The training began the moment Piccolo begrudgingly agreed. There was no gentle warm-up, no polite sparring. Kaito did not train them; he pushed them past the point of failure and then pushed them further.
"You waste too much energy," Kaito barked, standing motionless while Goku and Piccolo sparred beneath him, their movements appearing slow and wasteful to his divine senses. "Your power is like water in a cracked bucket. You can gather it all you want, but you leak half of it out just by moving."
His first regime was not about raw strength, but efficiency and suppression. He forced them to constantly maintain a state of perfect Ki control, compressing their entire power level down to a bare minimum, focusing it, and then instantly releasing it only when striking.
"Goku, you feel immense," Kaito instructed, watching Goku struggle to compress his warm Ki. "But you broadcast your movements before you make them. Every time you prepare a punch, I can feel your Ki shift. Every time you gather energy for a blast, it's a neon sign telling the enemy where to look. Suppress! Hold that power deep inside, in your core. Make your opponent guess."
For Piccolo, this was easier. His naturally condensed, cold Ki was easier to control, but his inherent rage was a flaw.
"Piccolo," Kaito observed, deflecting a sudden energy blast with a casual flick of his wrist. The blast vaporized a nearby stone spire. "Your power is contained, but it's fueled by anger. That rage blinds you to the greater threat. If you cannot control your emotions, you cannot control your Ki."
The days blurred into a punishing cycle. Kaito used the full spectrum of his awareness to correct their stances, breathing, and concentration in real-time, instantly identifying and crushing poor habits that had taken them years to develop.
The most effective technique Kaito introduced wasn't a technique at all; it was an exercise in pure mental fortitude.
"Imagine your power level is ten times what it currently is," Kaito challenged, sitting cross-legged while they lay panting in exhaustion. "Now, imagine you have to compress all that power down to the size of a single pebble in your chest. The pressure is unbearable. Now hold it there for one hour."
This exercise, which Kaito called "Mastering the Core", was designed to rapidly expand their Ki capacity and teach them how to handle exponentially greater power without exploding.By the third day, their base power levels were spiking dramatically simply because their vessels had been forcibly expanded.
Goku was the first to achieve a breakthrough. He compressed his Ki so tightly that, for a single moment, Kaito sensed a shift from "powerful" to "terrifyingly dense."
"I felt it!" Goku shouted, panting but grinning wildly. "It felt like... like holding a supernova in my stomach!"
"Fire a Kamehameha," Kaito commanded.
Goku gathered his energy. This time, there was no noticeable Ki flare or warning. The raw power surged into his hands silently, forming a shimmering, focused blue sphere. When he fired it, the beam was thinner, faster, and infinitely more concentrated. It punched a clean, whistling hole straight through three mountains.
[...GOKU POWER LEVELL INCREASED: 100%]
Piccolo watched the demonstration with thinly veiled shock. Even with his talent for condensed attacks, he had never seen such a rapid leap in Ki efficiency.
On the fifth day, Kaito intervened. Raw physical conditioning was needed to support the newly expanded Ki cores.
"Enough of this planet's gentle pull," Kaito announced. He reached into his Gi and pulled out a small, metallic sphere—the size of a marble.
[...TOKEN REWARD: 1000 ACQUIRED. GRAVITY CHAMBER PURCHASED (800 TOKENS) AND ZENITH DETECTION UPGRADE ACTIVATED (200 TOKENS)...]
He dropped the marble onto the plateau. It expanded instantly, unfolding into a sleek, domed structure big enough for three men to train in.
"This is a portable gravity chamber," Kaito explained. "Inside, the gravity can be adjusted up to 500 times Earth's normal pull. We start at 10 times gravity for conditioning. This will forge your bodies to handle the Ki we have awakened."
The two fighters spent the remaining two days inside the chamber, staggering under the weight of accelerated gravity, learning to fight, breathe, and fly under crushing conditions. The combination of "Mastering the Core" and gravity chamber training was brutal, forcing them to use their refined Ki to support their bodies, turning the Ki refinement into physical reality.
When they emerged on the morning of the seventh day, they were exhausted, covered in sweat, but utterly transformed. Their movements were sharp, efficient, and their Ki signatures—though still suppressible—felt like heavy, refined steel instead of fluid water.
"Your bodies are now ready," Kaito said, examining them. "Your core energy capacity has been expanded, allowing you to contain and use power far beyond your previous limits. When you release your full, unsuppressed power, your fighting strength will be four times what it was seven days ago."
Goku looked at Piccolo, and Piccolo actually nodded, a rare sign of respect for the power they now shared. Their combined unsuppressed strength was now theoretically enough to give Raditz a serious, unexpected fight.
"We're ready, Kaito," Goku said, his grin back, but hardened by the exhaustion of the past seven days.
Kaito looked up at the sky. His zenith detection was now covering the entire galaxy. He sensed a growing, impossibly strong, angry Ki signature closing in fast.
"The alien is here," Kaito stated, his tone dropping to a low, warning frequency. "He will land soon, and the technology on his face will detect the highest power level it can find."
[...RADITZ INCOMING. FINAL COUNTDOWN INITIATED...]