Hello All! This story and all my other fanfictions are available for free on my Patreon, alongside my other web-novels. It will have a very loose upload schedule, as I am focusing my efforts on seven chapters of Krypton Reborn: A Star Wars Story per week. If this web novel gains enough support in my monthly Patreon polls, it may move to the top spot in the priority list! Thanks to all the readers out there! All constructive criticism and comments are welcome!

 

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https://www.patreon.com/maizeblu

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Light flashed and Namek vanished, replaced by the shadow of a mighty tree. Hal smiled as he scanned the impossibly huge branches, eyes locked as they came upon an apple-size spiky green fruit.

 

“The Tree of Might…” A silent push of his biofield carried him within the foliage, before one of the energy rich pods. A dozen or so ki signatures registered in his mind, likely Turles and his mercenary strikeforce. “Not quite ripe, but almost there.”

 

Hal slipped into his three-minute-sight and mapped out the potential paths forward. His smile twisted to a grin as he found a slightly evil, but very beneficial chain of events. It was time to stock up on soul points and make some lottery draws.

 

Focused on his future benefits, Hal floated deeper with the branches, until he was well hidden from sight. He extended the invisible hand of his biofield to wrap around the tree and took hold of the fruit one-by-one. 

 

The second they ripened, he would gather them up and shove them in a capsule container. Ten would stay out for his current purposes, but nearly four-hundred covered the Tree of might. This world was already essentially dead, but its sacrifice wouldn’t be for nothing.

 

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“Have you idiots found a ripened fruit yet?” Turles floated from branch to branch, but found nothing but green. “Remember, bring everything you find straight to me, or you’ll wish I’d left you for Frieza to find.”

 

“Nothing, Boss…”

 

“Just unripe stuff over here…”

 

“Well, keep watch!” Turles floated to a crooked branch and leaned back against the wood, eyes focused on a semi-ripe fruit. “The one who finds the first ripe one will secure their place as my second.”

 

Time ticked on and his target fruit was almost entirely red, but none of his men had found anything but green, half ready pods. They combed the foliage around him, frustrated curses in the air as they fumbled about.

 

“How have none of you found anything by now?” Turles rose into the air and waved over his most trusted follower. “Amond, I thought you said you had a near ripe one over twenty minutes ago, where the hell is it?”

 

“I’m sorry sir… It was just over here, but I can’t find it anymore,” the bulky Saiyan bowed his head as he pointed to a nearby branch. “I thought it might have fallen to the ground, but there’s nothing there either…”

 

“The same thing happened to me…” Daiz, the third and final Saiyan in his mercenary group, floated down to join them. His words were echoed by the others, a murmur that Turles silenced with an angry wave of his hands.

 

“Are you telling me that a bunch of professional warriors can’t even keep watch on a bunch of fruit?” Turles pinched the bridge of his nose and waved to the branch behind him. “Look here, this one is about to ripen… watch as I take the first bite of our future and…”

 

He spun to face his chosen fruit, only to find an empty branch. His words twisted in his throat, replaced by a howl of rage. Turles rounded on his men, heartbeat visible in the veins on his neck.

 

“Which one of you fools has been stealing?” Faster than the others could react, he appeared before Daiz and grasped the smaller man’s neck. “It was right there a moment ago… with all of us around it, either you saw something or took it yourselves!”

 

“I… promise you… it wasn’t… me,” Daiz forced his words past his Commander’s iron grip, face an unhealthy shade of purple. “I… saw… nothing…”

 

“Useless!” Turles tossed his man to the ground below and turned his wrath toward the rest. “Spread out, find me our thief, and bring me my FRUIT!”

 

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Hal suppressed his laughter as the Mercenaries scampered about among the outer branches. He could ‘see’ anything within a few metres of his biofield. Combined with his future-sight, he was able to spirit away all the ripened fruit before Turles or his men could pluck it for themselves.

 

“There are only a few left now, time to put an end to the fun and games,” the fruit he’d gathered so far had filled three smaller containers, the only ones he could summon from their capsules in such tight quarters. “Let’s see what these things taste like…”

 

Hal snatched up a spiky, red fruit and gave it a sniff. It was unlike anything he’d encountered before, a floral mix that refreshed the body and mind. Mouth filled with a rush of saliva, his teeth pierced the unexpectedly soft flesh. The sweetest, purest honey, sourced from ten-thousand varieties of flowers.

 

Bite after bite flowed down his throat, until his hand stood empty. He moved to lick the juice from his fingers, when a tide of force swelled from the core of his being. Joyous flavour was forgotten as his ki erupted from under his skin in a fearsome series of waves.

 

“That was a bigger multiplier than the Grand Elder’s potential release…” Hal reeled in his wayward ki, focused on small changes within his cells. The energy from the fruit rippled back and forth, a force of purification and evolution. “I wonder what this Tree really is?”

 

“COME OUT, THIEF!” Turles’ gruff voice shook the branches around him and drew Hal back to the task at hand. “We know you’re in there… bring us the fruit you’ve stolen and maybe we’ll let you die easy instead of slow!”

 

Hal snorted at the arrogant Saiyan as he floated free of his perch. He floated several fruits, enough for each of the members of the mercenary troop. If he was going to kill them anyway, he might as well power them up for better system rewards!

 

“Hold your horses, Turles,” a flex of his biofield spread the branches wide, a tunnel that led him to the open air. He gave the Saiyan and his warriors a bored glance, before he distributed each of the fruits with a flick of his hand. “The faster you get what you want, the faster you die… now eat!”

 

Before the loud mouthed Commander could respond, Hal took hold of the Mercenaries with his aura and forced the fruit to their lips. Complaints turned to sounds of joy as the delicious ambrosia flowed down their throats. Even Turles held still in the biofeild’s grasp and swallowed his portion down.

 

Power erupted from the retrained warriors, a vibration of energy that his aura suppressed. Turles was obviously the strongest, with a power that measured close to half of his own. The rest were just bigger ants, fodder to raise his soul points.

 

“Good work!” Hal twisted his wrist and eight cracks echoed through the skies. The lifeless bodies of Turles’ men dropped to the ground, forgotten as his system sent out a number of alerts.

 

[Soul points acquired… soul points acquired… soul points acquired… total Soul Points available: Two-hundred-eighty-eight-thousand. Total Time Points available: thirty-five. Would you like to make a lottery draw?]

 

Turles raged against Hal’s invisible grasp, helpless against a strength so far above his own. The Saiyan pushed harder, enough that Hal turned from his system’s interface. He frowned and drifted forward, until his hand wrapped around Turles’ throat.

 

“Be quiet and you might survive our encounter, Saiyan’s are an endangered species in this universe after all,” with his hand in contact with Turles body, the might of his biofield was magnified twice over. It locked the man in place, while Hal returned to his system. “Now let's see what kind of rewards I can get!”

 

***Power Levels and other notes***

 

Hal: 980,000 ( Max kio-ken: 30x)

Turles: 19,000 (300,000 after fruit)

Diaz: 8,400 (126,000 after fruit)

Amond: 9100 (136,500 after fruit)

Cacao: 13,000 (195,000 after fruit)

Raisin: 8000 (120,000 after fruit)

Lakasei: 7600 (114,000 after fruit)

 

I decided to make Diaz and Amond into Saiyan’s for plot reasons. It was also weird to me that Turles never had any other Saiyan’s in his mercenary troop!