A year has passed since the night the blue capsule tore through the forest and dropped off two Time Patrollers, and for Sadala, time has not been kind.
The civil war continued with methodical cruelty: clans, tribes, and legions fought for honor, for land, for survival; there was enough blood to stain entire rivers.
Nothing gave way. The battle lines remained as steady as unhealed wounds. Sadala, the ancestral planet of the Saiyans, so rich in stories, was living its own recurring nightmare, a planet whose legendary history speaks of internal conflicts that nearly destroyed it.
That ancient memory echoed in every bomb whistle and every house that turned to ash.
In the heart of that shadow theater, in a dark stone fortress studded with bloodstained banners, Tarvok presided over the war council.
He was a man made of ice and cruelty: eyes that never smiled, a voice that knew no mercy. At his table sat the most feared generals, the fists that molded terror over Sadala.
Among them were figures whose mere presence seemed to twist the light, giants of men, warriors who had become public calamities. Cumber stood there, larger and denser than most, muscles like living roots, black hair that fell to his thighs like wild manes, a short fringe like a predator's sign.
It was the kind of presence that made people look away, not out of embarrassment, but out of self-preservation.
Tarvok described maps, lines of attack, and the enemy's weak points. His strategy was pragmatic: fracture the defense, destroy the leadership, sever the stalk so the rest would fall. When he reached the most sensitive point, the echoing name silenced the room: Yamoshi.
Among the pure-hearted Saiyans, Yamoshi was a living legend: a warrior whose story spoke of justice and a nobility that inspired armies.
He was, as everyone knows, one of the pillars that supported the resistance, and for that reason, the most desired target.
Tarvok pointed to Arvek, a cunning and unscrupulous general: Arvek would be ordered to set a trap; he would devastate Yamoshi's family and force Yamoshi out from the hiding place where his honor protected him. A cold, effective strike, designed to cut the enemy's moral core.
Cumber, in turn, received a different order. Tarvok smiled, a smile that seemed more like the glint of a blade in the dim light, and told of an ancient tree, a legend whispered among children and elders: in a distant forest there was a living being that contained "fruits of power," capable of altering the fate of whoever tasted them.
Tarvok wanted that power. He gave Cumber a rough map, sketched with lines and hazards already marked by mercenaries who never returned.
Cumber grumbled impatiently: he preferred direct confrontation, the blood in his eyes, the heat of combat. A silent search for "mystical fruit" seemed to him an old man's task, a quest for those who didn't know how to carve glory with the blade.
Still, the promise of power made him accept, not out of devotion to Tarvok, but out of the appetite for his own fury.
----
The forest Cumber headed for was no ordinary wilderness: it was a sea of green that swallowed faces and muffled sounds.
Following the map was only the first challenge; the second came when the ground, with every step, seemed to test the invader's courage. Insects the size of dogs swooped down, wings beating like hot blades; their serrated jaws sought flesh and ripped the locks from the air.
Mutant beasts, their backs seemingly channeling crystals, leaped between tree trunks, incisive; reptiles with fangs like daggers emerged from muddy puddles. Cumber, with his raw warrior temperament, responded as he usually did: charge, impact, and crush.
The fight scene was almost mechanical, yet charged with poetic ferocity. Cumber struck with sweeping movements, scattering trees like toothpicks, a punch that created shockwaves that reached all the way to the edge of the forest.
Yet the enemies were not mere prey. Their hybrid forms required surgical execution: facing a swarm of scorpions the size of wolves, Cumber lifted his foot and spun with a stake thrust, the ground giving way, and the bodies fell in a cataract of sound and odor.
Against a prismatic-scaled reptile, the warrior had to pierce, repel, and ignite, a sequence of blows that resembled a dance of blades and muscles. Even for someone so brutal, the difficulty was real: the forest seemed alive, the fauna had been touched by something ancient and hostile.
The first real sign that the forest was not what it seemed was when the earth shook and cracks opened, as if someone underground was breathing.
Golems sprouted from the ground, colossi of clay laced with sap, eyes like carbuncles and broad fists capable of crushing rock. Their hands ripped through tree trunks with ease, and their mouths emitted a hollow sound that gave form to fear.
Cumber smiled, that was what he wanted, and stepped forward.
The battle against the golems was a theater of brutality. Each blow of the Saiyan's fist reverberated through the earth's crust; each impact made the air crackle with sparks.
We saw the precision of a warrior who not only hit, but calculated.
Cumber used feints, abrupt movements, and lunges that sent the automatons hurtling toward each other. When locked in with a gigantic golem, Cumber felt the resistance as if he were fighting a moving mountain: he needed to find the center of gravity, the wrong joint, a point to leverage all his strength.
In more than one movement, the warrior's hand was crushed between rocks, ribs creaked, and deep scratches appeared on his skin. Still, he persisted.
When he realized that the golems were held together by a living web of mystical roots, a self-repairing elemental architecture, Cumber knew the confrontation would require escalation. The clay beasts regenerated beneath the sap that welled up from the soil; cuts healed; limbs were reconstituted.
Then, in a burst of will, Cumber resorted to a bestial resource: creating an artificial "moon." The transformation into an Oozaru (the "Great Ape") is activated by the sight of a full moon and by receiving Blutz Waves, a physical phenomenon that accelerates certain glands connected to the tail and amplifies power tenfold.
In times of moonlessness, mechanisms or energy spheres can simulate the same effect and induce metamorphosis. Cumber condensed his ki, shaped a silvery globe into the sky, and, in an act of primal fury, pointed it like a forbidden beacon.
The change was primordial. Cumber's body grew; his skin became a thick coat of fur; his arms lengthened, and his gait became a hammering sound. An ancient roar shook the trees. The Oozaru that formed was not only large, it was a manifestation of multiform fury.
He shook his hands, ripping out stone pillars to hurl at the golems; one hand crushed a clay titan and hurled its head like a projectile. The power emanating from it was raw, chaotic, and seemed capable of tearing the very veil of the sky.
But as the Oozaru crushed, the forest reacted. The plants were not innocent witnesses; they were ancient sentinels.
Toothed vines sprouted from the interstices, nooses twisted, and tangled roots formed rings that pulled at the Oozaru's giant legs.
The colossal body struggled, but each pull was accompanied by a sound like blades siphoning energy. Slowly, the sap that fueled the transformation began to fail: the Oozaru felt his ki draining, an invisible trickle that drew heat and strength.
The vines, it would later be claimed, were cultivated by a natural antidote from the forest itself: parasites that sucked the vigor from predators to protect the network.
The Oozaru roared, tore up more and more bushes, released puffs of energy with what was left (techniques similar, in comparison, to blasts expelled from the mouths of some beasts in the galaxy), and in a final devastating act created a shockwave that demolished three golems at once.
But the price was high: the transformation began to break. The artificial moon shattered into fragments of brilliance, and without support, the Saiyan's body shrank to a human form. Cumber fell to the ground like a collapsing mountain, wounded, bloodied, his breathing noisy, and his steps short, betraying exhaustion. The victory was partial.
As Cumber crawled, the world around him felt slower. The map had marked the area with a cross, and there, in the belly of a tree that seemed carved by ages, a small fruit gleamed.
It wasn't large; it seemed almost fragile compared to the grandeur of the forest. But energy flowed from it, a pulse that combined color and intent: not an innocent glow, but a magnetic flow that appealed to the warrior's most primal instinct.
Cumber, his mouth full of blood and his muscles knotted, saw his own hand reach out.
The realization was instantaneous: this was what the map promised. He didn't hesitate. He used the last shreds of his strength to break the vines that bound him, an explosion that swept around and opened a field of dust.
In a screaming leap from his chest, he grabbed the branch, climbed up, and before the forest had time to react again, sank his teeth into the fruit.
The first moment was agony. A scream rent the air as if the universe itself were startled: the taste was fire and ice at the same time, blood and metal, memories and promises.
But then, as if an ancient switch had been flipped, an aura rose, not just any aura, but a dense wave of malice. Pupils, red as embers, appeared in the already bruised eyes; pain turned to laughter, and all the wounds closed like curtains being pulled back by invisible hands. Power coursed through every fiber, igniting and reshaping them.
The psychological shift that accompanied the physical one was worse: Cumber's thoughts ceased to be just fighting; they became a hunger for devastation.
Where once there was a burning displeasure for tedious missions, there now resides a blind thirst for subjugation, for seeing the terror in the eyes of others.
The ki now emanating was impossible to ignore, thick, hot, and imbued with a hatred that seemed to devour the very air. There was no longer any strange volition: the birth of Cumber, the evil Saiyan, had happened here, beneath the tree. His laughter filled the clearing, a laughter that held echoes of eons and of something older than the race itself.
As he stood, supported by only one arm, the world before him seemed smaller. He raised his hand and tested the power with a simple gesture, a spark that became a blade, a blade that became wind, and the wind that swept through the foliage like an army.
The sensation was overwhelming: total healing, power without apparent limits, and a clarity of purpose that turned strategy into compulsion. Cumber lifted his face to the sky and roared once, a bellow that would cross valleys and reach the very foundations of Tarvok's base like a promise of birth.
On the way back, and yes, Cumber decided to hurry back, he spared no expense to the wildlife that tested him. Where once there were simply passages, now there were craters and trees reduced to stakes.
His hunger for confrontation was beginning to manifest itself: he wanted proof, he wanted the world to perceive his move not as rumor, but as catastrophe. On his return journey, crossing a valley, he encountered a group of looters howling over their spoils.
Without blinking, Cumber annihilated them, his ki vibrating so that the very earth seemed to tremble with evil.
As he stood before Tarvok, the leader's expression was one of icy satisfaction.
No grandiose words were needed, Tarvok saw the animal glint in Cumber's eyes and knew he had made the right call.
Cumber, now fueled by the fruit and the transformation, bowed his head in a cruel bow that was part promise, part cowardice. Tarvok had gotten what he wanted: not just a stronger warrior, but an instrument of terror, a blade that would know no limits.
Still, something resided in the forest, a seed of doubt that only the ages would confirm.
The power Cumber had gained was stolen from an ancient balance, a transgression the forest would not easily forgive. After all, the tree that created the fruit was none other than one of the seeds Omega sent across the Omniverse.
Now the universe, ever so patient, watched.
But at that moment, in that hall where red flags fluttered like trails of blood, Cumber raised his fist and laughed.
Tarvok smiled with satisfaction, and on the map, Arvek's dots lined up, ready to strike Yamoshi. Meanwhile, somewhere in Sadala, the legend of Yamoshi continued to shine like a timid beacon, unaware that the world was preparing a new chapter of war and horror.