Howls echoed through the forest.
Fast steps approached Bardock's fallen body. The ground trembled lightly as something large moved through the trees.
From the darkness emerged wolves — creatures resembling those from Vaske's last world. But these were different. Each had four eyes on each side of its head, eight in total, moving independently and scanning constantly. Two long tails extended from the rear of their bodies, swaying with unnatural balance. Their frames were lean yet powerful.
They circled Bardock slowly.
They sniffed his blood-soaked armor. One nudged his cheek wound. Another tugged at the torn remains of his battle suit.
They had decided.
He was food.
Several wolves began grabbing pieces of his armor and dragging him slightly, preparing to carry him somewhere safe to consume him.
But something interrupted them.
A ki signature descended from above.
An Oionian warrior.
He had been patrolling, searching for Bardock's base. He saw him fall from the sky and followed. From a distance, he watched the wolves surround the body.
He could not allow them to eat Bardock.
If the wolves consumed him, there would be no head to bring back. No proof. No reward. No glory.
He believed the leaders had already won the larger battle — Bardock's condition was the worst it had ever been.
So he acted.
The Oionian attacked the pack.
The wolves numbered 120 — powerful beasts with power levels ranging from 1000 to 2000. Strong animals, but nothing extraordinary for a trained Oionian warrior with a power level of 4000.
He began massacring them.
Spears of ki tore through fur and flesh. Bones shattered. Blood sprayed across the forest floor. Wolves leapt at him in coordinated strikes, firing small ki blasts from their jaws, using their double tails for balance mid-air.
But the power gap was real.
One by one, they fell.
When half the pack was dead, Bardock's eyes slowly opened.
His vision was blurred.
He saw wolves fighting the Oionian.
In his unstable, poisoned, half-conscious state, he thought they were defending his body while he had been in a coma.
He didn't question it.
He gathered what little ki he had left.
Without warning, he fired a blast.
The Oionian, focused entirely on the wolves, had no time to react.
The ki blast struck him directly.
He died instantly.
Silence fell over the forest.
The remaining wolves turned their eight eyes toward Bardock.
They had seen their enemy die.
These beasts were intelligent. They were sensitive to ki. They understood power.
The Oionians were their natural apex predators. They kidnapped wolf younglings and trained them for their armies.
Bardock had killed many of these wolves in the past without thinking twice.
But now everything was different.
All eyes were on him.
Weak.Bleeding.But still dangerous.
Soon the wolves circled him and didn't move. They simply stared at Bardock.
The injured wolves were feeding on what remained of the Oionian warrior's body, tearing flesh from bone. The healthy wolves stood guard, forming a protective ring around Bardock — not in defense of him, but against him.
All except one.
There was one extraordinary wolf.
Larger. Calmer.
His eyes resembled Bardock's — cold, empty of empathy for anything except his own kind. The same detached brutality. The same survival instinct.
Bardock and the Alpha locked eyes.
They stared at each other in silence.
The Alpha began approaching the still-bleeding Saiyan. Bardock did not move. He felt it — there was no malice in the wolf's gaze. No immediate intent to kill.
The Alpha stopped in front of him.
Then he howled.
At once, the entire pack responded.
The wolves moved toward Bardock, lifting him carefully using their twin tails, supporting his body as they carried him deeper into the forest.
The entire forest was the wolves' territory. When they saw Bardock falling from the sky, they came to investigate what had invaded their domain.
But now they had found something else.
Someone who could kill their apex enemy — the Oionians who hunted them, enslaved their young, and kept them for entertainment.
Soon they arrived at a clearing thick with wild vegetation and surrounded by tightly packed boulders. Between the rocks were entrances leading underground — the wolves' dens.
They carried Bardock into one of the largest dens.
Inside were massive piles of bones and hides — remains of animals… and even Oionians.
These wolves were far more intelligent than their counterparts on other worlds.
Bardock was placed gently onto a large hide near several sleeping cubs. The moment his body touched them, they stirred and began climbing over him.
They licked his wounds with their rough, sharp tongues. It irritated him, but it did not hurt, nor did it reopen his injuries.
More cubs gathered around him, pressing against his body for warmth. They shared heat instinctively.
Despite the pain, despite the blood loss, Bardock felt something unfamiliar.
Stillness.
He quickly succumbed to exhaustion and drifted into a coma-like sleep.
Most of his wounds had closed, but they remained unstable — any sudden movement could reopen them.
Six days later.
In these six days, the wolves and cubs were constantly moving, except for the Alpha, who was always watching Bardock's twitching body. The Alpha's eyes always looked like they were calculating something, but never delivering a final thought. The cubs were constantly moving around Bardock, but whenever it was sleep time, they would return to him. Bardock was like a burning furnace, radiating massive amounts of heat due to his healing process. He would sometimes scream and wake up the cubs and wolves, but it wouldn't happen constantly.
On the sixth day, Bardock woke up. He felt small things laying on his bare body. He slowly moved them away and then saw the Alpha, who was still watching him. Bardock nodded to him. "It seems they trust me. They could have killed me, but they didn't." Then he clenched his fist and thought to himself: "MY POWER… IT'S OVERFLOWING!"
He tried to sense it and realized it must be at least 70% stronger than before. It made sense—it was a massive Zenkai, releasing all of his dormant potential acquired in these years of fighting and training. He started moving and analyzing where he was, thinking it would be very hard to find this place.
Then his stomach made a horrible sound: GRWLRRRR! He instantly looked at the Alpha, who was still following him. It seemed like they could understand each other without any form of communication except for their eyes. The Alpha was telling the Saiyan to follow him toward one of the underground places. There was a massive amount of stored food there; this underground base was much colder than the others, which seemed to be why it was chosen for food storage.
Bardock instantly began analyzing the wolves' way of life and their unreal intelligence for monsters. He started eating, and the food was depleted fast. Soon almost all of it was gone, but Bardock looked at the Alpha with a look that said: "Don't worry, I will hunt for you in the next days."
And that's exactly what he did. He cleaned almost the whole forest and cleared another forest controlled by other races. Some of these races were enemies of the wolves, but to Bardock, they were nothing but ants compared to his massive power. While doing this, he also gathered more grass to make healing cream and speed up his own healing process. Soon he would return to get his revenge for the absolute humiliation and suffering he had endured, even having to turn his back to the enemy.
He was healing rapidly after consuming massive amounts of food and using his healing creams. Even the wolves were living the best life they could. They enjoyed the food the same way Bardock did, and some even started growing in power. If this race were ranked by beast standards in the universe, it would be around B rank with the potential to reach A rank. Rankings were based on F to SSS and counted beings that were not ruling their planet and had animalistic attributes. Some beasts even had the ability to talk and communicate, but that usually occurred only at rank A. SSS beasts were insanely powerful and rarely seen because they couldn't leave their planet, and not much was known about them.
Bardock planned to return the favor the wolves had shown him. They treated him like part of their pack—a family. He felt a familiar sense of home when he was with them. But five days quickly passed, and Bardock began again his attack on cities, killing civilians and warriors left to die.
The first city he approached was the one he had cleared before falling into the forest. The place where he had set his trap now had one big hole. It seemed like one saibaman had exploded, but the others were probably cleared without doing much. Even if they had killed one, it was enough to consider it a victory.
The city was empty from his last massacre, so he continued and quickly cleared five more cities in his path. But there was no squad to hinder him. Soon he discovered the reason: a massive ship was preparing to leave the planet. Bardock could have let them leave without losing anything, but he didn't want to. He instantly attacked, killing everyone in the area with an explosion of his ki.
He continued attacking, and the Tribe Leader and Sect Leader appeared. They thought they could fight him like last time. They did, but only for a short time. Bardock was just toying with them. But every time they attacked him, Bardock would kill one of their own people. The battle became much more desperate, but the Oionians fought with eyes full of hope.
Soon the spaceship began to float. Some of the fighting warriors went toward the ship, including the Tribe Leader. The Sect Leader decided to sacrifice himself with his followers so his brother and the rest of the people could escape this living hell of a planet. But Bardock wasn't like his brother, who would let them get into the ship and then torture them for revenge. He instantly exploded the entire ship with a red ki blast.
When the Oionians saw what happened, their hearts broke. They went mad, cursing Bardock and attacking him. But Bardock quickly killed all of them, including the Sect Leader and Tribe Leader, without much difficulty thanks to his new power level.
Soon he cleared all other civilians living on the planet and didn't bother dealing with stronger beasts. Instead, he returned to his base, where his pod was hidden. He sent a signal that the planet was cleared and that he had things he wanted to bring to Planet Vegeta. These things could be anything—from lifeforms to valuables—and it meant they were obligated to send a larger ship to transport whatever he wanted.
He would have to wait two months for the carrier spaceship, which was the closest one, and Planet Vegeta was even further away. During these two months, he waited patiently and deepened his connection with his pack of wolves. The cubs began growing and resembling full-grown wolves. They were no longer cute like before, but they saw Bardock as their brother, who had slept and eaten with them when they were little.
Bardock sensed something entering his ki radius—it was something large and metallic. He flew toward it. There were some aliens, probably slaves of the cold forces, tasked with doing dirty work for the Empire. They spoke a little about the events that had happened, but soon Bardock changed the topic to what he needed to transport to Planet Vegeta.
Soon, they flew with the ship toward the hiding spot in the forest where the wolves were. The aliens saw the wolves, far stronger than themselves, and instantly began shaking—but they couldn't disobey Bardock. Bardock started communicating with the wolves using his tail—the only way he could communicate with them. The wolves understood that they had to leave their homes and follow their brother, who had saved them and given them everything they needed.
Soon, the whole pack of ninety-five followed their leader, who was the first to board the ship. Bardock followed behind in his space pod, ready to intervene if they encountered space pirates or any other danger. Finally, Bardock entered the pod, gave the signal for the carrier to lift off, and followed.
Soon, there was nothing left of civilization or conscious beings on the Oionion planet, except for some stronger beasts.