Two people emerged one after the other.
At the front was Goku, his martial arts uniform torn, exposing his dirt-streaked but muscular body. His expression was calm, his demeanor valiant and composed, exuding an aura of deep, steady power like an unfathomable abyss. His eyes were as clear as a newborn's, brimming with life and agility.
Behind him came a middle-aged man with graying hair. The moment he appeared, it was as if the light of the world—the brilliance of this very realm—naturally shifted toward him. He became the center of everything in an instant. Yet this intangible charisma faded as quickly as it came, making one wonder if it was merely an illusion.
"Goku!"
"Daddy~~"
Bulma and little Son Gosen called out at the same time.
Seeing Goku injured, especially with his uniform in tatters, Bulma didn't even blink. She was used to it. Her husband was practically made of steel—if he wished, his flesh could become harder than iron in an instant, and not even artillery shells could damage his skin.
Sure enough, Goku seemed completely at ease. The contrast between his relaxed demeanor and his "tragic" appearance even gave him a certain aura. Seeing his wife and son, he flashed a bright grin. "Bulma, Gosen, you're here too!"
The four-year-old Gosen ran up with eager little steps, hugging Goku's pant leg and raising his arms for a cuddle.
Goku effortlessly scooped the child up with one arm, holding him in his embrace. Gosen clung to his father like a baby sloth, while Goku casually ruffled the warm, sweaty head of his son—he could tell with just one touch that the kid had just been roughhousing with the Phoenix, given the light layer of sweat on his body.
His son's talent for martial arts had already surpassed his own—Goku had noticed that long ago. He'd recently been thinking of persuading his master to train his son…
Looking at Grandpa Gohan nearby, Goku called out cheerfully, "Grandpa! Why didn't you go in?"
Gohan chuckled and shook his head. "Forget it. These old bones of mine aren't going in there to suffer."
"Oh, I see!" Goku nodded, then laughed. "Yeah, it is really tough in there! But I feel like you could handle it, Grandpa!"
"With 100 times gravity, I can still move freely using Muken," Gohan said, shaking his head, "but beyond that, the difficulty skyrockets as the gravity increases…"
Bulma smacked Goku's shoulder, chiming in playfully, "Exactly! You've gone completely nuts with your training! 300 times Earth's gravity… I can't even imagine it! A normal person would get crushed into mush instantly!"
At that moment, Taro walked up and overheard Bulma. Around the corner, Hathaway leaned against the wall, pointed at him, and broke into laughter… Clearly, her granddaughter had just finished complaining about how she was being bossed around by her husband.
As expected, Bulma's sharp gaze was already drifting toward Taro!
"This is the last time. It's done. From now on, let Goku train at home on his own, alright?" said Taro.
"Huh?" Goku immediately looked disappointed, glancing at Taro pitifully. "But Master… I still want to train with you!"
Though these five years of gravity training had brought tremendous results, and Goku had grown by leaps and bounds, the deeper his mastery became, the more he realized just how vast the heavens were.
With all his recent progress, he only became more aware of how unfathomable his master truly was.
The reason?
Compared to five years ago, Goku's power had increased by dozens of times—yet when he sensed his master's aura, it felt no more reachable than it did back then.
His master was like a distant green mountain. When Goku was young, he thought, "It may be far, but if I walk, I'll reach it eventually." But as he aged, he found the mountain never got any closer. Even now, after all this time, the green mountain remained as it was—still towering, still distant—and he, though walking endlessly, felt no nearer to its base than he did ten years ago.
"Gravity training is no longer useful for you. At this level, further progress comes from self-realization. In fact, if it weren't for your Saiyan blood, which gives you a powerful base and required the gravity chamber to tap into it, you should have been training on your own like Krillin and the others five years ago," Taro explained calmly. "As for your current power level… give or take, it's around two million four hundred thousand. At this stage, you've already tapped into the full extent of your Saiyan racial potential. Any further growth will be extremely difficult."
He paused, thinking of the power level milestone he'd encountered before—one hundred million. That was the threshold to galaxy-level strength. Practically all lifeforms in the universe who broke through via training would face this barrier. Even artificial beings, like Gero's creations in the original story, suddenly surpassed the strength of Super Saiyans—perhaps because Gero had somehow cracked a universal threshold through technology.
As for Saiyans… perhaps because they already harbored the latent potential of the Super Saiyan form within them, they encountered this bottleneck earlier than other races—becoming stuck around two to three million in battle power.
"To break through further, one way is to refine your spirit, martial arts, and cultivation until they merge into clarity and enlightenment—transcending limits and evolving the self… The other way is to dig deeper into your racial potential… to unleash a greater power…"
That power, of course, was what they called the Super Saiyan.
According to the God of Destruction, the Saiyans' distant ancestor had once been a true god in the pre-era. The vast potential of the Saiyan race likely stemmed from that lineage.
Thus, the so-called Super Saiyan might be a form of atavism—a reversion to that ancient blood. And the Super Saiyan God might be a deeper reversion—one that reached not just for ancient power, but for divine essence itself.
But Taro didn't directly point out the path to becoming a Super Saiyan to Goku. He wanted Goku to discover it for himself… After all, even Vegeta in the original story had managed to transform without knowing how Goku did it.
There was no urgent need to intervene—better to let Goku's own talent and intuition bloom.
Surely, the Goku who would one day master the full power of Super Saiyan wouldn't be stopped by a minor obstacle like this.
"Understood, Master," Goku nodded earnestly.
"Millions of power level?" Bulma exclaimed, clearly startled. "Then you've already surpassed that Frieza guy by a long shot, haven't you?!"
But Goku gave his wife a strange look. "Bulma, you haven't been following Earth Defense Battle news lately, have you?"
Bulma replied without hesitation, "So what? It's not like I'm the one fighting aliens out there!" She frowned. "Why? Did they update the game's data? It's based on real information, right? Would they change it so easily?"
"There's no change, exactly…" Gohan spoke up at this point, his expression turning serious. "But the character data for Frieza that the game initially released… wasn't complete."