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Chapter 268 - Chapter 268: Harvest from Namek

The honorary title arrived completely without ceremony.

At some point during Jordan's grueling second month of training, the scattered village elders had collectively held a telepathic summit. They officially decided that Jordan's bizarre combination of providing endless Happy Water, actively tutoring little Dende in divine magic, aggressively training in remote wastelands without accidentally vaporizing anyone, and generally being highly useful had officially earned him formal diplomatic status within their peaceful community.

They had pitched the idea to the Grand Elder. The Grand Elder had immediately agreed.

Jordan had ultimately been informed of his new political rank via Dende, who delivered the news with the immense, trembling gravity of a tiny diplomat conveying something historically important, heavily mixed with the barely contained, vibrating satisfaction of a kid who had been desperately looking forward to saying it all week.

Second Elder of Namek. Honorary, of course.

Jordan accepted the massive title with appropriate, deadpan solemnity. The respectful silence lasted exactly four seconds before Dende eagerly started outlining exactly what specific flavor of Happy Water he wanted to synthesize to celebrate the promotion.

Nail, who had been quietly watching the entire exchange from the doorway, just sighed heavily and looked out at the horizon.

The training.

Three brutal Namekian months had passed.

Assessed with cold, tactical honesty: Super Saiyan was officially mastered in the practical, combat-ready sense. He hadn't achieved the absolute, 100% flawless energy efficiency that only came from years of constant, passive use. But he had absolutely achieved the lethal functional proficiency that meant the golden mutation was instantly available the millisecond he needed it, was comfortably sustainable for several grueling hours, and was no longer actively triggering deep-crust seismic events as an incidental biological side effect.

The emotional trigger sequence was reliable. The catastrophic ki management was locked in. The remaining gap between his current output and total, flawless mastery was exactly the kind of gap that closed naturally with time and brutal repetition, not the kind that required another miraculous multiversal breakthrough.

Standing alone on a shattered coastline at the end of the second month, Jordan had placed his hands on his hips, surveyed the localized destruction, and privately concluded that the tactical situation was finally acceptable.

The honest, terrifying caveat was that this was still just the foundational form. Super Saiyan 1. The absolute first step on the ladder. It was the legendary mutation that had seemed completely universe-altering when Goku first achieved it on screen, but Jordan knew it was merely the biological baseline for everything completely insane that followed.

But foundational baselines mathematically mattered. And when that 50x Saiyan multiplier was aggressively stacked on top of the foundation Jordan already possessed—the hoarded deck of SSR abilities, the reality-warping Stand, the Hashirama Sage Body, the absolute mastery over electromagnetism and spatial dimensions—the final resulting combat number was something he genuinely, actively preferred not to calculate anywhere near a populated area.

He had accidentally destroyed enough expensive real estate already.

He found Dende in the massive backyard garden on the exact morning he had been waiting for.

The backyard of the village elder's home was generous by absolutely any planetary standard. Namekian architecture heavily prioritized substantial, open agricultural space, their deep cultural relationship with plant life aggressively expressing itself in their zoning laws. Dende had been utilizing his personal share of the soil with a manic enthusiasm that had initially started with synthesizing Happy Water, and had subsequently expanded into something far more vital once Jordan had officially given the prodigy a real project.

"Dende!"

The small Namekian snapped his head up from where he was crouched over a massive, raised planter bed. His green face was already rapidly shifting toward the specific 'immensely-pleased-but-desperately-trying-to-be-modest' configuration that Jordan had quickly come to recognize.

"Look, Brother Jordan!" Dende pointed eagerly at the dark soil. "I followed your scientific method—and I actually did it!"

Jordan dropped down into a crouch right beside him.

The tiny, fragile seedlings pushing up through the dirt were a pale, greenish-blue. They were growing in tight, loose clusters across the bed. He leaned in, examining them with surgical care. The microscopic leaf structure was absolutely perfect. The biological color was exact. The dark soil packed carefully around the fragile roots radiated the highly specific, humming quality of physical matter that had been fundamentally, molecularly altered from ordinary dirt into something divine.

It wasn't achieved through advanced agricultural chemistry. It was achieved through the accumulated, obsessive magical attention of a Dragon Clan prodigy aggressively applying the theoretical methodology they had meticulously worked out together over the last thirty days.

Senzu Beans.

Actually growing in the dirt on Planet Namek.

Jordan stared down at the tiny green shoots for a very long time.

He mentally traced the impossible chain of multiversal logic that had successfully led to this exact moment.

The Dragon Clan Magic SSR card, which granted the god-like ability to spontaneously create physical matter from sheer understanding and raw ki. The icy cola production, which had successfully served as the proof-of-concept, demonstrating that the divine magic could accurately replicate complex chemical compounds well enough to produce something entirely indistinguishable from the original object. The Miniature Bean Plantation SSR card he had ripped from Master Korin, which perfectly preserved the divine soil and magical water samples that made cultivating the biological superweapon actually possible.

And finally, little Dende. The terrified child who had taken the terrifying alien concept, the divine physical samples, the complex scientific methodology, and a full month of obsessive, hyper-focused magical attention... and successfully produced this.

It had to be him, Jordan thought, a slow, massive grin spreading across his face. It genuinely, absolutely had to be him.

Jordan reached out and scooped Dende straight up into the air.

Dende let out a startled yelp—the sound of a kid who had definitely been expecting polite verbal celebration, and had absolutely not anticipated being aggressively hoisted like a trophy. The yelp rapidly turned into bright, breathless laughter. He held on tight as Jordan spun him in a complete, dizzying circle before setting him gently back down in the dirt.

"I do not need to tell you what these are worth, Dende," Jordan said, once they had both stopped spinning. He was looking back down at the fragile blue seedlings, deliberately keeping his voice quiet and deadly serious to convey exactly how much weight the statement carried. "These little beans literally save lives. In a critical, bleeding combat moment, a single one of these is the absolute difference between someone surviving the day, and someone dying in the dirt. Protect this farm, Dende."

Dende instantly stood up perfectly straight, his small hands clenching into fists.

"I know," Dende promised. His voice carried the heavy, unshakeable seriousness of a child who fundamentally understood they had just been officially entrusted with something real, and incredibly dangerous. "I will protect it with my life."

Jordan looked at the kid's eyes. He entirely believed him.

"When the magical cultivation technique is fully mature and stabilized," Jordan added softly, "I want you to teach the other prodigies. Every single Namekian village on this planet should have a hidden, fortified Senzu plantation. Your people possess better natural agricultural talent than almost anyone else in the known universe. It's time to aggressively weaponize it."

The other, significantly more terrifying matter had been handled quietly during the second month of the training arc.

Jordan had casually taken Dende up to the mesa to visit the Grand Elder. It was politely framed as a friendly, diplomatic social call—which it absolutely was—but it carried a massive, secondary tactical purpose.

The Grand Elder had previously offered to unlock the latent, dormant potential for every single Namekian currently living on the planet. Dende was young enough that whatever massive divine power was sleeping dormant inside his DNA had absolutely not developed naturally yet. The Grand Elder's magical guidance could violently accelerate that biological timeline by decades.

The mystical session had lasted approximately twenty quiet minutes.

Dende had walked out of the ancient stone room with his legendary healing talent—a divine gift that previously only existed in abstract theory, the kind of absolute miracle that master Namekian healers usually spent centuries desperately trying to develop—fully, violently awakened and permanently active. He had spent the entire flight back down to the village staring blankly at his own small green hands, wearing the deeply shell-shocked expression of a man who had lived in a small house his entire life, only to suddenly discover a massive, locked mansion attached to the back of it.

F-boy, naturally, had been entirely present for the miracle.

Element Pickup flawlessly triggered on extraordinary biological talent at close contact range. And Dende's newly awakened, god-tier healing gift was, by any multiversal metric, absolutely extraordinary.

The glowing purple card that materialized between the Stand's gloved fingers shortly afterward was an instant SSR.

[Fantasy Card: Namekian — Super Healing] Type: Ability Card • Rarity: SSR

Description: The divine healing gift of the Dragon Clan's absolute rarest talent. Possessed only by exceptional, once-in-a-generation individuals among the Namekians. Capable of perfectly restoring others at a microscopic cellular level.Effect 1 (Perfect Healing): Channel ki outward to flawlessly, instantly repair massive internal and external physical trauma in another living person. The biological healing is absolute, not partial. Gaping injuries seal shut, violently destroyed organs instantly restore, and catastrophic cellular damage aggressively reverses. Healing speed scales linearly with the amount of energy expended.Effect 2 (Physical Recovery): Channel ki outward to completely, instantly restore another person's exhausted stamina and raw vitality back to peak combat condition.

Jordan had immediately compared the card's brutal stats to the Mystical Palm Technique currently sitting in his active deck—the A-rank medical ninjutsu from the Naruto universe that he had heavily relied on throughout the previous year. The Mystical Palm could heal trauma. It was genuinely excellent at healing trauma. But 'excellent at healing trauma' and 'literal walking Senzu Bean' were two wildly, meaningfully different tactical categories.

Super Healing sat squarely, terrifyingly, in the second category.

The only significant tactical drawback was the massive ki cost. The divine healing ability was incredibly generous to the patient; the healer aggressively paid the energy toll out of their own reserves to make the miracle happen.

This was absolutely not a logistical problem for Jordan.

He had integrated the SSR card into his biology that exact same afternoon. He had subsequently sent an exhausted Dende home with a massive, carefully materialized selection of premium Earth comfort foods. Dende had politely, weakly claimed—as he always did—that he absolutely didn't need the food, because Namekians biologically survived entirely on pure water and sunlight.

Dende had then aggressively eaten absolutely everything on the table.

The child had, Jordan noted with satisfaction, visibly, physically grown over the grueling three-month training arc. It wasn't a dramatic, anime-timeskip growth spurt, but it was highly measurable. It was the highly specific, healthy kind of biological growth that only happened when a traumatized kid was finally well-fed, intellectually engaged, had incredibly interesting magical physics to think about, and possessed a highly reliable, unlimited source of freezing cold carbonated beverages.

Jordan ultimately decided this was an incredibly good tactical outcome.

The Grand Elder, meanwhile, had been quietly formulating his own massive tactical plans.

Jordan had clearly noticed the psychological shift over the last few weeks. Something fundamental in the ancient alien's entire physical manner had violently shifted. He had transitioned from the heavy, settled patience of a dying ruler quietly waiting out his remaining time, into the sharp, hyper-focused energy of a planetary commander who had suddenly decided to spend his final months highly intentionally.

Part of the radical shift was absolutely due to the apocalyptic psychic vision Jordan had shared.

The Grand Elder had watched, in agonizing, bleeding, living images, exactly what happened to his peaceful people when the planet didn't know the galactic nightmare was coming. That terrifying knowledge had settled deep into his ancient bones and produced a massive, unexpected psychological reaction. It wasn't blind fear. It was cold, absolute purpose. It was a brutal reminder that there were still vital, necessary things worth doing to protect his children, while there was still time left on the clock to actually do them.

The Elder had spoken quietly about it to Jordan just the previous evening.

"My people have grown terribly, fatally complacent in our isolation," the Grand Elder had rumbled, staring out at the three suns. "There is absolutely nothing wrong with desiring peace. But a peace that completely lacks the fangs to violently defend itself is not actual safety, Jordan. It is simply good fortune that hasn't officially run out yet."

Jordan had listened in silence, completely agreeing, and politely choosing not to interrupt.

"I have a few short years remaining in this body," the Elder had stated with terrifying, absolute finality. "I fully intend to weaponize them."

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