Vegeta burst through the flames and shot straight for Moro.
Moro swept one hand across his path, pulling another wall of fire out of New Namek itself. Vegeta hit the brakes before plunging into it, and the old wizard's mouth curled into a contemptuous smile.
"You'll never lay a finger on me."
He raised his arm. The flames twisted together above him, taking the shape of a massive dragon before diving at Vegeta.
Vegeta weaved around it without much trouble.
"Vegeta, want me to take over?" Goku called from the sidelines.
"Shut up, Kakarot! Stay there and watch!"
Vegeta slipped past another pass of the flaming dragon and fixed Moro with a taunting grin.
"That little trick before was your best shot, wasn't it? If this is all you've got, I'll finish you without breaking a sweat."
"With what?" Moro chuckled. "I can keep doing this until the planet itself is dead. It costs me nothing. You, on the other hand, will keep losing energy until there's nothing left."
Vegeta's expression immediately became grim.
"That's a problem. If that's true, I might actually lose."
Goku looked at him strangely. Vegeta had gone from boasting to admitting defeat so quickly that even he could tell something was off.
"I've already burned through quite a bit of energy," Vegeta continued. "That last exchange took more out of me than I expected."
Moro seemed genuinely amused. "Giving up already? At least you know when you've been beaten."
"Before you kill us, answer something. Why did you come to Namek?"
"You're about to die. Why should I tell you?"
Vegeta gave him a thin smile. "Because keeping us alive might be more useful than killing us."
That earned a booming laugh from Moro.
"So the mighty Galactic Patrol has been reduced to begging for its life?" he mocked. "Very well. You two do seem to know this world better than I do. Find the Dragon Balls for me."
"So that's it. You came for the Dragon Balls."
"I understand there are seven of them. Do you know where they are?"
"No."
"Then I have no further use for you."
Moro brought his hand down, and an enormous curtain of fire collapsed toward Vegeta.
A blast of ki ripped straight through it, scattering the flames in every direction. By the time Vegeta could see clearly again, however, Moro was gone.
The danger came from behind.
Another fire dragon tore across the ground and slammed into Vegeta's crossed arms. His boots carved two deep trenches through the soil as he fought against its momentum.
"There's one more thing I want to know!" Vegeta shouted through the pressure. "What exactly are you planning to wish for? You're already this strong!"
"This?" Moro sounded almost insulted. "I'm a shadow of what I once was. I spent far too long rotting in that prison. If my magic were fully restored, I wouldn't need to waste my time fighting you. I could simply devour this entire planet."
Now Vegeta had what he wanted.
"So you want your magic restored. That's your wish?"
"Exactly."
Vegeta's earlier exhaustion vanished from his face.
"Good. You really are as stupid as the stories say."
His power exploded.
The fire dragon disintegrated under a violent surge of ki, and the blast continued for kilometers beyond it, ripping a long scar through the Namekian landscape.
Moro had been completely fooled.
"You were hiding that much power?"
"You never show your whole hand at the start of a fight."
"Vegeta," Goku called over, "I already knew he wanted his magic back. I looked into his mind earlier."
Silence would have been kinder.
Vegeta slowly turned toward him.
"Then why the hell didn't you say anything, Kakarot?!"
"You never asked."
Goku scratched his head as though this were the most reasonable answer in the world.
Vegeta had spent all that effort baiting Moro into revealing his objective, and Kakarot had just demolished the entire moment in two sentences.
Moro, meanwhile, was paying far more attention to Goku now.
He could look into my mind?
Impossible.
The Saiyan had to be bluffing.
Whatever the truth was, Moro could deal with him later. The red-tailed Saiyan came first.
More than a dozen fire dragons erupted around him at once and converged on Vegeta from every direction.
Vegeta tore through the formation before they could close around him. Moro barely had time to react before Vegeta was in front of him, driving a boot deep into his stomach.
The impact folded Moro over and launched him out of the sky.
He crashed into the lake below hard enough to throw water high into the air, but it did not keep him down for long. Moro blasted back out through the spray, glaring at Vegeta from above the churning surface.
"I don't care how many crimes you've committed," Vegeta told him. "I just won't let you devour this planet."
His aura flared around him.
"So I'll kill you here."
"Vegeta!" Goku shouted. "Something feels wrong. Be careful!"
Far from the battlefield, an engine roared to life.
Cranberry had seen enough.
He pushed the stolen spacecraft as hard as it would go, racing for the upper atmosphere while Vegeta still had Moro occupied.
There was no chance he was letting the Galactic Patrol catch him again. He had never imagined Vegeta could become this powerful, and as far as he was concerned, Moro had already lost.
All that mattered now was getting off New Namek.
Back on the battlefield, Moro suddenly fired several blasts around Vegeta. The explosions tore apart the ground and buried the area beneath a thick cloud of dust.
Vegeta blasted the smoke away with his aura, but Moro had already put an enormous distance between them.
He was standing atop a distant ridge with one arm raised.
A burning red sphere floated above his palm.
Three columns of fire erupted from deep beneath New Namek and connected with it, continuously feeding more energy into the growing mass.
"What are you trying now?" Vegeta called. "Make that thing as big as you want. It still won't be enough to hurt me."
Moro only smiled.
That answer did nothing to ease the warning crawling through Vegeta's instincts.
Elsewhere, the Namekians had gathered at their village while they waited for Grand Elder Moori to return with Eska. Their attention kept drifting toward the distant battlefield as the planet continued to tremble.
"Does the planet feel strange to anyone else?"
"Yeah. What's happening?"
One Namekian shifted the sack containing their Dragon Balls, only for it to slip from his hands.
"Careful! The Grand Elder trusted us with those!"
"Sorry."
He bent down to retrieve it, but before he could, one of the younger Namekians suddenly collapsed beside him.
The others rushed over.
"What's wrong?"
"I don't know. I just feel… weak."
"Now that you mention it, so do I."
Another Namekian frowned thoughtfully. "We're Namekians, though. I thought Earthling men were the ones who got weak after… overdoing certain things."
Nobody had time to question where he had heard that.
Above the distant ridge, Moro's sphere had swollen to nearly thirty meters across.
"Vegeta!" Goku shouted. "Shouldn't you be attacking him right about now?"
Vegeta was already moving.
Too late.
Moro closed his raised hand into a fist.
The enormous sphere collapsed in on itself so rapidly that within seconds it had been compressed to something no larger than a clenched fist.
Its fiery red glow vanished with it.
The sphere turned pale blue.
Whatever Moro had just done, the result no longer looked like ordinary planetary energy.
Then he opened his mouth and swallowed it whole.
"What the—he ate it!" Vegeta blurted.
"Yeah. He ate it," Goku agreed, as if Vegeta needed confirmation.
Power erupted from Moro.
The pressure rolling off him was far greater than before, and the old wizard stretched with obvious satisfaction.
"Ah… I haven't eaten properly in a very long time. That restored quite a bit of my strength."
"So that's how you absorb energy."
Moro ignored Vegeta and looked toward the tiny spacecraft disappearing into the distance.
He pointed.
The ship instantly lost power.
Cranberry screamed as it plunged out of the sky and smashed back into the ground.
Moro's voice reached him from kilometers away.
"Cranberry! Did you truly think I had lost? Stay there and watch."
"Yes! Of course! I'll stay right here!"
Cranberry had suddenly lost all interest in escaping.
Goku focused on Moro again, his earlier excitement gone.
"His energy's definitely higher than before."
Vegeta could feel it too, and at last Merus's concern made sense.
"So that's why even Merus considered him troublesome. Without Angel power, this bastard really could be a problem."
His fists tightened.
"Then I'll destroy him before he can recover any further."
"Go ahead," Moro invited.
"You think that little meal suddenly puts you above us? You're nowhere near my Super Saiyan 4!"
Vegeta tried to drive his power higher.
Nothing happened.
Worse, the energy required simply to maintain Super Saiyan 4 was already slipping away from him.
Goku felt the change immediately.
"Vegeta… where'd your energy go?"
Vegeta's body shuddered.
His transformation collapsed.
The red fur vanished along with his aura, leaving him in his base form before he could do anything to stop it.
"What the hell…?"
Understanding hit Goku at almost the same moment.
"He's been draining us too!"
Moro was already upon them.
One enormous hand clamped around Vegeta's head, and before the Saiyan could break free, Moro hurled him backward with brutal force.
Vegeta blasted through mountain after mountain, disappearing several kilometers into the distance beneath a chain of explosions.
"Vegeta!"
Moro laughed.
"You already knew I could consume a planet's life energy. Did you really think that excluded the life standing on it?"
Vegeta dragged himself out of the rubble, fury burning through the exhaustion now weighing down his body.
Moro extended his hand toward him.
"You said something earlier about keeping a card in reserve, didn't you?"
A twist of magic caught Vegeta before he could move.
Moro sent him tearing through another line of mountains, using his body like a battering ram as rock collapsed around him.
"Enough!"
Goku rushed Moro and drove a kick at his head.
Moro caught the strike on one arm, seized Goku by the ankle, and smashed him face-first into the ground.
Before Goku could recover, Moro swung him around and launched him into the side of a mountain.
A flick of Moro's fingers summoned another wave of fire, pinning Goku against the rock beneath the flames.
Only now did Goku realize just how much energy Moro had stolen while they were focused on the fight. By the time either Saiyan had noticed the drain, most of the damage had already been done.
"As long as you remain near me, your energy will continue to disappear," Moro said. "And once there's nothing left—"
A violent violet-red aura burst from the ruined mountains.
Vegeta shot back into the sky with one hand raised, a dense sphere of destruction energy forming above his palm.
"Hakai!"
He hurled it straight at Moro.
For the first time since absorbing New Namek's energy, Moro's confidence cracked.
His first instinct was to swallow the attack just as he had swallowed everything else. But the closer the sphere came, the clearer its nature became.
That energy did not feed.
It erased.
Moro thrust two fingers forward and stopped the sphere in midair just before it reached him.
Vegeta expected him to struggle with it.
Instead, Moro began working his magic through the destruction energy itself.
The change took only a few seconds.
The dangerous crimson-violet glow faded away, replaced by the same pale blue light as the planetary energy Moro had consumed earlier.
Vegeta could only stare at what remained of his attack.
Moro had converted destruction energy into something he could absorb.
"What…? That's impossible!"
[End of chapter]
[100 Power Stones = Extra Chapter]
[Check out my Patreon to read 20+ chapters ahead]
[[email protected]/BellAshelia]
[Thanks for your support!]