Zero Mortal Project! is the investigation volume of the Dragon Ball Super manga: Volume 3 collects Chapters 16–20, in which the heroes piece together who Goku Black really is, travel to Universe 10, and learn the name of the plan that threatens every mortal in every timeline. The fighting takes a back seat to revelation, and the arc’s villain steps out of the shadows.
What Volume 3 collects
Volume 3 collects Chapters 16–20, the middle movement of the Future Trunks arc that began at the end of Volume 2. Between Trunks’s memories of his own timeline, a visit to the Supreme Kai of Universe 10 and two trips to the ruined future, these chapters assemble the whole conspiracy. Each chapter has a full guide on the chapter index.
- Chapter 16: Future Trunks’ Past
- Chapter 17: Zamas: The Next Supreme Kai from Universe 10
- Chapter 18: Goku Black’s True Identity
- Chapter 19: Another Zamas
- Chapter 20: The Zero Mortal Project
The story inside
Trunks explains how his world got its scar: in his timeline he trained under the Supreme Kai and destroyed Babidi and Dabura before they could revive Buu, but the battle cost the Supreme Kai his life. In the present, the first expedition to the future ends in a bruising encounter with Goku Black, whose power grows with every exchange and whose Time Ring raises questions nobody can yet answer.
Suspicion turns toward Universe 10, where the apprentice Supreme Kai Zamasu is developing a poisonous hatred of mortals under the gentle Gowasu. The truth, when it lands, is worse than anyone guessed: Black is Zamasu himself, who used the Super Dragon Balls to steal Goku’s body, and the Zamasu of Trunks’s future has wished for immortality. Two versions of the same god are working together on the Zero Mortal Project, a crusade to wipe out all mortal life in the name of justice. The volume ends with the heroes regrouping, outmatched by an enemy who cannot die and a second who keeps getting stronger. The manga also gives Zamasu room to argue his case, which makes him more unsettling than a simple conqueror: he has watched mortals for a long time, seen mostly violence, and concluded that the gods failed by leaving them alive. Goku, characteristically, makes everything worse by treating a god as a sparring partner.
Where Volume 3 sits in the series
Volume 3 sits between Volume 2, which introduced Goku Black, and Volume 4, which carries the fight to its desperate final gambits. All five chapters belong to the Future Trunks arc, and this is the book that gives the arc its villain, its motive and its stakes. See the volumes index for the complete shelf order.
Editions of Volume 3
Shueisha released the Japanese edition in June 2017, and VIZ Media’s English edition followed in July 2018, in print and digital. The Japanese full-colour digital edition arrived in April 2020; our coloured edition guide explains the format. The individual chapters can also be read officially through VIZ’s Shonen Jump service. Full bibliographic details, including ISBNs, are in the information panel on this page.