The chamber was a ruin. The floor was a solidified pool of tortured metal, the walls bowed inward as if gripped by a giant's fist. Astra stood at its center, his body humming with newfound power. 2,150. A number that would place him firmly among the mid-tier Saiyan warriors. A number that was a lie, carefully suppressed by his [Energy Harmonization] to read a more believable 350 to any external scanner.
He had survived. He had evolved. But the cost was etched into his surroundings. The Dampening Field had contained the energy signature, but it couldn't hide the physical devastation. The palace structural integrity sensors would have registered the localized gravitational anomaly as a minor seismic event. It was only a matter of time before someone came to investigate.
He had minutes, at best.
With a thought, he summoned the awakened Arcosian Bio-Steel ore from his inventory. The pulsating purple chunk felt alive in his hands, resonating with his own heightened energy. This was not the time for careful forging. This was a time for desperate patchwork.
He placed his hands on the ruined floor and activated the [Stellar Forge] at its highest capacity. He wasn't trying to create a masterpiece; he was performing emergency surgery. He fused the melted duralloy of the floor with the raw, living metal, commanding the Bio-Steel to replicate the room's original structure. It was a brutal, inelegant process, like using a diamond to fill a pothole. The Bio-Steel flowed, hardened, and took on the dull gray color of the surrounding floor, its inherent iridescence suppressed. In under a minute, the chamber appeared whole again, though Astra knew the patch was a blasphemous fusion of mundane and cosmic material that would baffle any engineer who scanned it too closely.
He had just finished stashing the significantly diminished ore when the alert he expected chimed through his Direct Command Interface. It was not from a palace engineer. It was from the King himself. The priority was maximum.
[My chambers. Now.]
The message was devoid of the usual imperial grandeur. It was a razor's edge of cold command.
Astra smoothed his robes, his expression a mask of calm. He walked the polished halls, the eyes of guards and courtiers upon him. The rumor of the "seismic event" in the Technologist's wing had already spread.
The doors to the King's private chambers, not the throne room, hissed open at his approach. The room was spartan, a warrior's den, dominated by a large strategic display table. King Vegeta stood with his back to the door, staring at a star chart of the Saiyan empire.
"Close the door," the King said, without turning.
The doors sealed, plunging the room into silence.
"The report from Captain Borg was… inadequate," the King began, his voice dangerously quiet. "A spatial anomaly. A non-threatening phenomenon." He finally turned, and his eyes were not those of a satisfied monarch. They were the eyes of a predator that had scented blood. "You lied to me."
Astra's heart was a cold, hard stone in his chest. He said nothing.
"The structural sensors in your wing registered a gravitational spike of impossible magnitude," the King continued, taking a step forward. "The kind of spike that could only be generated by technology far beyond our own. Technology you did not report. Technology you have been hiding."
He stopped a few feet from Astra, his power level a suffocating pressure in the small room. "And then there is the matter of your… growth." The King's gaze swept over him, and for the first time, Astra saw a flicker of the King's own [Appraisal]-like skill at work. "Your power. It is a carefully constructed lie. You are not a 350. You are… more. Much more."
The King's hand shot out, not to strike, but to grab Astra's wrist, the one bearing the black command interface. His grip was like durasteel. "You have played me for a fool. You used my resources, my war, to build your own power in the shadows. You are not a tool. You are a rival."
The game was up. The carefully constructed persona of the useful, weak Analyst was shattered. He was in the lion's den, and the lion had just bared its teeth.
Astra met the King's gaze, his own eyes now devoid of pretense. The time for whispers was over.
"I am no one's rival, Your Majesty," Astra projected, his mental voice now sharp, clear, and utterly fearless. "I am your only hope."
He activated the command interface. But not to transmit data. He sent a single, pre-prepared data packet directly into the King's own neural receiver—a gift and a threat, bundled together.
It was a live feed from his Watchtower Partition. The image of the dead entity, the chitinous armor, the symbol of the grasping hand, and the chilling Power Level estimate: 42,000.
The King's eyes widened, his grip loosening slightly. "What… what is this?"
"That, Your Majesty, is the corpse of a being that could have snapped this planet in half without breaking a sweat," Astra said, his voice cold. "It was killed by something else. Something that travels between stars, between dimensions. The Tuffles knew. They found a gateway. The 'spatial anomaly' Borg and I found was the door. A door I intend to open."
He leaned forward, his small form suddenly radiating an authority that made the King take an involuntary step back.
"Frieza is a gnat compared to what is moving in the dark between the stars. You are fighting for a crown on a world that is a speck of dust in a hurricane. I am not your rival. I am the only one building a shelter. Cross me, and you die with the rest of them. Help me, and you might just live to see your son inherit something more than a graveyard."
The King stared at him, his face a maelstrom of rage, shock, and dawning, horrifying comprehension. The scale of Astra's deception was dwarfed by the scale of the threat he revealed. The King of the Saiyans, the conqueror of a world, was suddenly a child being shown the true size of the ocean.
The unraveling was complete. The shadow war was now a open confrontation. But in that confrontation, Astra had not pleaded for his life. He had offered the King a choice: die a king of ashes, or live as a vassal to a god in the making. The balance of power had shifted, not through force of arms, but through the terrifying weight of the truth.