I was completely surrounded by ice, but now I barely felt the cold anymore. There had been several full moons already, and I felt like I could control my Oozaru form soon. I was just missing something, and I felt like the solution to my problem was waiting for me.

It had been a few weeks now since this feeling came up and now it felt like it grew stronger every day, so of course, I relied on this feeling to guide me deeper into the Antarctica of this world.

I was still growing stronger every day and my control got better as well. I felt confident that I could recreate some of the cast’s techniques with some effort and time.

Currently, I was focusing on the Destructo Disc, as it was one technique that would let me punch considerably above my level of strength.

I headed deeper into the ice, occasionally having to fly over mountains of ice in order to move closer to where I was getting this feeling from. In the beginning, just being out in the open in the cold was difficult to handle, but I was getting better at handling my body’s response to it. By now the cold didn’t bother me anymore.

I went deeper into the domain of the ice until I had to stop. I got the feeling that it was underneath me. There was so much ice that I didn’t know how long it would take me to dig towards it.

Of course, there was no thought about giving up. I was surprised when I suddenly heard and saw the raven-like birds signaling me to come towards them. I approached them and saw that they were sitting on the edge of a deep chasm.

Relieved, I said my thanks before jumping off the edge and letting the gravity do its thing as I started plummeting into the depth. Before I hit the ground, I saw a dim glow through a hundred-meter-high ice wall. It was barely noticeable, but I had noticed it because of the birds perched on top of protruding edges near it.

“This has to be it!” I couldn’t help but exclaim before I spear-armed through the ice before digging through it while hoping that the whole thing wouldn’t collapse on top of me.

I started digging with more confidence when the ice seemed as unmoving as before. With every swing of my arms, the glow grew closer and brighter. I also heard a dull static noise, which only increased in intensity as I got closer to the glow.

My ki sense revealed a weak life force coming from the glow. ‘I wonder who or what it is?’ I frowned as I felt the need to get closer to it. The buzzing grew stronger, to the point that I could get a headache from it.

I only faintly register that I wasn’t really hearing the sound. It was like it came directly from my mind.

With another punch, I finally broke through the ice revealing a cave which’s ceiling was several dozen meters high. Of course, my attention was immediately drawn in by the giant golden spaceship.

The spaceship looked like a bird that had stretched its wings forward. In the middle was the cockpit that resembled a hawk’s head, which was flanked by the two curved sides of the ship resembling the wings.

The spaceship even ended with something akin to a bird’s tail. The owner certainly went all out to have it fit the theme…

The ship sat slightly tilted and halfway embedded in the ice. I walked closer and started smashing the ice apart that held the ship, which caused it to slide into the cave completely.

It felt somewhat familiar, but I couldn’t remember from where I could have seen it. The entire setting gave it an ancient feel, especially since it was buried in ice and the metal of the ship showed wear and tear.

Before I could decide on what to do next, a wall on the backside hissed open and lowered to the ground to become a ramp to the inside.

I walked inside, unperturbed, as I headed to the weak life force. It almost felt like whoever was inside was barely holding on, and I felt compelled to approach it without delay.

I entered the room that looked as thematically fitting as the outside. I looked around and almost instantly saw the creature lying on what resembled a sickbed.

On top of the bed laid what I could only be described as a male harpy. It had bird-like legs and broken wings sprouting from its back.

It looked at me weakly and before I could say anything, something zapped me from behind. The attack flung me into the center of the room just in front of the bed of the injured creature. I couldn’t do anything as I was hit again shocking me into unconsciousness.

…

Something roused me from my unconscious mind, as if someone was poking inside of it. When I finally came back to myself, I found myself bound to a bed, not unlike the harpy’s.

‘I am not a harpy. My race is called Kalvar. I go with the name Fal Tal’ A voice suddenly spoke directly inside my brain. ‘I was getting tired of waiting for you. Really, took you long enough to find me.’

It continued, ‘Didn’t I command you to find me several months ago? Instead, you went on a rampage and like a savage, you ravaged this planet and its inhabitants. If it weren’t for your race’s innate resistance to mind manipulation, you would have already arrived long ago!

Hmph, if I were in my prime, you would have no choice but to obey me and even if you could have resisted, I would have put you in your place for your disobedience. Even with that monkey transformation, I could have beaten you black and blue.’

It continued to ramble in a language that I could somehow understand.

I looked around and tried to move my body, but found myself too heavy to move. I could barely move a finger.

‘Don’t bother moving. You are paralyzed by a nasty poison that would even paralyze a Thanagarian for a while. *Sigh* It pains me to move my consciousness into this body of yours, but it’s better than spending the rest of my life inside this ice cage. Besides, I still have a mission to fulfill, after all.’

‘What the fuck!’

‘Whoa there, no need to curse. It’s unfortunate, but that’s just life. If you hadn’t come, I would have taken over someone else. You were just unlucky that you arrived when my ship awakened me after it detected a space-time anomaly.

Before my hibernation, I had programmed it to redirect any approaching ship to this planet, but it somehow went offline and ignored all the ships that had passed by.’

My mind was filled with thoughts and raced for an answer as I hoped for a way to escape from this asshole.

‘What a vulgar tongue! But I expected little of you anyway, you primitive monkey. Curse your bad luck if anything.’

It was incredibly difficult to do, as I had barely started training my telepathy and telekinesis, but I tried to use the link he established.

I felt the connection of his telepathy and moved my life force in tandem with my telepathic abilities to project my thoughts to it, so he wouldn’t read just any surface thought I had.

Afterward, I came up with a course of action almost instantly, while reciting numbers and poetry inside my mind in case it was still able to hear my thoughts.

I don’t know what he injected me with, but my control over my ki felt sluggish and heavy on the move.

‘What mission do you have? Maybe we can get to an agreement?’

I continued to converse with it as I build up my energy slowly and steadily. An artificial arm slithered out of a wall of the ship. The arm carried something that looked like a golden Egyptian key, an Ankh.

It held it between the two of us before another arm came out of the walls, grasping my arm before guiding it to the Ankh. Fal Tal had already reached out to the Ankh and was grasping it. The Ankh had already begun to glow ominously.

Just before I touched the Ankh, with all the effort I could muster, I aimed my hand towards him and just released every ounce of ki I could call upon and fired it immediately.

At that moment, I felt lucky that I built up a resistance to several toxins, otherwise this little movement would have been impossible, much less building up my ki.

The light coming from the attack was too bright, making me squinch my eyes shut.

The impact was almost immediate as I felt my attack tore the Ankh in half before enveloping the Kalvar in the wave of my attack. It barely stopped as I felt it tear through the walls of the ship and into the ice wall before the technique ended in a grand explosion.

I barely heard the ice collapse outside before I was thrown around in the ship like a ragdoll as gravity pulled the ship further down.

I tumbled around before the ship finally crashed into the ground. The abrupt stop of its descent threw me on my back and resulted in the back of my head smashing into the metal ground.

Once again that day, I felt my consciousness slip away and I could only hope for one thing. I hope I won’t grow as stupid as Kakarot.

…

I don’t know when I woke up again, but I knew that I would have a headache for the next couple of days. I slowly pushed myself up into a seating position and looked around.

Pieces of ice were coming into the ship from the hole I created. I slowly stood up and looked around before finding the top of the golden Ankh. Now it only was an oval with a gem in the middle held in place by two golden stripes.

Before I thought it through, my stupid ass almost touched it to pick it up. I shook my head and just let it be for now.

I walked around the messy spaceship before a glimmer attracted my attention. I walked towards it and picked it up. It was a hawk-shaped amulet, which no doubt belonged to Fal Tal. It kind of looked like a Witcher amulet.

I probably didn’t see it, as I was almost instantly ambushed by that asshole. I pocketed the amulet and started to dig myself up through the ice.

As I was digging my way out of the ice, I felt I was a lot stronger than before. Probably another Zenkai when I was zapped by that bird-shit.

It also wasn’t until I burst through the ground that I noticed it was a full moon, but it was already too late as I had already glanced at it.

I felt the transformation take hold as I grew in size and strength. Just like many times before, I calmed my rising rage and suppressed my instinct to just let go.

It took only a few seconds before the transformation was complete and several additional minutes before I realized I had successfully transformed without losing control.

I was so baffled by the fact that I had successfully retained my consciousness that I started laughing, which made me only laugh more because of my suddenly deepened voice.

After calming down, I started to get a feel of my body. I noticed that this smoldering savageness continued being there and keeping me on edge, but now I could direct it however I want to. I ignored the instinct to let loose for now to test my body.

I started jumping in place, which made the ice crack concerningly underneath my feet.

I tried to fly, and I could if just barely. I could not fly very high up into the air since it was unsurprisingly difficult to use my ki for anything. I was not sure if I could even fire a ki blast now. Maybe from my mouth, but I wouldn’t release any attacks from my hands anytime soon.

I flew up a few meters to not break the ice and headed somewhere else. Just flying was already a scrutinizing task. It took me a while to get somewhere more stable. As soon as I reached a ground that could hold my weight, I started to punch out and kick to find out my attack and movement speed, which was as slow as I imagined it to be.

Don’t get me wrong, I didn’t get slower. I was just as fast as I was in my humanoid form. It was just that my speed didn’t increase ten times as my strength did.

So, in comparison with the increase in size and strength, it made me think I was significantly slower than before, even though I could cover the same distance as fast as before. I knew that little tidbit already, so I wasn’t too bumped out or even surprised about it.

I don’t know, I just hoped that it would be different in real life. I guess I will have to figure out how to tap into Ikari for that speed boost, which means I will need to transform a lot more to get that feeling right, so I can trigger the transformation without actually transforming.

And it happens to be that I knew of a technique, which could make me independent of the full moon and allow me to transform whenever the Power Ball.

With the Power Ball, I would be able to transform every other day. If I can’t even master Ikari with that I should just go into a corner and die.

For the rest of the night, I just tested out my body as an Oozaru. I wanted to see what my limits were so I wouldn’t be caught by surprise later.

After the moon vanished from the sky, I reverted to my humanoid form and, like before, I was exhausted. I quickly called upon my attack ball and threw my body inside. Before the door was closed, I had already fallen asleep.

After sleeping for half a day, I woke up feeling refreshed. I guess that was something I needed to consider now when I want to transform. I would be too exhausted to do anything and would be way too easy to kill. There was a reason they used it as a last resort.

However, I was quite happy with the results. I took out the scouter that I had stowed away prior to going into this world’s Antarctica.

I checked my power level when I wasn’t holding back and was a bit surprised that I only reached 762. The dumb bird man didn’t zap me too hard and couldn’t be called a severe injury, so the small increase was to be expected. However, there was something bothering me.

Although the increase was expectedly small considering the circumstances, I felt like I was stronger than my power level showed and I didn’t mean like I was stronger than the other creatures on this planet because of my efficient usage of ki, but that I had an additional power that wasn’t there before.

It was quite noticeable. I was maybe 1.5x stronger than before, which meant I should have a power level of around 1.100.

I put that thought away. Maybe it was just a high on my successful survival and the subsequent transformation.

Either way, considering my current progress, I should be able to break through the 1000 pl on this planet, which would officially place me in the low-class.

There probably were only a select few Saiyans that had become class warriors before their first growth spurt.

Anyway.

For now, though, mastering several techniques would become my focus. When I transformed the other night, I realized that there was no buzzing during my transformation anymore.

My conscience had a lot fewer difficulties fighting the savageness that came with the Oozaru transformation as well. Coupled with the fact that I was constantly followed by these birds and that Fal Tal was a telepath, makes me presume that he had been influencing me subconsciously to approach him.

I don’t know if I have to spell it out, but being influenced by any telepath that comes around didn’t make me feel safe. Even if I was physically stronger, if I couldn’t fight being influenced efficiently, I would end up losing, anyway.

I was already meditating, and it probably already prevented Fal Tal from directly moving my body as he did with the birds, but I could be exponentially better.

I remember seeing Goku using his telekinesis and telepathy on multiple occasions and that bird asshole had also mentioned that I might have an innate resistance to mind manipulation, which kind of reminded me of one of the most badass scenes of Vegeta resisting Babidi’s mind control.

They were certainly abilities I wouldn’t say no to, so I will have to get to work on improving them. For the next weeks, I will hunt down any animal and use it to train my telepathy on it. I will probably turn their mind into mush, but that was a sacrifice I was willing to make. I would eat them afterward, anyway.

Other than that, I would need to learn how to create the Power Ball. I knew that it was something about mixing the ki of the technique with the planet’s environment to create Blutz Waves. I think it expanded violently in the sky and started to constantly release Blutz Waves.

I hope it wouldn’t be too hard. The technique was created by a bunch of savage Saiyans, it can’t be that hard, right?

Sigh.

Then there was telekinesis and the techniques of the cast. So much to do and so little time.

…

I tapped my scouter to scan me, and just a moment later, it revealed my power level again.

1522.

I had hoped for a higher jump in power, but I would take everything I could get. It had risen from 980 to a power level in the 15 hundred. With this, I was well in the low-class and with it almost as strong as Raditz would be as an adult. And contrarily to Raditz, I will improve even further.

It had been exactly a year now since I took over this body and landed on this planet. A few days ago, I killed the strongest creature on this planet after I let it intentionally injure me.

It was a frustrating fight, to be honest. I had already developed to the point I couldn’t be easily injured by weaker creatures that didn’t know anything about using their ki.

So, I had to even the playing field with the former strongest creature on this planet by suppressing my ki to a power level of 700ish, which honestly made it a frustrating and unsatisfying fight.

Especially since I wanted to be seriously injured by something that had no skill in utilizing its strength while not trying to die. The amount of guesswork I have to do just to determine how much of its ki/strength/power level it could use to attack was fucking annoying.

I was kind of used like a ragdoll for several minutes before I could figure out how much I needed to hold back to not die but also be severely injured. After I got considerably injured, I just said, ‘Fuck it, good enough!’ and took its head off and ate it as a thank you gift.

After having killed the arguably biggest threat on this planet, I knew that there was nothing more to gain from this planet.

No powerful enemies to slay and no toxin to adapt to. It was time for me to move on. I could probably train my body in the extreme temperatures, but that was a slow process, and I could do it on any other planet as well.

I couldn’t help but smile as I recalled how I became the strongest creature on this planet as a 16-year-old. Should I call myself Ogre or Baki from now on?

I stepped out of the cave, which was my home for several months now, and stepped inside my attack ball. At the back of the attack ball hung the broken golden Ankh as well as the amulet. After I had figured out their purpose, I knew that they will be great tools to train with well into the future.

I had already finished my beer and my food and there was nothing left to take with me.

Anything that could fit inside the attack ball would only last me a day at max and to bring them with me just for nostalgic reasons was a waste, besides I would sleep for the entirety of the journey. It wasn’t like I needed food to eat while waiting until I arrived at my destination.

I still thought it was unfortunate that it didn’t create a wormhole or something to instantly get me to my destination, but it wasn’t like I could be choosy.

I checked if I had everything with me and chose a planet from my navigation system. I needed a planet that had some sort of intra-galactic trading, so I could get information about either Earth, Namek, or Yardrat.

Honestly, I would first want to go to Yardrat and learn their techniques, after all, even as a Saiyan beyond God Vegeta had benefitted immensely from their training. Afterward, it didn’t matter if I went to Earth or Namek second. They each have a value of their own.

With that being said I just chose a planet that was neutral to the Cold Force since those amiable to them would just report me and those that were hostile would probably just attack me on sight, which I am not sure I would survive at this point.

As a low-class, I should be considered capable enough to conquer planets, but only the weaker worlds that had either no civilization or civilizations on the level of humans protecting it. Ideally, there was a moon orbiting the planet.

Any intra-galactic civilization could probably handle most Saiyans. The only ones that would be feared were the elite-class Saiyans, which currently only our King Vegeta belonged to.

There were very few people in the mid-class as well, so in the galaxy, we could only swagger around the weaker species.

So, I didn’t want to take any chances. It could only be a neutral organization with planets whose atmosphere I could breathe.

I confirmed my choice, and that the life support system was online before I leaned into the seat, trying to get myself comfortable since I would be sleeping in that position for an entire week according to the estimation made by the navigation system.

The attack ball started to shoot into the deep dark space and after a short few minutes, I smelled the gas that was being released into the interior of the spaceship. Just as per the manual, I slowly drifted off to sleep.

Unfortunately, I wouldn’t dream about anything, a fact that I knew from the files on my holopen.

…

Although it wasn’t unexpected, I was still a bit startled when I came to myself. My spaceship had abruptly stopped, and it wasn’t because I had landed on a planet, otherwise I would have woken up several minutes before the landing.

I had been stopped purposeful, obvious by the red light that enveloped the entire window of my attack ball. I looked outside and then noticed that the ship was pulled somewhere at an astonishing speed.

My space pod should be recognizable across the galaxy, so who was bold enough to kidnap a possible member of the Cold Force?

It took only a couple of seconds before my attack ball stopped again and I saw how I was pulled into a giant spaceship.

Through a tunnel that was barely 3 meters in diameter, I shot through the wall of the spaceship before I stopped on top of a platform that shone bright blue for a few seconds before it dimmed down again.

I looked outside my window, but I couldn’t see anything as only a single light above me was shining and the rest of the room was dark.

However, it only took me several seconds for my eyes to adapt to the dark interior of this ship to see several wriggling figures inside glass tubes that extended from the ground all the way to the ceiling.

Honestly, it wouldn’t surprise me if those creatures were all clones of something. Without getting too curious for my own good, I tried to activate my attack ball and just let it rip through the walls of this spaceship, but I couldn’t take off. According to the log, there was something preventing the necessary procedure from activating.

I have no other choice, haven’t I? I scanned the air and found that it was breathable. Afterward, I took the amulet that I hung up behind me and wore it around my neck before I hid it underneath my armor.

I put my holopen inside an inner pocket of my armor as well and wore my scouter before I decided to press the button to let the door open. The attack ball powered down, and I closed the door as soon as I stepped outside, since the inside of the attack ball wasn’t exactly known for its robustness.

The ship then vanished into another tunnel to god-knows-where. Suddenly, I saw a floating figure approach from the distance. The only light in the room from above the platform on which my attack ball was standing several seconds ago illuminated the creature’s features.

It was strangely round, and it didn’t seem to have any legs, but he did have two arms. It opted to move about by floating above the ground. He wore something akin to a coat with a red undersuit.

He had two polo blue eyes without pupils and a dry mouth with nonexistent lips. He didn’t have a neck, which made him look like a floating almond-colored blob of flesh. And here I thought the animals back on the planet were ugly, but this thing had them beat.

It spoke with a strange voice that sounded somewhat nonorganic, with an echo to it.

“Hello, I am the preserver.”