Everyone's Reaction

In the vast depths of space, there was no wind, no sound—only eternal darkness and cold.

Two spherical Saiyan single-pilot spaceships traveled at a steady pace through the pitch-black sea of stars like two inconspicuous meteors. Inside their hibernation chambers, the life-support systems emitted rhythmic mechanical sounds, while red indicator lights blinked on and off, maintaining only the bare minimum of life functions.

Beep—

The public communication channel lit up.

"Vegeta, we're three days away from that low-level planet called Earth. Honestly, I still can't figure out what that worthless Raditz is plotting."

Nappa's rough, disdainful voice came through the communicator.

"That trash runs faster than anyone whenever he encounters natives even a little stronger than himself, and whenever there's anything worthwhile, he keeps it tightly to himself. Yet this time, he actually sent us the coordinates and invited us over, saying there's something that can greatly increase our battle power. Do you think that idiot's brain is broken?"

Inside the other spaceship.

Vegeta sat with his eyes closed and his arms crossed over his chest, not even bothering to lift an eyelid.

"Something's off." Vegeta's voice was as cold as ice. "A selfish fool like Raditz would never understand sharing."

"Is it a trap?" Nappa asked.

"Either he can't handle whatever benefit he found and wants to use us to kill someone, or the Earthlings have him under control and are luring us in."

"Then why are we going there at all? To travel all that way just to be used as someone else's weapon?" Nappa's voice rose several octaves.

Vegeta sneered and finally opened his eyes.

"Why not? Before absolute power, any underhanded scheme is meaningless." Vegeta tapped the scouter over his left eye. "Whether Raditz is playing tricks or the natives have set an ambush, as long as their battle power doesn't exceed eighteen thousand, I can blow them—and that worthless planet—into scraps."

Nappa let out a cruel laugh. "Heh heh, true! I've been drifting through space for months. My bones are practically rusting. Once we reach Earth, I'm definitely going to pick a few big cities and wreck them properly..."

Before he could finish—

Beep beep beep beep beep beep—!

The scouter over Vegeta's left eye suddenly erupted in an ear-piercing alarm. The red numbers on its display began jumping wildly as if they had gone insane.

10000...

150000...

500000...

900000...

"What's going on? Is the scouter broken?" Vegeta frowned and pressed the restart button, trying to force it to reset and recalibrate.

But the numbers did not stop.

It was not a malfunction. The device had genuinely detected an incomparably terrifying source of energy. This violent aura was sweeping in unreasonably from a nearby star field, even causing the spaceship's navigation radar to flash red in interference.

"Vegeta! My scouter's gone crazy too! What the hell is this reading?!" Nappa roared furiously through the communicator, with even a trace of panic in his voice.

Vegeta said nothing. He stared fixedly at the wildly jumping display over his left eye.

1500000...

3000000...

5000000...

The jumping digits tore straight past the scouter's design limit, filling the entire screen with dangerous red overload warnings.

A scalp-numbing pressure crushed down on them across an unknown distance. Vegeta's proud Saiyan royal bloodline actually began trembling beyond his control. It was the instinctive terror of prey encountering its natural predator.

His heartbeat raced as though it would burst through his chest, and cold sweat poured down his forehead. Vegeta gripped the seat with both hands, his nails carving several pale marks into the hard metal armrests.

7000000...

9000000...

The numbers finally froze on a long string of nines. The core motherboard could no longer withstand such absurd data-processing strain.

Bang!

A muffled blast rang out.

The scouter over Vegeta's left eye exploded on the spot, sending up a plume of black smoke. Several shattered lens fragments slashed fiercely across his cheek, leaving behind two vivid, bloody cuts.

The cramped cockpit fell into a terrifying silence, broken only by the blinking red warning lights.

Vegeta had even forgotten to wipe the blood from his face.

His entire body had frozen in the seat, his pupils contracting violently. He was the proud Saiyan Prince. Even when facing Frieza, he had never experienced a fear that made even his soul tremble. The composure and arrogance ingrained in his bones had been completely crushed to pieces in that instant.

As a warrior who had spent years struggling on the edge of life and death, he understood better than anyone what that pounding dread had meant.

Somewhere in the universe, a monster utterly beyond his comprehension had opened its eyes.

At the same time, on Earth, West City.

In the newly built gravity chamber behind Capsule Corporation, intense special training was underway.

Bang! Bang! Bang!

Raditz, Krillin, and Tien Shinhan were sparring madly under thirty times gravity. After this period of desperate competitive training and relentless physical conditioning, their battle power had long since risen to an entirely different level from before.

Suddenly, it felt as if someone had sucked all the air out of the gravity chamber.

A terrifying pressure that made it hard to breathe descended from the sky, forcibly piercing through the thick walls reinforced with special alloy and crushing down on everyone's heads like a mountain.

Thud.

Under that indiscriminate, terrifying pressure, Krillin's bones let out a teeth-gritting protest. His knees buckled, and he was forced hard to his knees on the metal floor. He sucked in sharp breaths, unable even to raise his head, his face twisted as if he'd seen a ghost. "Th-this... whose ki is this?! It's so powerful that even Earth's magnetic field is shaking?!"

Tien Shinhan clenched his teeth, the veins on his forehead bulging. Even his upper third eye was bloodshot from the overwhelming suppression. "This is insane... This isn't a presence any human could possess. Before this ki, we're practically grains of sand in the desert. I can't even bring myself to think about fighting back!"

The one who reacted most violently, however, was Raditz.

He had collapsed onto the ground like a lump of mud, trembling uncontrollably all over. Cold sweat had soaked through the battle suit on his back, while his wild long hair drooped against the floor like withered grass.

"Impossible... absolutely impossible..." Raditz stared blankly ahead, muttering despairingly. "Even Frieza couldn't create this kind of pressure—the kind that makes you unable to even think of running away... Where the hell did this monster come from?!"

No one spoke in the gravity chamber. Only heavy, ragged breathing could be heard.

In the suffocating atmosphere, they looked at one another, and the same thought surfaced in all their minds.

Though none of them knew where that man had gone off to train in secret, looking across the entire Earth, the only one who could cause such a disturbance...

Other than Son Goku, who else could it be?