"Ha." I breathed out, my eyes squeezed shut in exertion as energy flooded out from my body. My hand was held out in front of me, my energy slowly draining as a mid-sized beam of pink Ki was battling for dominance against an equally sized yellow one.
Though 'battling for dominance' was exaggerating the situation a lot. Right now, I was standing in the middle of a canyon-like area, with various rocks and dust being flung in the air from the beam clash. Across from me, the form of Android 16 - or, what looked like Android 16, but actually wasn't - was firing a beam of Ki directly into mine.
This was just one part of my training: Ki training. While my Ki reserves naturally grew as my body became stronger through regular training, specifically training my Ki-power was a more efficient method.
I likened this form of training to lifting weights - I would force out my Ki reserves against the unlimited energy of Android 16, and as I ran low on Ki, I would be forced to push out literally everything I could to avoid being consumed. In a similar way to your muscles growing through constantly being pushed to failure, my Ki reserves grew every time they were emptied out.
And, once I was out of Ki?
"Bean me," I huffed as my reserves became dangerously low, casually holding up my free hand, and a second later, a Senzu Bean was flicked into it. The beam clash lasted only another few seconds before it started to be shoved back towards me, and it looked like my body was about to be engulfed in a beam of light.
But I casually placed the Senzu Bean in my mouth, then bit down. Power flooded through me instantly, and my Ki reserves were refilled by the magical bean. My half of the beam-clash pressed forward again, before I tapered off the power and let my reserves be drained as the powerful beams smashed in the middle.
Having a massive supply of Senzu Beans was pretty overpowered, especially considering it was pretty much limitless right now. Bulma had been in charge of mass-producing them, and compared to Korin, she was much more efficient. The elderly cat did it the old-fashioned way, that being growing them in the dirt, watering them, and letting the seeds grow into Senzu Beans. By comparison, Bulma's technological superiority allowed for her to accelerate the growth rate many times, optimize the conditions for the beans to grow, and overall cut the time it took to create a field of Senzu Beans to a tenth of Korin's time.
"I still think this is pretty pointless," Far to the side, Bulma, who was my bean-dealer at the moment, called out, "Why don't you just put an energy module inside your body? I could do it pretty easily!"
"My body is a temple," I shot back, nodding wisely, before my eloquent facade faded away, "And by that, I mean I don't want any random robot shit inside of it!"
After the cloning incident, where real-Frieza had appeared instead of a clone of me-Frieza, I didn't want anything done to my body. I still didn't know how I had come to inhabit this body, and I had no intentions of fucking myself over by being too greedy and turning myself into an android. But, most of all, I didn't want to mess up how quickly this body grew - which I also still didn't understand.
This body's inherent talent was much more valuable than any enhancing android-esque things I could do to it. The infinite-energy module was certainly appealing, but by training like this, my Ki reserves would become near-infinite pretty quickly. Truly, while Zenkai Boosts were overpowered, Frieza's body was even more overpowered.
"Fine, but you need to do this on your own then," Bulma replied, wincing as she glanced over at the collision of beams, "I'm going to go blind if I stick around any longer!"
Half of this lifeless planet was probably being lit up by the clash, so I couldn't blame her. I just nodded as she tossed me a bag of Senzu Beans and headed back to the ship.
For now, I had another dozen hours of Ki training to go, and then I would switch to the next part of the regimen.
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"T-Te… te… t-t-e… t… ten!" To my side, a sweat-covered Vegeta was panting heavily, and practically growling as he shoved himself upward - completing his tenth pushup.
Which, considering the gravity of the planet we were on, was actually pretty impressive. I had chosen this planet, which probably had a real name at some point, but was just Planet Frieza #971 now, because of its size.
Around me, there was nothing but a long, very long, stretch of rock and dust - stretching for literal tens of thousands of miles. The planet under me was gray and ugly, not looking very appealing as there wasn't a cloud overhead, or even really a sky as the vast, pitch-dark expanse of space hovered above. If it weren't for the various lights set up in the area - which had to be made specially by Bulma to withstand the intense gravity - then neither me nor Vegeta would've been able to see even the ground we were doing pushups on.
Essentially, this planet was empty. There was almost no circumstance in which anyone would want to visit here, much less live here, but it had one thing going for it: It was huge.
The planet was many times the circumference of Earth, and the mass of the floating ball of rock was just as intense. Overall, the gravity on this planet was roughly 200x that of Earth, which made it pretty good for physical training. It still wasn't perfect, as-
"Ninety-nine thousand, seven hundred seventy two," I hummed, my body moving like a blur in comparison to Vegeta's struggling form, as I closed in on 100,000 pushups.
The limit where 100x gravity had been effective training for myself had long passed, and so far, there wasn't any gravity chamber Bulma could create that was both spacious enough for effective training and able to handle the strain of over 200x gravity. And by that, I mean even my base from, ignoring any training I did since inhabiting this body, was way too strong to get big gains from it. Even 200x gravity was only moderately effective in pushing my strength, and that was because Frieza's body was so insanely talented. Seriously - I could do damn near anything and grow stronger!
Frieza had just been sitting on his ass, tossing around a planet-destroying ball of Ki here and there, and even then, he probably had been growing at least a bit stronger constantly before I took over. Of course, the difference between my final form's current power level of a couple of hundred trillion and the Golden Frieza form was still large.
I wouldn't give Frieza credit for much, but I would say one good thing about him - when he had trained to achieve his Golden form, he had seriously trained. Over the past year and some change, I had trained pretty casually, as I was more focused on the Empire-building portion of my plan, and despite training for double the time Frieza had, I had only gotten a fraction of the results.
Granted, that casual had been really casual, especially after I killed King Cold. If I sat here and did pushups for the next two months without any rest, I'd probably both achieve and pass up the Golden form easily. But the Golden Frieza form wasn't my final goal, and as a result, this was a temporary measure until I had a hyperbolic time chamber built by the Namekians.
"E-E… Ele… E… Elev… ELEVEN!" Vegeta yelled, his voice booming throughout the clear area around us. The prideful words, which were more like a roar than a shout, were far too dramatic for counting his eleventh pushup.
"Are you even trying, princeling?" I hummed, raising an eyebrow over at him as I, a bit mockingly, shifted to one-armed pushups casually.
"S-S-Shu-Shut u-up!" Vegeta just gritted out, slowly lowering himself for another pushup, and I ignored his less-than respectful words this time. Considering he probably felt like his body was being squished into a pulp right now, I couldn't blame him for forgetting who he was speaking to.
"I set up all of this for you, and yet you can barely do ten measly pushups?" I smirked over at him, only pissing off Vegeta more. My words seemed to have some effect, as his brow creased, and he started to rise for his twelfth pushup.
By 'set up all of this for you' I was referring to the area around us - as, despite being on a near-empty planet, the planet wasn't completely empty. There was a small structure around us, made mostly of metal, in what was more of a dome than a house. While I could breathe without oxygen no problem, Vegeta wasn't the same. As a result, Bulma had created this dome for us, which, through some sciency stuff I didn't fully understand, circulated air regardless of how heavy Vegeta was breathing.
Vegeta was, unsurprisingly, suffering heavily as he could barely reach ten pushups - as despite his intense look that would make you think he'd done ten in a row, he hadn't - within an hour. The Saiyan Prince was, to put it bluntly, rather lazy and stupid pre-Goku influence. Vegeta had probably barely trained since the death of his people, and that was showing right now.
Seriously, his power level during his fight with Goku was, at best, roughly twenty thousand, and he thought immortality would be enough to take down Frieza? Real-Frieza was enough of a moron that he'd probably give Vegeta the never-ending Zenkai Boosts that he would need, but if Frieza had even a tinge of intelligence, he'd just knock Vegeta out and tie him up somewhere for the rest of his immortal life.
Speaking of immortality, I could at least give the prince a bit more inspiration, right?
"If you reach fifty before I reach two hundred thousand, I'll let you wish for immortality," I said finally, still smirking as Vegeta's eyes went as wide as saucers next to me.
"S-Seriously?!" Vegeta breathed out, his focus breaking and causing him to slam down harshly on his stomach as he did, and then let out a pained groan.
"Seriously," I nodded mid-pushup, though my words were empty.
At this rate, and with how tired he was, he would be lucky if he reached fifty before I reached a million.
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"J-Just don't be too harsh on them, okay?! T-They took a lot of work to develop! A-And they're fragile compared to you!" I stepped forward off the ramp of my ship, casually walking onto the surface of another large and empty planet - which had a gravity level roughly half of the 200x one I was training with Vegeta on - and barely heard Gero's words to my side.
Instead, I was silently impressed as I looked at the hundreds upon hundreds of Android 16s waiting in a stiff, well-maintained line in front of me. They weren't actually Android 16, as neither was the one I had been training Ki with, but instead a much more robotic and loyal version. Gero had created these to be my training partner, as they had the unlimited energy module and were a fair bit stronger than the original Android 16 was.
But, most of all, they were fiercely loyal. That is to say - they don't think for themselves, as they're more robot than android. The perfect training partners, as even if I wore out myself so much that I was in a vulnerable position, I'd be able to command them and ensure I wasn't even in any real danger.
"R-Remember how long it takes for the cloning star to work! I-If you break them all, then it'll take weeks to create this many again!" Gero continued to talk quickly next to me, looking a mixture of nervous and panicked. Clearly, he was a bit protective of what he called his 'greatest creation,' and was afraid that I'd turn them all into a pile of scrap.
"Relax. They need to last for a few months - I'll be careful," I said simply, the 'for a few months' part only seeming to make Gero more nervous, as I smirked at the line of androids, "Now, let's get this training session started, will we?"
Both my Ki and my body had been trained. Now, it was time to train my actual fighting skills. Since I didn't have an opponent strong enough to push me, I just needed to have a lot of opponents.
It was time to become a one-man army.
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