Chapter 326: King Piccolo
Some two to three thousand kilometers from the island where Master Roshi lived, a rather strange-looking Namekian sat quietly upon a soft, opulent throne, a shadow lurking behind his eyes, though his expression carried a note of something almost wistful.
The deep wrinkles lining his skin made it plain this Namekian was no longer young — old age, even, would be a fair word for it.
And yet the terror radiating off him was enough to make anyone's blood run cold.
An ordinary person meeting his gaze wouldn't last ten seconds before their legs gave out from sheer fright — some might even lose control of their bladder.
Anyone faint of heart, anyone whose nerves simply couldn't take it, stood a real chance of rolling their eyes back and passing out on the spot.
The Namekian sat in a lavish great hall — though the reek of blood hanging in the air made it clear the hall hadn't originally belonged to him.
Now that he'd wiped out every human who'd once lived here, this magnificent hall was simply his personal property.
Watching the demon-kind he'd made and assimilated finish clearing away the fragile human corpses, the Namekian, seated on his lavish throne, muttered to himself, a shadow crossing his face:
"If I remember right, that old fool Mutaito had two disciples. They must've learned the Evil Containment Wave from him too, hm?"
"To think they sealed me away for all those years. If someone hadn't come along and let me out, I'd have grown old and died in that rice cooker. Look how much I've aged already..."
He rubbed at his wrinkled arm, plainly able to feel that his current strength fell well short of his peak in younger days.
He needed to reclaim his youth — and the thing that could give him that was the Dragon Balls!
Balls that could grant any wish — a truly fascinating thing indeed. Once he tracked down the ones scattered across the Earth, he'd wish for eternal youth.
And once that happened, the entire Earth would kneel beneath King Piccolo's feet — only a handful of beings would still pose any threat to him at all.
Mutaito's two disciples, say, and that Kami up in the heavens. Beyond those, who else could possibly be his match?
This Namekian was, in fact, the very target of Ryū and the others' quest — King Piccolo, the evil incarnation split off from this world's Kami!
With a baseline power level in the two-hundreds — and who knew whether he could push it to three or four hundred at full burst — King Piccolo was, at this point in the Dragon Ball world's timeline, a nearly unbeatable demon lord of terror.
Add to that a head full of nothing but evil schemes, and he became a truly bone-chilling presence.
It had been just over a day, nearly two, since the two transmigrators had released King Piccolo.
In that span of barely two days alone, the number of humans dead by his hand — directly or otherwise — had already broken into seven figures!
What did seven figures even mean?
In under two days, over a million people had already died — possibly two or three million, maybe even four or five million!
Seven figures could mean barely scraping past a million, or it could mean nearly ten million.
At last, King Piccolo's gaze settled on the two "demon-kind" nearby, still clearing away corpses.
These two were the "demon-kind" he'd assimilated with his own blood — and they were also one of the Dimensional Chat Group's targets this time: the rule-breaking transmigrators!
King Piccolo had no idea the two were transmigrators — he simply thought them a pair of humans smart enough to know which way the wind blew.
And both of them were, frankly, quite capable at what they did — he found himself rather impressed.
But did he not notice they were angling to use him? Not likely — not after living as long as he had, sharp as he'd become.
He didn't know exactly what they wanted to use him for, but he didn't much care — in the end, who was really using whom, and who'd end up counting someone else's money for them, was anyone's guess.
Sensing King Piccolo's gaze land on them, the two transmigrators, still handling the blood-soaked corpses, exchanged a look as if reading each other's minds.
By now, the two transmigrators looked nothing like ordinary humans anymore. They looked more like budget-tier Namekians — the cheapest tier available, at that. Only the green skin and pointed ears gave away even a hint of Namekian ancestry.
One of them, a good two-plus meters tall, shot an inconspicuous glance at King Piccolo seated nearby, and felt his heart give an involuntary jolt.
This guy's power is honestly insane. Sure, I know in canon he eventually loses to Goku, but now that we've released him early, there's probably nobody left who can beat him.
Then again, this green freak's given us insane power too. I feel like I could lift a heavy tank without breaking a sweat right now — it's unbelievable. Watching the anime never really made it hit home, but standing in front of the real thing sends chills down my spine.
Every word of that, of course, stayed locked deep inside his own head. The last thing this two-meter-tall transmigrator wanted was to say any of it out loud.
King Piccolo was the biggest boss the Dragon Ball world had to offer. As long as he could latch onto those coattails and squeeze a little use out of the situation, well — heh.
If Ryū had been there and somehow learned what this transmigrator was actually thinking, his expression would probably have gone very strange indeed.
"King Piccolo, the biggest boss in the Dragon Ball world" — was that supposed to be a joke?
Unless these two transmigrators were like the legitimate transmigrator son Whitebeard had taken in — knowing only a fragment of the actual plot. And honestly, that seemed quite likely.
After all, even reincarnators out of Sacred Ground only ever knew a sliver of the source material — let alone this bunch of wild, free-range transmigrators.
Knowing King Piccolo was a boss, knowing this world's Shenron could grant wishes, knowing roughly who his enemies might be — that was already doing pretty well for themselves.
Unaware the two were transmigrators at all, King Piccolo pulled his gaze away from the pair and looked over the lavish hall around him, clicking his tongue.
"Humans really do love their frivolous decoration. Even a house gets built this gaudy."
He pulled two Dragon Balls from his robe, a fevered gleam surfacing in his shadowed eyes.
"Two down already. Just five more to go, and I can make my wish."
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