"King Frieza! What in the universe happened?!" The stunned questions, thick with alien accents, echoed down the polished corridor.
The moment they caught sight of Tagoma's lifeless body slumped on the floor, the two alien soldiers froze in absolute horror.
"Th-this… is that Lord Tagoma?!" One of them stammered, his eyes wide with disbelief.
The other soldier snapped to attention, his small brain reeling. "W-what is going on, King Frieza?! Did an assassin somehow slip past us?!"
"Just moments ago, Lord Tagoma greeted us… How could this happen so fast?!"
The two exchanged nervous glances, their eyes darting between their King and the corpse, their confusion battling with a sudden, sharp fear.
Frieza simply shook his head, a bored look on his face as he casually blew on his fingertip, which still held the faint residue of a ki blast.
"Hmm… you can call it an assassin, if it helps you sleep at night," He drawled with indifferent cruelty.
"The assassin killed Tagoma."
With that final, dismissive word, Frieza leisurely began walking toward the ship's exit, leaving the two soldiers utterly petrified where they stood.
"Oh, and one more thing," Frieza added over his shoulder without turning around, "make sure to dispose of Lord Tagoma's body."
The soldiers stared at each other for a beat, then instantly sprang into action. They lifted Tagoma's corpse and quickly disappeared down the corridor. Watching Frieza's silhouette vanish, the braver of the two wiped a bead of sweat from his brow and let out a shaky sigh of relief. They had survived, for now.
…
The planet M2: a world of advanced technology and endless resources, particularly metal. Beyond its industrial landscape, it bore a strange, almost unsettling similarity to Earth.
Frieza recalled the final, twisted words of the Tagoma he'd just killed, the warning that tricking him into coming to this planet had already fulfilled the enemy's plan.
Afraid? How could Frieza know the meaning of the word? If someone dared to use him as bait, it simply meant they had supreme confidence in their trap.
Gazing out over the seemingly infinite, metallic cityscape, Frieza let out a roar that shook the air.
"Well then, everyone! Regardless of whether Cooler or my father have been revived, we will seize this planet first!"
His voice took on a theatrical, heartbroken tremor as he covered his face with one hand. "And furthermore! Our chief commander, Tagoma, was viciously murdered by the assassins from this world!"
The moment those words dropped, his entire army ignited as if injected with a potent stimulant. Their fury to avenge their (secretly despised) commander surged to a fever pitch.
Above Planet M2, a massive swarm of Frieza Force soldiers screamed their loyalty.
"Yes, King Frieza!"
Their thunderous battle-cries seemed to shake the planet to its very core. Immediately afterward, the densely packed Frieza Army launched their full-scale invasion. They descended like a monstrous plague of locusts, a raging tide threatening to devour every inch of the metallic world.
However, as the invasion began, something massive and unexpected happened.
In the distance, a colossal metal wall suddenly shot up from the ground, soaring thousands of meters into the sky. The towering barrier gleamed with a cold, unforgiving light, rapidly forming an unbreakable ring that encircled the entire main city.
RUMBLE—! RUMBLE—!
As the wall rose higher and higher, Planet M2 began to quake violently. The ground convulsed, the buildings shuddered, and the soldiers of the Frieza Force struggled to keep their footing.
The sudden upheaval halted the army's advance. They stopped in sheer astonishment, staring up at the enormous, seemingly endless wall before them. It just kept rising, completely blocking their path, sealing the city off from Frieza's troops.
They could only gawk, no one present could imagine a way to breach such a monumental structure.
"Wh-what in the hell is that?!" cried a lizard-headed Frieza soldier.
"I-I don't know," croaked a toad-like alien beside him.
"It's utterly massive! And it's nothing but metal!"
"W-wait! Look up there, at the very top!"
At those words, every soldier in the Frieza Force lifted their gaze to the peak of the towering barrier.
A burly man stood atop the massive metal wall, his arms crossed. He looked down with an air of crushing arrogance, his gaze locked solely and completely on Frieza. Even separated by nearly ten thousand meters, Frieza could feel the man's piercing, focused stare.
Frieza only let out a cold, low sneer. He wasn't angry; he was utterly fascinated, eager to see the next act of this strange play.
"Damn him! How dare he block the path of Lord Frieza's army!"
"Let's all attack at once! Blast a hole through it!"
A bold Frieza Force soldier charged forward, leading a vanguard toward the steel wall. As he launched the first ki blast, more and more soldiers followed, closing in on the lone figure above.
Countless energy blasts illuminated the sky. Every member of the Frieza Force unleashed their power in a single, massive salvo. A storm of death streaked toward the wall.
Whoosh, whoosh, whoosh—!
But suddenly, the enormous metallic wall grew even taller and noticeably thicker.
Then, to everyone's terror, it began to bend downward,, like a giant, impossibly huge hand, curving over and completely enveloping the entire barrage of incoming energy blasts within its grasp.
Not a whisper of smoke, not a flicker of light escaped. They were all simply absorbed.
The pressure in the air became suffocating.
Then, the burly man atop the wall finally spoke, his voice booming across the valley.
"Heh… the Frieza Force, is it?" he sneered. "You've come crawling back, have you?"
"The last fool who dared challenge me, what was his name again? Ah, yes. Tagoma, wasn't it?"
"He was your commander, wasn't he? I truly didn't expect any of you to still have the nerve to show your faces here."
The man's words instantly shattered Frieza's amusement.
So… Tagoma was killed by him? Frieza's eyes narrowed. Oh? That means the real Tagoma truly was slain by this man. The impostor wasn't entirely lying.
Which means, the real Tagoma couldn't beat him…
This must be the "General Rilldo" that fake Tagoma had desperately mentioned.
Frieza's eyes glimmered with something deeper than amusement, he looked up at the top of the wall, watching the man as though he were the star of a fascinating, dangerous performance.
"What?! So he's the killer of Lord Tagoma?!"
"That damned bastard! How dare he! There are so many of us, I refuse to believe that wall of his can withstand our combined assault!"
"Everyone! Attack again!" shouted the lizard-headed alien from before, his voice now ringing with desperate ambition.
Now that the Chief Commander was verifiably dead, a spark of hope, of promotion, flared in his heart. If he could show exceptional leadership in this battle, he might become the next Tagoma!
He didn't consider that both Sorbet and Tagoma had recently died, and both deaths were, directly or indirectly, tied to Frieza himself.
Just then, the man atop the wall spoke one last time.
"Very well! I'll give you all the distinct honor of witnessing the true power of General Rilldo!"
In the very next instant, the ground itself began to transform; massive, metallic arms erupted from the earth all around the Frieza Force. The enormous limbs, moving with Rilldo's command, reached out and began crushing the Frieza soldiers in their grasp.
Even before Frieza, several of those giant metal arms sprang up. Frieza cast them a cold, contemptuous glance, and with a mere surge of his golden aura, he blasted them away as if swatting flies.
But the lesser soldiers were not so fortunate.
In just a few short moments…
They were completely devoured.
(End Of This Chapter)
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