Arlic:

Viltrum On The Attack!

The allied territories of the Scutum Arm Sector are still reeling from yesterday after Viltrumite forces broke the decade-long ceasefire in the sector. Hundreds of billions are already reported dead or missing after over 20,000 Viltrumite warriors and warships stormed the alliance's borders.

'Well, that isn't terrifying in the slightest.' I thought with no small amount of sarcasm as I continued to scroll through the galactic news feed on my tablet.

Thank god our two empires were practically on the opposite sides of the galaxy from each other. I had no doubt that one day in the future I'd have to fight a Viltrumite, but that day wasn't now or anytime close thankfully.

Especially when it seemed that the genetically engineered virus that killed most of them in the comics hadn't been made or deployed here. That wasn't a pleasant thought. However, it did seem that they were quickly encroaching upon The Reach. Hopefully, those beetle armor-wearing bastards would keep them occupied for a while.

"You know, I think you're the only warrior caste saiyan I've ever seen that's willing to read something that's not about how to fight better." Olve said from beside me, "I didn't even know you all were capable of reading."

I looked away from my tablet and shot a dry stare at the girl whom I was both the same age as and yet the legal guardian of. It was an odd arrangement. Due to me technically being an adult by law despite being 7 years old physically, which was a benefit of my military service. Something those laborers and eggheads didn't receive.

"You know, I pay for you to go to school so that you can be the next great scientist of our race. Not so you can bully me for being a dumb fighter." I said sarcastically, "I miss when you were just a small runt that couldn't speak without stuttering."

Olve puffed her cheeks at me, "I am not a runt! Professor Okraos even says I should be getting close to my first growth spurt! Bet I'll be taller than you even once you have yours!"

I rolled my eyes. Olve could be taller than me for all I care. All I wanted out of the growth spurt was the increase in power that was said to come with it. Apparently said power bump varied from saiyan to saiyan, but even a moderate one combined with my natural growth rate could potentially put me within spitting distance of mid-class within a couple of years.

And I don't know about you, but Arlic the Mid-Class saiyan sounded so much nicer than Arclic the Low-Class saiyan.

"Oi! Are you even listening to me!"

"What was that? I couldn't hear you from down there?"

"Grrrrr," Olve growled as she crossed her arms in irritation.

The little saiyan was just too fun to mess with sometimes. Especially when I poked fun at her for being an egghead or for being so small.

I reached over and ruffled her hair despite her attempted swats to stop me, "You know as much fun as it is teasing you, I'll have to head back to the front soon to link up with my team. That means I'm going to need those names sooner than later."

Olve sent me a look that was half exasperation and half embarrassment, "Arlic no!"

"C'mon Olve. If you don't tell me then I'll just have to go through the whole campus myself until I find them." I warned as I leaned back in my seat on the bench.

"Absolutely not!" The little saiyan stubbornly demanded.

"I just want to talk to them." I promised.

"Garbashit!" She accused

I sighed, "I don't care what anyone says, bullshit sounds so much better."

Olve tilted her head in confusion, "What's a bull?"

I caught on to what the little gremlin was trying to do immediately, "You're not derailing this Olve. Who. Are. They?"

Olve's cheeks burned crimson with embarrassment, "Saiyans don't fight other saiyan's battles! I should have never told you…"

I snorted, "Yeah, well not this saiyan. Besides, you're not a warrior. Now tell me who before I send half your school to the healing pods."

The crimson stain on her cheeks intensified before she silently nodded to a group of saiyans and a few non-saiyans who were hanging around by the school's entrance.

Seeing non-saiyans with saiyans was always odd for me. The slave races were usually related to laborers, techies, logistics, and sometimes even conventionally armed peacekeeping forces if they were compliant enough. But they were never anywhere near the strike teams or the front lines. Honestly, besides the occasional trip to the hospital to be put back together on an operating table or a store where I needed something from between missions, the only non-saiyans I normally saw were the ones I was being told to kill, subjugate, or recon.

But it was different for the non-warrior saiyans I guess. And given the fact we were outside of a techie school, I assume these non-saiyans were more than likely children from the indentured servant/client race who showed academic potential.

"Which one's the main one?" I asked.

"The one with the three bangs…" She mumbled.

I partially flared my Ki and crossed the courtyard in an instant.

My sudden appearance startled them all and I saw most of them pale at the sight of the high-end scouter on my face and partially scared battle armor.

"The fuck is a warrior doing here?" I heard one of the non-saiyans mumble.

"Uh, can we help you?" Three bangs asked.

I tapped my scouter.

P.L: 2,500

About average for a techie who was probably a little older than Olve and I.

"No." I responded before I simply punched him in the face.

I heard bone crumble and gray matter squelch as the simple strike caved his skull completely in.

Huh, so this was how it felt to be Mayze when she spars with me.

There were yelps of surprise as three bangs fell to the ground with a dull thud.

This was another bonus due to being a warrior in the military. Anyone weaker than me who wasn't in some kind of vital role like head architect or researcher? Well if I felt like I needed to beat the shit out of or kill them, I simply could.

Well within reason. I couldn't just go around straight-up genociding. No, that was only reserved as treatment for the non-saiyan species that were somewhat expendable.

Off to my side, I heard screams from the said non-saiyans.

"Listen up. I'm Olve's big brother and this is a warning. Harass her in any way again and I'll turn you all into stains on this duracrete." I said bluntly and straight to the point, "Understood?"

If it was any other species of children, I probably would have just shown up and threatened them a little. But saiyans, even techie saiyans, wouldn't back down from such a thing. The only way to get them to understand and process it through their thick skulls was by putting your first through them first.

The weaker saiyans looked at me and nodded warily. I almost expected them to try and fight for their friend, but a couple years at this tech academy with no combat training had already dulled their bloodlust slightly it seemed.

"Have a good day then. Oh, and you might be able to get your buddy to a healing pod before he croaks if you run fast enough." I snorted before flying back over to Olve.

In most societies there might have been the issue of the kid having a higher class parent who might try to kill me or get me sent to some shitty assignment for what I had just done. But a twisted positive of being a saiyan meant that the parents would probably just disown the kid if they tried to have their parents fight their battles for them.

Olve hadn't been wrong when she said saiyans don't fight other saiyans battles, and I knew that if my team ever heard about this, I'd never hear the end of it. But hey, I already had a reputation for being soft anyway.

Landing in front of the little saiyan, she was still blushing and pouting as she looked up at me, "You didn't have to do that."

"Yeah, I did." I disagreed, "And if anyone does it again, just write their name down and I'll create some new vacancies in your class. Now c'mon. Let's go get something exotic to eat."

I groaned as I pulled a strange black knife out of my spleen. All the while mentally lamenting and wondering what I could've possibly done in my last life to end up in a new one where this was normal.

Was it because of test answers for that one really hard math class I leaked to help some of the brothers and sisters out? The movies I legally acquired? The stop signs I occasionally ran?

I truly wondered sometimes.

Flipping the ebony blade in my hand, I shook off the blood and chunks of tissue to get a better look at it. Which didn't help much to be honest. Whatever the hell it was made of must've been some kind of magic or exotic material, because despite being solid like metal, the surface rippled like water.

Though it seemed to be quite common on this planet. All their warriors had large melee weapons made of it, the archers with arrows tipped by it, and even the rogues had knives made of it. Which is how I had been stabbed. I was going through an archive when some little bastard with invisibility casted had sneak attacked and critted my spleen.

My saiyan blood enjoyed turning him and everything within a 2-mile radius into an ashen crater. Though that might have been an overreaction.

I already missed that nice planet I sent Olve to school at and it had only been a couple months since I had last visited. Nothing trying to actively kill me and good food? Was that so much to ask for?

The universe decided apparently so.

Injecting a little bit of bio-foam into the wound and securing the knife into a strap on my armor, I tapped my scouter and selected the record option.

"Add a note: Life forms on this planet make use of a strange metal that can pierce through armor and Ki-enhanced flesh with relative ease. I would recommend finding high and even elite-class volunteers to see if this metal has a limit on what it can pierce. Would have these properties tested on various exotic materials as well. Also, tell the techies to update the scouters to see through more forms of magic invisibility! I'm tired of getting stabbed!"

Leaning back atop the ruins of the destroyed building I sat on, I breathed a sigh of relief.

The people of this world seemed to be in a renaissance era of technology, but thankfully they were still pre-gunpowder and had no advanced ballistics of any kind. Had they actually been somewhat advanced, there could have been a decent chance of me dying from a stray bullet or lucky shot had they used this strange metal as a munition.

Very light amounts of magic too. No planet-wide teleportation or communication spells like I had seen on other planets previously. Either whatever magic system they were using here was very "light" or they simply hadn't advanced it enough, but that worked out fine for me. Despite this probably being considered a "major" city for this planet, without an advanced communication system, it would be days if not weeks before word spread of its destruction on this continent.

Much less the rest of the world.

This world's nations would probably blame each other or think it was some random dark lord who did it. Though not that it would really matter even if they did guess that it was because of aliens.

This planet was weak enough for even a low-level squad to clear within a couple days.

Bits of guilt gnawed at me as I readied the rest of the report. I had already ransacked this city's libraries, private collections, and universities for information on this metal and its uses. Information that would doom this planet and its biosphere completely.

If the surveyors confirmed that this planet had as much of this exotic metal as the inhabitants seemed to indicate it had, it wouldn't be long before the mining guild showed up and just strip-mined this planet down to the last bits of its core.

But, perhaps I could save some of them.

"Add a note: While not as powerful as others encountered, the primitive population does display several interesting abilities, including another form of invisibility that fools our scouters as mentioned before. I would recommend taking several million of them and relocating as done with other species previously for observation and study."

Satisfied with my good deed for the day, I taped the send button.

I scrolled through lists of planets that I could possibly go to next within my sector as I lounged in my attack ball. But this time I wasn't looking for the big blue rock that I had once called home. No, this time I was looking for fictional worlds of my last life.

While this was a DC universe primarily, due to the sheer amount of DC empires I somewhat recognized and the Green Lanterns, there were also Viltrumites here. Which had nothing to do with DC. That was something with both great and terrifying implications.

Because on one hand: What other fresh hell might have been unleashed into this universe from other series?

On the other: That meant the possibility of other forms of power-ups existing.

And a power-up, or even better, an energy multiplier was something I was in desperate need of.

Not that I was complaining about my growth mind you. It had been months since I had taken my first mission as a ranger and my power was now nearing 29K. A combination of having to sometimes take on entire planets alone, getting my shit rocked by exotic energies and tech, and bouts of training when I found the occasional habitable planet with a gravity well above galactic standard.

But it just wasn't fast enough for my taste. There were dangers and threats in every corner of this hell universe that wouldn't hesitate to kill me. Starting with my own race, all the other shit that came standard with the DC universe, and the fucking Viltrumites.

The latter of which was probably going to be my biggest immediate problem. The lack of the bioengineered virus that wiped them out in their cannon meant there were a minimum of billions of Viltrumites running around. And I was under no illusion that both our war-hungry races wouldn't one day meet and immediately start fighting.

Which considering the rumor was that the weakest Viltrumite ever recorded was sitting at a P.L of 150K? I wasn't optimistic about my chances. Especially when they seem to deploy in squads like we did.

Why couldn't our power levels be scaled like they were in DBZ? If that was the case I'd already be a planet buster and just be able to turn Viltrumites into paste at 29K. But no, instead the best I could do was take out a couple dozen city blocks in my base form.

I needed something! Sacred water, the Kaioken, that green shit that the new Broly had…

Anything!

I had attempted to brainstorm about what in DC I could use, but that was pretty much a dead end. As I had a very low level of knowledge of the DC universe in the first place. Pretty much all being half-assed bits of trivia I remembered from the cartoons and the occasional lore video that would play in the background while doing something, and that was before my memories of those things had degraded from my first 5 years of life here. The only thing I had even bothered to remember was DBZ knowledge since I thought this universe had been more centered around it initially.

Sure, I still remember that Batman was Bruce Wayne and Superman was Clark Kent. But that was practically worth fuck all when I couldn't even find Earth. So here I was, praying to find some other kind of fictional world that might offer me something of use.

Something I wouldn't even be able to do if not for the ranger role. Seriously, whoever had recommended this had my eternal gratitude. Having this much range of freedom without having to be with my squad all the time and higher access to the intel network was a godsend.

"Water world, water world, desert world with an FTL additive and giant worms, continental world with bug people that age really fast." I muttered as I read and scrolled through the bare-bone notes of worlds that had been buzzed with simple telemetry probes or taken from the galactic net via the notes of other alien explorers, "Paradise class world with energy manipulation restricted to basic elements, a continental world with a people obsessed with swords, sword-based energy attacks, and major cult activ- wait a second."

Scrolling back up, I clicked on the planet with the elemental energy manipulation to see if any images and planetary geography had been taken and uploaded. The screen chimed in confirmation as my tablet uploaded and displayed the requested data, and I was met with a vaguely familiar topography.

Oh, I might be able to work with this.

I just had to hope that a certain spirit owl had a far more expansive library due to being in a galactic size setting. After all, surely the spirit world wouldn't be limited to one planet?

I hope.

Typing in the coordinates and hitting the confirmation button, I also made sure to shoot a message out to Mayze to warn that I would be late for our team's rendezvous. Normally I'd get my ass beat for busting deadlines, but a hint that I had found an ancient data cache would soothe most ruffled feathers.

I had no idea what she or her bosses were looking for exactly, but I'd picked up on that whatever it was, it was old. She wouldn't have had me sacking ancient libraries and archaeological data on planets I performed recon on if it wasn't.

So a little lie like this was perfectly believable.

I felt the FTL drives kick in as my pod began inducing me into stasis. Only one thought left in my mind while my vision darkened.

Would that cactus juice have any effect on a saiyan?