Breakout Under the Stars

The ground beneath his feet shattered, and the stones were instantly ground into powder.

The rocky mountains within several kilometers collapsed, and dust rose into the sky like an enraged giant beast, staining the already dim heavens even more turbid.

That oppressive force was truly enough to make the entire planet tremble.

Yet, at the center of this destruction, Broly stood like a monolith.

He pushed the energy within his body to the limit, not for attack, but to shield himself with absolute focus.

Emerald-green aura surged from his body, but instead of leaking wildly, it rippled like waves of water, compressing layer by layer until it finally solidified into a massive energy barrier—a hundred meters in diameter, resembling a small green asteroid that had suddenly plummeted from the sky.

Inside the barrier, Broly's gaze grew increasingly determined.

He began to employ a skill he had practiced for a long time: manipulating and compressing air.

With his hands pressed forward into the void, an invisible force field instantly manifested inside the barrier.

The thin atmosphere of Vampa rushed madly into the shield, and under the pressure of his energy, the air molecules were compressed again and again, becoming denser until faint ripples were visible to the naked eye.

He kept compressing and filling, locking the air within the hundred-meter space tight, as if forging a colossal bomb with the atmosphere as its shell.

The energy barrier trembled slightly under the high pressure, emitting a deep, low hum.

Space began to distort, and the surface of the barrier refracted an eerie green halo.

Until, at a certain moment, the compression finally neared its limit.

A sharp glint flashed in Broly's eyes, and his movements came to an abrupt halt.

The terrifying aura around him slowly receded, leaving only that ultra-dense, emerald-green barrier suspended quietly in place.

Light shimmered across the surface of the barrier, which contained the atmosphere compressed to its absolute limit.

With a thought from Broly, the barrier lifted his body, and he began to rise slowly.

A hundred meters in diameter was far from his limit, but it was the most stable and controllable range, enough for him to carry out the next step of his plan.

The massive green sphere of light slowly accelerated, piercing through the dust and smoke, heading straight out of Vampa's thin atmosphere and into the cold, deep reaches of space.

Behind him, only the ravaged land and the lingering remnants of energy remained.

The silvery-white energy shield wrapped around Broly like flowing crystal, and he shimmered against the backdrop of Vampa's dark red atmosphere.

Inside the barrier, the hyper-compressed air formed a stable cycle, and every breath carried the scent of the planet he once knew—a mix of dust and sulfur.

He bent his knees slightly, his leg muscles tensed, and the rock beneath his feet shattered in response. He shot upward like a cannonball, tearing through the thick clouds and leaving a long trail of energy in his wake.

The moment he broke through the atmosphere, the pressure and sound vanished, leaving only the absolute, deathly silence of the vacuum of space.

Broly hovered at the edge of the planet, looking back. Vampa resembled a rusted, scarred iron ball, rotating slowly under the dim light of its star.

Ahead, the boundless universe spread out, deep as ink and studded with billions of stars, with the galaxy spanning the horizon like a flowing river of diamond dust.

His golden pupils reflected this magnificent sight, and a surge of indescribable, complex emotion rose in his chest.

He still remembered those years when he huddled deep in a cave, gazing at that tiny patch of starry sky, feeling nothing but a burning desire—a desire to break free from gravity, to cross the sea of stars, to stand on lands that existed only in legends, to clash with powerhouses from everywhere, and to witness incredible civilizations and wonders.

Now, he possessed the power to shake stars and could move mountains with a flick of his hand, yet he remained trapped beneath the invisible shackles of this stretch of space.

"Transmigrator..." Broly whispered in self-mockery, his voice echoing within the energy shield.

The energy within him surged like a raging river, and his muscles held an explosive force capable of shattering asteroids, but the essence of his life remained a chasm, blocking him firmly.

The body of a Saiyan was, after all, evolved for a planetary environment.

It required breathing, air pressure, and specific temperatures and radiation to survive; in the cold vacuum of space, this physique was, in the end, laughably fragile.

Even if he used energy to forcibly simulate a survival environment, it was merely drinking poison to quench his thirst.

The notion in those stories that "if you are strong enough, you can traverse the universe with your physical body" seemed absurd now.

The vacuum would not show mercy to your strength, and absolute zero or lethal radiation would not recede just because your aura was heaven-shaking.

Here, survival was the most luxurious and demanding challenge of all.

Broly took a deep breath, and the air inside the energy shield vibrated gently.

"Let's see how long I can hold on." He cast his gaze toward the nearest star point in his memory; theoretically, there was life there, but the distance was unreachable, despairingly measured in light-years.

He did not hesitate. His aura suddenly surged, the silvery-white light becoming blinding.

He did not choose conventional flight; instead, he crossed his arms and swung them forward with a violent thrust! The space in front of him seemed to be torn open by an invisible giant hand, distorting like water ripples.

The next second, his figure blurred, melting directly into that distortion and vanishing instantly.

Tens of thousands of kilometers away, somewhere in the cosmos, the same spatial ripples spread out, and Broly stumbled out, reeling.

A short-range space jump!

This technique was something he had spent countless years groping for, on the verge of energy overload and loss of control, amidst pain and solitude.

Extreme compression and instantaneous release of energy forced a brief passage through the structure of space, achieving an effect similar to instant transmission.

It required extreme precision and a vast amount of energy, and the toll on his body was significant.

At that moment, he felt his internal organs churning, and his energy shield flickered.

But he did not stop. He immediately focused his mind again, his golden aura and silvery-white shield converging as he tore through space for a second time.

His silhouette flashed, vanished, and reappeared time and again in the frigid void, each blink taking him further from Vampa and closer to that sliver of hope.

He was like a lonely meteor, sprinting in desperate pursuit through the eternal darkness.

Behind him, his homeland—that cage—gradually shrank into the distance.

Ahead, the far shore remained agonizingly beyond reach.

Energy drained rapidly, the reserves of compressed air within his shield dwindling by the naked eye, making every breath feel precious.

Yet he did not stop, nor could he.

This was his final breakout against fate, an attempt fueled by every ounce of his strength and every means at his disposal; even if failure were certain, he would never retreat.

What was more, his destination lay dozens, perhaps hundreds of light-years away.

Therefore, he had to compress his shield's energy to its limit before executing a short-range instant transmission.

It had to be short-range, with a controllable, visible radius.

He had to fold and leap through space within this confined space.

You might ask, if that were the case, why not simply master the long-distance Instant Transmission that Goku learned from the Yardrats?

It wasn't as if Broly hadn't tried.

Day after day, he sat cross-legged on the barren, rocky terrain, closing his eyes and desperately trying to sense that ethereal "ki."

But without a guide or instruction, relying solely on the vague description from the original work—"sense the ki, then move"—was like searching for a star that didn't exist in the pitch black.

What exactly was ki? How did one capture it? And how could he use it as a coordinate to tear through space? Every time he focused, it felt as though he were casting his consciousness into a bottomless abyss; apart from dizziness and vertigo, he grasped nothing.

To have forged a new path in such a desperate situation and painstakingly carved out the prototype of a "short-range instant transmission" was a testament to Broly's stubbornness and ingenuity as a transmigrator who refused to bow to fate.