Departure, Target: The Universe! [Please give tickets and collections, it's so hard]

Late at night two days later, when most of West City had sunk into sleep and Bulma had even started snoring...

Boom!

A sudden tremor ran through the room, jolting Bulma awake from her wonderful dream of touring outer space.

Still half-sitting up and a little dazed, she rubbed her eyes. Then she saw a dazzling blaze of fire suddenly appear outside the window, lighting the room as bright as day.

The abrupt scene snapped Bulma fully awake. As if realizing something, she shuddered, leaped out of bed at once, and rushed to the window.

When she saw the spherical spaceship printed with the Capsule Corporation logo streak past her eyes, rising toward the sky amid a rumbling roar, she froze for a moment.

"Son, Go, han!"

Bulma opened the window and looked at the spaceship that had already turned into a distant point of fire on the horizon. Gritting her teeth, she spat out those three syllables one by one.

On the spaceship, Son Gohan looked completely unbothered as he faced the inertial pressure of breaking free from Earth's gravity.

As for why he had left Earth ahead of schedule, since he already knew so many things in advance, why not simply take the first step early?

Before Vegeta arrived on Earth, he would head to Namek first and make arrangements ahead of time, so as to avoid the trouble of running into Frieza's subordinates.

After all, Frieza's combat power was still far too high for the current Son Gohan. He had to make every possible preparation before facing him.

His first target was naturally Namek. He had long since obtained its coordinates from Kai, and even the coordinates for Yardrat and other planets had been recorded in his mind as well.

The primary goal in going to Namek was naturally the Grand Elder. After all, Son Gohan needed his Potential Unleashed Technique to raise his own potential.

He believed that with his potential, he could absolutely rise to a whole new height before facing Frieza head-on!

Then for now, the first thing was to use this Gravity Machine to temper his body, because this was currently the fastest way to increase both combat power and potential.

Son Gohan walked up to the Gravity Machine and directly pressed the 28G button. A force of gravity immediately pressed down on his body.

One had to know that before, just 25G had been a little too much for Son Gohan to bear. Now, however, his face remained completely calm.

"As expected, after recovering from that near-death state earlier, my combat power must have risen by a large amount."

Son Gohan felt the level of strain on his body, but he simply shook his head, because he no longer felt much from 30G.

He pressed the button again and adjusted the gravity to 30G. Only then did Son Gohan feel a sense of weight pressing down on him.

Although his strength had increased greatly after recovering from that previous near-death state, with his personality, he naturally would not directly raise the gravity to an extremely high level. Instead, he would test it step by step and adapt first.

And it was not just simple gravity. After Son Gohan took off his clothes, he revealed a body of lean, powerful muscle.

Only then could it be seen that on important parts of his body—his hands, feet, shoulders, abdomen, and so on—metal rings were fastened one after another.

Do not underestimate these metal rings, though they were not thick. These were the heaviest Magic Metal Rings Son Gohan had specially asked North Kai to make.

Each ring weighed one ton. Added together, they gave Son Gohan a terrifying additional weight of a full thirty tons.

Of course, these Magic Metal Rings could be activated by incantation. Otherwise, they would have flattened him long ago.

This was also why Son Gohan had only adjusted the gravity multiplier to 30G. Otherwise, with his current strength, he could have raised it to 40G in one go.

"Dang Wajifu Wan!"

Buzz~

When Son Gohan chanted that spell, one-third of the Magic Metal Rings on his body immediately lit up with a mysterious glow of runes.

The next instant, a terrifying weight approaching ten tons erupted under 30G gravity!

"Mm!"

With a muffled groan, Son Gohan's body immediately sank. Only by gritting his teeth did he somewhat laboriously straighten up again.

One had to know, this was after his strength had increased. If it had been before, the pressure probably would have crushed him so badly that he could not move at all.

Whoosh!

He struggled to throw a punch, feeling that tremendous burden, yet a satisfied smile appeared on Son Gohan's face.

Only under these conditions could he continuously squeeze the potential of his physical body and raise his combat power as quickly as possible.

Just like that, Son Gohan began his self-training.

Every day, he trained his body for ten hours, then meditated for eight hours, and used the remaining six hours to rest with his whole body and mind fully relaxed. (As for eating and going to the bathroom, there was no need to ask.)

Such a dull and tedious life might have been unbearable for an ordinary person after just one week, but his obsession with becoming stronger made Son Gohan extremely disciplined.

Because he knew that in this world, without sufficient strength, he might not even be able to protect the things important to him.

It would take a total of thirty-four days to travel from Earth to Namek. Son Gohan decided that during this time, he would raise his strength as much as possible to a sufficient level.

Amid full and focused training, time quickly arrived at the seventeenth day.

That day, after completing his meditation training as usual, Son Gohan turned off the Gravity Machine.

Unlike Son Goku, who kept the Gravity Machine on even while sleeping, he believed that since rest was rest, one had to relax completely in order to let the body relax and recover as quickly and thoroughly as possible.

Just as Son Gohan finished showering and was about to get into bed to rest, the spaceship suddenly shook violently, and a series of piercing alarms rang out!

"What's going on!?"

Son Gohan immediately jumped down from the bed and rushed to the control console.

"Warning! Warning! The ship has been struck by an unknown object. Engine B has been damaged. The preset flight path has deviated by forty percent. Warning..."

Hearing the alarm, Son Gohan frowned and immediately flew into action, both hands racing across the keyboard. But no matter how hard he tried, the ship still ended up veering off course.

One had to understand that in a universe this vast, even a one-percent deviation from the preset route could, over distances measured in light-years, lead to a terrifying case of being off by an inch and missing by a thousand miles.

Helpless, Son Gohan could only accept that reality in the end, because even if he forced the ship back onto its route, a single engine was no longer enough to bear that load.

If the ship ended up stranded in the void of space, then there truly would be no one to answer his cries to heaven or earth.

After all, before reaching a certain level, Saiyans could not survive in the void of space. That was another helpless fact.

"Good thing I had Bulma make a detector capable of searching for life signs too. Otherwise, this would've been a real mess."

The detector on this ship was an enlarged version based on the Scouter. Otherwise, relying on that small detector alone really would not have worked in the ultra-long distances of deep space.

Just as Son Gohan was congratulating himself on his foresight, within a rainbow-colored beam of light already more than a light-year away from the ship...

"Vados, did we hit something just now?"

"My Lord Champa, it may have been some small drifting planet. No need to worry."

"All right. We need to hurry and search for the Super Dragon Balls while Beerus is asleep."

"Yes, My Lord Champa."