The months that followed blurred into a relentless cycle of training, exhaustion, and recovery. Time ceased to be measured in days and weeks; it was counted in the increasing difficulty of the Gravity Chamber's setting and the diminishing fear in a four-year-old boy.
Inside the gravity chamber, Goku and Piccolo pushed themselves past limits they never thought possible. Kaito insisted on incremental but brutal increases, guided by his System knowledge of their optimal growth rates. After four grueling months, the 20x setting was mastered, becoming their new normal.
Piccolo thrived under the constant pressure. The harsh environment suited his Namekian physiology and his stoic discipline. He embraced the pain, his power growing rapidly as he refined the Special Beam Cannon, practicing it until the spiraling energy felt like an extension of his own will. He went from fighting exhaustion at 20x to casually meditating at 50x gravity.
Goku met the challenge with his usual enthusiasm, often emerging from the chamber drenched in sweat but energized by the sheer power of his new training. By the time they reached 80x gravity seven months into the training year, Goku's power had more than doubled his strength from the previous year, and his control over his natural ki was becoming incredibly precise.
While the adults trained in the Gravity Chamber, Gohan's development was slower, but infinitely more important.
Kaito started every day by working with Gohan, focusing on simple meditation and ki alignment until the boy could sustain a stable energy flow for an hour. Once Gohan could sit quietly without crying, Piccolo took over.
Piccolo, true to his word, dragged Gohan into the harsh wilderness. The training was brutal: Piccolo threw Gohan off cliffs and forced him to survive in jungles, leveraging the constant stress to trigger Gohan's latent rage. Kaito monitored this remotely, making sure Piccolo never truly crossed the line, knowing that Piccolo's methods, while cruel, were necessary to forge the warrior Gohan needed to be.
One afternoon, six months in, Gohan faced a massive bear-like creature in the jungle. Terror spiked, triggering the massive, uncontrollable ki flare that Kaito had been waiting for. The timid boy was replaced by a screaming titan of energy who accidentally destroyed a large section of the forest.
Kaito, watching from the periphery, smiled grimly. Gohan was terrified of his own power, but he had finally felt its reality. Piccolo, though outwardly cold, used the moment to teach Gohan how to pull the power back, rather than just let it explode.
Kaito, meanwhile, worked on his Mastery Rank D inside the 500x chamber. The objective was complete efficiency, pushing his suppressed form to its absolute limit without breaking its stability.
[...MASTERY RANK D COMPLETE: 100%.]
[...MASTERY RANK C UNLOCKED. NEW BASE POWER LEVEL (Suppressed) IS NOW SENSIBLE TO MASTER ROSHI-TIER FIGHTERS. KI CLOAKING UPGRADE COMPLETE.]
The upgrade was subtle: Kaito's core power was now even more densely compressed, and the ki Cloaking meant that when he suppressed his energy, he was completely invisible to any known form of detection. He continued his training, fully focused on the next challenge: accumulating the tokens for Instant Transmission, even if he didn't strictly need it to travel.
The long months rushed to an end. Kaito, now permanently wearing the black and cyan combat suit Bulma had designed, stood in the lab. Bulma had finally managed to reverse-engineer the scouter's Ki detection sequence and had built a custom scanner.
"It's finished," Bulma announced, placing the device on the table. "It can detect Ki signatures across the entire Earth. And they are here, Kaito. Two of them. Their signatures are incredible, terrifying, actually."
Kaito nodded, his white eyes cold. "I know."
Goku, Piccolo, and Gohan arrived, landing outside Capsule Corp. They were stronger, faster, and hardened, their power levels far beyond what Raditz could have imagined. Krillin, Tien, Yamcha, and Chiaotzu were on their way, responding to the immense Ki signatures that had just ruptured the upper atmosphere.
"It's time, Goku," Kaito said, stepping outside to meet them. "They're landing near East City. No more games. The Earth's defense starts now."