A Little Comfort Amidst Disappointment

A month later, Reke stood on the rooftop, stretching his body.

"Hoo—" Reke gently retracted his fist.

Feeling the ki inside his body that had doubled, Reke was caught between laughter and tears.

He had decided to hold off on increasing his combat power, but he never expected that going out would result in a serious injury, triggering the Saiyan passive ability and forcibly driving his combat power up.

What am I supposed to do now? It's already at 200,000 and still rising. When will it ever stop? Reke thought to himself.

Good grief, there are actually people who complain about their combat power rising too fast. If others knew what Reke was thinking, they would definitely want to kill him, and they'd want to hack him into eight pieces just to vent their hatred.

He was truly asking for a beating; even the author himself wanted to give him a thrashing.

After some movement, confirming that his body had fully recovered, Reke flew toward the home of Plus.

"Ding-ding—"

Reke pressed the doorbell for a long time, but there was no response.

Reke felt frustrated. It wasn't that Plus wasn't home; Reke could sense Plus's ki inside the house, but no one was coming to open the door.

Reke was losing his patience and was just about to fly inside when Plus's roar came through the doorbell.

"Press, press, press, are you rushing to your own funeral? Which bastard is it? Didn't I say I was doing research and not to disturb me?"

Reke was so stunned by the verbal assault that he couldn't even get angry; after all, the man was doing work for him.

He said with a bitter smile, "Professor, it's me."

"Snap!"

The communication was cut from the inside, and two minutes later, the main door opened.

He could see Plus's figure running over from a distance.

"You finally came, quick, quick, quick, come with me." Plus ran up close, reached out, and grabbed Reke, trying to pull him inside.

Looking at the disheveled, unkempt figure in front of him who reeked of a foul odor, if it weren't for the fact that the ki inside the man was the same as Plus's, Reke wouldn't have believed this was the well-dressed young man he had seen a month ago.

"Eh?" Plus pulled a few times but couldn't budge Reke.

"Professor, what's going on with you? Why don't you clean up first?" Reke gestured toward Plus.

"There's no time for that, just come inside with me first."

Reke couldn't win against Plus, so he followed him into his laboratory.

At a single glance, the corner of Reke's eye twitched; he literally couldn't find a place to step.

The entire laboratory floor was covered in parts. Reke didn't understand them and was afraid of stepping on something important, so he stood at the doorway, hesitating to move.

"Hurry up and come in, why are you still standing at the door?"

It was unclear how Plus managed to find his footing, but he walked to the middle of the room and, noticing Reke hadn't followed, turned back to beckon him.

Reke had no choice; he slowly floated up and flew behind Plus.

Plus paused for a moment, then continued walking forward without a care, stopping only when he reached Reke's spaceship.

"Um, what should I call you?" Just as Plus was about to say something, he realized he didn't know the child's name, so he awkwardly scratched his messy hair and asked.

"You can just call me Reke."

"Reke, this is the tracker you mentioned. As for a listening device, I didn't find one, and there's nothing else useless on the ship."

"Can you jam the tracker?" Reke asked, glancing at the device.

"I can, give me two days," Plus said confidently.

"Then can this ship of mine be reassembled and used?" Reke asked, looking at the ship that was now nothing more than an empty shell.

"Uh! Sorry, I can't assemble it right now. I have to wait until I've fully grasped the other technologies before I'll be sure."

"What?" Reke's heart sank, feeling cold all over.

He took a deep breath and asked, "Then can you build a new spaceship here?"

"I can, but the speed won't be up to par. I've estimated that with the technology I currently possess, the ship I make might not even be one-ten-thousandth the speed of your ship."

"Big brother, are you planning on letting me grow old and die in that ship?" Reke was speechless.

"Don't lose heart. Once I've fully mastered the technology of this ship, I'm confident I can make one that reaches half the speed."

Reke was delighted upon hearing this and pressed, "Then how long will it take you to master it?"

Plus held up two fingers, his eyes fixed on the ceiling as if there were something fascinating up there, not daring to look at Reke at all.

Reke only saw the fingers and didn't notice Plus's expression.

"Two years? I didn't realize you were actually quite capable!" Reke praised.

"It's not two years, it's twenty years."

Seeing that he couldn't bluff his way through, Plus steeled himself, closed his eyes, and blurted it out.

Reke was petrified on the spot, his brain buzzing, the words "twenty years" echoing endlessly in his mind.

"Twenty years?" Reke trembled with rage.

"Reke, our technology is too backward; twenty years is the fastest time I can calculate." Plus said with a face full of sincerity.

Plus had completely given up on caring, saying whatever came to his mind.

It wasn't that he didn't fear Reke, nor was it that he didn't know of Reke's power.

It was simply that he had truly done his best.

What could Reke do? He felt desperate inside, but he couldn't exactly kill Plus.

If it was going to take twenty years now, losing Plus might mean he would be stuck here for the rest of his life.

You might wonder why Reke sought out Plus; this guy was already the smartest scientist on Udrapa Planet and the one most deeply involved with spacecraft.

There was no one else to replace him.

Reke had no choice but to start convincing himself.

He calculated secretly and discovered that the earliest he could leave Udrapa Planet would be Age 762, which happened to be the year Kakarot transformed into a Super Saiyan; in other words, he still had plenty of time ahead of him.

Thinking about it this way, Reke felt a little better.

He sighed once more at the brilliance of Bulma and her father.

They were worthy of being the people who created the Hoi-Poi Capsule and the Time Machine.

Comparing Plus's twenty years to Dr. Briefs's one month, the gap between the two was like heaven and earth.

With a "let it be" attitude, Reke asked casually, "What about the Gravity Chamber?"

To Reke's surprise, Plus gave him a pleasant surprise next.

"The Gravity Chamber is no problem. Due to material limitations, I can only build you a 200x Gravity Chamber at most."

Speaking of the Gravity Chamber, Plus regained his confidence, straightened his hair, and said.

"Oh! And how long will that take to build?"

"Give me three months. But why do you need such a high-multiplier Gravity Chamber?" Plus asked in confusion.

With the twenty-year lead-in, Reke felt that three months for a Gravity Chamber was completely acceptable; he even found Plus a bit more agreeable.

"What do you think it's for? Obviously for my training, or should I just keep it as a decoration?" Reke said irritably.

Plus didn't mind Reke's attitude and said with a puzzled look, "Do you realize that as the gravity multiplier changes, the pressure you have to endure increases exponentially? And it's not just your body, but everything inside you that has to withstand it. This is not the same concept as wearing weighted gear at all."

"Of course I know that. The gravity of my home planet is five times that of Udrapa Planet."

Plus nodded and did not continue the topic.