A Saiyan's Journey

Emerging from the cubic spacecraft, Zuke felt the power within him and nodded in satisfaction.

Although the increase might not be as significant as yesterday, the overall combat strength was still impressive.

Yesterday, Zuke estimated his combat power to be over one million... Now, it should be several million, right?

Still, it was far from Frieza's full power of 120 million.

There was no helping it; Frieza's transformations were absurdly powerful, marking the beginning of the power inflation in Dragon Ball.

The root cause was the plot where Goku's 20x Kaioken could only match half of Frieza's power, leading to an exponential increase in their combat strengths, eventually reaching over a hundred million.

This made it extremely difficult for Zuke to catch up in a short time—fortunately, Zuke had many auxiliary abilities beyond just combat power.

As long as Zuke's combat power approached Frieza's, he was confident he could take Frieza down head-on.

He had even considered the possibility of Frieza trying to destroy the planet in a last-ditch effort—one of the reasons he wished for immortality was to ensure his survival in space.

Merus followed Zuke out of the cubic spacecraft, and as soon as he stepped out, his communicator beeped.

Since the Hyperbolic Time Chamber was completely isolated from the outside world, Merus couldn't receive any communications while inside the spacecraft.

Now that they were out, the messages immediately reached Merus's communicator.

Merus picked up the communicator, glanced at it, and then smiled at Zuke:

"Mr. Zuke, Officer Spice is looking for you."

Hearing Merus's words, Zuke first thought about who Spice was, then remembered—he was the Galactic Patrol officer who offered to repair his scouter yesterday.

...

In the repair department of the Galactic Patrol headquarters, the officer named Spice handed a scouter to Zuke:

"Here, it's fixed."

"That was quick?"

Zuke looked at the scouter in his hand, unable to hide his surprise.

He had prepared himself to wait several days, but this guy managed to fix it by the next day.

Although the scouter's lens looked slightly different from Frieza's army's, the overall design was similar.

Zuke remembered that in the original series, Bulma took several days to repair a scouter. Was this guy better than Bulma?

"I've studied Frieza's army's scouters before, so fixing it wasn't too hard. The tricky part was getting some of the components."

Spice had no idea what Zuke was thinking and complained about the difficulties of repairing the device.

"Even with the Galactic Patrol's resources, it took a lot of time and effort to acquire the parts, especially with the recent chaos among the galaxy's merchants..."

Hearing this, Zuke nodded—that made sense. Bulma had to start from scratch to repair the scouter, while Spice had prior experience with Frieza's army's scouters.

So it was natural that Spice could fix it faster than Bulma.

"How did you get those parts?"

Zuke put the scouter on his left eye and activated it to scan Spice.

Combat power: 470. That was quite strong on a "remote planet" like Earth, but on a universal scale, it was rather average.

In the original series, the Galactic Patrol was described as mostly unable to defeat adult Saiyans, and this seemed to hold true.

"Officer Merus helped me acquire the harder-to-find parts after he learned about the situation."

Spice noticed the numbers flashing on Zuke's scouter and couldn't help but twitch his mouth.

"Please don't just scan people's combat power like that. It's rude."

"Sorry."

Zuke offered a half-hearted apology, feeling a bit surprised.

He hadn't expected Merus to help him with this. It seemed Merus really cared about him.

This made Zuke feel a little guilty. Maybe he shouldn't absorb planetary energy in the Dragon Ball world after all. It would feel wrong to betray Merus's kindness.

There were plenty of other mission worlds where he could absorb planetary energy if he needed to. He didn't have to make things difficult for Merus in this one.

"What did you mean by the chaos among the galaxy's merchants?"

"Recently, the Heeters, the largest merchant group in the galaxy, suffered a major blow. Their leader, Elec, has gone missing and is presumed dead."

Spice didn't hide anything from Zuke.

"Now, many merchants are trying to take over the Heeters' former influence and connections. Even Frieza seems to be involved."

Elec... The first person Zuke killed in the Dragon Ball world. He hadn't expected it to cause such a stir.

True, Elec wasn't particularly strong, but he was a skilled businessman. Even Frieza went through him for planet trades, which showed how extensive his operations were.

With his death, the Heeters were left leaderless, and chaos was inevitable.

...

After leaving the Galactic Patrol headquarters, Zuke entered a private room.

This room was specially prepared for him by Merus. Given Merus's status in the Galactic Patrol, arranging a resting place for Zuke was no issue.

Merus had even asked Zuke if he wanted to join the Galactic Patrol, but Zuke declined. The look of disappointment on Merus's face seemed genuine.

It seemed he really wanted Zuke to join.

Since Zuke hadn't joined, this room was just a guest room, but it was more than enough.

After all, he wasn't planning to sleep in this mission world.

Putting on the scouter, Zuke adjusted it a few times to ensure all its original functions were intact, then activated the communication feature.

To avoid detection by Frieza's army, he had previously disabled the scouter's communication function, but now he needed it.

Soon, under Zuke's settings, the scouter sent a communication signal to a distant location and quickly received a response.

A low but urgent voice came through the scouter:

"Zuke? Is that you!?"

It was Bardock, who had long assumed Zuke had died on Planet Cereal.

To be continued…

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