A crisp crack that made your teeth ache!
Dodoria's neck twisted at a bizarre angle, and several bloody teeth mixed with saliva sprayed out! His massive body was as if it had been hit by a speeding train. With a scream, he became a pink meteor, slamming into the ground in the distance and carving out a hundred-meter-long trench before lying completely still! Dust billowed everywhere!
"Ha... ha... ha..." The state resembling a power-up faded, and the white aura vanished in an instant.
Vegeta floated in the air, breathing heavily. His body was covered in wounds, his chest throbbed with pain, and one side of his face was swollen like a steamed bun.
But his eyes gleamed with the arrogance of a victor, unlike anything he had shown before!
"S-so strong! His Highness the Prince is so strong!"
Nappa's mouth hung wide open, his jaw nearly hitting the ground. His eyes were filled with fervor and awe. "Y-you... could you really be the Legendary Super Saiyan?!"
Raditz was equally stunned. Looking at Dodoria, who lay in the trench with his life or death uncertain, he murmured, "Th-the legend of the Super Saiyan... it's real?"
Vegeta landed with difficulty at the edge of the trench. He looked down at Dodoria, who lay limp as a dead dog, covered in blood, his face beaten out of shape. A smile twisted with pain but brimming with satisfaction spread across his face.
He turned to Nappa, his voice hoarse but carrying an unquestionable command:
"Nappa! Go! Get rid of that eyesore."
Bang!
The heavy metal doors crumpled as if struck by an invisible sledgehammer, flying inward!
Inside, the King of Planet Soph slumped on his ornate throne, his face drained of color as his whole body trembled like a leaf.
A guard who tried to report in had only managed to shout, "Your Majesty, run!" when a sudden beam pierced his heart. His body crumpled to the ground.
Vitelli appeared in the doorway, looking to the king like the Grim Reaper come to claim his life.
He looked at the king, who was so terrified he was nearly pissing himself, and smiled in a way that looked demonic to the other man. "Are you the king of this planet?"
"Y-yes... yes... yes, I am! Esteemed sir... what... what do you want with me?"
The king's voice shook uncontrollably. His overwhelming fear had stripped him of any will to resist.
Vitelli nodded, satisfied with this "knowing one's place" attitude. He glanced around, tore off a length of decorative rope from nearby, and casually slipped a noose around the king's neck.
"Lead the way."
Vitelli's voice brooked no argument. "Take me to where you keep your spaceships."
With the king leading him like a puppet on a string, Vitelli soon reached a secluded and heavily guarded spaceport behind the palace.
Several sleek starships of different designs were parked beneath its enormous dome. They were clearly much better-looking than the mass-produced saucers used by the Frieza Force.
Vitelli's eyes were immediately drawn to one of them. Its hull was silver-gray, its streamlined body radiating strength. Sharp wings extended from both sides, and four enormous main thrusters lined its rear. It looked like a starship from Earth's science fiction, far more stylish than the ships on Planet Vegeta.
"That one."
Vitelli pointed to the warship. "Fill it with food, top off its fuel, and set its destination to a planet called Earth."
"Huh?" The scientists stared blankly at their stylishly dressed king, unsure whether they should listen to the man standing before them.
Vitelli glanced at him, and the king immediately barked at the group of people in engineer uniforms beside him. "What are you waiting for? Hurry! Do as this gentleman says! Fill the fuel tanks! Load it with food! Set the course at once! Destination... Earth!"
The engineers came to their senses and scrambled to work.
Vitelli led the king aside by the rope, like a man walking a dog, and waited quietly.
The engineers worked efficiently.
Before long, one of them came running over, drenched in sweat. "S-sir! The ship is ready! The fuel tanks are full, enough for over twenty-five years of continuous travel! The food supplies are ample! The hibernation pod is in perfect condition and fully charged. It can maintain hibernation for a long time! The course is set, too. Destination: Earth, the third planet in the Solar System, located in the North Galaxy's spiral arm."
He hesitated, then forced himself to add:
"However... sir, Planet Soph is extremely far from Earth. At our ship's maximum speed... a one-way trip is expected to take two years." He cautiously watched Vitelli's expression.
"Two years?!" Vitelli frowned. That was much longer than he'd expected. He'd assumed that ships from technologically advanced Planet Soph would be faster.
"Please don't be angry, sir!"
The head engineer and the king nearly dropped to their knees in fright. "Our planet... has focused most of its efforts on robotics and automated defense. Our interstellar travel technology... really... really isn't top-tier. This King Soph Ship is already the best ship on our planet! A two-year journey... is as fast as it can possibly manage!"
The king nodded frantically beside him, confirming that the engineer was telling the truth.
Vitelli fell silent for a few seconds, then sighed helplessly.
Two years... It was a little long, but still better than staying on Planet Vegeta.
Besides, he'd spend the journey in hibernation, so it wouldn't be too hard to endure.
"Fine. Two years it is. Is the hibernation pod reliable?"
"Absolutely, sir! The hibernation system is one of the few technologies we can be proud of. It's extremely mature and stable! As long as it has power, it can keep someone in hibernation for a hundred years!"
The engineer thumped his chest as he promised.
"Good."
Vitelli nodded. He led the king over to the engineers, who had finished their work and were standing anxiously to one side.
Seeing their terrified expressions, Vitelli looked somewhat apologetic, but his eyes were cold as frost.
"Sorry for the trouble."
He spoke softly, as if stating a simple fact.
As soon as the words left his mouth, he raised his free right hand and aimed his palm at the engineers!
BOOM!!!
A massive golden ki blast erupted, more concentrated and terrifying than the one that had just wiped out the robots! Its dazzling light swallowed the engineers' horrified, despairing faces!
There were no screams, no struggles. Even the metal floor beneath their feet vaporized and vanished in an instant! All that remained was a huge crater, its edges smooth as a mirror, with wisps of smoke rising from it.
"Ah!!!"
The king watched the terrifying scene unfold. His pants instantly grew wet, and his legs gave way beneath him. He collapsed to the ground, making a strangled gasping sound, unable even to beg for mercy.
Vitelli let go of the rope around the king's neck and looked down at him. His tone was as calm as if he were commenting on the pleasant weather.
"Don't worry. I said I wouldn't kill you, and I won't break my word. However..."
He paused and glanced around the empty spaceport.
"I suggest you get out of here as fast as you can. You should know what the Frieza Force is capable of. Their goal is to destroy every living thing on this planet. If you stay here, you'll die. That's all I have to say. Whether you listen is up to you. Bye."
With that, Vitelli stopped looking at the king, who lay on the ground, limp and bereft of hope. He turned and strode toward the silver-gray warship.
The heavy hatch silently slid open behind him, then closed.
"Then, forward three! Let's go!!!"
The engines started with a deep, powerful hum, and blue flames blasted from the exhaust.
The enormous warship slowly left its berth, automatically adjusting its course until its bow faced the depths of space.
The next moment, the main thrusters burst into brilliant light!
BOOM!!!
The ship was like a silver beast breaking free of its restraints. With a shrill roar, it shot up at astonishing speed, pierced Planet Soph's atmosphere, and became a brilliant meteor hurtling without hesitation into the boundless darkness.
The king slumped on the cold ground, staring blankly in the direction the ship had disappeared. Vitelli's final words replayed in his mind like a curse.
After a long while, a desperate will to survive overcame his fear.
He struggled to his feet and shouted at the top of his lungs into the empty spaceport:
"Someone! Somebody! Prepare my ship! Now! Destination... destination, Galactic Patrol Headquarters!!"
Vegeta sat on a massive rock blackened by an energy blast, munching on some strange-tasting but energy-rich local food that Raditz had scavenged from a destroyed town.
His Battle Suit was somewhat damaged, and his face had several scrapes, but he looked unusually excited.
Although the battle with Dodoria had been difficult, he had won in the end!
When his power level had surged to 25,000, the sensation of being filled with power had intoxicated him.
Just then, he suddenly looked up, as though sensing something. His sharp gaze pierced the thin atmosphere and locked onto a silver speck at the edge of the sky, almost too distant to see—a ship rapidly escaping the planet's gravity.
"Hm?"
Vegeta furrowed his brow. A strange feeling welled up inside him, as if something familiar were aboard that ship... But he quickly dismissed the thought.
What a joke. How could Vitelli have left on his own? Ever since Nappa and Raditz had begun their widespread slaughter, countless ships had risen into the sky like a flock of startled birds, scrambling to flee the doomed planet.
Nappa and the others had blasted some of them out of the sky, but there were too many to stop them all. Eventually, they'd stopped bothering.
"Hmph. Just another bug trying to escape."
Vegeta scoffed disdainfully and paid it no more attention, lowering his head to keep eating his fruit.
After they had finished clearing out the planet's major cities and resistance forces, Vitelli would show up on his own. Then Vegeta would make sure to fight him properly and show him who the real genius was!
In the vast, silent, frigid universe, Vitelli's ship was like a tiny boat, traveling along its programmed course toward the distant Solar System at a steady speed.
Inside the ship, the indicator lights on the main computer blinked regularly, recording the journey's data.
Vitelli lay quietly inside a hibernation pod filled with pale blue nutrient fluid. A clear countdown was displayed on its transparent cover:
[Wake-up countdown: 1 year, 11 months, 29 days, 22 hours, 59 minutes...]
His breathing was steady and long, and his expression was peaceful. Enclosed by the hibernation system, his body had entered the deepest state of physiological stasis. His cellular activity had fallen to its lowest level, and time seemed frozen for him.
The ship traveled smoothly through a relatively empty star field.
Suddenly, the monitoring radar detected a faint signal: a tiny meteor fragment, no bigger than a fist on the scale of the universe, drifting toward them at a relatively slow speed along a trajectory almost perpendicular to the ship's course.
Under the complex forces acting on them, their paths formed a tiny intersection—one so small it could almost be ignored.
Thunk!
An extremely faint impact sounded against the ship's sturdy hull, though it shouldn't have been audible in the vacuum of space.
The impact point was on the ship's side, near a connector for the hibernation pod's power supply.
The impact was so slight that it didn't even leave a visible dent in the superalloy hull.
However, at the very moment of impact, an extremely precise circuit node inside the hibernation pod, responsible for receiving wake-up commands, was affected by an almost undetectable anomaly.
Like a tiny speck of dust dropped into a still lake, the interference triggered a chain reaction throughout the complex electronic circuits.
On the pod's main control panel, the regularly changing wake-up countdown stopped abruptly at [1 year, 11 months, 29 days]...
The countdown... had stopped.
Vitelli remained immersed in the deepest hibernation, completely unaware of what had happened outside the pod or of time continuing to pass...
His expression remained peaceful, as though he were dreaming a long, beautiful dream about gaining power and the future.
The ship faithfully carried out its final instructions, continuing along its original course. Its engines shone steadily in the eternal darkness.
Only the countdown that marked his return remained frozen forever at the moment of departure.
The ship continued onward, traveling smoothly into the depths of the dark universe.
Chapter 7: At Last, I Meet the Little Rich Girl Bulma
In the vast, boundless universe, near the edge of the Orion Arm of the Milky Way, a blue planet floated quietly among the stars like a forgotten jewel.
Earth—in the star charts of would-be universal conquerors, it was marked as a low-level planet, a planet of no value. And it was precisely because it was worthless that it could remain tucked away from trouble amid countless interstellar conflicts. Aside from the occasional visitor who crash-landed by accident, it was rarely touched by the storms beyond its borders.
West City, Capsule Group estate.
"Whew! Finally, it's done!"
In the bright laboratory, a girl with short blue hair named Bulma excitedly raised a strange-looking device in her hand.
Seven glowing dots were clearly visible on the grid map displayed on its screen.
This was the Dragon Radar she'd painstakingly built after deciphering the electromagnetic-like signals emitted by the Dragon Balls themselves!
Ever since she'd discovered one of the seven Dragon Balls mentioned in ancient texts in her father Dr. Brief's storeroom—a Dragon Ball said to grant any wish—Bulma's spirit of adventure had been completely ignited.
She'd thrown herself into the lab to analyze the unique radio signals emitted by the Dragon Ball, and today she'd finally turned the radar that could detect them into reality!
"Dad! Mom! I've finished my Dragon Radar!"
Bulma rushed out of the laboratory, her face shining with youthful energy and eager excitement. "I'm going to spend my summer vacation finding all of them! Then I'll make my wish!"
With her open-minded parents' support, Bulma's adventure plans were quickly approved.
She packed in a hurry, stuffed a whole case of Hoi-Poi Capsules filled with various supplies and daily necessities into her backpack, then picked a high-performance car from her father's dazzling collection in the garage.