The wilderness that Mahoraga had chosen as his temporary sanctuary was a vast expanse of untouched nature, far from any human settlement and deep within a mountain range that seemed to stretch endlessly toward the horizon. Jagged peaks rose like teeth against the sky, their snow-capped summits gleaming in the afternoon sun, while dense forests blanketed the lower slopes in a carpet of vibrant green. Waterfalls cascaded down cliff faces into crystal-clear pools, and the air was thick with the sounds of wildlife that had never known the touch of civilization.
It was, Mahoraga reflected as he touched down on a rocky plateau overlooking a particularly dramatic valley, exactly the kind of place where a being like himself could train without worrying about collateral damage. The nearest human settlement was over two hundred miles away, and the ambient ki signatures he could detect in the area were nothing more than ordinary animals going about their ordinary lives. If he happened to destroy a few mountains during his experiments, no one would be the wiser.
The Divine General stood motionless for a long moment, allowing himself to fully appreciate the reality of his situation. He was here. He was actually here, in the Dragon Ball universe, inhabiting a body of tremendous power, with the knowledge of everything that was supposed to happen and the ability to change it. The sheer impossibility of it all should have been overwhelming, but instead, Mahoraga felt nothing but a calm, focused determination.
He had work to do.
"First things first," he said aloud, his deep voice echoing off the surrounding peaks. "Let's see exactly what Raditz taught me."
The battle with the Saiyan had been brief but illuminating. Mahoraga had allowed Raditz to attack him repeatedly, absorbing the impact of both energy blasts and physical strikes, and his adaptation had responded by learning from each assault. He could feel the results of that learning process now, new patterns of movement and combat technique that had been written into his very being by the spinning of the wheel.
He raised his fists into a fighting stance, and immediately noticed something different. The position felt natural in a way it hadn't before. His weight was distributed perfectly, his guard was tight but not restrictive, and his body seemed to know instinctively how to move from this position into any number of offensive or defensive techniques.
This is Saiyan combat doctrine, Mahoraga realized with fascination. Not just Raditz's personal style, but the underlying principles of how Saiyans are trained to fight. The wheel didn't just copy his movements—it extracted the fundamental concepts and integrated them into my own capabilities.
He threw a punch at the empty air, and the motion was explosive. His fist traveled in a tight arc that maximized both speed and power, his body rotating to add momentum, his feet shifting to maintain perfect balance throughout the movement. The displaced air created a shockwave that carved a furrow in the rocky ground thirty meters away.
"Impressive," Mahoraga murmured, looking at his fist with new appreciation. "But that was just a basic strike. Let's see what else I can do."
He began to move through a series of combinations, letting his body guide him through techniques that his conscious mind had never learned but that his adapted form now knew instinctively. Jabs, crosses, hooks, uppercuts—each punch flowed into the next with mechanical precision. Kicks followed, sweeping arcs and devastating straight thrusts that would have shattered steel. Elbow strikes, knee strikes, headbutts, throws—the complete arsenal of Saiyan hand-to-hand combat unfolded from his movements like a deadly flower blooming.
But it wasn't just the techniques themselves that Mahoraga had gained. It was the philosophy behind them. Saiyans fought to dominate, to overwhelm, to crush their opponents with superior force and ferocity. Their combat style emphasized aggression and power, pressing the attack relentlessly and giving enemies no room to breathe or recover. Defense was almost an afterthought, a brief pause between offensive onslaughts rather than a strategy in itself.
This works for beings who are naturally durable and who get stronger from taking damage, Mahoraga analyzed as he continued his practice. The Zenkai boost means that even if a Saiyan loses a fight, they come back stronger. So they're incentivized to take risks, to engage in battles they might not win, because defeat only makes them more powerful.
And now I have that same mentality, combined with my own adaptation ability. Every attack I survive makes me immune to similar attacks in the future. Every technique I experience becomes part of my repertoire. The more I fight, the more invincible I become.
It was a terrifying realization, and Mahoraga found himself grateful that his personality—his human conscience, carried over from his previous life—was still intact. A being with his powers and no moral compass would be a nightmare beyond imagining.
He spent the next hour refining his new combat capabilities, pushing his body through increasingly complex sequences of movement and testing the limits of his Saiyan-derived techniques. He discovered that he could chain strikes together in combinations that would have been impossible for a human martial artist, his enhanced speed and coordination allowing him to land dozens of blows in the space of a single second. He learned that his kicks could generate enough force to split the air itself, creating vacuum blades that extended the range of his attacks by several meters. He found that the aggressive mindset of Saiyan combat actually synergized well with his Divine General nature, the wheel spinning faster when he committed fully to offensive action.
But physical combat was only part of the equation. Mahoraga had also absorbed Raditz's ki blast, which meant he should theoretically have gained some understanding of energy manipulation as well.
He raised his right hand, palm facing outward, and concentrated on the power flowing through his body. The ki within him responded immediately, eager to be shaped and directed, rising to the surface of his skin like water seeking to overflow a dam. Mahoraga focused on the memory of Raditz's attack—the purple energy, the explosive force, the way the Saiyan had channeled his life force into a concentrated projectile—and tried to replicate it.
The result was instantaneous and somewhat alarming.
A beam of energy erupted from his palm, not purple like Raditz's attack but a deep, ominous black shot through with veins of golden light. It was massive, easily ten times the size of what Raditz had produced, and it tore through the air with a sound like reality itself being ripped apart. The beam struck a distant mountain peak and detonated with catastrophic force, vaporizing the entire summit and sending shockwaves rippling across the landscape.
Mahoraga stared at the smoking crater where the mountain had been, then down at his hand, then back at the crater.
"Okay," he said slowly. "That was... more than I expected."
His ki attacks, it seemed, were not simple replications of what he had adapted from. They were enhanced versions, filtered through his Divine General nature and amplified by his own vast power reserves. The black-and-gold coloration was distinctive, marking his energy as something fundamentally different from the ki used by other beings in this universe.
Cursed energy, Mahoraga realized. Or something like it. My power isn't pure ki—it's a hybrid of this universe's life force and the supernatural energy that defined my original form. When I use it offensively, it takes on characteristics of both systems.
This had interesting implications. Cursed energy in Jujutsu Kaisen operated on different principles than ki in Dragon Ball. It was fueled by negative emotions, could affect spiritual entities, and had its own unique techniques and applications. If Mahoraga's power combined elements of both systems, he might be capable of things that neither pure ki users nor pure cursed energy users could achieve.
He spent another hour experimenting with energy attacks, firing beams and blasts of varying intensities to get a feel for his capabilities. He discovered that he could adjust the output with reasonable precision, from attacks weak enough to merely scorch the ground to devastating strikes that could level mountains. He learned that his energy could be shaped in different ways—concentrated beams for penetration, wide blasts for area destruction, rapid-fire projectiles for suppression. Each variation came more easily than the last, his adaptation helping him optimize his technique with every attempt.
But the most interesting discovery came when Mahoraga tried to replicate one of the more advanced ki techniques he remembered from Dragon Ball canon: the energy barrier.
He concentrated on creating a shell of power around himself, and the result was unlike anything he had anticipated. Instead of a simple bubble of ki, what formed around him was a complex lattice of black-and-gold energy that seemed to exist in multiple layers simultaneously. The barrier hummed with power, and Mahoraga could sense that it would be extraordinarily difficult to breach.
More than that, he realized that he could feel attacks coming through the barrier, could sense when the lattice was being stressed and where. If he maintained this shield while being attacked, his adaptation would have advance warning of incoming threats, potentially allowing him to adjust even faster than normal.
Defensive adaptation, he thought with satisfaction. I can protect myself while still learning from attacks. This changes the calculus of combat significantly.
But even as he catalogued his offensive and defensive capabilities, Mahoraga became aware that he was missing something. The Saiyan fighting style was effective, the energy attacks were powerful, but neither felt like a complete expression of his nature as a Divine General. There had to be more. There had to be something that was uniquely his, some capability that emerged from the fusion of his Mahoraga template with this universe's power system.
He dismissed the barrier and floated down to land on the plateau once again, his wheel spinning slowly as he contemplated the problem. What made the original Mahoraga special, beyond adaptation? What were the signature abilities of the Divine General?
The sword. The original Mahoraga had wielded a blade called the Sword of Extermination, a weapon capable of delivering positive energy that was antithetical to cursed spirits. Mahoraga reached behind his back instinctively, but his hand found only empty air. No sword had manifested with his transformation into this form.
But there was something else. Something he had been ignoring because it seemed like a passive element rather than an active weapon.
The wheel.
Mahoraga turned his attention inward, focusing on the massive ring of power that rose from his back. It was always there, always spinning, always processing the adaptations that made him so dangerous. He had thought of it as an integral part of his body, like an arm or a leg, rather than as a separate tool that could be used.
But what if it was both?
He concentrated on the wheel, really concentrated on it for the first time since his rebirth. He could feel it responding to his attention, the spinning accelerating slightly, the power within it pulsing in recognition of his focus. It was connected to him on a fundamental level, yes, but it was also distinct. It had its own weight, its own presence, its own... mobility.
Mahoraga reached back with his mind rather than his hand, grasping the concept of the wheel as a weapon rather than as an appendage. And to his amazement, he felt it begin to move.
The wheel detached from his back and floated before him, spinning in the air like a disc of pure power. It was massive, easily eight feet in diameter, its surface covered in symbols and patterns that seemed to shift and change as he watched. The eight handles that gave it its name extended from the rim like the spokes of some cosmic sundial, each one radiating energy that made the air around them shimmer.
"Hello there," Mahoraga said to the wheel, and though it couldn't respond verbally, he felt a pulse of acknowledgment through their connection. The wheel was his, and he was the wheel's. They were partners in existence.
He experimented with moving the wheel through the air, finding that it responded to his mental commands with perfect precision. He could send it spinning toward a target, bring it back to his hand, make it hover defensively around his body, or reattach it to his back for passive adaptation processing. It was, he realized, an incredibly versatile weapon.
But how destructive could it be?
Mahoraga selected a nearby mountain—smaller than the one he'd destroyed with his energy blast but still substantial—and willed the wheel to attack. It shot forward like a disc of death, spinning with such velocity that the air around it ignited from friction. When it struck the mountain, it didn't bounce off or embed itself in the rock.
It cut straight through.
The entire mountain split in half, the top portion sliding off the bottom and crashing to the earth in an avalanche of stone and dust. The wheel emerged from the other side of the destruction completely unharmed, spinning back toward Mahoraga and resuming its orbit around his body.
"That," Mahoraga said with genuine awe in his voice, "is going to be very useful."
He spent the next several hours practicing with the wheel, learning its capabilities and limitations. He found that he could throw it over vast distances without losing control, that it could change direction mid-flight with impossible precision, that it would return to him no matter what obstacles stood in its path. He discovered that the eight handles could extend outward to increase the wheel's cutting radius, or retract inward to make it more compact and faster. He learned that he could channel his energy through the wheel to enhance its attacks, coating it in the black-and-gold power that defined his offensive capabilities.
But the most significant discovery came when Mahoraga tried to use the wheel defensively.
He threw the wheel at a cliff face, intending to test how quickly it could return to block an imaginary counterattack. But as the wheel struck the rock and began its return journey, something unexpected happened. A creature—some kind of massive dinosaur that had apparently been sleeping behind the cliff—burst through the rubble and lunged at Mahoraga with jaws wide enough to swallow him whole.
It was not a threat. The creature's power level was negligible compared to Mahoraga's own. But it was unexpected, and that unexpectedness triggered something within him.
The wheel accelerated.
Not just quickly, but instantaneously. One moment it was a hundred meters away, and the next it was between Mahoraga and the attacking dinosaur, spinning with such ferocity that the beast was bisected before it could even complete its lunge. The two halves of the creature flew past Mahoraga on either side, crashing to the ground behind him in a spray of blood and viscera.
Mahoraga stared at the wheel, which had returned to its normal orbit around his body as if nothing unusual had happened.
It protected me, he realized. Even when I wasn't consciously directing it, the wheel acted to defend me from a perceived threat. We're not just connected—we're synchronized. It reads my subconscious reactions and responds before my conscious mind can even process what's happening.
This was an enormous advantage. It meant that Mahoraga effectively had an autonomous defense system, a guardian that would intercept attacks even if he was distracted or overwhelmed. Combined with his adaptation and his energy barriers, it made landing a truly damaging blow on him almost impossibly difficult.
But he wasn't satisfied. There was still something missing, some capability that he felt should be available to him but that he hadn't yet accessed. The physical combat, the energy attacks, the wheel—all of these were powerful, but none of them felt like the ultimate expression of his Divine General nature.
And then he remembered.
Black Flash.
In Jujutsu Kaisen, Black Flash was a technique that occurred when a cursed energy user applied their power within a fraction of a second of a physical impact. It created a distortion of space, a flash of black light, and dramatically amplified the power of the attack—by a factor of 2.5 to the power of itself, according to the manga's explanation. The technique was notoriously difficult to perform intentionally, requiring perfect timing and absolute concentration.
But Mahoraga had been designed as the ultimate shikigami, capable of adapting to any phenomenon. If Black Flash was possible for cursed energy users, shouldn't it be possible for him as well? Especially now that his power combined cursed energy with ki?
He reattached the wheel to his back and took a deep breath, focusing his mind on the concept of Black Flash. The key, as he understood it, was to apply cursed energy at the exact moment of impact—not before, not after, but within 0.000001 seconds of the physical strike connecting. It required a level of timing that should have been beyond conscious control.
But Mahoraga wasn't trying to be conscious about it. He was trying to adapt to it.
He created a target for himself, using his energy to form a dense sphere of compressed ki that floated in the air before him. The sphere was tough, resistant to damage, a worthy testing ground for what he was about to attempt.
Then he began to punch.
His first strike was fast and powerful, shattering the sphere easily but producing no special effect. Mahoraga reformed the sphere and tried again, this time focusing intensely on the moment of impact.
Nothing.
He tried again. And again. And again. Each punch destroyed the target, but none of them produced the distinctive black flash that he was searching for. The timing was wrong, or his concentration was off, or something else was preventing the technique from manifesting.
After a hundred attempts, Mahoraga paused to reconsider his approach.
I'm trying to force it, he realized. I'm trying to consciously control something that, by its very nature, can't be consciously controlled. That's not how adaptation works. I don't force adaptations to happen—I experience phenomena and the wheel processes them automatically.
So how do I experience Black Flash if I can't perform it?
The answer, when it came to him, was almost elegant in its simplicity.
He needed to stop trying to control the timing and instead focus on the feeling. Black Flash wasn't just a technique—it was a state of being, a moment of perfect synchronization between body, energy, and intent. The practitioners who achieved it in the manga described it as a transcendent experience, a moment of absolute clarity and connection to the nature of cursed energy.
Mahoraga closed his eyes—metaphorically, since his eyes were always sealed—and stopped thinking about timing or power or technique. Instead, he focused on the sensation of his energy flowing through his body. He felt it pulsing in rhythm with his heartbeat, circulating through pathways that connected his physical form to the wheel on his back, resonating with the ambient ki of the world around him.
He thought about what it meant to be Mahoraga. Not the borrowed form, but the essence. The Divine General who had never been tamed. The ultimate expression of the Ten Shadows Technique. The being who adapted to all phenomena because adaptation was not just his ability—it was his purpose. His very existence was defined by the drive to overcome, to evolve, to become more than he was.
Black Flash was about perfect synchronization. About the moment when intent and action and power became one.
And wasn't that exactly what Mahoraga was? A being whose physical form, adaptive ability, and combat purpose were perfectly unified?
He opened his eyes—metaphorically—and threw one more punch at a newly formed target sphere.
This time, he didn't think about timing.
He just existed in the moment.
The impact came.
And the world turned black.
The flash was visible for miles.
A burst of absolute darkness, somehow luminous in its absence of light, erupted from the point of contact between Mahoraga's fist and the target sphere. The sphere didn't just shatter—it disintegrated, broken down to its component particles by the force of the impact. A shockwave of black lightning radiated outward from Mahoraga's fist, carving trenches in the ground and flattening trees in a radius of several hundred meters.
But more than the physical destruction, Mahoraga felt the power of the technique resonating through his very being. It was like nothing he had ever experienced. For a fraction of a second, he had been in perfect harmony with his own nature, his physical strike and his energy and his intent all converging on a single point in space and time.
It was transcendent.
It was addictive.
And the wheel on his back was spinning faster than ever before, processing this new phenomenon, integrating it into his adaptive matrix.
"Black Flash," Mahoraga whispered, staring at his fist as black lightning continued to crackle around it. "I actually did it. I performed Black Flash."
But it was more than just performing the technique. He could feel the adaptation taking hold, making it easier to replicate the effect. The timing that had seemed impossible before was now written into his instincts. The synchronization that had required intense meditation to achieve was becoming second nature.
He formed another target sphere and punched.
Black Flash.
Another sphere.
Black Flash.
A third sphere.
Black Flash.
Each successful use reinforced the adaptation, making the next attempt more reliable. By the tenth successful Black Flash, Mahoraga felt like he could perform the technique as easily as throwing a normal punch. The difficulty that made it so rare among cursed energy users in Jujutsu Kaisen was simply... irrelevant to him. He had experienced the phenomenon, and now it was part of his arsenal.
But he didn't stop there.
If I can use Black Flash on punches, Mahoraga thought, what about other attacks?
He formed another target sphere and threw a kick instead of a punch. The Black Flash manifested on impact, just as powerful as before. He tried elbow strikes, knee strikes, headbutts—every physical attack he could think of. Each one could be enhanced with Black Flash, multiplying the damage beyond what should have been possible.
Then he tried something more experimental.
He detached the wheel from his back and threw it at a distant mountain, concentrating on the feeling of Black Flash as the weapon made contact with the stone.
The result was spectacular.
The wheel struck the mountain, and a burst of black light consumed the entire peak. When the darkness faded, the mountain was simply gone, erased from existence by the combination of the wheel's cutting power and the multiplicative effect of Black Flash. Even the debris seemed to have been annihilated, leaving nothing but a smooth crater where the peak had been.
"Black Flash on ranged attacks," Mahoraga said, calling the wheel back to him with a thought. "The amplification applies to the wheel as well as to direct strikes. This is..."
He trailed off, unable to find words adequate to describe what he was feeling. The power at his disposal was immense, far beyond what he had possessed in his previous life, far beyond what most beings in this universe would ever achieve. He could destroy mountains with casual attacks, he could adapt to any threat he encountered, and he had access to techniques that combined the best of two completely different power systems.
And this was just the beginning. He hadn't even faced the truly powerful beings of the Dragon Ball universe yet. When he did, when he adapted to their techniques and integrated their power into his own, he would become something truly extraordinary.
But power without purpose was meaningless, and Mahoraga knew that he needed to be careful about how he used his capabilities. The Dragon Ball universe was not just a playground for him to test his abilities—it was a world with real people, real consequences, real stakes. The threats that were coming would endanger innocent lives, and he had the power to make a difference.
The question was: what kind of difference did he want to make?
He could take Goku's place as the universe's primary defender, solving problems before they became crises and preventing the suffering that the canon timeline contained. But that would deny the Z-Fighters their own growth, their own journey, their own moments of heroism.
He could remain in the shadows, intervening only when absolutely necessary and allowing events to unfold roughly as they were supposed to. But that felt like a waste of his power, a refusal to use his gifts to their full potential.
Or he could find a middle path. Help when he could, challenge himself against worthy opponents, grow stronger through adaptation while still allowing others to grow in their own ways. Be a ally rather than a replacement, a safety net rather than a solution.
That's the answer, Mahoraga decided. I'll be the backup. The last resort. The being who steps in when all other options have failed. I'll fight alongside the Z-Fighters when they need me, but I won't take their battles away from them. I'll push myself against the strongest opponents this universe has to offer, but I won't seek out conflict for its own sake.
And I'll use my knowledge of the future to prevent the worst outcomes—the genocides, the extinctions, the moments when things went wrong in ways that didn't need to happen.
It was a compromise, but it felt right. He was here to experience this world, to grow within it, to make it better without fundamentally changing what made it special. The cosmic entity that had sent him here wanted entertainment, wanted to see how his presence would change things. Mahoraga would give it a show worth watching.
But first, he needed to finish his training.
He had adapted to Saiyan combat techniques, had learned to use his energy offensively and defensively, had mastered his wheel as a weapon, and had unlocked Black Flash. But there was more to explore, more capabilities to develop, more potential to unlock.
The wheel on his back spun with eager anticipation.
Mahoraga smiled in a way that had nothing to do with his sealed face and everything to do with the joy of discovery.
The training was just getting started.
Night fell over the mountains, but Mahoraga didn't need rest. His Divine General body didn't experience fatigue the way mortal forms did. Instead, he continued his practice, illuminating the darkness with bursts of black-and-gold energy and the flashes of absolute darkness that accompanied his enhanced strikes.
He discovered that he could combine Black Flash with his energy attacks, though it required more concentration than applying it to physical strikes. A Black Flash energy beam was a thing of terrible beauty, a lance of destructive power that seemed to tear holes in the fabric of reality as it traveled. He used it to carve a valley through a mountain range, the beam extending for miles before finally dissipating.
He found that his wheel could be separated into its component parts—the eight handles could detach from the rim and operate as independent weapons, each one capable of the same cutting power as the whole. He could control all eight simultaneously, creating a web of deadly projectiles that would be nearly impossible for an opponent to avoid.
He learned that his adaptation wasn't limited to combat techniques. When a sudden thunderstorm rolled over the mountains, he deliberately stood in the open and allowed himself to be struck by lightning. The first bolt stung, the second was merely uncomfortable, and by the third, he was completely immune to electrical damage. His body had processed the phenomenon and evolved to counter it.
What else can I adapt to? he wondered. Temperature? Pressure? Time? Reality manipulation?
The possibilities seemed endless, limited only by his willingness to expose himself to new phenomena. And in a universe as varied as Dragon Ball, there would be no shortage of new things to experience.
As the night wore on and the storm passed, Mahoraga finally allowed himself to pause and take stock of his situation. He had spent the entire day training, and the results were satisfying. He was faster, stronger, and more skilled than he had been when he first arrived in this world. His arsenal of techniques had expanded significantly, and he had a better understanding of how his adaptation worked.
But the real tests were still ahead.
Raditz was returning to space, carrying the news of Mahoraga's existence to Vegeta and Nappa. The two remaining Saiyans would come to Earth seeking revenge, seeking the Dragon Balls, seeking to prove their superiority over the creature that had humiliated their comrade. When they arrived, Mahoraga would face opponents far more powerful than Raditz.
And beyond the Saiyans lay even greater threats. Frieza, the galactic tyrant who had destroyed the Saiyan homeworld. The androids, the bio-engineered terrors created by Dr. Gero. Cell, the ultimate artificial lifeform. Majin Buu, the ancient demon of destruction. And beyond even them, the gods and angels and cosmic entities that populated the higher realms of the Dragon Ball multiverse.
Each one represented an opportunity. Each battle would make Mahoraga stronger, more adapted, more capable of facing whatever came next.
I'm going to fight them all, he realized with a surge of anticipation that made his wheel spin faster. I'm going to face every threat this universe can throw at me, and I'm going to grow from each encounter. By the end of this journey, I'll be something that even the gods will have to respect.
But that was the future. For now, in the quiet of the mountain night, Mahoraga allowed himself a moment of peace.
He looked up at the stars—stars that represented a universe far vaster and more dangerous than anything he had known in his previous life—and felt something that might have been gratitude. For the cosmic entity that had given him this chance. For the form that made him capable of experiencing this world. For the knowledge that would guide him through the challenges ahead.
He was the Divine General Mahoraga, the Wheel of Adaptation, reborn into a universe of endless possibility.
And his journey had only just begun.
END OF CHAPTER TWO