SYSTEM NOTIFICATION: Daily Login Complete.
Reward Unlocked: "Starter Pack — Mortality Rewritten"
You have obtained: Body Template — Vegito (Full-Blooded Saiyan Variant)
You have obtained: Tail (Attached)
You have obtained: "Daily Motivation" x∞
System: Welcome back, Vegito. Today's goal: Survive. Tomorrow's goal: Conquer.
The first thing Vegito noticed was the scent of wet moss and iron and a particularly aggressive brand of hunger that seemed to have been patiently waiting for him through whatever came-before. He opened eyes that hadn't belonged to him before, and the world came into focus in too many brilliant, impossible shades. He had been a fanboy once — not just a casual admirer, but the kind of obsessive who knew the exact shade of red Goku went through the first time he broke his limits. He recognized his own reflection before he recognized anything else: high cheekbones, that arrogant smirk caught somehow between amusement and hunger, and a tail curled like a sleeping cat against a waist that flexed with an athlete's memory.
He flexed the tail and it answered, twitching like an old friend. "Of course," he muttered, and the voice in that new throat sounded exactly like the one he'd always imagined when he shouted at the TV during power-ups. "Vegito da," he told the trees, because his head, for reasons he would later blame on some cosmic joke or poorly written system, had decided he would wear that name in honor of someone who had once been everything he wanted to be: strong, clever, irreverent.
SYSTEM NOTIFICATION: MC Status Check.
Name: Vegito (Surname: —)
Race: Full-Blooded Saiyan
Age: — (Biological: Prime Adult)
Special: Tail active
Innate Abilities: High stamina, latent energy absorption, comedic timing: +9000
Abilities in Progress: Kame Style Training, Advanced Haki Conditioning, Marine Six Styles (Observer)
Inventory: Rags, Stone, Sharp Stick
Reward Slots: 3
Ship Bonding Level: 0/100
"Perfect," he said, to absolutely no one. He patted his stomach, noting with the kind of approval usually reserved for rare steaks that his new body required food in monstrous quantities.
He'd known this would happen. In another life, before deadlines and rent and the slow betrayal of sleep, he had been steeped in anime and manga. He had argued power scaling at three in the morning with strangers named DemonSlayer345 and had cried openly at arcs no one else he knew would admit affected them. He'd said more than once, in the deep, silly hours, that if ever reincarnation was a thing he'd want a theme song to. He had also, more than once, joked that if he woke up inside Dragon Ball he'd better have a useful tail. Fate, apparently, had a sense of humor and a robust customer support system.
The island itself was all extremes: cliffs that jutted like the teeth of sea serpents, dense forests dripping with rotten fruit and the remains of previous, less fortunate lives, and a sky so blue it stung. It felt ancient. It smelled ancient too, which meant beasts. Vegito's ears picked up a sound miles away — a low, vibrating growl that made the hairs on his arm stand at attention. He smiled. Fighting made the world smell better, like iron and the burnt sweetness of victory.
He moved like he'd rehearsed the motion for years: a quick hop to a higher ledge, a tail sweep to stabilize, an elegant small-planet punch that showed off how he could manage his center of gravity. The animals came in waves: horned lizards the size of dogs, a pack of furred colossi that could have been horses if you were less bothered by teeth, and a massive bird that watched him with eyes like polished coal. He didn't bother with stealth. He hadn't learned to be subtle in his past life; subtle was for taxes and bad dates. Instead, he announced his presence.
"Oi!" he shouted. "Who's up for breakfast?"
The first beast accepted the invitation. After a quick, predictable scuffle, Vegito found himself rolling in the dirt, laughing in a way that made the trees join the chorus somehow. He laughed the way he'd always laughed at the absurd — bright, loud, and with a sharp edge that promised either a joke or a punchline. When the last of the beasts lay panting and the largest one had been relegated to being a very practical stew-pot, Vegito sat on a rock and surveyed his new lungs' capabilities. He chewed, and the system alighted like a bell.
SYSTEM NOTIFICATION: Quest Triggered: "Learn to Survive — Phase 1"
Reward: "Appetite Amplifier" (Passive)
Progress: 0/5 Beasts subdued.
It was all so game-like that his childhood self—clutching a bowl of instant noodles and a fading poster—would have purred in approval. The system wasn't gentle, but it wasn't cruel either. It offered. It opened menus like doors: training, learnable techniques, items that seemed to come from capsules he could only imagine. Logos and runes flickered in the air, ancient and efficient.
He spent the following months like a man who had finally had permission to be ridiculous. He broke sticks and tested his body. He learned to breathe slower and then faster until he could feel his pulse in the tendons of his thumb. He trained the tail until it became second nature, a counterbalance to his jokes and a deadly weapon in itself. With each lesson, the system fed him something new: a memory of a form, a description of a move, sometimes even the sensation of having performed it once before. The "Daily Login" bubbled to the top of his consciousness like a warm, nagging beverage.
SYSTEM NOTIFICATION: Daily Login Complete.
Reward Granted: Training Module — Kame Style Primer.
Tip: "Copying motion alone is a start. The intent behind the motion is everything."
Kame Style. It was like being handed a cookbook for energy. He practiced alone, standing by a cliff, chanting the ridiculous two-syllable nonsense while forcing energy into the palms of his hands. The first attempts were laughable; the energy spat like a minor temper. He laughed at each failure the same way he laughed at bad dates — with a theatrical shrug and a promise to do better. His first real success was pure joy: a blue flare that startled a flock of distant sea gulls and made his stomach flutter with the old, familiar delight of mastery.
"Kaaaa—" he started once, in a voice that thinned as it reached the final note.
"HAAAAA—" The energy finished it for him, an imperfect but honest beam that spat into the ocean. The sound of it — raw and satisfying — made something in him click. He was learning faster than a human should. But he also had a tail, a Saiyan's resilience, and a system that fed him techniques like homework from a very enlightened teacher.
Days turned into months. He built a small camp with a stone marker and a cryptic little shrine to the absurd gods of crossover fiction. The beasts grew less interested in eating him and more interested in keeping him as a local attraction. The system kept rolling out rewards like a dealer with very specific tastes.
SYSTEM NOTIFICATION: System Gift: Gravity Chamber Access Granted (Capsule Tech Compatible).
Caveat: Capsule retrieval requires 1 hour to decompress. Gravity settings adjustable to x100 for training.
Room Feature: "Chamber Space" — Time Dilation field active (equivalent to 1 day outside = 1 week inside)
There was a particular moment, as autumn bled into the kind of winter the island had invented for itself, when he found a capsule half-buried beneath the roots of an ancient tree. The capsule opened with a hiss and revealed something architecturally obscene: a compact, foldable room with controls that smelled suspiciously of laboratory fiction. He pressed a button, and the gravity around him condensed like a kettle being turned up. The gravity chamber became his playground, and it changed everything. In there, he could isolate motion to the bone. He could practice the Kame style with the patience of a sculptor. He could learn posture, train Haki strikes until his arms felt like they'd burst from doing nothing but punching the air.
And then the system offered him more. It was generous in the way a casino is generous—only with lessons instead of chips.
SYSTEM NOTIFICATION: Training Module Unlocked: "Advanced Haki Conditioning."
Prerequisite: Self-awareness.
Objective: Observe. Disrupt. Overwhelm.
Note: Haki here integrates with Kame energy differently. Experimentation encouraged.
He learned quickly that Haki wasn't about screaming and being intimidating. It was about seeing the lines in an opponent's stance, threading his intent through the crack to find the point of weakness. He learned to make warmth run down his spine to warn him of incoming attacks and to sear the senses of his enemies into hesitation. The system helped by giving him data: micro-shifts in muscle, telltale sounds of breath. He built a training regimen combining weighted punches in the chamber while maintaining a soft, layered awareness in his head. His laughter at practice grew quieter then — a tight hum of satisfaction.
Two years passed with the sort of montage his old self would have loved: sunrise push-ups, midnight meditations, meals that seemed to require entire wild boars and at least seven kinds of fruit. He read the sky with the sort of hungry patience that makes conquerors. The daily login became like a ritual: click, reward, learn, improve.
He trained the Marine Six Styles not to use them as toys, but to understand them. The system gave him video fragments — not from this world, not entirely — snapshots of techniques practiced in other realms. They were arcane and elegant and utterly deadly in the hands of a teacher. "Observe," the system chimed. "You are not to use these to become a murderer. Learn them to instruct others if necessary."
Vegito respected the warning because he liked people too much to take their lives for sport. He was a womanizer and a charmer, but he would never toy with lives. He wanted lovers and laughter, not blood debts.
Inside the chamber, he learned to bend gravity, to feel his limbs like strings attached to an unseen hand, to pull and push until he could move the world a fraction. He imagined a ship that could ride sky and sea, and he built it in his head during runs around the island. The idea sat warm in his chest like a map to everything he wanted: crew, freedom, and the kind of chaotic love only a reckless man could dream of.
SYSTEM NOTIFICATION: Quest Completed: "Master the Elements of Self."
Reward Unlocked: Ship Template — "Heaven's Embrace" (Prototype)
Reward Feature: Multi-Environment Travel (Sea / Sky / Underwater)
Additional Feature: Ship's Inner Chamber — "Embrace Sanctum" (Time Chamber Analog)
Bonding Requirement: 1 owner, 10 crew members to reach full offensive capacity.
He laughed wickedly when the ship template dropped. "Of course I'd get a ship that doubles as a statement piece," he told the gulls, who answered with a rude chorus.
It was not until the day the news bird flew over that he had anything remotely resembling a plan. Two years of training had made him a force, not just in the ways that bulging muscles show, but in the soft places — discipline, timing, and a near-criminal level of imagination. The bird came like the world itself couldn't help but gossip, and with it came a scrap of paper that altered everything.
The paper was a newspaper, crisp and smudged with ink that smelled of other people's wars. He took it, and in the headlines, in letters broad as sails, he read of ports and pirates and names that set the sea a-fizzy with possibility. On that day, the paper told of East Blue, of a town called Cocoyashi Village, and of the peeling news that the world wasn't as small as he'd trained in solitary to believe. He traced the map and tasted horizon like it was a new spice.
SYSTEM NOTIFICATION: Story Progression: Island Location Identified.
Island: Unnamed — proximity confirmed to East Blue route.
Estimated Time to Port: Variable (Ship Bonding Required).
He chewed the corner of the paper with the flourish of someone who'd done this in a hundred novels. "East Blue," he said aloud, and the name felt warm on his tongue. That was where the first of many opportunities waited — a cartography of small, nervous hearts and a particular cartographer with orange hair who'd made him laugh from a picture once and had never stopped occupying certain daydreams in a way that made him blush for no reason he wanted to admit.
He kept to himself the specific daydream details. For now, it was enough to carve a plan: acquire ship, head to East Blue, recruit Nami and Nojiko, and start leaning the world in his favor one flirtatious grin at a time.
SYSTEM NOTIFICATION: Reward Given: Vessel Manifest — "Heaven's Embrace" initialization protocol available.
Tip: "Name bonds the ship. Choose wisely."
He did not choose wisely.
He named her out loud because he had a wandering, sentimental streak and because he had always liked the idea of romance and the melodrama of a man talking to a thing that could carry the weight of his ridiculous dreams.
"Heaven's Embrace," he said, and heard the system cough like an amused elder.
SYSTEM NOTIFICATION: Vessel Bonding Initiated — "Heaven's Embrace"
Feature Unlocked: Runic Hull (Sci-Fi/Fantasy Hybrid)
Visual Note: Wings fold against hull. Figurehead: Dragon-woman with flowing hair, ample curves — aesthetic profile: intimidating-ally-charming.
Defense Matrix: Reinforced (World-Class)
Propulsion: Multi-Terrain (Sails + Ether Jets + Submersible Folds)
Interior: Embrace Sanctum (Time Dilation Room + Gravity Tuner + Capsule Integration)
Crew Requirement for Full Function: 10 ship nodes.
He laughed, aloud, and the sound carried across the island like a bell. "Perfect," he told the system. "Now I just need a crew. Preferably high maintenance and fond of me."
He spent a week in the chamber, learning the ship's systems from the little manual that popped into existence with a polite chime. The manual was written like a polite but very efficient concierge. The room that interested him most was the Embrace Sanctum: a gilded chamber the size of a temple, latent with the smell of ozone and old, comforting power.
He walked in and felt a strange tug; it was like stepping into an arena and a nursery at once. A console blinked awake, and he smiled, because some part of him — the small boy who read every wiki page and every side-plot theory — was thrilled to be given tools he had only admired.
SYSTEM NOTIFICATION: Embrace Sanctum Activation Complete.
Feature: Training Acceleration: Time-dilation field active.
Small Note: Privacy safeguards installed. (Because even gods need boundaries.)
P.O.V.: Vegito
I made myself a promise the first night I slept on my ship's deck — which is to say, the night I fell asleep within the curled wings of a prototype that smelled faintly of oil, leather, and rune-etched mahogany. I promised that I would not become a man of singly cruel ambition. I would be a man who laughed at the storm and kissed the calm. I would be a leader, because I could not stand not being one. I would take women with kindness and not with conquests. I would gather hearts like stars and turn them into constellations for the world to envy.
It was a grand plan. Ambitious. Maybe unrealistic. But I had a tail, a name, a ship, and a system that seemed to like the sound of the words "pirate king" in my throat.
The waves whispered against the hull like a secret. The moon cut in silver slices through the winged figurehead. I was, beneath all the training and the punchlines, hungry for people. I had loved from afar, and now, perversely and warmly, the world had afforded me a second chance to be both the ridiculous hero I had idolized and the kind, laughing monster of my own invention.
I scratched at my tail and laughed softly. "Alright then," I said to the night and to myself. "East Blue, prepare to be owned."
Nami laughed — but not yet. She was still somewhere on a page, a future that hadn't happened, a nervous bird in a scavenged nest. The world was small and large at once. Two years had made me stronger than I had any right to be. The system had made me a man of options. The ship had made me a possibility.
And somewhere in the future, I could hear the echoes of women whose names I would learn, tentatively and then like a chorus. Bell-mère. Nojiko. Reiju. Faces and voices and the possibility of songs that would wrap the world into something I could own only if I was careful enough to let them keep their freedom.
I climbed into my makeshift bed and slept like a man who would wake up to a fight and a feast. The last thing I heard — as the Embrace purred like a contented beast under the plates of the ship's hull — was the system's final, useful line for the night.
SYSTEM NOTIFICATION: Tomorrow's Goal: Dock at East Blue. First Crewmate: Nami (Bell-mère Nami). Secondary Objective: Assess Nojiko (Bell-mère Nojiko).
Hint: Charm increases success rates. Caution: Nami has trust issues; Nojiko has trauma. Approach with care.
Vegito smiled in his sleep, dreaming of orange hair and the taste of salt and the sound of gulls that would one day laugh with him.
He would not be a monster. He'd give himself the space to love. He'd build a harem if he wanted, but he would do it with the kind of messy, fumbling tenderness that made good stories. He had a ship, he had a plan, and he had two years of training and a hunger that was more poetic than cruel. He had already become dangerous — and he intended to use it to make a world better, in whatever peculiar way a Saiyan with a heart that loved too easily could.
Outside, the waves sang him to sleep. Inside, the Embrace hummed. The system went quiet only long enough for a man to dream.
End of Chapter 1