Chapter 35: The Gravity Chamber Is Ready (Patreon)

A few days later, the Gravity Chamber was finally finished.

Bulma gazed proudly at her handiwork and announced, "Look at this—it's a three-hundred-times-gravity chamber.

The only one in all of West City—no, the only one on all of Earth."

Lunch patted Oryon on the shoulder. "Your new toy's ready. Go try it out already!

But fair warning—don't get so obsessed with that chamber that you forget about us!"

"Mm!"

Oryon kissed Bulma and Lunch each on the cheek, then strode in eagerly.

Curved white walls, a floor of honeycombed aviation-grade metal, and all kinds of gravity devices lining the base.

He walked up to the control panel, where a phone sat mounted.

The screen lit up, and Bulma's face appeared on it.

"Hehe, I figured you might not know how to work it, so I set up a phone for emergencies.

If you ever can't move, I can cut the power from outside."

Warmth flickered across Oryon's face. "Thanks, Bulma. All right, I'm starting my training."

"Mm-hm!"

With that, Oryon flipped the switch and set the gravity to twenty times Earth's.

Bulma blurted in shock, "Hey, are you crazy? Jumping straight to 20x? Shouldn't you start at 2x and work your way up?"

Oryon shot back, "Don't be so dramatic. Do I look like an ordinary person to you?"

Bulma shivered and glanced at Lunch beside her.

"We can never just wander in there casually. If the gravity got switched on by accident—20 times gravity—we'd be flattened into paste in an instant..."

Still shaken, Lunch nodded in agreement.

Once the gravity kicked in, Oryon felt as if an invisible giant hand were pressing down on him from every direction.

His knees buckled slightly, but he straightened them again in an instant.

This much gravity couldn't hurt him—once he adjusted, he could crank it even higher.

He tried throwing a punch.

Raising his arm felt like swinging a fist through thick mud—impossibly heavy.

Next he tried some push-ups. He'd barely finished a few dozen before sweat was pouring down his face.

Half an hour passed.

Oryon trained until he was drenched in sweat, feeling every muscle in his body stretch, contract, and adapt under the chamber's crushing weight.

Bulma's voice came through the phone.

"How's it going, Oryon? You okay in there?"

Gritting his teeth, Oryon shouted back, "Feels great! I haven't sweated like this in ages!"

Bulma let out a relieved breath. "Good, as long as you're fine. Lunch and I won't wait out here—we're heading inside!"

"Got it!"

"Call me if anything comes up—I added a new feature to that phone, you can wake it up with your voice."

"Understood!"

Oryon was deeply moved—for his safety, Bulma had gone and invented a voice-activation feature decades ahead of its time.

No wonder the Gravity Chamber had taken her so long to build.

Before long, Oryon had adapted to 20 times gravity.

He started throwing punches, working his legs, kicking...

They were the most ordinary training motions, but under the added gravity, they left him exhausted, his muscles screaming with soreness.

Sweat streamed down his spine, pooled into little rivulets at the small of his back, then trickled down along the curve of his hips and legs.

Before long, dehydration left him parched.

But Bulma had installed a water dispenser in a gravity-free section of the chamber.

Oryon could down two liters in one go, then get right back to training.

Two hours passed, and his whole body felt like it had been filled with lead.

The moment he stepped out of the Gravity Chamber, he collapsed onto the floor.

He was exhausted!

Only sheer novelty had kept him going this long.

After all, Goku had gone from under 10,000 Power Level to a staggering 90,000 in just seven days.

This thing had to be seriously effective.

Bulma rushed over to hold him up, and Lunch came running in from the living room.

The two of them propped him up by the arms, one on each side, and helped him to the sofa.

"Honestly, how did you wear yourself out like this?"

"Yeah, way too hardcore."

Oryon managed a smile. "Guess I lost track of time. Ha ha."

Even laughing made his stomach ache—he really had never gone through training this brutal before.

A moment later, Oryon lay sprawled on the sofa, limp as a corpse.

Bulma wiped the sweat from his face with a towel, scolding him. "Even a Saiyan body can't take this kind of abuse."

Lunch crouched by the sofa, holding a drink with a straw stuck in it, and brought it to his lips.

"Here, drink some electrolyte water. This'll help you recover."

"Glug, glug..."

Oryon drained the entire bottle of electrolyte drink in one go, and immediately felt much better.

"So good!"

Bulma looked at his exhausted face and asked, "Can you still move? Are you still up for playing Jenga with us tonight?"

Lunch nudged Bulma. "Jenga, seriously? Let him get some proper rest—he's completely worn out."

But Oryon refused to back down. "Who says I can't? A man never says he can't. Tonight, I'm making both of you kneel down and sing 'Conquer' for me."

Bulma's face darkened, and she huffed. "Kneel down and sing 'Conquer' for you, sure. Keep talking tough..."

Sure enough, it wasn't long before Oryon fell asleep.

He was just too exhausted.

He hadn't even showered.

Bulma and Lunch exchanged a look and sighed at the same time.

"If we'd known, we should've carried him to a bedroom. Sleeping in the living room like this isn't great..."

Lunch fetched a blanket. "It's fine, I'll stay here with him in the living room..."

Bulma said, "Don't get up to anything, okay? This is the living room—it'd be bad if my parents happened to see."

Lunch nudged her. "Come on, give me some credit. If he wakes up able to move, we'll just sneak off to the bedroom."

"Fair point..."

After that, Lunch lay down beside Oryon and fell asleep. By midnight, he still hadn't woken up.

But his snoring was so loud it kept even Lunch awake.

She'd figured it would just be like this for one day. And the first day was exactly like this.

So was the second.

The third, the fourth, the fifth—every single day, the same.

Oryon said that after a few days of training in the Gravity Chamber, he was going to push past his limits.

Vegeta's Power Level was 18,000, while Oryon's was only around 10,000.

He desperately needed to raise his own strength.

The small gains from his day-to-day intimacy with Bulma and Lunch just weren't cutting it anymore.

It was a last resort, but the only option he had.

He dreaded exhausting himself, but he dreaded losing his current life even more.

Once you've enjoyed something long enough, you grow attached to it—and terrified of losing it.

Oryon loved his current life far too much.

Carefree, blissfully indulgent, extravagant beyond measure.

And besides, when the time came, he wanted to bully Vegeta and Nappa a little.

Without real strength, how was he supposed to bully Vegeta and Nappa when the moment arrived?

Was he supposed to bully them like some Hidden Leaf's unruly civilians, throwing his life on the line to do it?