The return to Planet Vegeta was shrouded in a tense, brittle silence. Borg filed a terse, by-the-book report detailing a "navigational anomaly" and a "non-threatening spatial phenomenon," his loyalty to Astra clearly warring with his Saiyan instinct for self-preservation. He had seen something he couldn't understand, and that frightened him more than any battlefield.
King Vegeta summoned Astra to the throne room. The King's gaze was like a physical weight. "Your report is... sparse, Technologist. A nebula? A spatial tear? Explain."
Astra stood before the throne, his mind a fortress. He had prepared for this. He projected a carefully curated series of sensor logs and energy readings—all doctored by his [Stellar Forge] to show a volatile but ultimately useless spatial rift, already collapsing.
"The Tuffle data hinted at unstable wormhole technology, Your Majesty," Astra explained, his mental voice calm and factual. "I confirmed its existence. However, the phenomenon is far too unstable for transit or study. It poses no threat and offers no benefit. I deemed further investigation a waste of royal resources."
He presented the data not as a discovery, but as a closed case. He gave the King a problem and immediately provided the solution: forget about it.
The King studied the fabricated data, his eyes narrowed. He was a warrior, not a physicist. The graphs and energy spikes meant little to him. But he trusted results, and Astra had never given him a reason to doubt his utility.
"Very well," the King grunted, dismissing the hologram with a wave. "Your time is better spent on practical matters. The PTO has new demands. Frieza's engineers require a more efficient design for planetary core drills. See to it."
It was a dismissal, and a profound one. The most significant cosmological discovery in Saiyan history was brushed aside as a "practical matter." Astra had successfully hidden the truth in plain sight, using the King's own narrow focus as a shield.
He returned to his lab, the opulent rooms feeling more like a cage than ever. The memory of The Cradle—the silent platform, the shimmering gateway, the promise of a hundred-fold time—burned in his mind. It was a siren's call, a vision of salvation so close, yet separated by a chasm of power.
The Key. The gateway required a Key. A specific energy signature of immense power and control. His current Power Level of 720 was a candle trying to open a bank vault.
The need for rapid, explosive growth was now an absolute imperative. But his methods had reached a plateau. The 15x gravity field, even with his [Dense-Body Constitution], was no longer providing the dramatic Zenkai boosts he needed. The incremental gains from his nightly Void Fist practice were too slow. He was a craftsman honing a blade, but he needed to become a volcano forging a new one.
He needed to push his body to the absolute brink, to dance with death in a way he never had before. He needed to trigger a Zenkai Boost of unprecedented magnitude.
His gaze fell upon the obsidian obelisk in his inventory. The Gravity Forge. He had only ever used a fraction of its power, too terrified of the consequences. But terror was a luxury he could no longer afford.
That night, with the Dampening Field at maximum and his Cognitive Partitions set to monitor his vitals and maintain external secrecy, he prepared for the ultimate gamble. He placed the Gravity Forge on the floor in the center of his chamber. He sat before it, cross-legged, his [Energy Harmonization] skill circulating Ki and Mana in a perfect, stable loop.
He took a deep, centering breath. Then, he reached out with his will and activated the Forge.
Not at 25x. Not at 50x.
He commanded it to generate a field of 100x Standard Gravity.
The effect was instantaneous and apocalyptic.
The sound was a deep, fundamental THUMP that was less a noise and more a rearrangement of reality. The reinforced floor of the palace chamber didn't just buckle; it flowed, the metal deforming like liquid under the insane pressure. Astra was driven down into the melting floor, his body flattened. Every bone in his body shrieked in protest, his [Dense-Body Constitution] strained past its breaking point. Blood vessels ruptured in his eyes, turning his vision red. His lungs collapsed, unable to draw breath in the condensed air.
[CRITICAL SYSTEM FAILURE IMMINENT.]
[MULTIPLE ORGAN SYSTEMS SHUTTING DOWN.]
[HOST PHYSIOLOGY AT 450% OF STRUCTURAL INTEGRITY LIMIT.]
This was not training. This was execution.
Pain became the universe. It was a white-hot, all-consuming fire that erased thought, erased fear, erased everything except the raw, screaming fact of his existence being unmade. He felt his ribs splinter, his spine compress. He was being turned into a smear on the floor.
[LIMIT-BREAKER TRAIT ACTIVATED. ZENKAI BOOST CALCULATED.]
[BOOST INSUFFICIENT. HOST WILL EXPIRE IN 3... 2...]
His consciousness began to fray, to unravel at the edges. This was it. He had overreached. The Cradle would remain a dream.
But then, something else stirred. The [Stellar Forge], the repository of all his accumulated knowledge and will, reacted not to save him, but to observe. It analyzed the process of his destruction with a cold, scientific curiosity. It saw his body not as a dying entity, but as a complex structure undergoing a stress test.
And in that final, microsecond before oblivion, the Forge offered a single, flawless calculation. A modification to the [Energy Harmonization] pattern. A way to use the crushing gravity not as a destroyer, but as a hammer, and his own Ki and Mana as the anvil, to force a quantum-level consolidation of his cellular matrix.
There was no time to think. Only to act.
With the last shred of his will, he implemented the change.
The effect was as violent as the gravity field itself. His body didn't just heal; it reforged. His shattered bones fused, becoming denser, woven with microscopic lattices of Ki. His muscles tore and re-knit, each fiber now a cable of condensed power. His cells screamed as they were compressed, their very atomic structure forced into a more efficient, robust configuration.
The white-hot pain did not vanish, but it transformed. It was no longer the pain of destruction, but the agonizing, glorious pain of evolution.
When the process was complete, he lay in a crater of cooled, twisted metal, the Gravity Forge deactivated beside him. He was alive. He gasped, drawing ragged, burning breaths into newly solidified lungs.
He slowly pushed himself up. His body felt… different. Heavier. More real. As if he occupied more space in the universe than he had before.
He looked at his status.
[Power Level: 720 -> 2,150]
[Dense-Body Constitution has evolved to Lv. 2.]
[Gravity Resistance has improved to Lv. 3.]
[Unique Skill: Stellar Forge proficiency has increased.]
He had nearly tripled his power in a single, suicidal session. He had stared into the abyss, and the [Stellar Forge] had shown him how to steal fire from it.
He was still far from the Key's required power. But he had found the path. It was a path of unimaginable pain and risk, a tightrope over the void. But it was a path. The weight of The Cradle's secret was now the fuel for his ascent. He had taken the first, most dangerous step. The next would be harder still.