The Icefield Pact

He flexed his toes, and the solid ice beneath his feet let out a faint creak.

Looking down, he saw that the ice was as clear as a mirror, yet so deep it made his skin crawl.

Beneath it was not earth, but an endless expanse of deep blue where all light was swallowed.

It felt as though some ancient presence were watching from the darkness—terrifyingly silent and indifferent, like a gigantic icy eye that had remained shut for countless years, only to now gaze coldly at the intruder standing above the ice.

Cold, vast, and so silent that even his heartbeat seemed unusually loud.

This place was the complete opposite of Vampa, where he had grown up.

On Vampa, scorching waves of heat rolled endlessly, with cracked, charred earth and smoking volcanoes everywhere.

The air was thick with the stench of sulfur and ash. One breath was enough to make his lungs feel as though they were burning.

The rocks beneath his feet had been baked red and soft by the planet's core, as if they could melt into lava at any moment.

But here... the white vapor from every breath immediately froze into ice crystals and fell to the ground.

Other than the howl of the wind, all he could hear was the flow of his own blood and the beating of his heart. It was as quiet as stepping into a vast graveyard completely frozen by time, where even death itself had been frozen solid.

Broly took a deep breath of the blade-sharp cold air, his chest expanding as he let the chill flood his lungs.

He actually liked this silence.

Here, there was no roar of his father, no current from the control device, no chaotic fragments of memory—only the most primal, most frigid emptiness.

A place like this could make his will as sharply defined and unbreakable as an iceberg.

He slowly raised his head. His gaze pierced through the snowstorm, crossed ridge after ridge of rolling ice, and locked firmly onto the massive shadow on the distant horizon.

That iceberg was so enormous it hardly seemed real. It had not risen from the ground, but looked more like a fang formed by the furious compression of the entire ice field, silently stabbing toward the sky.

Under the dim polar light, the entire iceberg glowed with a deep, frigid blue radiance, its edges sharp as though carved by an axe.

It was like a colossal blue sword, frozen since ancient times and forged solely to slay gods. It stood there alone and arrogant at the end of the world, enough to make one's chest tighten just by looking at it.

That place... Broly's pupils contracted slightly.

In the "story" of another world, that was where he had met his end.

Beneath the witness of that iceberg, he had been driven into a corner by the two people before him—Son Goku and Vegeta.

Their fusion, "Gogeta," had crushed him with absolute power.

In the end, his rage, his loss of control, and his life filled with tragedy and madness had all become nothing more than a pale footnote to the cosmic legend of the "Legendary Super Saiyan"—a pitiful stepping stone meant to highlight the protagonist's brilliance.

Rage ignited madness, madness brought loss of control, and loss of control meant destruction—being mercilessly torn apart by someone stronger.

That was the inevitable ending the "original work" had written for him.

The icy wind swept up his dark green hair, its tips brushing across his sharply defined cheekbones.

Broly withdrew his gaze, and a distinct, chilling curve slowly formed at the corner of his lips.

There was no self-mockery in that smile, nor any anger. There was only a calm as solid as stone, and beneath that calm, a restless fighting spirit.

But that was only the story of another world.

Now, standing upon this frozen wasteland, he was neither the beast enslaved by his father's control device and twisted by pain and rage, nor the monster consumed by the madness in his bloodline, capable of nothing but destruction.

He was Broly.

A warrior who had survived alone for forty-one years on Vampa, a place crueler than hell.

A warrior who had clawed his way out, step by step, through blood and fire, death and despair.

He had breathed the poisonous fumes rising from lava rivers, torn wild beasts apart with his bare hands, gnawed on raw flesh, and endured endless nights of absolute zero by relying on his boiling Saiyan blood.

He had even weathered stellar particle storms with his flesh and blood, tempering every inch of skin, every muscle, and every bone into the deadliest weapons.

His strength had not appeared out of nowhere in some legend. It had been earned through countless life-and-death battles, branded deep into his soul by the instinct to survive.

And now, he stood here.

Before him were this world's destined "protagonists"; behind him lay a cold yet dazzling sea of stars stretching across countless light-years.

The shackles had long since shattered, and the cage no longer existed.

He was no longer a prisoner of fate.

"This is far enough." Behind him, a familiar voice broke the deathly silence of the ice field.

Son Goku could not hide the excitement in his voice, like a child who had just found his favorite toy.

He rubbed his hands, reddened by the cold, and breathed into his palms. His always-clear eyes now shone like two stars fallen onto the ice field, burning with pure fighting spirit.

"Now we can really cut loose! We definitely won't affect Bulma and the others!" Broly heard him and slowly turned around.

His movements were not fast, but they were steady and powerful, like a mountain shifting.

The ice beneath his feet let out a low hum.

His gaze fell calmly upon the two people before him.

Son Goku's orange martial arts uniform stood out sharply against the gray-white backdrop.

His hair still spiked upward with the same untamed air, and his face wore an almost innocent smile.

But his stance gave everything away—his knees slightly bent, his center of gravity leaned forward, his toes gripping the ice as every muscle in his body found the perfect balance between relaxation and tension.

Like a ferocious beast that had spotted its prey, every cell in him trembled with excitement, yearning to pounce and unleash that world-destroying power.

Farther away, Vegeta leaned against a slab of deep-blue ice rock, his arms crossed over his chest.

His battle suit nearly blended into the ice rock, with only his shoulder guards and bracers reflecting a cold metallic gleam.

The prince's face remained as cold as ever, his brows tightly furrowed and his lips pressed into a sharp line.

His piercing gaze swept over Broly without concealment, like an icy probe intent on seeing through the source of his power and every one of his weaknesses.

His vigilance carried that lofty arrogance of his.

But Broly's beastlike instincts sensed even more.

Within the sound of the wind, he "heard" it—Vegeta's heartbeat, which should have been steady, was now faster and heavier than usual, pounding against his chest.

It was not fear, but excitement he could not suppress.

The fighting spirit already boiling in his blood...

It was exactly the same as the pounding in Broly's own chest.

It was the most primal, most fervent desire buried in a warrior's bones upon encountering an opponent worth fighting—a power that had lain dormant too long, finally about to erupt with a roar.

The icy wind swept past, stirring up snow dust and drawing a brief calm between the three of them.

The curve at Broly's lips deepened slightly.

He slowly raised an arm. The motion looked casual, yet carried the weight of a thousand tons.

His thick fingers first pointed at Son Goku, who was itching for a fight, then his wrist turned and pointed steadily at Vegeta in the distance.

His voice was not loud, even slightly hoarse, yet it drowned out all the wind and snow between heaven and earth, pouring clearly into both their ears with an irresistible calm and an arrogance that seemed capable of crushing the world itself—

"You two." His thumb paused in midair like a warhammer striking an invisible battle drum.