At the moment the transmigration transfer began, the surrounding scenery turned into lines, streaking backward at incredible speed.
In less than two seconds, it was as if he had entered a pitch-black tunnel; everything around him fell into darkness. But very quickly, color returned again, though everything was still in the form of countless lines.
Just as Broly, feeling a bit curious, was about to reach out to touch the lines around him, the scenery suddenly froze, and his figure appeared on a staircase in a basement.
A rustling sound came from behind him, faintly mixed with an almost inaudible sobbing.
"Hm?"
Broly turned around. On the steps below where he stood, he saw a scene of a large mass of wriggling worms crawling about.
And in the middle of this pile of plump, tender worms, there was a slightly bulging lump of worms, from which that faint sobbing was coming.
Broly thought for a moment, then jumped into the center of the worm pile and directly reached out to tear open the worm-covered lump that was making noise.
When the worm pile was pried apart, it revealed a little girl underneath, completely naked. Her face was streaked with tear marks, her eyes were red and swollen as if she had been crying for a long time, and the whimpering that had been continuously escaping her lips paused in dazed surprise upon seeing the light again.
"Are you sleeping in the food pile?"
Broly asked curiously, his gaze locking onto a worm crawling across the girl's fair chest. These worms were white and tender; although they had some sharp teeth, they looked far tastier than Vampa spider larvae. This made Broly involuntarily swallow.
Hearing this, the young Sakura Matou did not know how to respond for a moment. Half a month ago, her father had sent her to the Matou family as an adopted daughter. On the very day she became their foster child, the old man named Zouken Matou had brought her here.
"Your element for magecraft is Imaginary. You'll have to undergo some modification before you can better inherit the Matou family's magecraft crest."
The dried-up, withered-looking old man had said this, then tossed the freshly acquired foster daughter from the Tohsaka family into the underground worm pit.
Ignoring the girl's crying and fear, he controlled the crest worms in the pit to carry out the initial modification, using the corrosive magical energy carried by the crest worms to corrode the Imaginary-element magic circuits in the girl's body.
The process was not only visually horrific; for the one being modified, it was also an indescribable torment, with the entire body suffering pain like being pricked all over with needles.
It took only a few days for the girl to go from crying and struggling loudly to enduring it with low sobs, all while holding onto the hope in her heart that her family would come save her.
Whether it was her elegant, gentlemanly father, her gentle and virtuous mother, or even the older sister who sometimes bullied her—any of them would be fine.
However, none of the family members she imagined would come to save her appeared. Instead, a boy she did not know, who looked only a little older than she was, appeared before her.
In this hopeless environment of being buried in a mass of worms, he had pulled away the bad worms crawling on her and biting her, then squatted down to look at her with concerned eyes.
Although she could not understand what he had just asked, one should always say thank you when being helped by someone. The etiquette education from the Tohsaka family had not been forgotten just because she had become the Matou family's foster daughter.
Enduring the lingering prickling pain on her body, the young Sakura pushed herself up from the ground and tried hard to open her mouth to say thank you to the boy in front of her, but her throat was hoarse and she could only produce a mosquito-like whisper.
Broly could not hear what she said clearly, but when the girl stood up and fully revealed herself, a line of information surfaced in his mind.
"Sakura Matou, one of your figure wives, can be targeted and invited to join the Crystal Palace as a member."
"You're my wife?"
Broly asked this in a questioning tone.
"Eh?"
Faced with this question, young Sakura was utterly stunned.
But then she thought of how her mother had told her fairy tales when she was little.
Stories where the prince on a white horse saved the Black Snow Princess, and the two of them came together and became husband and wife.
"I'm not your wife, but I can become your wife."
Comparing herself to the fairy tales, her own situation seemed similar.
With that thought in mind, young Sakura answered softly.
This time, her voice could barely be heard clearly.
"If you're my wife, then I'm hungry. Do you have anything to eat?"
Broly stretched his hand out to young Sakura.
The Crystal Palace had said it: a wife was a being who would give him things to eat.
Since she had so much food here, she should give him some, right?
So Broly thought.
Looking at the worms gathering close again around them, the eagerness in his eyes grew even stronger.
Suddenly becoming someone else's wife, and then suddenly having her little husband ask her for food—
This was something young Sakura had never experienced before.
However, she did have experience playing house. She knew what she should do now.
When the husband was hungry, the one playing the wife should bring him food.
But whenever she was called into the worm pit to undergo modification, she would be told to take off all her clothes, so she had nothing on her right now.
Facing the boy's outstretched hand asking for food, young Sakura felt at a loss. Just then, the door to the worm pit was pushed open, and a hunched figure walked in with a cane.
"Sakura, who is this?"
Zouken Matou looked down from above at the boy who looked like a little street urchin that had appeared in the worm pit, frowning as he questioned his foster granddaughter.
"G-Grandpa…"
Seeing Zouken Matou, young Sakura's body began to tremble. To her, Zouken was an extremely terrifying person.
"I don't know him. I'll behave and accept the modification. Please don't punish me."
Saying this, the frightened girl lay back down on the cold ground.
"So miracles really don't exist. Faced with Grandpa, this big brother who came to save me will definitely be killed…"
Tears once again flowed uncontrollably from her eyes. She did not know whether she was crying for the boy who was about to die beside her, or for herself, who would have to continue enduring the crest worms' modifications.
"I really am getting old, letting a kid break into the worm pit before noticing something was wrong. Brat, you truly are unlucky. But since you've barged in here, then become food for the worms. Go, eat him."
Zouken Matou raised his hand and issued an order to the worms in the pit. The crest worms that received the command instantly became aggressive.
"But don't harm Sakura. Her body is the Matou family's precious womb and placenta for nurturing offspring with better potential."
The crest worms avoided the young Sakura and crawled all over Broly, using their sharp teeth to tear at the boy's flesh.
Ripping sounds rang out as the tattered battle armor was shredded by the crest worms' fangs, making quite a racket.
"Uu… uu…"
The girl's sobs grew louder. She could do nothing, and had caused the death of someone who came to save her.
"Your grandpa is really a good person, you know!"
Yet from within the human-shaped mound of worms, such a voice came.
"Slurp~"
Right after that, chewing and swallowing sounds began to ring out.
Broly swung both hands, grabbing the worms crawling on him and feasting on them.
The worms were neither bitter nor astringent; they really did taste much better than Vampa spider larvae.
"The shells are crunchy, the meat tastes like chicken, and the protein content is eight times that of beef…"
As he gulped down worm after worm, such information surfaced in Broly's mind as well.
With a small grab, yet another worm was caught in his hand.
Slurp—he sucked the tail end of the worm into his mouth.
Crunch—his teeth bit down, and rich, savory juices exploded in his mouth.
With a casual toss, the worm's fanged head landed to the side.
Soon, a little pile of worm heads had formed there.
Even without bodies, the sharp-toothed mouths of the worm heads were still opening and closing.
At this moment, both young Sakura and Zouken Matou felt their minds go blank.
So crest worms were actually something one could eat?
No matter what they thought, however, the fact was right in front of them.
The Saiyan diet was quite broad. As long as something did not harm them when eaten, they could digest most things they swallowed.
Compared to some food that was hard to digest (like certain aliens), the crest worms of the Type-Moon world were clearly excellent nutritional supplements, filled with abundant energetic (magical) substance.
"Brat, you're not a normal human. What exactly are you?"
Zouken Matou questioned him. He had already discovered that the crest worms' sharp teeth could not even pierce the skin of the little brat below.
"Mmph… I'm… mm, called Broly. I'm a Saiyan."
Given that the other party had sent him so much tasty food, Broly answered Zouken's question quite politely.
"Saiyan? What kind of people are those?"
Hearing this, Zouken Matou was puzzled. He ransacked his vast, erudite memory but could not find any information about Saiyans.
"Never mind who you are. Since you dare eat my worms, you'd better be ready to pay the price."
"Huh? Weren't these things something you gave me to eat?"
Broly's mouth filled with another burst of worm juice as he asked in surprised rebuttal.
"How could they possibly be for you to eat? Every single worm here has been carefully bred by me as a precious crest worm for changing a magus's elemental affinity. Each one costs over five million, and on top of that I've put in a great deal of time and effort…"
The Matou family's mundane finances had not been good for nearly a century, and this underground worm pit took up a substantial portion of the Matou family's wealth. It was a kind of magical workshop real estate. Just look at the pile of leftover worm heads over there—restoring the pit to its former state would require another enormous investment.
"So they weren't for me to eat."
Broly sounded a little disappointed, but his mouth did not stop moving as he sucked another worm that had crawled near his lips into his mouth.
"It crawled in here on its own. That has nothing to do with me."
He argued like this while chewing up the worm in his mouth and swallowing it, looking entirely like someone trying to use the opportunity to sneak a few more bites of good food.
"Ueh~"
Beside him, the girl finally could not hold back and began dry heaving on the floor.
"Are you mocking me?"
Zouken Matou's face grew ugly. He waved his hand to summon several flying crest worms.
"Kill him!"
These bugs, which looked like enlarged wasps, buzzed their wings and swooped toward Broly.
"More food!"
Broly's eyes lit up. He casually snatched one of the wasp-like worms out of the air and took a bite.
"Boom~"
The large wasp he bit into exploded directly in his mouth.
"Fool. That's a self-detonating worm I specially modified."
Watching the smoke and dust from the explosion, Zouken Matou spoke smugly.
"So this kind you can't eat."
But Broly's somewhat disappointed voice sounded from within the smoke.
"What the—how are you fine?"
When the smoke cleared, Broly's body, apart from having the last scraps of his clothes blown off, did not show a single trace of injury.
"The law of 'lots of smoke, no damage.' You really don't know it?"
Broly asked back in puzzlement.
"Wait. Because of the explosion, your wife has been frightened. Her Happiness Value is dropping. Please raise her Happiness Value as soon as possible.
"The higher the Happiness Value, the easier it is to capture your wife, and after she agrees to the invitation to join the Crystal Palace, the more Happiness Points will be converted at once…"
Broly read aloud the prompt from the Crystal Palace in his mind, then turned his head and saw the girl shivering on the floor behind him.
"So what is the point of this wife, exactly?"
Such a question arose in Broly's mind, but his body moved faster than his thoughts. Grabbing another of the large wasp-like crest worms, he floated over to Zouken Matou. Before the old man could react, Broly shoved the worm into his mouth.
"Boom~"
Another explosion. Broly remained completely unharmed, but Zouken Matou's head was blown clean off.
Without its head, the withered body slid stiffly down the stairs and hit the floor.
In the worm pit, the worms, having lost the one who controlled them, sensed an aura of supreme predator radiating from Broly and quickly shrank back into the corners of the basement.
"Law of inheritance?"
Broly muttered the new piece of information that had surfaced in his mind, then floated down to land beside the girl and awkwardly spoke his mind to her.
"I killed your grandpa. Now his food is yours. I'm still a bit hungry. Can you give me some more food?"
Broly had eaten quite a lot of worms in the pit, but for a Saiyan's appetite, that amount of worm meat was clearly not enough.
"Eh?"
Hearing this, young Sakura raised her head and saw her grandfather's headless corpse not far away.
"Ah?"
Instead of fear, what rose in her heart was joy.
"Do you still want to eat those worms?"
She asked.
"Is there some problem with that?"
Broly tilted his head, not really understanding what she meant.
"That's not food."
Young Sakura once again pushed herself up from the floor, wiped the tear tracks from her face, and said.
Broly: "…"
He felt deeply deceived. The Crystal Palace had clearly said that a wife was someone who would give him things to eat.
Yet this wife did not give him anything to eat at all. She was far less generous than the grandpa he had just blown up.
"I can take you to eat things that are really edible."
Very quickly, though, Sakura's next sentence dispelled Broly's resentment.
"Things that are really edible? What are those?"
Broly was extremely curious. In his short life so far, bugs had been the most common food.
"Like cake, pudding, and so on."
Young Sakura thought for a bit, then mentioned the best things she had ever eaten.
"Cake? Pudding?"
Those two words rang a bell in Broly's mind, but he could not recall exactly what they were.
Still, his sense of anticipation was cranked up to the maximum.
"Where are they?"
"In the fridge. Uncle Kariya bought them for me a few days ago."
Young Sakura replied.
With Zouken Matou dead, much of the shadow over her heart dispersed.
Even the hoarseness in her voice eased a little, regaining some liveliness.
"What's a fridge?"
"A fridge is… um, come upstairs with me and you'll understand."
Grabbing Broly's hand, young Sakura pulled the boy up the stairs.
She did not want to stay in this basement worm pit for another second.
After leaving the basement with Broly, Sakura headed straight toward the kitchen.
"This is the fridge."
In the kitchen, she opened the refrigerator to show Broly the real thing. The cold air pouring out of it gave Broly a fright.
The little Saiyan hastily jumped back a few steps, warily eyeing the object spewing cold air. No information surfaced in his consciousness, so he could only cast an inquiring look at the girl beside him.