"Asteroid field detected ahead."
Aeris went completely numb.
What the hell was this luck?
She knew that weird irritation earlier meant something bad was coming. See? There it was. Disaster, right on schedule.
"Tch… screw autopilot, switching to manual. I'm taking over!"
Aeris scrambled over the controls, frantically adjusting one instrument after another.
Warning. Warning. Severe impact on starboard side. Hull damage at ten percent.
Warning! Warning! Unknown magnetic interference detected. Output reduced by thirty percent.
The shrill alarms were driving her insane.
As if getting hit by asteroids at high speed wasn't bad enough already, now there was some bullshit magnetic field interference too.
And the worst part was that the ship had taken different levels of damage all over from the impacts.
Really.
When it rains, it pours.
Absolute dogshit luck.
Right now, all Aeris could do was focus with everything she had and manually steer the ship around the larger asteroids. This place was way too dense. There was no way the ship's built-in navigation could dodge through something like this on its own.
After more than three hours of getting battered by asteroids, they finally made it through safely.
Probably.
"I swear to— not again?! Does this shit ever end?! Th-this… ah, whatever. Fine. Just kill me already, I'm tired."
Aeris stared ahead.
Not far in front of her…
Was a black hole.
After cursing at the universe, she yanked hard on the controls and desperately tried to change the ship's course. This wasn't a joke. And she could already feel it.
The ship was being dragged toward the black hole.
Slowly.
Relentlessly.
"Oh no no no no no, I'm dead, I'm so dead—!"
At this rate, escaping its pull in the main ship was going to be nearly impossible.
Which meant there was only one option left.
Escape pod.
Emergency launch.
The moment that thought hit her, Aeris rushed to pack what she could. At times like this, those capsules really were useful as hell.
She stuffed food and a few necessary supplies into capsules, then bolted toward the escape pod.
Once inside, she started smashing buttons as fast as she could.
At this point, she was scared enough that her soul was halfway out of her body already.
She had seen what black holes could do.
One time, an enemy chasing her had gotten dragged straight in and torn apart.
"Come on… come on, hurry up! Start, damn you!"
Now the ship was being pulled in faster and faster.
Aeris stared at the launch timer in front of her.
Five seconds.
It still needed five whole seconds before the hatch would fully open.
And there was no way in hell she was getting out of the pod now. Getting sucked out into space wasn't even the scariest part.
The scariest part was—
She couldn't fucking breathe out there.
After what felt like the longest five seconds of her life, the hatch finally opened completely.
Aeris instantly shoved the pod's output to maximum.
Boom!
The escape pod shot free of the ship and began creeping away from the black hole's pull at an insultingly slow speed.
Then came the long, miserable drift.
But in the end…
She escaped.
For real.
And the moment the threat of death was finally gone, Aeris passed out from sheer exhaustion.
The pod drifted aimlessly through space.
After Aeris lost consciousness, the escape pod automatically fitted her with a series of emergency life-support devices, then entered standby mode.
An escape pod, by design, was exactly what it sounded like.
Emergency survival equipment.
It didn't store much power to begin with, and a lot of that energy had already been burned escaping the black hole. At this point, it could only keep the most essential systems barely running.
Aeris stayed unconscious for a long time.
And during that time…
She had a dream.
A very long one.
In it, she saw a person.
Someone incredibly powerful.
That person was fighting many opponents, all of them stronger than her.
At first, that person handled them with ease.
But little by little, they began to lose ground.
The endless chain of enemies wore them down. One after another. One after another.
Eventually, they ran out of strength…
And were killed.
That said, the others didn't come out of it clean either. By the end, only two or three of them were still left standing.
Right before dying, that person looked at Aeris.
Their lips moved, like they were saying something.
But she couldn't hear it.
Just as Aeris was about to step closer—
A violent jolt shook her awake.
Her eyes slowly opened.
Then she abruptly sat up.
"Hiss… ow, ow, ow…"
Clutching her head, Aeris stumbled out of the escape pod.
She looked around at the unfamiliar planet surrounding her.
"…Huh? Wait, what? Where the hell did this dump me?"
She stood there looking completely lost.
Then she took another look around and noticed that the air quality was pretty close to Earth's. The environment felt similar too. But aside from the grass and flowers, the trees around here were pitifully sparse.
After observing the area for a while, she turned back and looked at the pod.
The amount of wear on it was way too severe.
There was no way it ended up like that after only a day or two.
"What a pain in the ass… I was only unconscious for a while…"
Still, that dream remained unusually clear in her mind.
The person in the dream had a tail.
And…
That person's hair had been golden.
There was also that terrifying aura.
Even in a dream, she could feel how strong it was.
No—
"Strong" didn't even cover it.
It was the kind of overwhelming power that made despair feel natural.
Aeris bit at her finger, deep in thought.
She was sure of it.
That person had definitely been a Saiyan.
So why were they being hunted?
Did it have something to do with the Saiyans themselves?
"Ahhhh, enough. If I keep thinking this hard, I'm gonna grow a brain."
Muttering curses to herself, Aeris left the area around the pod. The escape pod was completely finished now, so the most important thing was finding a new ship and figuring out how long she had been unconscious.
Right now, she knew too little.
She needed information.
Without that, there was no way to plan what came next.
But after only a few steps, Aeris suddenly felt her whole body go weak, and she stumbled forward onto the ground.
"Damn it… how long was I out?"
She reached for her capsules, intending to pull one out—
But no matter how much she felt around, she couldn't find them.
Aeris sighed.
They had probably been lost somewhere during the pod's crash.
Or destroyed.
At this point, every possible bad thing seemed to be happening at once anyway.
Her body was weak as hell. When she first woke up, she hadn't noticed because the pod's final life-support measures were still keeping her going.
Now, though?
Yeah.
She felt it.
Left with no better option, Aeris grabbed the grass beside her and started eating it.
Whatever.
Her stomach could handle it.
After mowing down a whole patch of ground, she finally felt a little better. But before searching for a ship or gathering information, she needed proper food first. Living off grass was not a long-term plan.
Unfortunately, there were no animals around.
No lake either.
Which meant no easy food source.
Still, luck hadn't completely abandoned her.
Not far ahead stood a strange tree shaped almost like a giant leaf, and hanging from it were several fruits about the size of a human head.
Aeris let out a long sigh.
Well.
That counted as lucky, in a miserable sort of way.
The problem was that she was still too weak to fly. She couldn't even use the most basic healing technique she was best at.
At this point, all she could barely manage was walking.
So in the end, Aeris could only sit down and rest, waiting for her body to recover slowly.
She had survived this long because the escape pod kept her alive with its stored energy.
But as a side effect, the nerves throughout her body had been numbed.
Not that it was surprising.
Escape pods were only used when things had already gone to hell. The people who needed them were usually seriously wounded and trying to flee. Numbing the nerves was just one way to keep an injured person still while treatment continued.
So Aeris sat there cross-legged, quietly waiting to recover.
And while she did—
A figure appeared behind her.
Slowly.
Silently.
Getting closer.
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