Frieza Force: Your Majesty! We've come to collect your corpse... no, to avenge you!

On the second day after the spaceship entered warp.

Chen Mo sat in the cockpit.

Before him, the starlight had stretched into lines.

Even now, the only things he recognized on the Frieza Force control interface were the steering wheel and accelerator.

He hadn't touched a single other button.

What if he hit the self-destruct?

Trunks was in the rear cabin with Moori.

The old man was very weak.

After leaving Planet Namek's atmosphere, his breathing had become intermittent.

Trunks placed his coat behind Moori's back as a cushion, then found a blanket to cover him.

The Dragon Balls were locked in the cockpit safe. Their orange-red glow shone through the cracks onto the metal walls.

Android 18 sat in the co-pilot's seat, her legs resting on the console, her eyes closed.

But Chen Mo knew she wasn't asleep. Her toes twitched every few seconds.

"Your toes are keeping time," Chen Mo said.

Android 18 didn't open her eyes. "Were you staring at my feet?"

"There wasn't anywhere else to look."

"Look at the stars."

"The stars have been stretched into lines. Looking at them too long makes me dizzy."

Android 18's toes stopped moving.

Then she switched which leg was resting on the console.

"Twelve days," Android 18 said. "Locked inside this piece of junk for twelve days."

"A standard Frieza Force medium warship. It has a warp engine, life-support systems, and hot water. It's not junk."

"Junk."

Fine. Junk.

Chen Mo leaned back in his chair and looked at the only navigation screen still lit on the console.

Earth's coordinates flickered at the center of the screen. It was still very far away.

"Do you think they'll come?" Android 18 suddenly asked.

"Who?"

"Those Frieza underlings."

"They will." Chen Mo was certain. "Frieza's been dead for years. The Force has only been barely hanging on. No goal, no core. Every outpost acts on its own. You saw it at the space station just now. Rusty equipment. Soldiers wearing patched-up battle suits. They need a reason to gather again."

"To revive Frieza."

"Right. It doesn't matter whether that reason is real or not. They'll come because they need it too badly."

Android 18 opened one eye and looked at him.

"How do you know they need it?"

"Because people are all the same," Chen Mo said. "Whether they're Earthlings or aliens. Once they lose someone to be loyal to, they become a scattered mess. The Frieza Force maintained order through fear. Once the source of that fear was gone, so was the order. But the faith remained. Tell them there's a chance to revive that source, and they'll go crazy."

Android 18 opened both eyes and looked at him for several seconds.

"What did you do on Earth?"

"Worked."

"What kind of job teaches you to think like that?"

Chen Mo thought for a moment. "Overtime."

Android 18 said nothing more.

She lowered her feet from the console, then turned her chair halfway around to face Chen Mo.

"That thing you mentioned about sensing ki."

Chen Mo looked up.

Android 18's expression was calm. But when she asked the question, her voice was slightly lower than usual.

"That... ki sensing. Can I really not learn it?"

Chen Mo fell silent for a moment.

He knew what that question meant.

Android 18 rarely asked questions like that. She never needed to ask anyone for guidance.

Her strength crushed everything. But in Shigula's darkness, she had become blind.

A monster with a power level in the hundreds of millions was moving right in front of her, yet she could not even touch his shadow.

That sense of powerlessness.

For Android 18, it might have been unprecedented.

"You can't learn it in theory."

Android 18 turned back toward the streaks of starlight.

"Then be my eyes."

"You can't run away anyway," Android 18 added.

Chen Mo did not answer.

He looked at the navigation screen. Twelve days. One had already passed. Eleven remained.

He silently calculated the timeline in his head.

More than twenty-four hours had passed since the full-band broadcast was sent out. The signal had spread through the Frieza Force's communication array at faster-than-light speed.

The nearest outposts might have already received it.

He had no idea what their reaction would be.

In fact, the reaction came far faster than Chen Mo had expected.

North Galaxy, Seventy-Ninth Star System, base of the Frieza Force's Thirty-Second Fleet.

It was a massive space station lodged within an asteroid belt, ten times larger than the transfer station Chen Mo and the others had robbed.

Six thousand surviving Frieza Force soldiers were stationed inside.

Command center.

A high-ranking officer with green skin and horns was studying the broadcast record.

He read it three times.

Then he stood up.

"Call in all squadron commanders."

Fifteen minutes later, the command center was packed. All kinds of builds, all kinds of races.

Some were less than a meter tall, while others stood over five meters. Their battle uniforms came in every imaginable style—some brand-new, some patched and mended.

The green-skinned officer projected the broadcast onto the main screen.

"New Planet Namek. Seven Dragon Balls. They can grant any wish, including reviving King Frieza."

The command center fell silent for three seconds.

Then it erupted.

"King Frieza can be revived?!"

"Dragon Balls! Namek's Dragon Balls! King Frieza went to Namek for those back then!"

"The coordinates! Where are the coordinates? Were they included?"

"They were! New Planet Namek's coordinates! Fourteen warp-days from here!"

The green-skinned officer slammed a hand on the table.

"Quiet."

Everyone shut up.

"The broadcast says six Dragon Balls are in the possession of a Super Namekian called Shigula, whose power level is extremely high," the green-skinned officer said. "This isn't tourism. It's a combat mission."

A burly man with purple skin raised his hand. "How high?"

"The broadcast didn't give a specific number. It only said 'extremely high.'"

"Higher than Dodoria?"

"Dodoria was only at twenty-two thousand. King Frieza's guards had power levels of five hundred and thirty thousand. If he can be called extremely high..."

The command center went silent again.

This time, for ten seconds.

"What's there to fear?" someone spoke from the corner.

Everyone turned.

The speaker was a small gray creature, less than a meter tall, with three eyes and a faded old battle uniform.

"Numbers in the tens of thousands or hundreds of millions only matter in a head-on fight. We're not Saiyans." The gray creature stepped out of the corner. "What did King Frieza rely on to conquer the universe? His fists?"

No one answered.

"It was his brain. His methods. The special forces of each planet," the gray creature said. "I'm from Planet Baru. What is my race's ability? Spatial rifts. I can tear open a spatial crack within three meters. Anything that touches it gets cut in half, no matter how high its power level is."

The green-skinned officer glanced at him.

The gray creature continued. "The Seventeenth Fleet has Ilio People. They can release visual interference, making targets see the exact opposite image for ten seconds. The Forty-First Fleet has parasitic species from Planet Kaibo that can enter the nervous system through wounds."

"And abilities like Guldo's time stop—the Ginyu Force may have been wiped out, but the universe is vast. More than one person has abilities like that."

The atmosphere in the command center changed.

The green-skinned officer sat back in his chair. "You mean..."

"Join forces," the gray creature said. "Spread the news. It won't be just one fleet going—it'll be every branch fleet we can contact. Tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands. Every planet has different troops, with all kinds of strange abilities. There are a thousand ways to kill from the side a monster you can't beat head-on."

"For Lord Frieza?"

"For Lord Frieza."

The gray creature's three eyes shone. It was not fear, but fanaticism.

Exactly as Chen Mo had predicted.

Similar scenes played out simultaneously at seventeen Frieza Force outposts across North Galaxy over the next seventy-two hours.

Some outposts set out immediately.

Some spent two days assembling their forces.

After confirming the coordinates were real, some outposts forwarded the broadcast to more distant bases, attaching their own combat assessments and lists of special troops.

The communications arrays lit up like spiderwebs, one node after another coming online.

Frieza's name was like a curse sealed away for more than a decade. The instant it was unsealed, its power still made all of North Galaxy tremble.

The first fleet to reach New Planet Namek was the nearest—the Nineteenth Fleet.

Four warships. Eight hundred men.

When they dropped out of warp, they saw a green planet illuminated by three suns.

Just as the records described.

But the sky over a region in the north was black.

Like a rotten patch.

"What is that?" the fleet commander frowned.

The scout ran a scan. "Large-scale energy shielding. It covers a radius of two thousand kilometers. Light from all three stars is completely absorbed in that area."

"What's inside?"

"Can't scan it. No signals can get through."

The fleet commander fell silent for several seconds.

"The Dragon Balls are in there."

He glanced behind him at the eight hundred soldiers.

All kinds of races. All kinds of builds.

Their power levels ranged from one thousand to thirty thousand.

More were still coming.

"Scout it first. We'll act once the Thirty-Second Fleet arrives."

What they did not know was that, in the deepest part of that darkness, Shigula had already sensed them.

Within the nest, upon a throne of ice.

Purple eyes opened.

"A few bugs have arrived," Shigula murmured.

He could sense the life signatures beyond the atmosphere. Several hundred of them, all weak. Even the strongest was only at thirty thousand.

Not worth mentioning.

But he could also sense more presences farther away, drawing closer.

From every direction.

Like sharks that had smelled blood.

"Someone brought them here." Shigula's purple eyes flickered in the darkness. "That human called Chen Mo."

He remembered that name.

Not because of his power level.

But because that man, with a power level of only fifteen million, had created a problem even someone with a power level of five hundred million could not solve.

On the fifth day of the spaceship's journey, Chen Mo noticed a set of data on the cockpit scanner.

The electromagnetic frequencies from the direction of Namek showed abnormally dense communications activity.

He pulled up the Frieza Force communication channels. Though he could not read the text, the number of channels had risen from three when they departed to seventeen.

Someone had arrived.

And more than one group at that.

"What are you smiling about?" Android 18's voice came from beside him.

Chen Mo had not realized he was smiling. He smoothed his expression. "Nothing. I saw some good news."

"What good news?"

"Shigula is about to start having headaches."

Android 18 did not react much.

She leaned back in her seat, absently fiddling with a metal nut she had swiped from the space station.

"That purple one," Android 18 said. "Next time we meet, I'm tearing him apart myself."

"You'll have to learn how to find him in the dark first."

"That's why you can't die." Android 18 turned to look at him, her blue eyes bright beneath the console lights. "You're my only pair of eyes. If you die, who's going to help me see the way?"

Chen Mo opened his mouth, wanting to say something, but he could not think of what.

Android 18 turned away again and continued playing with the nut.

"And..." Her voice was soft, almost like she was talking to herself. "In the dark, when you held my hand and told me which way to go... that feeling."

She did not finish.

The nut slipped from between her fingers and struck the metal floor with a crisp clang.

It sounded especially clear within the silent spaceship.

Chen Mo bent down, picked up the nut, and placed it back in her hand.

When their fingers touched, Android 18 did not pull away.

She merely clenched the nut tighter.

On the seventh day.

Trunks's urgent voice came from the rear cabin.

"Chen Mo! The Grand Elder, he—"

Chen Mo sprang from the pilot's seat and rushed into the rear cabin.

Moori leaned against the wall, his eyes half-open and half-closed, his breathing so faint it was almost inaudible.

He was still holding that Dragon Ball. Gray spots had appeared across his green skin.

"Grand Elder!"

Moori's lips moved. His voice was like wind brushing over paper.

"Don't shout. This old man's... ears aren't good anymore, but I'm not deaf yet."

Chen Mo crouched down. "How are you feeling?"

"Old." Moori said the same thing he had said before. "This body... could still hold on for a while on Planet Namek. But after leaving my home planet... the aging has accelerated."

Chen Mo's heart sank.

The Grand Elder was the creator of the Dragon Balls. If he died, the Dragon Balls would turn to stone.

The one in his hands would be no exception.

"How much longer can you hold on?" Chen Mo asked.

Moori thought for a while. "Reaching the Earth you mentioned... should not be a problem. But after that... it's hard to say."

"Once we reach Earth, I'll find a way."

Moori looked at him. There was an exceedingly calm light in his aged eyes.

"You always say you'll find a way," Moori said. "Young man, some things... cannot be solved just by finding a way."

"Some can."

Moori smiled, very faintly, then closed his eyes.

Chen Mo stood and returned to the cockpit.

Android 18 watched him sit down.

"The old man's about to die?"

"He'll make it to Earth. After that, I don't know."

"Then what about your Dragon Ball plan?"

"Speed it up. Once we reach Earth, gather all seven as quickly as possible and make the wish while he's still alive."

"You only have one. The other six are with Shigula."

"So I need the Frieza Force to keep him occupied. Keep him occupied until I'm capable of going back to take them."

Android 18 said nothing.

Chen Mo glanced at the navigation. Five days remained.

There wasn't much time.

He lowered his head and looked at the Scouter. The number of communication channels in the direction of Namek had risen to twenty-nine.

The density of electromagnetic waves was still increasing.

The second, third, and fourth fleets were arriving one after another.

What Chen Mo didn't know was that, at the exact moment he looked at the Scouter, eleven Frieza Force warships had already docked in orbit around New Planet Namek.

The green-skinned officer of the Thirty-Second Sub-Fleet stood at the flagship's command station. Before him, a holographic projection displayed the boundary of that dark region.

"Has the Nineteenth Sub-Fleet's scouting team gone in?"

"They went in. A five-man team, three hours ago."

"Have they returned?"

The communications officer fell silent for two seconds.

"No."

The green-skinned officer's expression darkened.

"What about their signals?"

"All cut off. Every communication went dead after they entered the dark region."

The gray, three-eyed dwarf beside him walked over.

"I told you, going in head-on is suicide," he said. "We wait. Wait for more people to arrive, wait for the special units, then gradually compress the range of that darkness from the outside."

"How?"

"Light," the gray dwarf said. "Create light. The Frieza Force has planet-scale illumination flares, originally used to light the surfaces of airless planets. As long as they're bright enough, they can counteract his darkness. At the very least, they can weaken part of it."

The green-skinned officer considered it. "Have the Kaibo Star Parasites from the Forty-First Sub-Fleet arrived?"

"They'll arrive tomorrow."

"Wait for them."

The green-skinned officer turned and looked at the black blotch on the holographic projection.

"Lord Frieza," he murmured. "We're here."

And in the deepest reaches of that darkness.

Upon a throne of ice.

Shigula opened his purple eyes.

He sensed them.

More and more life signatures were gathering in orbit around this planet like insects.

One fleet. Two fleets. Five fleets. More.

He rose to his feet.

His silhouette was reflected on the icy walls of the nest—tall, purple, and cold.

"Come."

His voice echoed through the darkness.

"No matter how many of you come."

"This darkness is mine."

On the eleventh day of the voyage.

Chen Mo was jolted awake by a piercing alarm.

He sprang up from the pilot's seat. A red indicator on the console was flashing wildly.

Android 18 sat up straight as well.

"What's going on?"

Chen Mo took a look. It was the communications system. Someone was calling the ship through an encrypted Frieza Force channel.

After hesitating for a moment, he opened the communication.

A voice came from the speaker, hoarse and low, carrying an accent Chen Mo could barely understand.

"Calling warship K-7734. This is North Galaxy Central Dispatch of the Frieza Force. Report your identity and current location."

Chen Mo and Android 18 exchanged a glance.

"You stole this ship," Android 18 said. "They found out."

The voice on the comm sounded again.

"K-7734. We have detected that your warp route has deviated from the direction of Namek. The entire legion has entered assembly status. All warships must converge on New Planet Namek. I repeat. All warships."

Chen Mo cut off the communication.

"Ignore him."

"Can they catch up?"

"They can't. We're faster than them. And we'll reach Earth soon."

Android 18 leaned back in her chair.

Chen Mo looked at the navigation screen. Less than twenty hours remained until they reached Earth.