A Cage Among the Stars

The cosmic void was eerily still, like a frozen sea of ink. Only a few distant stars glimmered with cold light, like scattered diamonds.

In that boundless darkness, even time seemed to have lost all meaning. Only eternal silence and nothingness remained.

Broly was wrapped in a flowing, flickering emerald-green aura. It wasn't especially bright, more like a candle struggling against the wind, fighting to exist in the absolute darkness.

He curled his powerful body inward like a lonely meteor burning itself out, trailing a faint, fleeting streak of light through the endless void.

The trail stretched behind him, then was quickly swallowed by darkness, leaving nothing behind.

Six hours had passed since he left Vampa's thin, turbulent atmosphere. That ugly, barren planet, covered in rocks and eternally swirling sand, had long since shrunk to an invisible, dim speck before finally vanishing into the unfathomable darkness behind him.

Ahead, the target he sensed—like a candle flame wavering in the wind, yet unmistakably alive—was still so far away it was despairing.

It was like a cruel illusion woven from starlight, close enough to see, yet forever beyond his reach.

"How... much farther...?"

Broly licked his cracked lips and forced a hoarse whisper from his throat.

His voice bounced around inside the cramped energy field, echoing dully. The feeling of suffocation grew more pronounced, like thick liquid slowly filling his ears.

His chest heaved violently.

Every breath brought a dull ache between his ribs.

It wasn't exhaustion—his body could handle a flight this long without difficulty. The problem was that the air inside the energy field was limited, and precious.

As the seconds passed, the air grew thinner and more polluted. He could feel it clearly.

A faint metallic, rusty smell began to spread through the air, a sign that the carbon dioxide concentration was rising.

He instinctively raised his right arm. There was nothing on his wrist, only the pale scars left by battle.

In the end, it was just a habit.

He anxiously tried to grasp the time slipping away, but all he could do was count silently by his heartbeat and biological clock.

Four hours.

At the maximum speed he could sustain after escaping a planet's gravity—somewhere between the speed of light and the speed of sound—he had probably already traveled ten light-years.

That number sounded impressive. It could fill several pages in the astronomical records of any civilization.

But in this boundless universe, to Broly, it was no more than a tiny step beneath a giant's foot, a brief blink in eternity.

"Ten light-years..."

He calculated silently. "At least... twenty-two more."

At the speed he could maintain while balancing energy output with the strain on his body, he would need at least seven more hours.

He clenched his back teeth, the muscles in his jaw creaking under the strain.

Seven hours—a simple, clear number, and a despairing one.

The air in his energy field would last four more hours at most.

He had already compressed the field until it barely covered his body, making it as thin as a membrane.

He had also slowed his breathing and metabolism as much as his body could bear, forcing himself to live like a turtle withdrawn into its shell.

But even if he pushed himself further, he wouldn't last more than five hours.

In other words, long before he reached that planet of hope, he would suffocate and freeze like a fish out of water in this vacuum desert, then become a corpse drifting forever through the universe.

"Damn it...!"

He growled, grinding all his fury and frustration between his teeth.

He abruptly shut his eyes, not to rest, but to focus every ounce of his concentration.

The veins at his temples throbbed as he once again strained his innate, battle-honed powers of perception, sending them toward the planet like invisible tendrils.

Thirty-two light-years was practically "within arm's reach" by the standards of the vast universe. It was practically next door.

But for a Saiyan who needed to breathe and withstand atmospheric pressure, absolute zero, and cosmic radiation, that distance was harder to cross than a heavenly chasm.

The laws of physics stood coldly in his way, as if mocking any fool who thought he could force his way through with sheer strength.

Fragments of his memories from before he crossed over suddenly surged into his mind—the nights spent hunched in a cheap rental room, scrolling through Dragon Ball fanfiction on a battered old phone.

Those authors made it sound so easy. "The protagonist powers up and crosses the sea of stars." "Saiyans can survive in a vacuum." "Ki protects them from their surroundings." As if a high battle power and a hard enough punch could kick over the laws of thermodynamics and smash the constants of the universe.

"It's... all... bullshit!"

He spat the words out through gritted teeth, his chest heaving even harder as each breath grew more difficult.

Reality was a cold stone, grinding all those beautiful fantasies to dust.

What was a Saiyan?

A race of born warriors who could battle beside pools of lava and fight to the death on frozen wastelands.

Their recovery was absurd. They could even grow stronger by pushing themselves to the brink of death.

Yes, they were strong enough to destroy planets.

But at the end of the day, they were still living beings.

They needed oxygen to breathe and food to eat. Their cells could function only in relatively temperate environments.

No matter how strong they were, they couldn't change the survival code written in their DNA. They couldn't turn their lungs into nuclear fusion reactors or their skin into a perfectly insulated shield.

No matter how great their strength, they couldn't escape the limits of their biology. That was the "definition" written into their species' genes.

A fish's gills couldn't absorb oxygen from the air, and a bird's wings couldn't cut through the dark currents of the deep sea.

Some boundaries couldn't be crossed through strength alone.

"Ha... ha..."

Broly dragged in a deep breath. The air he inhaled was so thin it tasted sweet, and it was tinged with rust.

He felt the cold current rush into his lungs, bringing a faint sting, but it also cleared his foggy mind a little.

He abruptly opened his eyes. Beneath the eerie green glow of his aura, his golden pupils burned with the look of a beast—fierce with frustration, stubbornness, and an almost frantic will to survive.

Forty-one years in captivity!

On that abandoned garbage planet, he had fought beasts for food and battled the storms. Loneliness and rage had tormented him day after day.

He thought he'd finally seized the chance to escape when that ship had appeared by chance. He thought breaking free of the planet's gravity would mean freedom and a new beginning.

But the universe had given him no freedom. It had given him an even larger, more merciless prison—this starry sea, seemingly boundless but filled with shackles at every turn.

"Do I... really have to go back?"

As soon as the thought surfaced, a chill colder than the universe itself seized his heart.

Return to Vampa? Go back to that hellhole of rocks, sand, and wretched food? Go back to enduring that endless loneliness? No. He absolutely refused.

If he had to turn to dust among the stars, that was still better than going back.

He whipped around and stared at the deep space beyond his energy field, as if he could see through the immense distance and catch sight of the planet he had sensed.

The sky was as black as velvet, the stars glimmering indifferently.

That starlight had traveled tens, hundreds, even tens of thousands of light-years to reach him. Every ray was like a distant, cold dream, quietly speaking of the universe's indifference and vastness.

The star he was heading for was lost among the others and wasn't particularly bright. But right now, all his hopes and struggles rested on it.

His blood roared in his ears. The dizziness caused by lack of oxygen slowly spread, and his will was on the verge of being swallowed.

But something more primitive, more feral, suddenly erupted from the depths of his soul—the Saiyan instinct.

Try again!

This time, it wasn't a whisper in his mind or a quiet calculation. It was a roar, held back until it could no longer be contained, finally bursting out!

Every muscle in his body tightened at once, and the veins bulged.

The emerald-green energy field, already on the verge of collapse, seemed to have received a shot of adrenaline. It pulsed violently, suddenly blazing brighter.

He was no longer content with simply maintaining his flight. He began madly squeezing every last bit of energy from his body, determined only to make the life-fire surrounding him burn brighter and propel him farther!

He didn't care if it burned up the air he breathed. He didn't care that his body still hadn't fully adapted to space, or that the acceleration might tear him apart.

In the absolute darkness, the eerie green light was like an unstable star, suddenly pulsing with wild, flickering intensity as it surged toward its distant target, leaving a brilliant but fleeting trail behind.

Broly slowly closed his eyes and pressed his palms together, his fingertips trembling.

He took a deep breath. The violent energy inside him began flowing in a way it never had before—not bursting out recklessly, but forcefully organized, compressed, and guided along a precise, fragile path.

He had spent twenty years developing this technique through repeated experiments, failures, and injuries on countless lonely planets and in empty stretches of space: short-range Instant Transmission.

The idea was simple: use his energy like a feeler to sense and lock onto a distant target's coordinates, then forcibly fold space through sheer strength to achieve a kind of "leaping" movement.

The technique relied on no technology. It depended solely on power and will forcibly interfering with the laws of the universe.

But its limitations were almost cruel.

First, it really could only be used over "short distances."

On a planet, even at full strength, he could leap only a little over a hundred kilometers.

In space, there was less resistance, so the distance could be extended. But his limit had never exceeded one light-year.

For interstellar travel, that distance was practically negligible.

Second, he needed an absolutely precise "anchor."

He had to clearly sense the energy or life-force at his destination and use it as a coordinate.

Without a "beacon," he was like someone lost at sea in a storm, unable to make the leap at all.

And now, his target—the unfamiliar planet twenty-two light-years away—was sending out a life-force so faint it was almost despairing.

It was like staring desperately at a candle about to go out in the endless darkness of the universe, its flickering light on the verge of being swallowed at any moment.

There was no turning back. Whatever happened, he had to try!

Broly abruptly opened his eyes. The emerald-green glow in them shone like the heart of a star.

He gritted his teeth, the veins on his forehead and neck standing out. He cast all his senses into the depths of space like a net, desperately trying to catch that faintest trace of energy.

The energy in his body roared through him with unprecedented speed and pressure, even making a metallic, tortured humming sound.

His body began to tremble uncontrollably within the energy field. Visible ripples spread through the space around him—the groaning of space itself under his brute force.

Locked on!

Now!

Get me... there!

He gave a low growl filled with pain and resolve, pouring all his energy into the heart of the technique in an instant.

At that moment, the space within several meters of him twisted violently. Light bent, and everything around him became strange and blurred.

Then Broly and his spherical energy field vanished from their original location, leaving only a ring of spatial ripples that quickly faded away.

A brilliant streak of emerald light, like a comet flying backward, tore viciously through the silent void and completed its first difficult leap toward the unseen target deep in space.

He had forcibly crossed about 0.7 light-years through a fold in space.

The next moment, at a distant corner of the universe, the void broke like the surface of water. In a chaotic flash of energy, Broly's figure reappeared.

"Cough—! Pfft!"

The moment he appeared, he doubled over, unable to stop himself from coughing up a large mouthful of blood.

In zero gravity, the scarlet droplets became round little red spheres, floating inside the energy field and standing out painfully against the darkness.

His face was as white as snow, almost entirely drained of color. As he gasped violently, wisps of mist dispersed through the energy field.

The backlash from forcibly folding space was far worse than he'd expected. It had instantly drained a third of his energy and badly damaged his internal organs and meridians.

Worse still, the spherical energy field sustaining his life had also become unstable after the violent surge of energy, emitting an ear-piercing "sizzle." The oxygen monitor's alarm sounded much more urgently, too.