but at the space between her and Briana. “Break the link!” Caulifla shouted.
Bruce moved. He didn’t intercept the punch. He stepped into the trajectory, taking the blow on his shoulder. The impact resonated through the platform like a gong. Pain, bright and sharp, flared through the wire connecting them all, a shared jolt that made Julianna gasp from across the disc.
“Stop reacting to their plan,” Bruce growled, shoving Caulifla back with a forearm that crackled with protective energy. “We are the plan. Susannah, Julianna—pincer the Namekians from Universe 10. Now.”
The two women broke formation without a word. Susannah flowed into a sprint, her war-goddess senses mapping the chaotic field, every fighter a potential threat vector. Julianna split into two watery duplicates, each flanking a green-skinned warrior. “Burning through your defense,” she called, her voice echoing from both mouths as jets of superheated steam condensed into scalding needles aimed at their eyes.
High above, Zeno clapped his hands. “So many flashes! It’s pretty!”
The Grand Priest’s expression remained serene, but his eyes tracked Bruce with a new, minute intensity.
A surge of unfamiliar energy pulsed through the arena. From Universe 7’s platform, Goku’s hair spiked silver, his aura erupting in a cyclone of divine power. “Ultra Instinct,” he breathed, his voice calm amidst the storm. He locked eyes with Bruce again, and this time his grin was edged with challenge. “Later. We gotta thin the herd first.”
Jake felt it first—a pull in his gut, a resonance with Goku’s transformed state. The latent godhood within him, dormant since the ascension, stirred like a buried beast waking. It wasn’t power. It was hunger. A need to connect, to prove, to consume. He glanced at Lena, who was panting, her silver aura flickering from redirecting another energy blast. Her leggings were torn at the thigh, revealing a long scratch that wept luminous fluid instead of blood.
The wire between them all thrummed, not with pain now, but with a desperate, building heat. It was the same visceral need from the clifftop, amplified by the immediacy of mortal danger. Bruce felt it as a tightening in his groin, a primal response to the fight. Protection wasn’t just a shield. It was possession. And right now, he needed to possess them all, to anchor them deeper into reality against the erasing void.
“Lena. Briana. To me,” he commanded, his voice a low vibration that cut through the din of clashing energies.
They disengaged instantly, falling back to his position as Susannah and Julianna covered their retreat, their movements a lethal dance that forced two Universe 3 androids into a defensive cluster. Bruce didn’t move to a private space. He created one. With a thought, a dome of shimmering, sound-muffling energy flickered around the three of them, a temporary pocket within the chaos. Outside, the battle raged in silent, violent pantomime.
Inside, the air was thick with sweat and adrenaline. Lena was already pulling at her torn clothes, her hands shaking. “Bruce, I can’t… the amplification is bleeding. I need the sync. I need the anchor.”
“I know,” he said, his hazel eyes dark. He grabbed the remains of her top and ripped it the rest of the way off, exposing her small, pert breasts. Her nipples were hard peaks against the cool air of the pocket dimension. Briana was already pressing against Lena’s back, her own hands sliding around to cup Lena’s breasts, pinching the nipples roughly. “You take him,” Briana whispered into Lena’s ear, her voice husky. “I’ll take you. Just like on the cliff.”
Bruce unbuckled his pants, freeing his cock, already fully erect and thickening to that monstrous, wrist-wide girth. Precum beaded at the slit. He didn’t bother with gentleness. He spat into his palm, slicked his length, and nodded at Briana. She spat onto her fingers, then reached between Lena’s legs from behind, pushing two fingers deep into her soaked cunt. Lena cried out, her head falling back as Briana scissored her open, the rough preparation fueled by urgency.
“Now,” Bruce grunted.
He guided his cock to Lena’s entrance. The broad head pressed against her, stretching her impossibly. With Briana’s fingers inside her, he pushed. Lena screamed, a raw, tearing sound muted by the dome, as he sheathed himself in one brutal thrust. He was so deep she could feel him in her throat, the full, aching thickness splitting her open. Briana immediately withdrew her fingers and replaced them with her own cock—a manifestation of her cessation power, a solid, cool length of null-energy that she drove into Lena’s ass without pause.
Lena was filled in both holes, stuffed and stretched beyond reason. Bruce began to fuck her with short, punishing strokes, each thrust grinding her back onto Briana’s phantom cock. The dual penetration was a violent anchor, the pain and pleasure fusing into a sharp, white-hot signal that shot through the wire.
Outside the dome, Jake stumbled, gasping as the shared sensation hit him. His own cock hardened painfully against his fight suit. He saw Julianna take a hit to the ribs, her duplicate popping like a water balloon. She needed the boost. They all did.
“Fuck her harder,” Briana hissed, biting Lena’s shoulder. “Flood her. Let them feel it.”
Bruce’s rhythm became relentless, his hips pistoning, the slap of skin echoing in the small space. He could feel Briana’s cold null-energy cock moving in counterpoint to his own heat, creating a devastating friction inside Lena. Lena’s eyes rolled back, her mouth open in a silent wail as her body convulsed around them. Her potential goddess power erupted, not as silver light, but as a raw amplification of the sexual current coursing through the bond.
The wire sang. Across the platform, Susannah jerked as a wave of fierce, protective arousal washed over her. Her next move became a fluid kill-shot, disarming an android with a twist of its arm before shoving it off the edge. Julianna felt a surge of molten heat between her own legs, her body responding to the phantom penetration. She clamped her thighs together, channeling the sudden, wet need into a whirlpool of water that engulfed two fighters from Universe 4, spinning them into the void.
Jake’s hunger crystallized. The resonance with Goku’s Ultra Instinct sharpened into a blade. He didn’t manifest godhood. He manifested a reflection. His aura flickered silver for an instant, and he moved, dodging a energy volley from Universe 2’s Ribrianne not with thought, but with instinct. He was inside her guard, his own cock—thick and desperate—pressed against her thigh through their clothes, a crude, animal reminder of the life they fought for. “You’re pretty,” he snarled, echoing Zeno’s vacuous praise, before headbutting her off the platform.
The dome around Bruce dissolved. He was still buried to the hilt in Lena, Briana glued to her back. They stood exposed for a second, joined, their intimate connection now a weapon displayed to the remaining universes. Bruce pulled out, his cock glistening with Lena’s release, and Briana’s null-cock dissipated like smoke. Lena collapsed against Briana, trembling but her eyes clear, her silver aura stable and strong.
The Omni-King pointed, giggling. “They did a sticky thing! Does that help them win?”
The Grand Priest’s lip twitched, almost imperceptibly. “It appears to have synced their collective combat efficiency, Lord Zeno. Unorthodox, but within the rules.”
Goku, from his platform, wiped blood from his mouth and laughed. “Hey, not bad! Your team’s got guts, Bruce! Or, uh, other stuff!”
Bruce re-fastened his pants, his gaze sweeping the diminished field. Universes 9, 10, and 4 were gone. The air was thicker now, heavy with the scent of spent energy and sex. The hunger in his team’s eyes had tempered into a unified, predatory calm. The wire between them was no longer just a connection. It was a live circuit, humming with shared power and purpose.
“Round two,” Bruce said, his voice carrying across the sudden quiet. “Who’s eager?”
Silence answered Bruce’s challenge for exactly three heartbeats. Then the arena erupted.
A lumbering brute from Universe 11, a creature of pure muscle and magma, charged. Bruce didn’t dodge. He stepped forward and met the charge with his shoulder, a movement so brutally economical it looked casual. The impact didn’t echo. It consumed sound. The magma-warrior’s momentum evaporated; its chest cratered around Bruce’s point of contact. Bruce didn’t pause. He gripped a horn on its head, pivoted on his heel, and used its own mass to hurl it like a discus into a cluster of winged fighters from Universe 2. They scattered like pins.
“He didn’t even power up,” Vegeta grunted from a nearby platform, vaporizing a偷袭 from a teleporter with a flick of his wrist.
Goku laughed, a bright sound cutting through the chaos. “He’s fun!”
Bruce was already gone, a phantom in the flickering gravity. He reappeared behind a trio of slender, psychic warriors from Universe 3. Their psionic blades hummed to life, aiming for his spine. He let them come. The blades shattered against his skin, revealing not flesh but a brief, shimmering lattice of protective energy. His hands shot out, left and right, grabbing two by their necks. He cracked their skulls together. The third tried to flee; Bruce kicked a loose fragment of the obsidian floor. It became a projectile, catching the fleeing psychic between the shoulder blades and sending her spiraling into the void.
Lena and Briana flowed in his wake, a dual shadow. A frog-like creature from Universe 5, seeing an opening, lunged at Lena with a poison-tipped tongue. Briana stepped into its path, her cessation field flaring for a microsecond. The tongue passed through the null zone and dissolved into harmless mist up to the frog’s lips. It blinked, stunned. Lena drove her palm into its bulbous throat, her amplified strike bypassing its rubbery hide to rupture its internal organs from within. It vanished.
“Clean-up on aisle three,” Susannah drawled, snatching a razor-edged boomerang meant for Julianna out of the air. She didn’t throw it back. She reversed her grip and slammed it hilt-deep into the temple of its thrower, a cyborg from Universe 12.
Julianna was a storm of elements. She drowned a fire-user in his own condensing sweat, then flash-froze a charging ice-giant with a focused beam of superheated steam that cracked its core. Her hair whipped around her face, soaked with mist and sweat. She fought with a furious, grinning desperation, each movement an extension of the heat still pooling low in her belly from the shared connection.
Jake fought differently. He was no brawler. He was a ghost, using Roland’s gunfighter instincts. He baited, weaved, let opponents overcommit. He lured a powerful brawler from Universe 7—one of Goku’s own team, a hulking man named Bergamo’s brother—toward the edge. The Saiyan roared, swinging a fist that could shatter moons. Jake sidestepped, planted a foot on the giant’s knee, and used his momentum to vault onto his back. He locked his legs around the thick neck. He didn’t have the power to choke the beast. He didn’t need to.
“Sorry about this,” Jake muttered, and drove his now fully erect cock against the base of the Saiyan’s skull, a vulgar, distracting pressure. The fighter roared in confused fury, stumbling forward. One more step. Jake shoved off, twisting in mid-air as the behemoth’s foot found empty space. It flailed, tumbling into the endless burgundy below. Jake landed in a crouch, his chest heaving, the hunger still gnawing at him, unfulfilled.
“Focus, kid!” Vegeta barked, blasting a swarm of insectoid drones from Universe 10 out of the sky with a wide-beam. “This isn’t a pillow fight!”
The Grand Priest watched, his hands folded. “His power expenditure is negligible, Lord Zeno,” he observed, his voice a calm note amidst the symphony of violence. “He has yet to manifest any significant aura. He is eliminating top-tier universal fighters using only base physicality and tactical acumen.”
Zeno had stopped clapping. He leaned forward, his large, empty eyes fixed on Bruce, who was currently using the severed arm of a crystalline warrior to bludgeon its partner into glittering dust. “He hasn’t powered up fully yet?” Zeno asked, his tone losing its singsong quality for the first time. It was flat. Interested.
“No, my lord. He has not.”
On the platform, Universe 6’s leader, the frost demon Frost, saw an opening. While Bruce was dismantling the crystal duo, Frost gathered his energy into a single, invisible point—a lethal assassination technique. He aimed for the space between Bruce’s shoulder blades. The attack was soundless, lightless, a void of absolute cold that would stop a heart instantly.
Lena saw it. She screamed a warning, but her amplification was spent. Bruce, his back turned, seemed oblivious.
Jake, several yards away, felt the lethal intent like a spike of ice through the wire. He moved without thought. He wasn’t fast enough to intercept. So he did something else. He reached out with the hungry, grasping need inside him—the need that had resonated with Goku’s Ultra Instinct, the need forged in the sync with Bruce and the wives. He didn’t try to protect. He tried to take.
His hand clawed at the air between Frost and Bruce. A wrenching, tearing sensation ripped through him. The invisible point of cold didn’t hit Bruce. It veered, bending through space like light through a prism, and screamed directly into Jake’s outstretched palm.
Agony. Absolute, soul-deep cold. It wasn't just an attack; it was the conceptual essence of Frost's power: silent, perfect assassination. Jake's body arched, his mouth open in a soundless scream. His bones felt like they were shattering from the inside. He stumbled back, the force of the stolen technique driving him toward the arena's unguarded edge.
"Jake!" Susannah's cry was raw, laced with a war-goddess's fury and sudden terror.
The cold was inside him, killing him. But the hunger was there too, the godhood that had been dormant, born from protection and connection. It saw the foreign energy not as a threat, but as fuel. Mine, it whispered in the core of his being.
At the very edge of the platform, one heel slipping into the abyss, Jake's silent scream found a voice. It wasn't a roar. It was a low, resonant hum, like a tuning fork struck against the fabric of reality. The cold burning through his veins reversed. It didn't leave. It consolidated. It solidified around his fist.
His right hand clenched. Frost, bewildered, took a step back.
Jake's eyes snapped open. They weren't his own. They were pools of condensed, shimmering void, reflecting not light, but the absence of it. He looked at Frost.
"I see your kill shot," Jake said, his voice layered with a hundred echoes. "I take it."
He didn't throw a punch. He simply unmade the space between them. Frost had time for a microsecond of profound confusion—his technique, his signature move, was being used on him—before the same perfect, silent point of absolute cold blossomed in the center of his own chest. His body didn't shatter. It simply ceased to be, pixelating into nothingness from the inside out.
The hum faded. Jake’s eyes cleared. He slumped to his knees on the very brink, gasping, smoke curling from his fingertips. The arena, for a moment, was dead quiet.
The Omni-King floated down from his dais, hovering just above the platform near Bruce. His childlike face was tilted, examining Jake with an expression devoid of its usual vapid glee. It was pure, analytical curiosity.
"He stole the move," Zeno stated, no question in his voice. "He didn't copy it. He took it. It was his, and he used it." He turned his large head slowly toward Bruce. "Does yours do that too?"
Bruce stood over the wreckage of the crystalline warriors, his chest barely rising. He met the creator-god's gaze. "He's family," Bruce said, the words simple, final, and carrying more weight than any threat. "We share."
Zeno blinked. A slow smile spread across his face, but it wasn't the happy-clappy smile from before. This was the smile of a child who has just found a fascinating new bug to pull the wings off of. "Ooooh," he breathed. "Sharing is good."
The Grand Priest’s eyes narrowed a fraction. He looked from Jake, still trembling on the edge, to Bruce, standing amidst the carnage, to the diminished ranks of the other universes. The balance had irrevocably shifted.
Bruce extended a hand toward Jake, not moving from his spot. "On your feet."
Jake looked at the hand, then at the void behind him. He took a deep, shuddering breath that felt like his first. The gnawing hunger was gone. In its place was a settled, cold understanding. He knew what he was now. He took Bruce's hand.
As he stood, the remaining fighters from the other universes, those not from Universe 7 or 6, took a collective step back. The wrecking crew was just getting started. And now, it had a new weapon.