"How... how much more do you plan to eat?!" the head servant asked in pure terror, her hands trembling violently as she held yet another empty, grease-stained platter.
She'd never seen someone eat so much food in such a short amount of time!
Merun completely ignored her.
He was in an eating frenzy, ripping thick cuts of roasted beast meat from the bone and swallowing them almost whole. The stack of ceramic plates towering beside his chair had already surpassed his sitting height, teetering precariously with every heavy chew.
They were sparkling clean, though. He made sure to lick off every bit of sauce before moving on.
Panicking, the woman looked toward Master Iaiashin, silently begging for permission to stop the madness before the estate's pantry was entirely hollowed out. But the beautiful Master just stood there, observing his unending consumption.
"So this is the true reality of the Tyrant Strength Body," Iaiashin murmured softly, her eyes analyzing the changes in Merun, tracing the way his muscles subtly expanded and rippled with every swallow. "To maintain a physical constitution that powerful... it demands an impossible amount of raw calories just to function. Incredible."
She let out a soft sigh, rubbing the bridge of her nose.
"Note taken. I will have to purchase more farmlands and livestock fields just to keep this boy fed."
Seeing how entirely consumed he was by his hyper-focus, Iaiashin quietly turned and left the dining hall, letting the monster fuel himself in peace.
The head servant, receiving a silent nod from the departing Master, reluctantly bowed and ran back toward the kitchens, screaming at the staff to slaughter everything left in the pens.
———
"What a meal!", Once Merun was finally done, he wiped the grease from his jaw, patted his bulging belly and made his way to Iaiashin's private office.
He slid the heavy door open, finding the Master waiting for him. She gestured toward the seat across from her.
"Come sit," she said softly.
Merun sat down, tracking her movements.
For some reason, ever since their confrontation in the tunnel, she had been treating him somewhat more kindly. It was so different compared her usual cold, demanding demeanor. Merun briefly wondered about the sudden shift but decided it wasn't his place to bring it up.
"You have exactly three hours left before the grand finals," Iaiashin said, sliding a thick, heavy stack of bound scrolls and heavily detailed papers across the mahogany desk. "This is everything. All the gathered intelligence, observation notes, and tactical data on Sakuma. Use it wisely."
Merun pulled the top scroll closer, skimming through the dense columns of ink.
As his eyes flew down the page, his pupils widened slightly.
The depth of the data was staggering—flaws, habits, muscle-twitch reactions, and exact ranges.
"What the heck..." Merun muttered, looking up. "Is this... your own personal file on him?"
"Yes," Iaiashin replied without hesitation. "Not to mention, he is my most powerful pupil."
Merun blinked, stunned.
"What?! If he's your top student... is it really okay for you to be colluding in his loss like this?"
"Nonsense," Iaiashin cut him off, her voice sharp. "It is precisely because he is my student that I know exactly what he is capable of. And it is precisely why I know you have a high chance of dying out there. You stand absolutely no chance against him, Merun"
"...Unless you manage to surprise me."
A confident, sharp smile suddenly tugged at the corner of Merun's lips.
He pushed the scrolls together.
"Oh. If that's all it takes, then there is absolutely no reason to worry, Master. Can I request a training room?"
"Of course," she nodded. "Tell the servant outside to escort you to the subterranean chambers at once."
Merun smiled, offering a respectful bow, and left the office.
Once the door slid shut and she was left entirely alone in the quiet room, a single bead of cold sweat rolled down Iaiashin's temple.
Her hands gripped the edge of her desk tightly.
"You have three hours, Merun," she whispered to the empty room, her voice trembling with a rare, raw emotion.
"If he steps onto that arena and see him nearing the end of his life, I will forfeit the match on his behalf immediately. The consequences to my plans be damned... I really hope I don't need to resort to that."
She stared back down at her desk, her mind racing to formulate a backup plan, when a phantom echo suddenly bounced through the quiet corners of her mind.
"I'll win, trust me, Yen-Yen..."
Iaiashin's eyes widened, her breath catching in her throat.
For a split second, the distinct, vivid memory of a man with long, wild hair stood right in front of her desk, flashing her a familiar, reckless grin.
She blinked, reaching out a hand, but the vision vanished into thin air.
Another buried memory from a lifetime ago, refusing to stay dead.
Sigh...
———
Deep below the estate, inside a cold, silent stone chamber, Merun sat perfectly still in a cross-legged meditation posture with his hands resting on his knees. He drew deep, rhythmic breaths, cycling his completely replenished ki through his body.
The massive mountain of calories he had just consumed, combined with the high-grade herbal stamina potions and healing pills Iaiashin had provided, was working absolute wonders.
The torn tissue of his right eye socket was completely knitting back together, his vision stabilizing from a blurry pink haze into perfect, crystal clarity.
He wondered if he should wear an eyepatch or something to catch Sakuma off-guard, but there were no practical scenarios that it would help... it was better to have his full vision at the very start.
It'd be really damn cool though.
With his eyes all healed up, he finally started his primary goal.
With his breathing synchronized, Merun closed his eyes and dove deep into his own mind, accessing the structured layout of his Mind Palace.
When his mental eyes snapped open, he was standing in the familiar, sun-drenched fields of the farming village of Owari.
With a thought, the mental landscape sped up and shrank beneath his feet. He stepped forward, zooming past the dirt roads, crossing roaring rivers, and cutting straight into the deep, untamed forest until he came to a halt at a sheer mountainside.
He walked into a dark, deep cave—and right at the very end of the stone passage, incongruously placed, stood a sleek, modern apartment door.
This is where his attack pod, ship, capsule or whatever had landed. It was also now the hiding place in his mind that he had built with the guidance of hypnotists of the Beggar Sect, so as to avoid getting mind read by any other martial artists.
He turned the handle and stepped inside.
"I'm home!"
Meow!
Mimi, recreated perfectly by his subconscious, quickly scrambled across the floorboards and began rubbing herself affectionately against his shins.
Merun smiled, picking up the cat with one arm while his free hand reached toward the crowded bookshelf on the wall.
He had already skimmed the scrolls on Sakuma before entering his trance, and the reality was grim.
The man was a monster.
Sakuma was the second most powerful martial artist in the entire Kinzoku clan, standing directly beneath Master Iaiashin herself.
The scrolls detailed a terrifying combat history.
Sakuma wielded a colossal crystal greatsword, but he didn't use it for elegant, refined slashes. He wielded the massive slab of crystal like an ultra-fast, devastating mace, swinging it with a velocity that defied his massive frame.
Worse, part of his martial style was spewing volatile, molten esoteric material directly from the weapon's tip with every swing.
Sakuma looked like a mindless brute, but his battle IQ was flawless.
His melee strikes were unblockable because the crystal greatsword-mace was simply too large to dodge within a standard arena's spacing, and his techniques artificially warped the surrounding air to trap his targets in his range.
He excelled in close-quarters slaughter, but if an opponent tried to back away, his wide-area-of-effect molten projectiles would turn the entire battlefield into a searing, inescapable hellscape.
During the previous bloody campaigns of the Iron Border Wars, Sakuma had single-handedly broken fortress walls and annihilated entire vanguard units of the same realm.
Merun's Vajra Tyrant Style looked invincible, but it was still technically at the Squire level.
The only reason he had defeated Roro and Ephraim was because his raw, base physical statistics were so absurdly high.
Think of Martial Techniques as a combat multiplier. The stronger the body, the bigger the power.
But against Sakuma?
Brute force and high stats wouldn't be enough to survive as at the moment, they were much, much higher than his.
Merun realized exactly why Iaiashin was terrified for him.
If he fought as a martial artist... he was dead.
There was no question.
Merun learned a lesson with Ephraim; don't underestimate Martial Seniors.
It had caused him to lose his precious scouter and more importantly, HE EVEN ALMOST FUCKING DIED!
Fine, Merun thought, a sharp, dangerous glint returning to his eyes.
If I have no chance of winning as a martial artist... then I'll just have to win as a Saiyan.
And for that...
He sat down on his couch, settling Mimi into his lap.
He looked down at the vibrant cover of the book in his hand:
Dragon Ball, Volume 1.
"Let's see," Merun muttered to himself, flipping the page open. "What kind of ki techniques can I borrow and learn in these next three hours?"
.
.
.
A/N
I'm sick, and I just churned out this chapter for you guys.
Lend me your energy.
The next chapter might be delayed until Monday.
Thanks!