The light died.
Silence rushed back in like a collapsing star.
Vegeta stood motionless, eyes closed, feeling the new universe that now lived inside his skin.
Before: a bonfire.
Now: a supernova compressed into a single Saiyan body.
Fifty times? Sixty?
Numbers felt childish.
He flexed one hand. The air around his fingers warped, ionized, screamed.
Two and a half million.
Give or take a few hundred thousand.
Enough to turn First-Form Frieza into red mist.
Enough to make Final-Form Frieza sweat.
Not enough to make him kneel.
Not yet.
The Grand Elder watched him with ancient, exhausted eyes.
"With this strength… you can destroy the tyrant."
Vegeta's laugh was low, humorless.
"You still don't get it, old man. What you just felt? That was me at rest."
He opened his eyes; twin black holes that swallowed light.
"Frieza's final form is twelve times what I just showed you. Maybe more. Right now I'd lose. Badly."
The Grand Elder's massive frame sagged further, hope guttering like a candle in a storm.
Vegeta stepped closer, voice dropping to a whisper that somehow filled the entire chamber.
"But give me a few days. Let me digest this gift. Let the rage cook a little longer."
He tapped the center of his back, once, the exact spot Cabba had described centuries from now.
"When I tear that gate open and the Super Saiyan wakes up… Frieza won't be a tyrant anymore."
He'll be a footnote.
The Grand Elder stared, feeling the truth of it in his bones.
"…Super Saiyan," he repeated, tasting the legend. "I have seen shadows of gold in your future. If that is the key…"
"It is."
Vegeta turned to leave, then paused at the threshold.
"One more thing. Keep your watchdog on a leash. If Nail interrupts my training, I'll put him in the ground. Permanently. Tell him that."
He didn't wait for a reply.
The door stone ground open on its own.
Outside, Nail stood rigid, fists clenched so hard his nails drew green blood.
Vegeta met his glare with a lazy smirk.
"Relax, Namekian. I'm not your enemy today."
He shot upward, a violet streak that cracked the sky, and vanished toward a distant archipelago of floating islands.
Training time.
Two million five hundred thousand was just the appetizer.
Super Saiyan was the main course.
And Frieza?
Frieza was going to learn what real fear felt like.