Celer sat back down in the corner of the nursery, the silence of the other children ringing in his ears. He stared at his small, tan hand—the one that had just sent a "Forty" flying—and waited.
'Okay,' he thought, closing his eyes tight. 'That was the trigger. The first fight. Now... show me the goods.'
He waited for the familiar Ding! he had read about in a hundred web novels. He waited for a translucent blue screen to flicker into his vision, displaying his stats, his level, and maybe a "Starter Gift Box" containing a Zenkai boost or a map of the Dragon Balls.
Five seconds passed. Ten. A minute.
'Status?' he whispered in his mind. 'Menu? System? Open Inventory?'
Nothing. The only thing he heard was the low, mechanical thrum of the nursery's life-support systems and the ragged breathing of Bard, who was being helped up by his two cronies.
'You've got to be kidding me,' Celer's inner salaryman groaned. 'I got the truck. I got the reincarnation. I even got the spiky hair and the tail. Where is my "Host" greeting? Where is the AI voice telling me I just gained +5 Strength?'
He tried different variations. 'Quest Log? Skill Tree? Gacha? Shop?'
Still nothing. No holographic interface appeared. No "hidden quest" was completed. He was just a three-year-old boy sitting on a cold, metal floor in a nursery that smelled like ozone and burnt hair.
'This is a scam,' Celer thought, a cold sweat breaking out on his neck. 'This is the ultimate corporate rip-off. I've been sent to the most dangerous universe in fiction, where literal gods sneeze and erase galaxies, and I have to do everything manually? I don't even have a tutorial!'
Back on Earth, he had spent his life following manuals, spreadsheets, and corporate guidelines. He was used to having a path laid out for him. But here? There was no map. No EXP bar to tell him if his training was working.
'Wait,' he calmed his racing heart, focusing back on that violet spark beneath his ribs. 'If there's no System... then what the hell is this?'
He reached out to touch that cold, royal energy again. The moment his consciousness brushed it, a wave of pure, crushing pressure rippled through his nervous system. It wasn't the hot, bubbling "Life Ki" he felt in the other Saiyan kids. This was something heavy. Something ancient.
'This isn't just power,' he realized, his eyes widening. 'This is Divine Ki. God Ki.'
In the original series, Goku and Vegeta had to undergo grueling training with an Angel just to sense this stuff. They were grown men, masters of martial arts, and even then, it nearly broke them. And here he was, in a three-year-old body that hadn't even finished growing its baby teeth, trying to hold a sun inside a glass jar.
'I see the catch now,' Celer's mind raced, his adult logic kicking into high gear. 'I don't have a System because I started with the end-game cheat code. But my body is a "Level 1" vessel. If I try to use this power like a normal Saiyan—just screaming and pushing—I won't turn Super Saiyan. I'll just turn into a red smear on the floor.'
He looked over at Bard, who was staring at him with a mix of terror and confusion. Bard had used "Life Ki"—the regular, messy, explosive energy of the Saiyan race. It was easy to use, easy to measure on a scouter, and easy to replenish.
But Celer's energy was different. It was efficient. It was silent. And it was incredibly volatile.
'Fine,' Celer thought, his expression hardening into the determined look of a man who had survived a decade of corporate deadlines. 'No System? No problem. I'll just have to build my own. I'll be the Coder, and the Beta-Tester all at once.'
He didn't need a quest to tell him what his first mission was. He knew exactly what was coming. He knew about Frieza, he knew about the meteor, and he knew about the extinction of his race.
'I have maybe two or three years before this planet is erased,' he calculated, his gaze turning toward the red sky outside. 'I can't waste time looking for a "Level Up" button. I need to temper this body into a Divine Engine. Every breath, every step, every heartbeat... it all has to be part of the grind.'
He closed his eyes again, ignoring the world around him. He didn't have a "Menu," but he had a memory of every martial arts movie, every science textbook, and every DBZ episode he'd ever seen.
'Manual Mode it is,' he whispered to himself. 'Let's start with the "Operating System": Total Ki Suppression.'