The wind howled bitterly. On Fenris, white was the planet's defining color, snow and ice were the norm, and death was an everyday occurrence.
A year on Fenris was equivalent to forty months on Holy Terra. For only a few months each year, Fenris moved a little closer to its star, granting the entire planet a rare summer that lasted several months.
A spaceship plummeted toward the planet, trailing a long plume of exhaust. It slammed into the surface with a world-shaking crash, crushing the glacier beneath it and forming an oval impact crater.
As the smoke cleared, it revealed an eyeball-shaped spacecraft. It was a single-pilot vessel.
Inside the ship's red hatch, a human boy of about five slept soundly. He had an unusual hairstyle and a tail.
More than twenty years earlier, another spaceship just like this had fallen from the sky and landed on Fenris. It had brought a Wolf King, the planet's ruler.
Raised by a she-wolf alongside his two wolf brothers, he had eventually encountered humanity and his adoptive father. That was when he received the name Leman Russ and became the king of this icy world.
When the warriors of the tribe discovered the ship, they wasted no time reporting it to their king, Leman Russ.
When Russ heard that a boy had appeared on the planet in the same way he had—
Leman Russ felt an instant kinship with him. He immediately ordered his bodyguards to bring the boy and his spaceship to his palace.
Amid the commotion, the long-tailed boy inside the eyeball-shaped ship woke up.
"What the hell! Where am I? Did I veer off course?" Once Axis regained consciousness, he realized he was surrounded by a group of savages.
They were an extremely primitive bunch, carrying crudely smelted iron weapons. Some of them even had nothing but sharpened sticks.
They wore thick coats made of animal pelts, and their stench was so bad he could smell it even through the ship. What an utterly primitive stink!
After a quick look around, Axis concluded that this was an incredibly backward planet.
It seemed he hadn't landed on Earth. He'd ended up on some remote, primitive world instead!
He hoped the Frieza Force wouldn't find him. He had no idea whether they could track the signal from his ship!
Frieza hadn't even sent anyone after Kakarot's ship, so surely he wouldn't bother chasing a five-year-old kid like him.
He'd finally escaped the destruction of Planet Vegeta after being reincarnated as a Saiyan. He just hoped nothing else went wrong.
At the very least, let him lie low for a decade or so. He could worry about becoming a Super Saiyan after that!
Just as Axis fell into thought, a series of heavy footsteps approached.
Thud! Thud! Thud!
The ground seemed to tremble beneath him. A colossal figure appeared in Axis's field of vision, standing an estimated three and a half meters tall.
The man's features were rugged, as if carved with a knife. Two enormous fangs protruded from his mouth, and long, tousled hair fell down his back. Two massive wolves stood at his side.
The instant Axis saw the towering man, he was gripped by an indescribable sense of danger. The man radiated an intense threat!
Axis didn't dare let his guard down. He immediately pressed the Scouter on his eye.
Beep-beep-beep-beep!
The numbers on the Scouter began to jump, then finally settled on 1,666.
A power level of 1,666! You'd never have guessed it! This rugged-looking man had a power level of 1,666!
On a remote planet like this, that had to be enough to rule the roost! And he posed a massive threat to Axis!
He was at least 1,500 points stronger than Axis, whose current power level was only 110. Among Saiyans, that made him a Low-Class Warrior.
If this towering man decided to kill him, Axis wouldn't stand a chance.
Even if he transformed into a Great Ape and multiplied his power level by ten, he still didn't seem strong enough to win.
He hoped the man meant him no harm. Axis decided to act like a helpless infant and see if he could win the man's sympathy.
The towering man suddenly reached out and violently tore the spaceship's hatch off with his bare hands.
What incredible strength! It took a warrior with a power level of at least 3,000 to rip open a spaceship hatch by hand.
And this guy had done it with ease! He must have an incredibly powerful body!
After ripping off the hatch, the towering man spoke to Axis in a language he couldn't understand.
Axis tried asking him something in the universal language, but the man only looked bewildered. Clearly, they couldn't understand each other.
Leman Russ shook his head, then lifted Axis out with both hands. He hoisted him up high to show him to the tribe members and thumped his chest as he said something.
The surrounding savages raised their weapons and shouted, speaking in a language Axis couldn't understand at all.
Only after learning the language of Fenris did Axis understand what Leman Russ had said:
"I saved him. From now on, this boy is my little Wolf Cub!"
Held in the arms of someone with a power level more than 1,500 points higher than his own, Axis didn't dare move. His body even stiffened a little as he forced a childlike, innocent smile.
He looked five years old, so there was no harm in acting like a kid.
Wait! What the hell? He was a kid. There was no acting involved.
A cold wind blew. Held aloft by the towering man, Axis shivered, struck by the bone-deep chill. Damn, it was cold!
What planet was this, anyway? The environment was brutal!
Axis turned his head and looked around. The people nearby were all burly men about two meters tall, every one of them powerfully built.
But compared to the man before him, they were nothing. Their power levels looked much more normal, all of them below ten—pathetic.
If that giant weren't standing there, Axis was confident he could take down everyone around him by himself.
So was this man some kind of high-power-level mutant created by a genetic mutation? In the universe, mutants from certain powerful species could have much higher power levels than the rest of their kind.
Take the legendary Super Saiyan, said to be born once every thousand years, or Frieza's father, King Cold. Both were mutants with exceptionally high power levels.
His spaceship was broken now, too. How was he supposed to get to Earth and find the Dragon Balls?
He had no idea whether anyone on this primitive, savage planet could repair his spaceship.
Axis's ship contained several Combat Suits made for Saiyans, some Saibaman seeds he had stolen while escaping Planet Vegeta, and a few Scouters. That was all.
He hoped these savages wouldn't break anything in his ship.
The tall man carried Axis over to a table laden with delicious food, waving to the people around him along the way.
He smiled at Axis, then mimed eating to show him he should dig in.
Axis looked up at the giant, then turned to the loaded table with delighted surprise. He'd been hungry for ages.
If you were offering a Saiyan food, he wasn't going to be polite!
This guy with a power level of 1,666 seemed pretty easy to get along with. Axis could let him raise him for a few years first.
With a Saiyan's talent for fighting, it would probably take only a year or two to surpass him! Then Axis would look after him.
Axis didn't hold back. He grabbed a piece of roasted meat from some unknown animal and stuffed it straight into his mouth, chewing voraciously.
Then he began devouring everything on the table. All kinds of cheese, hard bread, roasted meat, smoked sausages, and some kind of meat soup all disappeared down his throat.
Seeing how much Axis could eat, Leman Russ was delighted. A hearty appetite was a good thing.
The boy was right up his alley. Like Russ, he had arrived in a small, single-pilot ship—and he could eat just as much.
He was also as strong as Russ had been as a child. In fact, this boy seemed even stronger.
When Leman Russ had carried the boy out, he'd realized just how surprisingly strong he was.
His arms and legs were small, but they were packed with strength. Russ reckoned that a dozen adult warriors from the tribe might not be able to handle him.
Could this boy be his brother? Or perhaps some other relative?
The more Leman Russ thought about it, the more likely it seemed. This long-tailed boy had to be connected to him somehow.
"Hahaha! Look at that—my little Wolf Cub can really eat!" Leman Russ pointed at Axis and laughed.
When Russ had been that age, he'd been a tremendous eater, too. Back then, he'd snuggled close to his wolf mother with his two wolf brothers.
"A boy who can eat that much is sure to grow into a fine warrior."
"Great Wolf King, perhaps he'll grow as strong as you one day."
"Congratulations, great Wolf King."
But soon enough, they stopped laughing. Everyone realized that this child could eat far too much.
In just a few minutes, he'd polished off enough food for two or three adults, and he showed no sign of stopping.
"Lord Russ, h-he seems to eat even more than you did as a boy."
"Hahaha! Looks like the little guy was starving. Go get some more food and let him eat his fill!"
Leman Russ watched Axis with interest and immediately ordered one of his men to bring out the food in storage.
As the Wolf King of the entire planet and lord of Fenris, surely he wasn't about to go broke feeding this boy?
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