Ultimate Dio

This version of Dio is a vampire crowned with blond hair, occupying the stolen body of Jonathan Joestar. The novel offers little further physical detail, though he is depicted swimming the open ocean and, in the climactic conflict, wielding an array of powerful Stands as his form is repeatedly shattered and reformed.

Cunning and utterly self-serving, he manipulates those around him without scruple, gaslighting Erina Pendleton over a long captivity and orchestrating events across decades to serve his own ends. His conviction runs to megalomania, and his use of Beyond springs from an unshakable belief that he is the king of the world, a certainty that fuels his refusal to yield even as Kars tears him apart.

When Jonathan dies aboard the sinking ship, Erina Pendleton tries to flee inside Dio's coffin with the infant Lisa Lisa, only for Dio to seize the child as leverage and compel Erina to feed him her blood over a grueling ordeal at sea. He alternately torments and coddles her, even revealing her pregnancy to keep her eating, until she recovers her resolve and turns the tables by threatening to take her own life, the one thing that would rob him of the blood he needs. Rescued at last, she has fishermen weigh the casket down and sink it into the depths.

Left alone on the sea floor for years with The Passion, the Stand inherited from Jonathan's body, Dio gains glimpses of the future and, aided by his Beyond, engineers an elaborate scheme. He reaches through dreams to his own son Giorno, stirs the Diavolo persona, drinks Giorno's blood, and journeys through time using Cube House, allying with Funny Valentine and devouring a version of Kars. He then implants part of his own soul into Giorno to remake him as an incarnation of DIO, intending to slumber until that self is slain by Jotaro in Egypt so he can reclaim what is his.

The plan culminates in a cataclysmic duel against the Ultimate Life Form Kars across a reset universe, both combatants exploding and regenerating as they trade blows. Dio steals Kars' C-Moon Ultimate Requiem and evolves it into Made in Heaven Ultimate Requiem, reclaims his own The World Ultimate, and begins rewriting reality, revealed to be the Saint's Corpse sought in the Steel Ball Run world. Confronted at Trinity Church, he is thwarted when Erina and Lisa Lisa distract him long enough for Jonathan to be revived, and in fury he grafts his head onto the decapitated Diego Brando before vanishing into the dark, swearing he is finished with the Joestars.