A Saiyan's Journey

After setting the destination to Planet Zuno, the spherical spaceship immediately launched, slowly ascending into the sky and gradually accelerating as it departed from Planet Cereal.

As Zuke expected, no one paid any attention to the spaceship's departure. Even if a few people saw it, they would likely assume that someone was acting independently.

The mercenaries of the Sita clan might think that someone from Frieza's army had some task to handle, while Frieza's forces would assume it was a Sita clan mercenary taking a solo action using their ship.

After all, the Sita clan's ships were large, typically carrying many people. For individual actions, borrowing a single-person spherical ship from Frieza's army was the only option.

Spherical ships weren't particularly valuable within Frieza's forces. Many were destroyed on missions, especially by Saiyans, who would often crush the ships after transforming into Great Apes.

Thus, Frieza's troops weren't concerned about someone taking off with a ship. They could track it using the onboard locator system and recover it anytime.

—Naturally, they had no idea that Zuke had already dismantled the tracking device before launching.

"No one's following. Good."

After the ship launched, Zuke kept his eyes on the view outside through the spherical ship's window. Even when they reached space, no one had come after him, indicating that his escape was indeed successful.

"However, the time needed to reach Planet Zuno is ridiculous…"

Although it was fortunate that no one noticed Zuke stealing the spherical ship, the estimated travel time displayed on the small screen was disheartening.

The screen showed, "21,514 Taks remaining."

Taks were a universal time unit in space. Zuke recalled that 100 Taks were roughly equivalent to 48 minutes on Earth.

In other words, it would take a full seven days to travel from here to Planet Zuno.

Zuke felt somewhat helpless. Crossing the distance between planets was, after all, a significant journey, and the speed of Frieza's spherical ships was already quite fast. Even so, several days of travel couldn't be avoided.

For a small planet like Earth, located on the "outer edge" of the universe, traveling there would take nearly a year. At least Planet Zuno was in a more central, bustling region, so the journey wouldn't be as long.

It seemed that Planet Cereal's proximity had given Zuke a misleading impression that interplanetary travel didn't take much time, as it had only taken a few hours to reach there.

"Fortunately, each time I log out of the game and re-enter, I appear in a relative position."

Zuke was relieved that he always reappeared in a relative position in the world, rather than an absolute one.

This meant he didn't have to worry about logging out in the spaceship and reappearing in the vacuum of space upon re-entering.

"But still, does this mean I'll be stuck in this cramped spaceship for seven days? There's not even a single entertainment facility in here…"

Although there was no risk of appearing in open space upon logging in, Zuke was indeed stuck with nothing to do in the ship.

As seen from Vegeta and Nappa's conversation in the original work, the only thing to do inside a spherical spaceship was to use the sleep pod, which at least allowed people to pass the long travel time unconsciously.

But Zuke definitely wasn't going to hibernate. He didn't need to sit inside the spaceship for seven full days when he could log out after eight hours and return to the real world.

The spherical ship's interior was very cramped, forcing Zuke to sit in a curled-up position, without room to stretch his limbs. Sitting in such conditions for eight hours would be truly unbearable.

"This is where the benefits of having a second world show…"

Zuke sighed. If he could access a second world right now, he could train there for seven days, allowing the spaceship to travel on its own.

When it was close to the destination, he could then return to the Dragon Ball world, reappearing inside the spaceship without wasting seven days.

However, now that the spaceship was already in motion, there was nothing he could do. He resigned himself to his fate:

"In that case, I might as well just log out."

He wasn't interested in staying in this confined space for eight hours before logging out. The "Log Out" option was now a permanent feature on his interface, allowing him to exit the game anytime.

He planned to log back into the Dragon Ball world in seven days, by which time he should have already arrived at Planet Zuno.

But just as Zuke was about to log out, a new message suddenly flashed across the spaceship's screen.

"Hmm?"

Zuke paused and looked at the screen, which displayed a simple message indicating that a nearby planet had been detected with a Frieza Force spaceship sending a distress signal.

Judging by the distress signal, the Frieza Force ship appeared to have suffered severe damage.

"Another Frieza Force ship nearby sending a distress signal?"

Zuke rubbed his chin, intrigued. It wasn't common for the Frieza Force to issue a distress signal. Was something unusual happening?

Could it be Broly and his father?

If the world Zuke was in followed the "canonical" timeline, then Broly and his father would indeed exist. Given that Bardock's son was just born, Broly should have been born already as well.

Broly was exiled to the inhospitable Planet Vampa by King Vegeta shortly after birth for exhibiting terrifying growth potential. His father, Paragus, followed him there.

"I've never heard of Planet Vampa being near Planet Cereal. Should I go check it out?"

However, the possibility that this distress signal came from Broly and Paragus wasn't high. After all, Paragus held a grudge against King Vegeta and distrusted Frieza's forces due to Broly's exile.

In such a situation, sending a distress signal that could alert the Frieza Force would be a suicidal move.

Since the specifics were unknown, why not take a look? After all, the next seven days would be a long journey, so he might as well find something to do before the lengthy flight.

The planet sending the distress signal wasn't far from Zuke. Changing course would take only one or two hours, which was acceptable.

After confirming the target, Zuke set the new flight path for the spaceship and turned toward the planet emitting the distress signal, prepared to see what was happening there.

Even if danger arose, he could use "Instant Transmission" to escape, which gave him the confidence to investigate.

To be continued…