In Dragon Ball: A brutal beating of Frieza at the start

Page 98

"You bastard! Get out of my way!" Beerus roared in fury, his dignity as a God of Destruction trampled upon. Purple destructive energy surged like a burst dam, carrying the aura of annihilation, crashing towards the center of the dark maw. However, this attack, powerful enough to wipe out galaxies, melted away like snow under the sun upon touching the darkness at the edge of the maw, being decomposed and assimilated. Instead, it made the darkness at the edge of the maw even denser and more solid, as if it were merely an appetizer for the monster.

Weiss gripped his scepter tightly, his elegant angelic face turning solemn for the first time. He attempted to manipulate the flow of time to rewind and repair space, but his divine power of time, upon touching the dark areas, was like sinking into a viscous swamp, swallowed and corrupted by "nothingness," rendering it ineffective. His own divine power also sluggish and dimmed, and a chilling backlash caused him to groan, his scepter's light flickering.

"No effect!" The High Priest's voice was more solemn than ever before, even tinged with fear. A dazzling divine light erupted from his body, transforming into a shield of light with flowing, profound runes, protecting the core area of ​​the Omni-King's Throne. The shield violently fluctuated and twisted under the erosion of the dark's suction force, like a lone boat tossed about in a raging storm. "Its existence transcends the laws we understand! It is devouring 'existence' itself! The Assembly of Power must cease immediately! All angels, protect it with all your might!"

He looked up, his gaze piercing through the chaotic energy storm and the fragments of collapsing space, landing on the two Omni-Kings seated on their thrones. For the first time, his small head turned simultaneously toward the dark maw, his innocent eyes reflecting a pure abyss of despair.

Lin Ye hovered in the turbulent currents of shattered space, the violent suction pulling at his body, attempting to tear apart and devour the pure white light surrounding him. Although his silver-white "Above the White God" form remained, the pure white light at his edges, like snowflakes being peeled away by an invisible hand, drifted towards the gigantic maw to be swallowed. Each stripping brought weakness and excruciating pain deep within his soul. Deep within his consciousness, a system alarm tolled like a death knell:

[Highest alert! Intrusion detected from an ultra-high-dimensional entity!]

[Feature matching: 99.999% matches 'Time Devourer'!]

[Energy level exceeds the system's detection limit! Absolute resistance to laws!]

[WARNING! This entity is devouring the host's 'Beyond White God' form's origin! Form stability is continuously decreasing! Estimated time for complete collapse: 1 minute 48 seconds!]

[Urgent Advice: Immediately leave your current location! Give up resistance! Escape with all your might!]

Giving up? Escape? These cold words burned like a red-hot iron into the depths of Lin Ye's consciousness, suppressed by the "Above the White God" form. The authentic will belonging to "Lin Ye," under the extreme fear of the abyss's gaze and the oppression of the cold divinity, struggled and burned weakly yet stubbornly like a spark in a storm.

He slowly raised his right hand, which was beginning to radiate silvery-white light, his five fingers spread, no longer aimed at Jilian, but firmly at the dark maw. A cold, grand, resonant voice rang out, and beneath the indifferent, divine tone, a trace of "Lin Ye's" arrogance and madness erupted like molten lava: "Want to eat me?... I'm afraid your rotten mouth will shatter all your teeth!"

Almost simultaneously, a roar like that of a wounded ancient beast exploded within the turbulent suction! It was Jiren! His shattered Ultra Instinct silver light flickered uncertainly like a candle in the wind, his arm muscles ripped open, golden divine blood gushing out only to be torn apart and devoured by the suction. His cold, hard face was contorted with pain and loss of power, bloodshot, but his eyes burned with an indomitable fighting spirit, fixed firmly on the jaws of the Time Devourer. There was no fear in his gaze, only the enraged fury of the strongest warrior! The strongest warriors of Universe 7 and Universe 11, before the Abyss of Destruction, resonated with their fighting spirit for the first time, their spears aimed directly at the greedy Devourer.

The Grand Priest's divine shield rippled under the erosion of the dark's suction, its light flickering. The auras of the Omni-King's attendants were like unsheathed swords, their oppressive power permeating the air. Amidst the chaotic ruins of the arena, Goku wiped the blood from the corner of his mouth, his golden aura igniting with a tragic and resolute intensity; Vegeta's face contorted in rage, his destructive energy compressed to its limit in his palm; Frieza's eyes were filled with madness, his golden aura mingled with cold calculation and fear… All the powerful beings who could stand, regardless of which universe they came from, whether they were allies or mortal enemies before, now felt an overwhelming sense of impending doom, their gazes fixed on the gigantic maw of darkness.

The outcome of the Tournament of Power, the stakes of the universe's survival, were long forgotten. The true endgame only began its bloody curtain call the moment the Time-Devourer descended, treating the Realm of Nothingness as bait!

The gigantic, dark maw seemed to sense the tenacious, trapped will gathering below. A low, greedy hum echoed from the abyss, like the churning of millions of stomachs. The maw adjusted its shape, the suction intensified, and space, like a fragile glass curtain wall, shattered and peeled away on a larger scale, being swept into darkness.

"Ugh!" Toppo had barely stood up when the suction forced him to his knees, his cloak of justice turning to ashes. Tispo's speed advantage vanished; he was pressed against the cracked crystal ground by an invisible force, his skin rapidly losing its luster. The weaker angelic attendants in the stands also groaned in pain, their divine light dimming, their bodies swaying precariously. The entire Realm of Nothingness resembled an altar drained of its life force.

The High Priest's shield of light emitted a piercing groan, spiderweb-like cracks appearing at its edges as pure divine energy fragments were stripped away and merged into the torrent of energy. Beads of sweat trickled down his forehead, his scepter swinging heavily. Repairing the shattered space required ten times the divine power, and even that power was being indirectly devoured by the gigantic maw.

“We can’t hold on like this!” The angel of the tenth universe, Kex, said urgently, doing her best to maintain the spatial stability of the area where the remaining warriors of this universe were located. “Its core… that pure ‘nothingness’… is polluting the foundation of our laws!” The angel of the twelfth universe, Makalita, said with a trembling voice. She tried to interfere with the devouring will with the power of the Law of Pleasure, but the pink divine power was like a stone thrown into the sea, swallowed up and devoured by the darkness.

Just as the angels' power was being restrained and the Grand Priest's shield was on the verge of collapse, Vegeta roared, "Ka...Karot!" His roar was broken and intermittent amidst the suction storm, yet it was filled with determination. The dark purple destructive energy around him was compressed to its limit, like the core of a supernova about to explode, resisting the suction that stripped away his life force, and he struggled to move toward Goku, who was also supported by golden light.

Goku turned around and instantly understood Vegeta's meaning. His eyes, always filled with optimism and fighting spirit, now burned with the same fierce light. Without a word, the two golden flames of peak Davana—the berserk energy of Super Saiyan Blue Limit—began to intertwine and merge with difficulty.

"Kamehameha..." Goku's voice distorted under the suction force, "...Kung Fu!!!" Vegeta roared in response, and the two of them pushed out their arms at the same time. Two golden energy torrents, which originated from the same source but carried their own extreme will, struggled wildly on the edge of fusion, trying to twist into a destructive force that could shake higher-dimensional existences. The violent energy turbulence exploded around them, and the fragments of space instantly vaporized. This forced fusion process accelerated the loss of their life force.

On the other side, Frieza's eyes flashed with coldness and madness: "Damn insects! Damn monsters! Die!" His golden body erupted with dazzling golden light, even tinged with an unstable dark purple! He held nothing back, pushing his hands towards the giant maw, countless death beams, condensed with the ultimate destructive intent, poured out like a torrential rain, yet strangely, they shot towards the massive spatial fragments below the maw, pulled and shattered by the suction force. He intended to detonate these fragments containing immense spatial energy, creating a chain of energy storms to disrupt the devouring process—pure destruction and disruption!

"We're coming too!" Gohan, Piccolo, Android 17, Android 18... all the remaining warriors of Universe 7, whether seriously injured or not, erupted in their final shouts. The blue light of the Kamehameha, the spiral of the Special Beam Cannon, the shockwave of the Androids' infinite energy... beams of energy, like moths to a flame, carried an indomitable will, merging into Vegeta and Goku's golden torrent, or following Frieza's death beam towards the spatial nodes.

Other top warriors from different universes, such as Hit and Kefla from Universe 6, and Ribrian from Universe 2, after a brief period of despair and shock, gleamed with a fierce, desperate light in their eyes. Hit's figure flickered in the suction storm, each appearance unleashing a "fatal strike" condensed from the power of time; Kefla and Caulifla's golden flames intertwined, attempting to break through with pure power; Ribrian and his team members burned the divine power of love and beauty, transforming it into a pink energy shockwave... At this moment, all the remaining warriors set aside their cosmic barriers and hostility, transforming their last strength and will into a desperate and magnificent counterattack thrown into the abyss.

Countless beams of energy, like a reverse meteor shower, rose from the ruins of the collapsed arena, carrying the last roars of the surviving warriors, and shot toward the dark maw.

"Foolish!" Alarm bells rang in the High Priest's mind. The energy levels of these attacks were like dust in front of the Time Devourer, unable to harm it in the slightest. What was even more terrifying was that this power, infused with the life essence of the warriors, would only become sweeter food for the monster, accelerating its devouring.

As expected, the dark maw remained unchanged in the face of the energy torrent. All the energy that approached—whether it was the golden dragon formed by the fusion of Goku and Vegeta, the turbulent currents from Frieza's detonation of spatial fragments, or the energy impacts from other warriors—melted away like ice and snow the moment it touched the dark edge of the maw, disintegrating, assimilating, and disappearing silently. The darkness at the edge of the maw thus became even more solid and profound, and the greedy buzzing sound took on a pleasant quality.

Despair, like an icy tide, engulfed all the fighting warriors. Their desperate attacks failed to even create a ripple, and their life force was drained away even more rapidly with each counterattack.

"Ugh..." The energy surges of Goku and Vegeta dissipated, and the two were flung away like kites with broken strings, spitting out blood. Frieza's plan to detonate the spatial fragments only created a momentary chaotic flash before being swallowed by greater darkness, causing his golden skin to dim slightly.

Lin Ye hovered amidst the turbulent energy currents, his silvery-white pupils coldly watching the futile and tragic counterattack below. More and more silvery-white light fragments emanated from his right arm, and the system's collapse countdown ticked in his consciousness: [Form Collapse Time: 1 minute 05 seconds]. However, deep within the indifferent Starry Eye, the flame of will belonging to "Lin Ye," under extreme pressure, burned even more fiercely and wildly, like refined iron being forged.

He saw the cracks spreading across the High Priest's shield, the exhaustion of the angels whose divine power was being restrained, and the despair of the warriors below, who were like ants trying to shake a tree. He also clearly "sense" the giant mouth core's greedy desire for the origin of the form "above the White God".

A crazy thought cleaved through his cold mind like lightning. "Want to eat? Then... I'll let you eat your fill!" Lin Ye no longer stabilized the edge of his dissipating form, but instead took the initiative to release control over the source power of "Above the White God".

A silvery-white radiance, far purer and more primal than before, resembling the light of the universe's creation, erupted from Lin Ye's heart. No longer concentrating on his body, it surged forth like a bursting dam, actively and violently rushing towards the dark maw. This pure light seemed to briefly "purify" and "freeze" the turbulent spatial currents that it passed through.

This "deliciousness," offered without warning and hundreds of times greater than before, caused the gigantic dark maw to tremble violently. Its greedy buzzing rose in pitch, like a gluttonous beast that had been starving for billions of years finally receiving its main course. The darkness at the center of the maw spun wildly, forming an even stronger vortex of suction, eagerly devouring the silvery-white torrent of origin.

However, just as the immense primordial power was being swallowed by the giant maw, coming into contact with the pure "nothingness" within, and about to be assimilated to a fraction of its original strength, the starlight in Lin Ye's silver-white eyes spun wildly in reverse. "Explode!" A word containing endless destructive will struck the core of the immense primordial power he had willingly offered, like a cold iron hammer.

Chapter 243: The Echo Returns to Zero

Lin Ye's hand, heavy with destiny, touched the suspended sphere of light, radiating a soft glow yet containing an infinite flow of information. The sensation transmitted through his fingertips wasn't cold energy, but a pulsation, as if he had touched the pulse of the universe's core. The instant of contact, the young host, curled up inside the sphere and dormant for billions of years, suddenly opened his eyes.

Those eyes were as clear as newly risen stars, devoid of the expected resentment or madness, only a serene and liberating tranquility. The boy's lips curved into a pure, breathtaking smile.

"Thanks…"

Two words, light as a feather, acted like an invisible key, instantly unlocking the enormous lock that lay across the dimensions of the multiverse.

Om-!

The frequency of its oscillations was indescribable, silent yet so violent as to tear apart the very fabric of reality. The scene before Lin Ye's eyes was engulfed by a pure, domineering, all-consuming golden light. The light wasn't an explosion, but a higher level of "coverage" and "erasure." At the source of the light, the colossal Omega, a symbol of ultimate destruction and order, was swept away by the torrent of data, like metal thrown into strong acid, emitting a silent shriek. Its form collapsed, disintegrated, and vaporized at a visible speed, ultimately revealing a fragile shape curled up like a newborn infant. It existed for less than a moment before, along with the surrounding stardust, it was completely wiped away by the golden light, as if it had never existed.

The violent tremor was not a sound, but a rupture at the level of rules.

This sense of fracture, centered on the origin of the light sphere, swept across the endless cosmic bubble in an instant via a dimensional leap that exceeded the speed of light.

The seventh universe destroys the divine world.

The sky was a clear, azure, and the temple floated suspended among the clouds. Beerus, the God of Destruction, lay sprawled on a soft couch, fast asleep. Whis, the angel, stood gracefully on the terrace, scooping up a spoonful of pink ice cream with a silver spoon and precisely bringing it to his lips.

Right now.

"Huh?" Weiss uttered a short, surprised syllable.

The ice cream scoop he held, crafted from divine gold and sturdy and indestructible, vanished abruptly as if it had been directly "erased" by the highest level of spatial laws! The moment the scoop disappeared, the ice cream lost its support and landed with a "thud" on the tip of Weiss's spotless white boot.

Weiss did not clean up the stain. His usually gentle and smiling eyes suddenly sharpened like a hawk's, piercing through the temple dome and shooting towards the higher dimensional heavens.

There, the once rock-solid sky of the God of Destruction, woven from countless lines of law, was now riddled with spiderweb-like cracks! These cracks weren't physical fissures; rather, they seemed to represent a terrifying degradation and collapse of the very underlying "destruction" rules that supported the operation of this divine realm! Countless tiny black runes, representing the authority of "destruction," flickered and struggled at the edges of the cracks, then extinguished and vanished like candles in the wind. The entire temple groaned under the unbearable burden, its spatial structure becoming fragile and shaky as the rules degraded.

"Destructive energy... has degenerated?" Whis's voice lost its composure for the first time, filled with disbelief and gravity. He clearly sensed that the core force maintaining the cycle of life and death in the Seventh Universe—the Authority of Destruction—was collapsing at an alarming rate! This was a demotion! He instinctively looked at Beerus; the God of Destruction was still snoring, but the destructive aura surrounding him, the one that made all things tremble, was rapidly receding and fading like a tide. The very foundation of the rules had been shaken!

Universe 7, Earth, the island where Master Roshi's House is located.

Sun Wukong sat on his horse in the open space, his whole body surging like a boiling furnace, his right fist aimed at the specially made super alloy sandbag.

"Drink!" With a roar, his right fist, which gathered all his strength, shot out like a cannonball!

However, just a fraction of a second before the fist touched the sandbag—

puff!

The terrifying force of the punch, which should have been like a landslide or a tsunami, suddenly became weak and powerless! It was as if a strong adult's fist had instantly turned into a three-year-old child's shove. The condensed gale instantly dissipated, producing not an explosive roar, but a muffled, short sound like a fart. The light of the fist instantly dimmed like a candle flickering in the wind.

But the impact force, which had suddenly diminished many times over, still acted on the sandbag. The sandbag swayed slightly.

A strange thing happened.

Behind the sandbags, the Turtle Hermitage, built of solid rock and wood and which had withstood the aftershocks of countless battles between powerful figures, was as if it had been smashed hard by an invisible giant hammer!

Boom——! ! !

A deafening roar shattered the island's tranquility! The entire Master Roshi's House, as if all its load-bearing structure had been removed, crumbled and collapsed inch by inch, starting from the roof, before Krillin's horrified gaze! Smoke, wood chips, and rubble shot into the sky like miniature bombs detonating. The massive shockwave even threw the unsuspecting Goku off balance.

"Pfft—cough cough cough!" Smoke and dust filled the air as Klin, covered in soot, struggled to crawl out of the ruins, staring blankly at the mess. The old sea turtle was struggling to climb out from under the wooden planks.

"Master Roshi!" Krillin rushed over to help. He instinctively raised his hand, opened his palm, and tried to gather a ki blast to clear the obstacle.

Sizzle... sizzle...

A few faint, match-head-sized white sparks flickered a few times in his palm before extinguishing completely. His body felt incredibly heavy, every cell conveying an unprecedented sense of weakness. He tried to jump, but the height was far less than before, and his knees buckled when he landed.

"What...what happened?" Krillin's voice trembled with terror as he looked at Goku, who was brushing off the dust. "Goku! Can you feel it? My body...it's so heavy! My ki...I can barely feel it!" He pointed to his empty palms and the ruins. "My power level...it's regressed by ten years?" A chilling thought gripped his heart. It wasn't just weakness; it was a structural collapse of his entire life energy level!

Goku frowned, clenched his fists and kicked, his face full of confusion: "Strange... my body suddenly feels much heavier, and my ki... I can't run anymore?" He tried to activate his Saiyan bloodline, but the volcanic eruption of power vanished without a trace, leaving only a heavy, stagnant feeling. "Krillin, it's not ten years..." Goku scratched his head, his expression serious, "It seems... I've retreated even further, like I just finished fighting Frieza? No, maybe... I'm even weaker?" This unprecedented, unfamiliar weakness made him extremely uneasy.

Namek, the Purple Swamp.

Lin Ye felt as if he had been slammed down from the top of the universe by an invisible giant hand. The all-consuming golden light brought a chilling vacuum, stripping him of all senses and power. Like a meteorite that had burned out, he was pulled by gravity through the thin atmosphere, crashing with a mournful howl into a sticky, cold, and putrid purple swamp!

boom!

The immense impact sent a spray of thick, sticky, purple mud several meters high. A stench instantly enveloped him. The cold, icy mud rushed into his mouth and nose, almost suffocating him. The impact made his vision blur, and his internal organs felt as if they had shifted.

"Ugh...cough! Cough cough cough!" Lin Ye rolled and struggled violently in the mud, finally managing to pull his head out. He gasped for breath, each breath carrying the strong smell of humus and the sweet, pungent odor of rotting plants. His face and body were covered in disgusting purple slime.

Ignoring his nausea and injuries, he immediately clenched his fist, trying to summon the power within him that had once shaken the stars and torn apart space!

no respond.

Deep within his dantian, the once fiery and surging sea of ​​qi, burning like a star, was now as still as icy, stagnant water. Only a faint, almost negligible flow of energy struggled to travel through his withered meridians, causing a pricking, stinging pain. The immense drop in energy brought on a wave of weakness that swept through his body, making his vision blur and his legs go weak. He sensed the pitiful intensity of this energy.

"Fifty...fifty thousand?" The number surfaced in his mind with an unbelievable bitterness and absurdity. This was even lower than his combat power when he first set foot on Namek and faced Frieza's minions! A self-deprecating, twisted, bitter smile appeared on his mud-covered face. Just minutes ago, he was standing at the peak of his power, facing Omega head-on; now... looking at his mud-covered, slightly trembling hands, which even made it difficult to clench his fists, he felt a hundred times worse than death.

A sharp, piercing buzzing sound tore through the silence! It was coming from the emergency communicator, specially made by the Capsule Corporation, frantically alarming from his inside chest pocket!

Lin Ye frantically rummaged through his mud-soaked pockets, pulling out a communicator, equally covered in mud but stubbornly flashing a blinding red light. Wiping away the grime, Bulma's face, distorted and magnified by extreme anxiety, appeared against a backdrop of a screen wall filled with wildly fluctuating and chaotic data streams. A piercing alarm echoed through the swamp.

"Lin Ye! Lin Ye! Did you hear me?! How are you doing?! Answer me!!" Bulma's voice was shrill and distorted, filled with unprecedented panic and sobs. "Something terrible has happened! The entire universe! I detected the energy levels of the entire Seventh Universe, no, all observable universes! Just now! An exponential, precipitous drop occurred! Physical constants are all fluctuating wildly! Gravity, the speed of light, the strong nuclear force... everything is in chaos! This is a dimensional reduction attack on the universe! The rules have collapsed! The fundamental laws have degenerated!" She was incoherent, having lost all composure.

She gasped, her fear intensifying: "But even more bizarre! The edge of the Milky Way! Near the core region where the energy just plummeted, a massive, unstable wormhole has appeared out of nowhere! Energy readings are chaotic and beyond the limit! The spatial curvature index is exploding! Damn it… something is crawling out of the wormhole! The energy reaction… is extremely ancient! Extremely… evil! Full of pure malice! Do you hear me? Lin Ye! Answer me! If you're alive, make a sound! I need to confirm the location!"

Bulma's every word was like a cold hammer, striking Lin Ye's heart with cosmic-level terror. Was it all because he touched the orb of light? Because of the host's relieved smile? A chill a thousand times more biting than a swamp instantly gripped him.

“I… on Namek… in the southeastern hemisphere… in the Purple Swamp…” Lin Ye’s voice was hoarse and dry. “I heard it, Bulma. The energy plummeted… I felt it too… my power…” He paused, bitterness almost overflowing, “…less than one-tenth… no, not even one percent…” He tried to calm himself, but weakness, frustration, and despair were clearly conveyed.

"What?! You're near the center too? You..." Bulma's voice abruptly stopped, the communicator emitting a piercing electromagnetic interference noise like billions of metallic insects gnawing at glass, so sharp it gave Lin Ye a splitting headache. The screen image distorted and tore violently, Bulma's face appearing intermittently, "...wormhole...unstable...interference...too strong...space...repulsion...Lin Ye...be careful...that thing...locked on...you...its will...penetrates...zzzzzz...searching for...you...zzzzzzzz—!!"

The communicator's red light flashed frantically and desperately, the screen turning into a snow-like display of ominous dark purple patterns, the piercing busy tone like a death knell. Bulma's intermittent, curse-like "Locked on you," "Looking for...you..." pierced Lin Ye's nerve endings like red-hot, poisoned steel needles, freezing his blood.

A bone-chilling cold, like being watched by an unspeakable predator from the deepest recesses of the universe, shot up from his tailbone to the top of his head! He jerked his head up, his mud-covered face filled with utter horror, his gaze instinctively filled with fear as he looked towards the eerie, gloomy, purple-cloud-shrouded Namekian sky. A wormhole? Locked on? That thing… sensed him? Is… coming?!

boom--! ! !

A dull, hammer-like impact, carrying thick purple mud, exploded less than twenty meters from Lin Ye! The mud sprayed seven or eight meters high, drenching Lin Ye completely. In the mud rain, a tall, powerful figure slowly rose to his feet like a demon god breaking through the earth. His hair, which had shone with a holy silver light in his "Self-Extreme" form, disappeared, reverting to short, pure black hair like burning flames. However, the ancient, mysterious Saiyan rune carved by Lin Ye himself on his forehead did not dim with the decline of its terrifying power; instead, under the purple light, it shimmered with an even more restrained and profound dark golden halo, like an inextinguishable brand, striking and dazzling!

Vegeta raised his hand, with the inherent arrogance and nonchalance of a Saiyan prince, wiping the mud off his face. The movement carried the heavy, stagnant weight of power forcibly drained from him. His sharp, hawk-like eyes swept over the mud-covered, disheveled Lin Ye, instantly catching the lingering shock, unease, and bewilderment in the other's eyes.

"Hmph." Vegeta let out a short, cold snort, his voice low and hoarse. Ignoring the immense resistance of the sticky mud beneath his feet, he waded through shallow water and strode to Lin Ye's side. Without any questions or words of comfort, he reached out his calloused hand and grabbed the front of Lin Ye's wet, mud-caked combat uniform.

"Just getting back into training, rookie." Vegeta's voice was low and hoarse, like sandpaper scraping, carrying a near-cold calm born from having faced life-or-death situations. The dark gold rune on his forehead rose and fell slightly as he spoke, radiating an ominous yet resilient glow.

The next second, Lin Ye felt himself being violently lifted off the swamp by an immense force! Vegeta's arm muscles bulged as he hurled him like a garbage bag at a small Saiyan spherical spaceship that was moored on relatively solid rock not far away! The movement was swift and decisive, tinged with impatience.

"Let's go!" Vegeta roared. His figure moved like a black lightning bolt, following closely behind the thrown Lin Ye, and lunged towards the open hatch of the spaceship.

Lin Ye's body arced briefly through the air before crashing heavily onto the spaceship's cold metal floor with a loud thud, sending shivers down his spine and making him see stars. He struggled to lift his head, his last glimpse through the hatch at the purple swamp that resembled the entrance to hell and the ominous sky. A wormhole… something crawling out… Bulma's warning… the absurd sense of security that Vegeta's "just starting over" provided… a jumbled mess of emotions.

The hydraulic system of the hatch hissed shrilly, and just as it was about to close, Lin Ye's gaze froze on Vegeta's retreating figure as he rushed into the cabin. At the edge of Vegeta's thick, short black hair, close to the gleaming dark gold runes, a faint, eerily sinister, seemingly alive, jet-black line snaked and spread silently like a venomous snake! The black line carried an extremely unsettling, cold, and foul feeling, creating a bizarre contrast with the sacred runes. It appeared only for a fleeting moment, disappearing beneath the hairline before Lin Ye could even see it clearly, as swift as a phantom.

What is that?! Lin Ye's heart skipped a beat, then pounded wildly! Weakness, panic, and threat were overshadowed by the eerie black markings clinging to Vegeta, casting an even deeper and more terrifying shadow! Vegeta's runes were glowing; what were these insidious black markings? A consequence of the crash? Or… something even more terrifying parasitizing him?

"What are you standing there for?! Close the door! Useless trash!" Vegeta's roar exploded like thunder in the cramped, stinking cabin, filled with command and unspeakable rage. He slammed his hand heavily on the control panel. *Whoosh!* The spaceship's engines roared, spewing scorching blue flames from their tails, the powerful thrust slamming Lin Ye, who had just struggled to his knees, back down to the floor.