Chapter 18 - Monsters Of Riches and Rags
…
Shula engaged Yamcha. They clashed several times in a split second.
Baam! Baam! Baam!...
The air quaked with each of their punches. They were fast, and Baba couldn't see them. Only hearing their fists clashing was the only sign that they were fighting.
'This young man is stronger than my brother.' Baba calculated. He had to be since Shula was also stronger than Roshi too. It was still a mystery to her why the demon boss had attacked suddenly. He never seemed like the type to do so.
Booom!
One of the houses crashed, and Yamcha's injured body lay amid the wreckage. He was breathing heavily, but he grit his teeth and got up.
The young man smirked confidently. "Is that all you got?"
Baba wasn't sure how good of a plan it was to anger someone like Shula.
The demon boss' eyes narrowed, and rage overturned his whole body. "You!" He yelled out like a maniac. Charging at Yamcha without an ounce of logical thought or reasoning.
At the last second, just before the hit landed, Yamcha crouched, and Shula's fist flew overhead, exposing the demon's midsection.
Yamcha shot two beams from his hands, hitting the demon point blank and causing a huge explosion.
When the smoke cleared up, Shula had his legs and head left, both parts separated, and the demon was dead.
On the other hand, the young man stood above the dead demon's body. A spiked golden sword was running straight through his chest. Blood ran down his mouth, looking at his chest with wide eyes. "N -No… I can't die like this." He fell to his knees.
Devil Man appeared next to the young champion in an instant. "Baba! Come and heal him!"
Baba approached and examined the sword running through his chest. It was too late for her to do anything at this point. The weapon had some strong demonic qualities since it belonged to Shula. It might even be cursed.
Didn't Yamcha knock away the sword with a beam? The sword must have had some ability to summon it back to the user's hand.
Looking at the young man's dying face, knowing she couldn't do much, it sprung Baba's old heartstrings to see someone so young and with so much potential die. "Devilman, pull out the sword in one fell swoop. The demonic magic on that thing is just causing pain. I will try and heal him."
Devilman followed the instructions, and the almost-dead Yamcha winced a little as the sword got pulled out. The weapon had steep edges too, so it was like pulling out a chainsaw; blood and pieces of his organs came out with it.
"*cough* Old lady, I really wanted to learn some magic. Can you imagine how cool it would be if I could shoot a fireball?" Yamcha spoke in a hoarse voice, going into shock, as he started saying delirious things. His face was pale, hands and fingers shaking.
Baba hadn't cried in a long time and wasn't about to start now. But the least she could do was to comfort the young man. "Yes, I will make you the best magician out there. Now stop talking and concentrate on using Ki to stop your bleeding."
"Did you take out all the demons," she addressed Devilman.
He nodded. "Yes."
"Good, we don't want any interruptions during this. Make sure the village's survivors don't get too close," Baba instructed him.
Her hands shined green as she started giving Yamcha some of her life force. Or at least tried to, as immediately she sensed something strange with his body. It felt like Yamcha's whole body was a dimension of its own rules. Nothing could be given or taken from it. Baba hadn't seen such a thing before.
How was this possible? It went beyond just magic and was in the domain of Gods. Not ones like Yanma or Earth's Kami. Such a body was a miracle taking human form. She noticed his wounds had already started stitching themselves together, and even his organs were returning to their original form.
'He is already healing?! Cursed demonic energy is like poison for normal humans, yet his body is acting like it is, at most, the flu. No, maybe it isn't reacting at all. Since this body is a world of its own, demonic energy might not work by the same rules.'
Stabbing himself with a sword through his chest is a bitch and a half.
'Fuck, it hurts! Fuck, it hurts! Fuck, it hurts! Fuck, it hurts! Fuck, it hurts!'
Yamcha clenched his teeth to try and keep calm. Why the hell did this sword cause so much pain? It wasn't like this was the first time a sword had cut him. Even Tao's poison wasn't this painful.
[Willpower increased by 1]
Oh? So you could raise the willpower stat this way too? Seeing that his stats rise, Yamcha was okay with the pain and more accepting of it. Maybe stabbing himself a couple of times wouldn't be so bad.
Until now, he had never tried increasing his willpower stat and improved only due to the circumstances of his training. Still, he hoped at least everything would work out. He had gone through a lot of trouble and pain to make this happen.
He was inexperienced at manipulating things behind the scenes, and wasn't some kind of genius mastermind. But everyone had to be a beginner at one point.
Yamcha learned a lot from this experience. He had to throw another demon in front of the Devilmite Beam so it wouldn't kill Shula, stab himself, and even sacrifice people, which he didn't want to do. However, he did try only to leave the weak old behind and kill any demons that went for kids. That originally wasn't the plan, but planning something and seeing it happen before his eyes were two different things.
Still, those sacrifices hadn't been for nothing. With them, Yamcha will get access to Magic. He thought back to the age-old question: How do you make best friends with someone at a level where they would give you even their biggest secret? Obviously, by saving their life.
…
It took three weeks for Yamcha to 'heal' from the aftershock of the fight. During that time, he only read books about Magic and was taught the basics about it by Baba.
Surprisingly Magic wasn't too complicated. Just 'see' how the Magic Power moves and copy it to create a similar effect. With his Perception, 'seeing' magic was easy.
But to officially awaken magic, well, there are many ways: to be born with it naturally, have magic creature blood, and another was to eat certain magical plants that will unlock your road to magic.
Yamcha was a little different in that regard. His body was that of a Game Character taken form. Game Characters don't have limits to what they can grow, or what they can learn. Sure, compared to if he was reborn in a Saiyan body, his growth might have been faster with the knowledge he had. But as long as he trained and continued growing, Yamcha knew his potential was something not many in this world could match, Saiyan or otherwise.
"Again, your magic pool is low. So you will have to learn the basics," Baba criticized him. He was used to it by now.
She was a cranky old woman, and he can think things like this and not be afraid of her knowing.
'She looks like a young grandma. Wait, is that even an insult? She's so ancient that calling her a young grandma is probably a compliment.'
"What're you looking at, brat?" Baba said, startling Yamcha.
"I just wanted to ask if there has been any news recently. Anything that caught your ear?" Yamcha answered without missing a beat.
"Someone destroyed some private army with a stupidly basic name," Baba used some kind of magic to check his body, something she did a lot recently.
Yamcha guessed she had noticed something strange about him by now. He hadn't tried to hide it, not like he could even if he wanted; at least he had a hint that his body functioned in a magical way, and there was no real science behind it. "Is it by any chance called the Red Ribbon army?"
"Yeah, I think that was their name," she answered absentmindedly, frowning and using another spell.
'Goku should have been able to destroy the Red Ribbon army with relative ease. He was stronger than in the original show, and Tao didn't exist… Shit, he probably didn't climb Korin's tower either.'
If Goku didn't climb Korin's tower, he wouldn't meet Kami, so he wouldn't have Kami convince King Yemma to allow him to travel the Snake Way. Which overall meant no Kaioken, no Super Saiyan, and essentially the whole world was fucked because of one small change.
This was the so-called butterfly effect.
Yamcha wasn't going to and didn't want to take over Goku's place. If he wasn't afraid of the changes he might have caused with his presence alone, he would live the rest of his life in blissful solitude.
Okay, that might be a lie, as he would still want to learn Ki, Magic, and many cool techniques. But Yamcha would have been happy to do that in solitude, maybe have an average wife to cook for him, and everything would have been perfect.
Though he wasn't sure how well he would do in solitude, during this whole time, he blocked some shit from coming to the surface that might come out if he was all alone and had nothing to occupy his mind with.
Baba finished her regular check-up and walked out of the room, just like usual.
'She is probably trying to make sense of my body. It would be impressive if she could. I wouldn't mind learning more about it either.'
Yamcha took out a dragon radar from his inventory and kept track of the Dragon Balls. They weren't gathered. Thankfully, no one had tried making a wish. But he wanted to go and get one in his inventory, just in case for the future. Can't have such dangerous artifacts lying around and ready to use for any two-bit crook to become dangerous.
He had learned a lot of theoretical knowledge from Baba, and she seemed to think he couldn't use it despite the huge amount of magic Yamcha had. Yes, he knew that despite her comments about his magic power being weak, Devilman, who was surprisingly a nice guy, had told him the truth.
She had tried unlocking his magic, but it didn't work. Yamcha learned something valuable from her tests, outside interferences on his body would go away with a good night's sleep. Also no matter how hard she tried, Gamer's mind would block her from going to his mind to unlock the MP.
'It takes years for the average mage to become a novice mage and use their Magic Power. But I am different. As a Gamer, I just need to do it.'
He closed his eyes and looked deep within himself. There was the flame-like Ki traveling through his body, but Magic was in the deepest part of his mind and soul. There were memories and walls, shit he wasn't trying to think about his last life and who he had left behind, and finally, he stumbled on the strange mental/spiritual energy.
With his Perception, Yamcha could see through difficulties others would have in less than a second.
[MP has been unlocked]
He could use Magic, and no one else knew about it. Hidden cards weren't supposed to be shown, and a secret between three people can only be kept if two are dead.
[Name: Yamcha
Age: 17
Title: Champion
Level 50 [EXP: 46%]]
[HP: 1000/1000
MP: 330/330
KI: 399/399]
[Strength: 223
Agility: 177
Endurance: 200
(Power Level: 200)]
[Intelligence: 11
Perception: 100
Willpower: 88
(Magic Power: 66)]
[Status Points: 148]
His status page was coming along nicely too. He was sad some people had to die for this. Even if they were mostly old, each had a life and people they cared for, and others cared about them.
But in life, sometimes you have to do things you don't like to get what you want. Yamcha knew in the future, he might have to do more than just things he didn't like, maybe even things he detested.
He wrote a note saying his goodbyes, left it on the bed for Baba and Devilman, and then he flew off.
…
Yamcha flew over the sea, and his mind wandered. After a while, even flying and defying gravity turns into the same monotonous activity as driving a car.
He never knew if there was an afterlife in his last world and wasn't much of a religious man either, but with what had happened to him, he wasn't sure. Maybe a God or some other all-mighty beings existed out there. This world had its beings like that.
Now, if only Yamcha knew for sure he would end up in the same afterlife as the people of this world, he wouldn't mind dying a little and running the Snake Way. Techniques like the Kaioken were quite suited for his body.
Then he would have Bulma, or someone else gathers the Dragon Balls and revive him. Okay, maybe not Bulma since she might wish for something extra.
Beep! Beep! Beep!
The dragon radar in his hand made a beeping noise as he got closer to the dragon ball.
On the shores close to South Capital City, ashore washed a small ball with one star, and Yamcha picked it up with the dragon radar in hand.
Yes, this was a real Dragon Ball.
He looked around. Wasn't there supposed to be some kind of fight and defeat a lousy enemy that had the Dragon Ball first?
Or maybe that was only Goku's luck as a Shonen protagonist. He always had to fight some bad guy somewhere and had fate on his side. But for Yamcha, it was different, he isn't necessarily too lucky, but he doesn't have bad luck either. Though maybe being reborn with a Gamer interface could be seen as good luck. Depends on how one looks at it.
While he hadn't tested it yet, certain outside interferences to his body seemed impossible. What if he wanted to transform into a Saiyan? Were the dragon balls enough to change his body permanently?
Yamcha rubbed his brows and didn't bother thinking about things to which he had no way of knowing an answer.
He set off and flew eastward and put the Dragon Ball in his inventory.
'I'm not going to make the same mistake as Goku and have his son wear the four-star dragon ball in his hat, which screams: Hey, I'm here, come and kidnap me. Maybe I should advise Goku not to do that when Gohan is born, or if he is born in this timeline. Chances are this shit will go sideways if I don't try and keep it on track. Wait… will I have to put Viagra in Goku's drink to get him to do it with Chi Chi and to make sure Gohan is born at the right time to be useful?'
Yamcha shook his head and dismissed such thoughts for now. He didn't want to think about Goku and Chi Chi doing anything.
"I need a music player or something," he muttered. When traveling alone, some weird ideas always come to mind.
…
It didn't take long to reach Roshi's house, though finding an island in the middle of nowhere was harder than he had thought. In the anime, they always seemed to be able to find it when they needed to. Then again, they usually had maps or Ki Sensing way above Yamcha's current level.
Still, he found the place eventually, and Roshi was on the shore in his muscular form, trying to look cool in front of nice Launch.
Yamcha flew down, and Krillin came out of the house, pointed at him, and called out. "Hey! Yamcha!"
He landed on the ground, and Roshi looked at him. "That movement, levitation, where did you learn it?"
"Learn it? I discovered that myself," Yamcha remembered that Tien Shinhan was the first to show flying in the series, and Roshi might assume he had learned it from Crane School. "Quite easy actually, just push the Ki from the-"
"No! No! No!" Roshi deflated and covered his ears. "I don't want to learn such an overrated movement technique."
Yamcha stared at the older man. He was a little confused. Was Roshi's rivalry with Shen so bad that he wasn't even willing to learn flying? But that's an essential skill later on that any fighter worth anything knows. Yamcha tried to remember if he had seen Roshi flying on the original show, and… he never had.
There's no way someone this old can be so petty, right? Their rivalry was around three hundred years old. There's no way someone could be that petty, right? Yamcha thought. But he knew better than to bring this up again; if the old turtle hermit hadn't given up in three hundred years, Yamcha doubted the old man would give up now.
"Do you know where Korin's Tower is?" Yamcha asked. Despite it being a tower in the sky, finding it wasn't easy. Even Kami's lookout didn't appear in any satellite views. It was probably some kind of magic bullshit.
"Korin? The God of Martial Arts? You know about him," Roshi seemed surprised. "I guess you probably met him. That's where you got your senzu beans from."
"Yes, that guy. The senzu beans are a whole different complicated matter," it wasn't that complicated, but Yamcha gaslighted the argument. "I wanted to try training with him. Since Goku will be stronger by the time we meet again. I still want to be overwhelmingly stronger than him."
Roshi stared at him, and Yamcha saw the cogs turning in that old mind. As Goku's master, there's no way the old hermit didn't want his student to be stronger than some up-jumped bandit.
"Hmm~ maybe later, when he grows up and becomes a bit wiser," the old man seemed to be fairer than Yamcha had thought, or maybe he had already come to a decision but was acting as if this was a hard choice.
It didn't matter in the end, as Yamcha decided to add more fuel to the fire, anything to get Goku to Korin's tower. "Also, thanks for the new technique."
"Huh? What technique?" Roshi broke out of his thoughts and stared at Yamcha. With his sunglasses on, the old master was quite hard to get a read on.
Yamcha closed his eyes and remembered how Roshi had used the technique before he landed on the island. It might have been quite far, but he could see and sense everything the old man did, every muscle, and how his Ki moved.
Every muscle fiber in Yamcha's body was imbued with Ki. The muscles bulged to unnatural proportions, and he had to use Ki to stabilize the gaps in physical muscles.
[You have learned a new Skill: Pump Up]
[Ki Control has risen to Level 31]
Roshi stood agape at what he saw. "N -No way!"
Yamcha smiled and deflated back to normal. 'That's a hard form to keep up. My muscles felt so tight it caused some tears.'
Even now, his muscles had some pain despite using it for only a few seconds.
[Pump Up - Lvl 1/10]
[+100% Strength
+25% Endurance
-75% Agility]
The skill itself was nice for a temporary boost, but in the long run, losing so much speed wasn't good in a fight.
"*Hatchu!*"
Suddenly Yamcha felt a gun pointed at him. The source was a blonde-haired Launch. "I knew you would come looking for me, handsome."
Yamcha looked at her and couldn't help but think. 'Is there a reason why I keep attracting crazy women? It's happened twice now, and the common denominator was me. Shit, am I the problem here?'
"Anyways, see you all later," Yamcha's Ki burst out, and he flew off.
"Hey!" Launch kept calling out to him, but Yamcha didn't hear anything. If she later asked, he would use the excuse of the wind being too strong up here.
He had finished his mission here. Yamcha needed to plant the seed of the idea to send Goku to Korin's Tower. Whether this would work out, he wasn't 100% sure.
Yamcha was planning to go off-planet in the future. But due to the changes he had made, he was a little nervous that there wouldn't be an earth to come back to when he returned.
So he had to plan in advance for that. In this case, he needed a group of specialized people who were strong enough to handle such threats. But how would he gather a group of people like that? Yamcha had gone through many plans, from creating a bounty hunting group or maybe a team of elite assassins.
Amongst all such options, only one stood at the top.
'I have to create a Martial Arts School. Where Earth's Defenders will train in these three years. I almost got what I needed from Earth.'
As he flew over the ocean, Yamcha thought of the more minor but essential details of opening a martial arts school. Unlike Roshi, he didn't want to take a new student every couple of decades and wanted to have a lot of people, at least a hundred.
For something like that, he needed a secluded place, like an island. To get that, he would need money. There were a lot of empty islands in this world, but they didn't have what an average human required for basic survival.
So he needed something that could fix problems like that, also known as money. He had multiple options to get money. The first and easiest way was to ask Bulma, but no, just no. Asking her for money and being in her debt would take a special kind of masochistic person who liked being stalked.
The second option was to turn in Tao's head and get the bounty. But that was dangerous too, as it could cause Shen to do something drastic. He barely changed anything major, yet Tao somehow ended up in the tournament and almost killed everyone. Yamcha had to be careful with these things, despite how weak Shen was by comparison.
Then there was the third option which was why he bothered coming to this desolate place. The Pirate Treasure is a minor plotline in the original Dragon Ball. Goku and the others would have stumbled here during the Red Ribbon Army Arc. He doubted the Red Ribbon army could push Goku so far because the Saiyan at the end of the tournament was stronger than Tao.
"It should be somewhere around here," Yamcha concentrated on his now unlocked Magic Power and drew it around him. He remembered how Baba did it and shaped the Magic Power in a sphere barrier around him.
[You have learned Skill: Barrier Magic]
Immediately the barrier stabilizes and becomes hard as a rock. Yamcha submerges with the barrier around him, and by using Ki he can fly underwater, moving faster than any submarine.
Finding the entrance to the cave was the same as trying to find a needle in a haystack. The chance of it happening by just looking around was close to zero. But Yamcha used his Ki Sensing to try and sense strong life forces.
It took some time, and the sun was about to set, but it barely made any difference when he was almost at the bottom of the sea. Suddenly, while walking amongst the many crevices with the barrier around him to keep the water pressure away, Yamcha finally sensed a strong power.
He remembered that Goku fought some giant octopus, which was quite strong and should have a stronger signature than the other fish around here.
Yamcha looked around and finally found an underwater cave. He entered and saw light from above. He swam upward and stumbled on a dock with ships and submarines. However, they were the old type of submarine. This shows that this place's inhabitants were likely alive a long time in the past.
Click!
He suddenly heard the knock of a gun behind him before bullets rained down.