The humming of the cheap refrigerator was the only sound in Ren’s apartment.
He sat at his small, wobbly coffee table, illuminated by the harsh yellow glow of a single overhead bulb.
Spread out before him was a scavenged, slightly water-damaged notebook and a ballpoint pen.
Ren stared at the blank page.
He had spent the entire train ride back from the safe zone replaying the effortless, terrifying precision of Spring Mustachio and Golden Ball.
He had realized that raw strength was a blunt instrument, and against true masters, it would inevitably be parried and countered.
But as he sat down to map out a plan to acquire martial arts, his mind inevitably drifted to the reason why he needed to grow so strong, so fast.
He pressed the pen against the paper and began to write down names.
Carnage Kabuto.
Deep Sea King.
Elder Centipede.
Orochi.
These were the walking natural disasters of the original timeline.
Ren tapped the pen against the paper.
Without Saitama, the Hero Association would suffer catastrophic casualties against these monsters, but they might still scrape by.
Tatsumaki could handle most of them.
Blast, wherever he was, might intervene if the planet itself was on the verge of cracking.
But there was one name that made the ink on the page feel like a death sentence.
Ren slowly wrote it down, circling it three times in dark, heavy ink.
Lord Boros.
The Dominator of the Universe.
The leader of the Dark Matter Thieves.
A being so unfathomably powerful that his casual energy blasts could vaporize entire cities, and his ultimate attack could wipe the surface of the Earth clean.
Ren leaned back, aggressively rubbing his temples.
According to the lore, Boros had spent twenty years traveling across the cosmos because an alien seer had prophesied that he would find a warrior on Earth capable of giving him a glorious, all-out battle.
In the original timeline, that warrior was supposed to be Saitama.
“But Saitama isn’t here,” Ren whispered to the empty room.
A cold chill ran down his spine.
If Saitama didn’t exist in this universe, did the prophecy still hold true?
Did the seer make a mistake?
Did Boros simply stay on his throne, lightyears away, conquering other galaxies?
Ren wanted to believe that.
He wanted to believe that without the ultimate hero, the ultimate villain wouldn’t show up.
But a deep, unsettling feeling in his gut told him otherwise.
The universe demanded balance.
Perhaps the seer had foreseen Tatsumaki’s terrifying psychic might.
Perhaps they had seen Blast.
Or perhaps, just perhaps, destiny was a self-fulfilling mechanism that didn’t care about the details.
“He’s coming,” Ren said softly.
“I can feel it.”
As he spoke the words, his Saiyan biology reacted.
It didn’t recoil in terror.
His tail shifted against the floorboards, and his heart rate elevated into a slow, heavy, pounding rhythm.
The alien DNA in his veins recognized the concept of a universal apex predator and instantly craved the challenge.
Ren forcefully clenched his fists, suppressing the feral instinct.
“Stop it,” he ordered his own biology.
“He would vaporize us just by breathing.”
Ren focused his vision on his own reflection in the dark windowpane.
[Ren]
[Power Level: 61]
Sixty-one.
He was proud of that number just hours ago.
Now, looking at the name Boros on the notepad, it felt like an absolute joke.
Boros was a planetary threat.
If Ren had to guess, the alien overlord’s Power Level wouldn’t just be in the thousands or the tens of thousands.
It would be in the millions.
Hundreds of millions, maybe.
To bridge the gap between 61 and the millions before the massive alien warship descended upon City A, relying purely on the Zenkai boosts from fighting local street monsters was mathematically impossible.
Even if he fought a Tiger-level threat every single night, he wouldn’t reach the thousands in a decade.
He needed multipliers.
He needed the legendary transformations of his bloodline.
But the Super Saiyan transformation required a massive, foundational baseline of Ki control.
It required an emotional trigger, yes, but it also required a body capable of handling a fifty-fold increase in cellular energy without instantly combusting.
Right now, forcing a tiny shockwave out of his fist had nearly burned the skin off his arm.
“I need perfect control,” Ren muttered, staring at the notebook.
“I need to learn how to move, how to breathe, and how to parry force rather than just absorbing it.”
If he could master a high-level martial art, he could survive encounters with Dragon-level threats.
He wouldn’t be able to kill them, but he could survive their attacks by deflecting their kinetic force.
And surviving a Dragon-level attack would trigger a Zenkai boost so massive it could shatter his current limitations entirely.
There was only one martial art in this world designed specifically to repel and redirect overwhelming physical force.
Water Stream Rock Smashing Fist.
Ren flipped to a new page in his notebook and wrote the name down.
The dojo was legendary, run by Silver Fang, the S-Class Rank 3 hero, Bang.
And most importantly, the dojo wasn’t in some distant, inaccessible province.
It was located right here, built into the towering mountains overlooking City Z.
Ren drummed his fingers against the table.
Getting into Bang’s dojo was going to be incredibly difficult.
In the original timeline, Bang had been desperate for disciples because his top student, Garou, had gone rogue and violently beaten every other student in the dojo before being expelled.
Ren checked the calendar on his smartphone.
He didn’t know the exact timeline of Garou’s rampage, but considering the Hero Association was fully established and expanding, it was highly likely Garou had already left, or was about to.
“If Bang is alone, he might be looking for students,” Ren calculated.
“But he is an S-Class master.
He won’t just take in some C-Class scrub off the street.
I have to prove I have the potential, without revealing the alien biology.”
It was a delicate needle to thread.
He had to show Bang he possessed incredible durability and instinct, but he couldn’t use his explosive speed or his raw, unrefined Ki.
He had to present himself as a blank canvas—a tough, determined human desperate to learn true technique.
Ren stood up from the table, walked to the window, and pulled the blinds open completely.
The Ghost Town stretched out below him, a jagged sea of ruined concrete and shadow.
But beyond the smog, cutting through the night sky, were the sheer, rocky peaks of the City Z mountain range.
Somewhere up there, surrounded by bamboo forests and ancient stone steps, was the dojo of the Silver Fang.
Ren reached behind his back and unwound his tail, letting it stretch.
He had the raw strength.
He had the survival instinct.
He had the spark of Ki.
Now, he needed the discipline to bind them all together.
“Tomorrow morning,” Ren declared to the silent city.
“I start climbing the mountain.”
He closed the blinds and walked back to his futon.
He needed a full night of rest.
The hike up to Bang’s dojo was notoriously grueling, designed to test the physical endurance of any prospective student before they even reached the front doors.
As Ren lay down, pulling the thin blanket over his shoulders, he closed his eyes and visualized the descending alien warship.
He imagined the dark, cycloptic eye of Lord Boros looking down upon the Earth.
The fear was still there, cold and rational.
But beneath the fear, the Saiyan blood pulsed with a dark, burning anticipation.
I will be ready, Ren thought as sleep finally overtook him.
I have to be.