The energy didn't taper off. It detonated.
It surged outward from the pit of his stomach, flooding into his limbs, his spine, and the hollow spaces between his ribs. The vitality was dense, scalding, and ancient in a way that had absolutely nothing to do with physical temperature. Every single cell in Jordan Evans's body violently lit up simultaneously, like a dead city grid slamming back online after a blackout.
He stood perfectly still in the forest clearing, doing nothing. Just breathing.
Even at his current operating capacity—with every passive ability, every cracked stat, and every evolutionary step already integrated into his biology—he felt physically full in a way he hadn't experienced since before his transmigration.
Actually, full was an understatement. He curled his fingers inward. His closed fist hummed with a kinetic density that felt very much like the capacity to cause serious, localized geological problems.
So that's what a full heal feels like at this body weight.
He had always known the theory. The card description had been incredibly clinical: instant stamina restoration, complete cellular repair, and the nutritional equivalent of ten days' fasting packed into a single mouthful. He had kept his original gacha-pulled Senzu Bean stashed in his inventory since the very beginning, entirely untouched. Emergencies that truly warranted burning an ultra-rare, full-heal item simply had a habit of not arriving when he could actually afford to use his only one.
Now, he had nearly twelve thousand of them sitting in his pocket.
The underlying biology of the interaction was fascinating, if slightly humbling. Jordan possessed the Hashirama Sage Body—the exact cellular architecture of a man who was, by most metrics, the greatest living biological weapon in the Naruto universe. Every single one of Jordan's cells carried that absurd, regenerative vitality as a baseline. The concentrated life energy packed into one tiny bean was potent enough to instantly bridge the gap between near-death and perfect health in someone built like Hashirama Senju.
One bean, Jordan thought, staring down at his glowing hands. For Hashirama.
He looked back at the massive earthenware jar.
What kind of insane agricultural operation are they running in this universe?
No wonder Master Korin's stockpile was always critically low. No wonder Yajirobe was able to comfortably freeload his way through the supply with such cheerful, maddening consistency. This was a biological superweapon, and the entire planetary production facility was a single, elderly, talking cat with a garden plot in the stratosphere. That was the kind of global resource mismanagement that made a man want to lie down and stare at the ceiling.
Jordan weighed his options.
The obvious move was blanket generosity: distribute a massive supply to everyone, let the Z Fighters burn through them freely during their brutal training arc, and ensure absolutely nobody died from blunt-force trauma that a magic bean could have instantly fixed.
The obvious problem with the obvious move was Yajirobe.
Jordan had read enough of this world's meta-history to have a highly accurate psychological profile. The man was talented in a very specific, incredibly frustrating way: strong when it suited him, entirely invisible when it didn't, and fully capable of stress-eating enough Senzu Beans in a single afternoon to leave the rest of the cast rationed for a year. If Jordan handed the Earth warriors a hundred beans, Yajirobe would deep-fry and eat sixty of them before the Saiyans even breached the atmosphere.
Scarcity, Jordan decided, has its tactical virtues.
If the supply was limited enough that every single bean felt genuinely precious, they would treat the medicine with the respect it deserved. They would save them for the moments that actually required saving.
He mentally revised his original distribution number downward. Then he pictured Yajirobe's face, looked at the jar again, and revised the number downward once more.
Yeah. That feels about right.
F-boy stepped smoothly out of his body.
The Stand materialized beside Jordan in the dappled sunlight. Its tailored purple suit was crisp, its side-swept hair entirely unmoved by the forest breeze, and its expression was locked into its default state of aloof, corporate professionalism. It held out one hand, palm upward.
Card Mastery.
The Stand's fingers moved with practiced, surgical precision. Azure spiritual energy gathered in the air, bending reality along the seams as the massive jar of Senzu Beans fed its physical mass and conceptual weight into the system. Ten seconds later—exactly as long as the process required—the air above F-boy's palm violently shimmered with emerging geometry.
Three cards crystallized.
Two were bordered in deep purple—SR-rank, their edges catching the morning light. The third was a blinding, luminescent orange. SSR.
They spun lazily in the air for a moment before dropping neatly into Jordan's waiting hand.
[Fantasy Card: A Jar of Senzu Beans] Type: Item Card • Rarity: SSR
Quantity: 11,887 (Description omitted).
[Fantasy Card: A Handful of Senzu Beans] ×2 Type: Item Card • Rarity: SR
Quantity: 50 per card (Description omitted).
The rarity scaling made perfect mathematical sense. A single Senzu Bean was an R-rank pull—blue border, moderately rare. Fifty of them condensed together elevated the conceptual weight to a purple SR. Eleven thousand and change violently pushed the mass into ultra-rare orange territory. The gacha system clearly had strong, algorithmic opinions about bulk pricing.
Jordan pocketed the two SR cards—the Z Fighters' allocation, which was already much leaner than his first instinct and considerably leaner than his second—and examined the SSR jar card with something approaching religious reverence.
He had been admiring the holographic shine for approximately two seconds when he noticed F-boy was still standing there.
The Stand hadn't deactivated. It was staring at Jordan with an expression calibrated somewhere between polite professionalism and the carefully contained energy of an employee who very much had something to add to the meeting agenda.
Jordan waited.
F-boy reached into its tailored suit pocket and produced a fourth card.
It was gold. SSR. But it caught the light differently than the Senzu cards. The shine was deeper, heavier, as though the orange border was backed by something far older and far more dangerous.
Jordan's eyebrows crept upward.
"Huh." He took it from the Stand. "Did you rip this off the dragon?"
F-boy calmly placed both hands in its trouser pockets and gave a single, measured nod—the exact body language of a CEO confirming a quarterly earnings report that he already knew was going to impress the board.
[Fantasy Card: Dragon God's Power — Earth Dragon Balls]
Type: Item Card (Consumable)
Rarity: SSRSource: The Dragon Balls of Earth, containing the conceptual authority of the Dragon God Zalama.Effect: Make a Wish. Consume this card to immediately grant one wish within the limits of an Earth deity's authority.
Jordan read the text.
He read it a second time.
He read it a third time, tracing the letters with his eyes, just to ensure he wasn't misinterpreting the system formatting.
He had literally just used the physical Dragon Balls. He had just made a massive wish to Shenron, watched the dragon dissolve back into the storm, and watched the stone spheres violently scatter across the planet to go dark for a year.
But F-boy had established physical contact with Shenron during the summoning. Element Pickup. And Shenron was, apparently, sufficiently extraordinary that the Stand had successfully ripped a fragment of his conceptual essence out of reality. It hadn't copied the dragon's combat power, or its scales, or its terrifying voice. It had extracted something far more fundamental.
The divine right to ask.
I just fulfilled a wish and immediately got handed a second one for free.
Jordan stared blankly at the gold card for a long time.
This, he realized, is exactly the kind of thing the gacha system does when it wants me to acknowledge that it is, occasionally, completely and utterly unreasonable.
F-boy's lips curved at the edges. It wasn't a full smile—F-boy never fully smiled—but the phantom ghost of one, barely visible above the crisp collar of the suit.
Jordan slowly gave the Stand a thumbs-up.
F-boy's satisfaction was dignified, contained, and entirely obvious. The Stand stepped backward, melting smoothly back into Jordan's body in a single, fluid motion that managed to communicate 'mission accomplished' without a single word.
Jordan tucked the Dragon God's Power safely away into his spatial inventory and considered his next heading.
He had one more stop to make before he could officially call the Dragon Ball preparations complete.
He looked up at the sky. It was completely clear now, the bright morning fully restored, the apocalyptic darkness of Shenron's summoning dissolved as though it had never happened. Somewhere far above the clouds, resting above the stratosphere, was a tower that technically defied several core principles of architecture and a great deal of common sense regarding oxygen limits.
And at the top of that tower was an elderly cat who was probably, right at this exact second, watching him through a magic bowl of water.
Jordan smiled at the sky.
The next second, he vanished.
Sonic booms rang out in rapid sequence—crack, crack, crack—as violent, cone-shaped compression clouds formed and instantly tore themselves apart around his rapidly ascending figure. The concussive shockwave hit the forest floor like a physical wall, flattening the tall grass and scattering terrified birds in every direction. Then the clearing was dead quiet, and Jordan was already punching through the cloud layer.
Master Korin had been watching through the water tank.
He had been watching since the very first tremor in the planet's atmospheric energy—the strange, impossibly vast electromagnetic pulse that had preceded the sky turning black and Shenron manifesting. He had watched Jordan casually collect all seven Dragon Balls in eleven minutes, executing a global tour that would have taken any normal mortal several months of grueling travel.
He had watched the summoning. He had watched the wish.
Senzu Beans, Korin had thought, blinking down at the rippling image in the enchanted water. He used a divine wish... for Senzu Beans.
The ancient martial arts master hadn't been entirely sure what to make of that. The ambient energy signature radiating off the young man in the reflection was the sort of overwhelming pressure that made Korin's own god-given divine power feel like a flickering candle next to a lighthouse. And this was what he had chosen to do with a blank check from Shenron.
Somehow, the sheer pragmatism of it was oddly reassuring.
Then the water had shifted, showing Jordan standing in the clearing below the tower. Korin had watched the sonic booms physically tear the air apart. Now, that terrifying energy signature was approaching the tower on a vertical trajectory at a speed that made the white fur on Korin's tail stand straight up.
The cat straightened up, leaning heavily on his wooden staff, and carefully arranged his whiskers into an expression of serene, ancient dignity.
A figure casually cleared the outer railing.
It happened impossibly fast—he simply wasn't there, and then he was. Jordan landed on the sacred platform with the kind of effortless, controlled grace that proved the landing had been a deliberate choice rather than a frantic deceleration. Half a second later, the violent displacement wave of air that had been chasing his ascent finally caught up. It hit Korin like a solid wall.
The cat staggered backward. The heavy wooden staff was the only thing that kept him upright. His ears flattened flat against his skull in the gale.
The young man standing in front of him slowly straightened up, smoothly dusted off his jacket, and looked down at Korin with an expression that was...
He's trying not to pet me.
It was extremely obvious. Korin had been an immortal, telepathic cat for eight hundred years, and he intimately knew the look. The slight, involuntary widening of the eyes. The hands that were desperately trying to find somewhere neutral to rest. The very deliberate, conscious maintenance of an appropriate, professional greeting distance.
"Hello, Master Korin," Jordan Evans said, his voice a picture of complete, unbothered composure. "My name is Jordan. I apologize for arriving unannounced."
Korin blinked.
In eight unbroken centuries of guarding this sacred tower, absolutely no one had ever apologized for arriving unannounced. Usually, mortals were either screaming in exhausted celebration because they had just spent three months climbing the pillar, or they possessed some alternative method of flight and were immediately demanding Senzu Beans. The polite apology completely threw him off his rhythm.
"...Hello," Korin managed after a long moment, gripping his staff. "May I ask what brings you here? If it is a matter of urgent planetary defense, you can proceed directly to the Temple above—"
"Actually, I came to see you specifically." Jordan shook his head, a slight, knowing smile tugging at the corner of his mouth. "About the Senzu Beans."
Korin's ears immediately lifted.
Ah. He exhaled a long, tired sigh. There it is. "Well, I should warn you immediately—Yajirobe came through recently. Again. I have been attempting to cultivate a fresh batch, but the yield has been... less than stellar, and he..." Korin's dark eyes narrowed, adopting a specifically old, tired expression that communicated centuries of the exact same frustrating roommate. "There are perhaps a dozen left in the jar. You are welcome to them if the need is dire."
He began to turn away, moving toward the storage alcove.
"That's very kind of you, but—" Jordan's voice stopped him in his tracks. "I'm not here to take them. I came to give you some."
Korin froze. Slowly, the ancient cat turned back around.
He stared at Jordan for a full three seconds, which, in feline processing time, is an eternity.
A purple-bordered card materialized between Jordan's fingers, its edges catching the high-altitude sunlight. He held it flat in his palm for a brief second—and then the card dissolved. Left behind in his cupped hand were fifty small, green beans. Each one was dry, shriveled, and completely unremarkable to look at.
Jordan extended his hand toward the master.
"For cultivation," Jordan said simply. "Seed stock. Let's see if an injection of this much variety gives you enough genetic material to improve the upcoming yield."
Korin slowly reached out both white paws. The beans, a payload representing more successful agriculture than he had personally produced in several years of careful tending. He stared down at them, utterly speechless.
And then, a large, warm hand rested gently on the top of his head. It lightly ruffled the fur between his ears with the comfortable, terrifying confidence of a man who had decided this was going to happen regardless of planetary hierarchy.
The fur was, objectively speaking, incredibly soft.
...It's fine, Korin thought, forcing himself to stand perfectly still under the assault. It's completely fine. I am eight hundred years old. I am a master of martial arts. I have immense dignity. I am completely—
The hand withdrew.
Korin blinked. He looked down at the fifty precious Senzu Beans resting in his paws. He looked back up at the incredibly powerful young man standing in front of him, who was currently adjusting his jacket sleeve as though absolutely nothing out of the ordinary had just occurred.
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