Drum took his shot at Krillin, itching to see just how much of his great power the bald human had lost after toying with his enemy using all of his potential at once. It might have been obvious now and not before but Krillin had misjudged the vitality of an Evil Tribe demon and their demonic physiology, their aggression to take charge at a possibly stronger opponent just so they could see more blood being shed on the battlefield.

Drum's fist almost covered the entirety of Krillin's body. Everything went black for a moment when the human martial artist got smashed with the wrecking ball of the thick and powerful enemy. With a shake of his head, snapping himself out of his daze and returning to the gritty reality of matching fists against a fat demon, Krillin prepared to fight back against his sadistic opponent.

Krillin's eyes tracked every motion, his limbs moved in to block in time still. Having lost a meaningful portion of his stamina did little for diminishing his skill. The reaction time might have dipped but other than that Krillin was golden. He was strong enough, there was no reason to be afraid! He was no longer the frightened boy observing people much more excited about martial arts fighting out on the tournament stage while he admired their results and secretly dreamed about achieving the same ones with only one-tenth of the hard work.

This time he did all the work, he persevered and fought alongside Goku and reaped the rewards. Just as Goku was patient to accept losses where they came and choose to improve himself in preparation of when they come for him again, Krillin was patient in withstanding the bitterness of hard work and that was why he was now laying fists on the mushy flesh of King Piccolo's strongest son yet. Looking overwhelmed by Krillin's returned offensive, Drum roared out and sent waves of purple electricity streaming around him as an intense aura.

It hurt! Though the hurt was just like the infernal scorches of the Room of Spirit and Time. It was just heat. Nothing but heat. Krillin had learned to deal with that already, he learned to calm his breathing, soothe his mind and embrace serenity in all of his essence. That tranquility made his aura as chill as he was, it made it cold and heat suddenly didn't seem so bad…

Krillin rose from his knees and straightened out his back, opening his eyes and facing Drum like an opponent worthy to stand against his enemy. He wasn't counting on a trick, he wasn't even planning on being deceitful. This time he'll settle it like a true martial artist. The kind that would make Muten Roshi proud if he could see him.

Drum wriggled like a wet dog, he shoved his thumb that was the size of a human arm all by itself into his mouth and blew vigorously, inflating his body and forcing the caved inward bumps of flesh to cave out, rendering Drum somewhat less misshapen and battered in appearance.

"Well, well… The shrimpy human still has some fight left in him after all…" Drum cracked his knuckles. Krillin took a quick glance downward, smelling smoke. It wasn't his flesh, being roasted by Drum's intense evil lightning technique but instead his uniform displaying its holes.

For once it was a good sign – Krillin himself hadn't yet suffered terrible injuries that might have prevented him from fighting, on the other hand, it also meant that his Ki defenses were slipping up if his uniform was taking damage. It was just the first stage of his Ki failing to keep up with the exact coolness or the power of the boy's demands but it was an indication to be heeded – he needed to settle things soon.

"I'm a demon, you know…" Drum declared out of the blue.

"Yeah, I know… I have made the mistake of believing I'd be fighting someone like I've faced before. I didn't realize how ignorant to the pain you lot are, how tough your physiology is. You guys might be more effective and ruthless fighting machines than the Saiyans…" Krillin wiped an itching bruise on the edge of his lip with his damaged wristband.

"That's not it, I'm a demon. My power is meant to cause terror and agony. My lightning is to roast and decimate, make hearts of puny humans burst and pop out through their eyes when I zap them." Drum elaborated, gesturing with his hands as if he pleaded Krillin to understand.

"Sorry to disappoint you," Krillin shook his head. "I too am tougher than I look."

"You still don't get it, do ya?" Drum pounded his open palm with his right fist as he made his fishy lips wave and pout in frustration. "The Great Demon King Piccolo gave birth to me after becoming one with Kami, I, therefore, have both demonic power and divine aid within my system and it's real damned confusing."

The swamp-green fatso extended his massive hands outward, threatening to zap Krillin again as his hands became submerged in an intense aura of purple lightning. Instead of blasting off at Krillin, the lightning resonated backward and took dominion over Drum's entire colossal frame. Krillin took a fighting stance and darted off with a flying kick to Drum's belly, the demon of round proportions nearly had his own eyes pop out from his sockets as he flew back bent over in pain.

"Do you think I haven't heard Demon King Piccolo explain you've healed him? I know that you're able to heal yourself too and I'm not letting that happen." Krillin declared while he loomed over the writhing and kneeling demon despite barely being one-third Drum's size and likely not even one-tenth his body weight.

"Th-Thank you…" Drum exclaimed through physical torment not even a demon of the Evil Tribe such as himself could have neglected. "I… I really hate using my lightning for that… Except on the Great Demon King… Piccolo… Thanks for... Helping me stay a demon of the... Evil Tribe..."

"Sure…" Krillin nodded his head in understanding before taking a bountiful leap back and propelling himself back at Drum, digging his foot deep into the demon's face and sending him rolling aside. Krillin then bounced back and to the east, taking another flying kick from his faraway location at the enemy, then repeating it two or three more times until Drum laid sprawled out on the ground. This flying kick was the only thing of value in terms of martial arts techniques that Krillin had learned in the Orin Temple.

Of philosophy and life, he had learned to be afraid. He had learned that those with more power than him would always be out to get him, to bully him and that it was meaningless to try and resist. That he had to find his own ways to get back at the bullies, take shortcuts because in their own words he couldn't stand up to them not even in a thousand years… Drum had been a bully his entire short life and yet it took Krillin mere hours by the standards of the outside dimension to measure up to him. All it took was the first step and then to follow down that road as far as it led Krillin, then to shut up and keep walking a hundred more miles because that was how much more he was capable of when his body demanded to fall over already.

It remained unclear if Drum still fostered fighting spirit or if he had died already and moved solely out of the pure evil instinct to carve out people's eyes with those sharp claws of his, but the slob flashed behind Krillin with the remarkable instantaneous movement ability that he used to get around in battle. Krillin felt a dull and sharp thud at the back of his head and leaned forward, reeling in pain.

"Kamehameha!" Krillin yelled out after cupping his hands together and pointing them at the direction of the Drum who didn't appear to even be alive while fighting back. Then again, with how misshapen and swollen the demon's entire body was, it was rough to say… A beam of azure light, far punier than any of the ones Krillin had generated before taking off from the pint-sized martial artist's hands, Drum leaned forward, letting the beam enter through the gaping hole in his head and then move right down his gullet, gobbling the technique up just like earlier.

"Orin Kick!" Krillin chanted out after propelling himself at Drum and driving his flying kick straight at Drum's belly where the entirety of the swallowed Kamehameha lingered. The force of impact made Drum burst from inside and detonate in a titanic explosion that sent Krillin flying aside like a ragdoll and made things seem dizzy and black all around. By the time Krillin had mustered up the willpower to stand up, he realized that he could barely fathom where exactly he was in the Room of Spirit and Time.

There was this one black pile of ash further ahead, Krillin noted to start his path back to Goku's aid from there…

"I will admit, you've pushed me the farthest that anyone has ever pushed the Great Demon King Piccolo in the prime of his power. Still, you lack the power to stand up to the Evil Tribe parading around in your human form." The Demon King declared, further mocking Goku for his hesitance to transform.

"You're right. I might need a bit of a leg-up…" Goku chuckled to himself, only managing to must out a puny smirk while his right eye swelled up in a mean-looking bump and threatened to close for good until properly treated. With his somewhat hopeless smile giving way to stern determination, the boy pressed his hands to his sides and made his Ki burst outward in valiant aura flowing vastly beyond Goku's body.

"Wh-What are you doing!?" King Piccolo dropped his jaw. "You're bleeding out power forcing your Ki out like that!"

The color of Goku's aura began to sparkle, the air around him appeared to bend and ripple before a more focused inspection revealed trails of vapor rising from the raging body of the young martial artist. The hair on his tail stood up and began trying to vent the immense heat that Goku had begun building up in his body by forcefully manipulating his Ki to cook him from within, similarly to how Goku adapted to the inhumane frost of the Room of Spirit and Time. Goku's entire skin took a healthy hue of red, as if he had just left the most intense sauna of his life while sweat he was letting out profusely continued to evaporate in crystal-clear vapor above Goku's body.

Taken aback by the suicidal power-up of his opponent, the Demon King took a step back with his left leg. So far, he wasn't even sure that Goku was powering up at all, his power seemed the same from an outsider's perspective but he had just forced his body to the state of dehydration and near-heatstroke through just his Ki manipulation alone.

A pulse of flames burst from where Goku stood but the boy was no longer there, in fact, the flames were just signals for his movement. Emanating heat from his entire being and further overflowing with superheated Ki, like a star contained inside a human body, Goku appeared right in front of King Piccolo's body and threw a wicked cross to the Demon King's jaw, bending the decrepit belfry of his opponent entirely to the will of his fist.

King Piccolo stumbled back and wriggled, struggling to remain upright in order to not appear weak in front of his opponent who had just taken a breath of his second wind and catching the rush of that wave decided to not let go. Goku let it rain with his punches, all over his enemy who failed to keep up with the relentless barrage of strikes and resolved merely to defend himself. The Demon King yelled out, sending an explosive shockwave of Ki that threw Goku back and the Saiyan clutched at his chest before forcing to keep going. There was a sense of urgency to Goku's attacks that there was not before and the Demon King, now possessing some of Kami's wisdom, identified that.

The two clashed in the center, the Demon King felt curious to see where his hated enemy, the champion of humanity and martial artists alike has taken his loathsome craft. He pressed his hands and let his own Ki loose, holding not a single ounce of his power back. The blazing inferno emanating from Goku's aura merged together with the Demon King's own unfathomable might and created a cataclysm to shake up the entire visible area of the Room of Space and Time while the two struggled like two goats in the middle of a bridge.

"Submit!" King Piccolo declared proudly while pressing Goku a bit too hard. Feeling the joints in his arms giving way and fearing they'd promptly break, Goku folded and Piccolo pushed his enemy off-balance before pulling him into a knee shooting straight at Goku's face. Red poured as if Goku's strained body was waiting its entire lifetime to let it loose. It was as if whatever power Goku had called forth by causing himself to dehydrate rapidly had made him brittle at the same time as it supercharged the rest of his bodily attributes.

Crying out in pain Goku slumped in King Piccolo's grasp. For a moment the sudden power over his enemy began getting to the Demon King's head and made him freeze but that spark was all that was needed to reignite Son Goku's flame who forced a nova of Ki out from his body and even sent the Demon King reeling away from the boy's flames.

"You're doubling down on this, huh?" the Demon King wondered as Goku continued to threaten to kill himself by burning up every ounce of humidity inside his body just to gain a temporary boost in performance.

Not having even a moment of time to humor his opponent with a reply, Goku charged at his enemy who had left himself wide open as he scurried away from the power of the blaze. The boy landed onto the floor and disappeared, blinking right up to the Demon King only to thrust his fist and half of his arm into the Demon King's gut, forcing both the eyes and the teeth of the fossil to slide forward and threaten to come out from its sockets.

"I-Incredible… You've… You've gotten even more powerful, it's not just a mere skip higher on the power scale, it's a continuous soar…" the agonized Demon King pronounced while wiping the trails of blood off of his face and giving Goku a scornful look. While the forced rise in the boy's body temperature and the physical strain of expelling so much Ki out all at once drove his body closer and closer to collapse, at the same time, it pushed his body beyond its limits by simulating a crisis. "What a dirty trick… So befitting a martial artist…"

Goku didn't speak, who knew if the boy's mouth even had the necessary humidity to utter one word or if it felt like made of sand as the heavy breathing that the boy's panting let out rung true to his actual condition. Goku rotated like a whirligig, throwing every limb he had at the Demon King all at once as he rushed to victory. Despite the tremendous strain, the tension was never higher in the boy's body and he was ready to do his enemy in or die trying.

An uppercut to the Demon King's chin, a haymaker to send the murky slug-man flying, Goku disappeared in a haze of flames and appeared out of seemingly thin air to kick his airborne opponent smashing into the ground, squirming in pain from the royal beatdown that the boy was putting on him. The sight of drooling purple from the open jaw of the Great Demon King that colored the demon's fangs with the hue of his own blood made it apparent that Goku had caught up with his opponent in terms of battlefield success and threatened to overtake him in a dehydration-induced flash.

Goku clutched his fist by his side and grit his teeth, his childish muscles tensed up at the same time and twitched a pair of times involuntarily while the young Saiyan demanded that his body would withstand the tremendous punishment he was putting it through and carry him to the end of the golden road he set himself up. The chance for hope and victory that he had forged for himself and the final hope for the world that took him in and raised him when his own had abandoned him to be free once again.

Goku set his blazing fist aside and dispersed in a mass of flames, blinking back into existence only high-up in where the clouds would have settled had the dimension of the Room of Space and Time any clouds to do the settling. From that point on, gravity would have done most of the work. The infernal heat that Goku made burst from his body, his entire aura focused into his right fist as the Saiyan took a plunge at his panting and possibly knocked out cold opponent. A streak of white flashed…

Piccolo's eyes were open – his finger was pointing at Goku and the boy's arm, carrying the hopes and wishes of humanity that he decided to place upon his shoulders and deliver to King Piccolo himself burst open in a bloody mess as Piccolo's finger beam penetrated Goku's arm by the elbow. The pent up flames dispersed into thin air, just as they've manifested.

"You'll pay for every ounce of hurt you've put me through with that trick of yours!" the Demon King barked out with bloody glee as he pointed his finger at Goku's other arm.

Just like before, Goku cried out in pain significantly later than the jarring hole had appeared in the center of his arm, very nearly taking the limb off in its entirety, had it not been for a couple of strings of muscle insisting to hold it together. The arms of the plummeting Saiyan limped lifelessly by his sides as Goku parted the white void with a hopeless expression.

"My power… It's gone nowhere!" Goku yelled out as black circles formed around his eyes, a sign of the tremendous blood loss from the total of the wounds accumulated in this battle as well as the gruesome finale that he was about to meet in King Piccolo's hands.

"Too bad you've got no arms to punch me with anymore… All dried out from fluids to pull that dehydration trick again, disarmed and defenseless. You're about to get gone, kid!" King Piccolo raised his hand up, ready to deliver his Explosive Demon Wave as he placed his left hand over the wrist of his right and channeled all of his Ki to flare and build up. If he timed it right, the mightiest blast the Demon King could do would come out just before this Saiyan boy hits the ground and incinerates him point-blank.

"Ka…!" Goku yelled out. "Me…!"

"It's useless, I've seen that girl use that technique before. You might have the Ki but you don't have the arms to use it, just curl up and die, trash!" King Piccolo taunted his falling opponent as a vein popped on the side of his face while his malicious Ki erupted from his body in a storm of wild lightning beaming off in all directions.

"Ha…! Me…!" Goku closed his eyes and continued to cry out. His face soured from both pain and the tremendous Ki that he had put into the fist that would have demolished King Piccolo but which he had to store into his body after his arm very nearly came off. "Ha!"

The beam of superheated white left from the tips of Goku's feet, accelerating the boy's descent and sending him crashing down like an arrow through the gut of the Demon King Piccolo, reducing the arm that would have launched the Explosive Demon Wave to a shredded stump, while the stumped King Piccolo could do nothing more but twitch his eye and drop his mouth at shock of his right arm being entirely gone and a hole the size of a teenager Saiyan gaping in his abdomen. Goku crash-landed behind the Demon King and laid lifeless as he had taken a nasty bump on his head and skid for at least half a kilometer further from his agony-ridden opponent.

Krillin shook in disbelief, having found his way back only to witness these final moments of the battle for Earth's fate. Demon King Piccolo was as good as dead! The Earth was free, at last!