What does a speed of 1,000 km/h mean?
- 277.78 meters per second.
- In the blink of an eye, you could sprint an entire track field.
But the Snake Way stretches 1,000,000 kilometers—meaning even at this relentless pace, crossing it would take 1,000 hours.
Roughly 42 days. A month and a half.
In the original tale, when Goku first ran the Snake Way—rest stops included—it took him half a year.
But after training with the King Kai, Goku was estimated to need only 2 days for the return trip. In his desperation to save his friends, he pushed harder, even using the Kaio-Ken, halving the time to just 1 day—blazing through the path and back to Earth via Yemma's Hall.
Crunching the numbers:
- 24 hours = ~41,666 km/h
- 11.5 km every second
And this was Goku at just 8,000 battle power post-training.
Considering he arrived only mildly winded (and unaware of Korin's Senzu backup), he likely didn't push beyond Kaio-Ken x1—a 50% boost, putting his output around 12,000.
At ~12,000 power: 41,666 km/h.
Now, consider Yamiru's current power: 200,000,000+.
1,000 km/h? A leisurely stroll.
If he truly unleashed his speed, what would the numbers look like?
- 100 km/s? 1,000 km/s?
- 10,000 km/s?!
(Light speed, for reference: 300,000 km/s.)
On Earth, Yamiru had never flown full throttle—there simply wasn't enough space. (Earth's circumference: a mere 40,000 km.)
Now, soaring above the Snake Way, a grin tugged at his lips. He wanted to know.
With a thought, the white flames around him erupted into jagged spikes.
BOOM—
A streak of light tore across the golden clouds, parting them like a divine plow, carving a hundred-kilometer-wide trough in the sea of mist.
Accelerate. Accelerate. Accelerate.
His mind emptied—only speed remained.
For a fleeting moment, he remembered those morning runs on Nanbu's country roads, back when he was just a lost soul sprinting to outrun his doubts.
…Too soon, the path ended.
Yamiru slowed reluctantly, landing with a sizzle as his smoldering clothes trailed smoke.
"Hah… Now *that* was a rush."
Above him, the golden halo pulsed, channeling a torrent of energy from the Afterlife's reserves—refilling his drained reserves in seconds.
Fully restored, he gazed ahead.
The King Kai's planet loomed.
Even the slight physical fatigue he had felt earlier was completely gone.
"Being dead really has its perks," Yamiru mused, shaking his head slightly. "Well, more accurately, the benefits of being a Heaven resident are just that good..."
He scanned his surroundings, quickly locking onto a tiny planet floating diagonally above him.
"Strange, I don't sense anything resembling King Kai's ki," Yamiru muttered, puzzled. "Back at the start of the Snake Way, I thought it might be interference from the Underworld's unique spacetime... Now I remember—even in the original story, Goku couldn't sense King Kai's ki at all when he first arrived on this planet. He even mistook the gorilla for the Kai..."
Puzzled but undeterred, Yamiru flew toward the miniature planet.
As he approached, a powerful gravitational pull enveloped him.
"Ten times Earth's gravity?"
Yamiru relaxed his body, letting the increased gravity of the King Kai's planet pull him down.
Whoosh—
He streaked down like a black line from the sky, landing softly on the grassy surface without a sound. Yamiru didn't even need to adjust his stance, already completely accustomed to the tenfold gravity.
During his time with Yamoshi, he had long since trained under hundreds of times Earth's gravity using his self-created "Gravity Technique."
To him now, ten times gravity was about as bothersome as reluctantly wearing thermal underwear in winter—slightly uncomfortable, but ultimately negligible.
"Ook ook!"
An animal's cry reached his ears. Yamiru turned to see none other than the King Kai's pet gorilla.
'Was his name Bubbles?'
Yamiru walked over with a friendly smile. "Hey there."
"Ook! Ook!" Bubbles circled Yamiru, sniffing and examining him as if trying to figure out who this intruder was.
Yamiru let him inspect freely while glancing at the lone house nearby. Still, he sensed no ki whatsoever.
"Is King Kai not home?" he asked conversationally.
Yamiru entered the small house—the door, of course, wasn't locked—and searched inside and out. It wasn't that the King Kai's ki was too advanced for him to detect; the guy genuinely wasn't here.
'Out running errands, maybe?'
Bubbles followed Yamiru around before scurrying back inside, rummaging through some drawers and pulling out a few bananas. He peeled one and offered it to Yamiru.
"You go ahead," Yamiru chuckled, waving it off. "I need to call your boss back first."
"Ook?" Bubbles tilted his head in confusion but happily started munching on the banana himself—until a sudden, violent surge of ki erupted beside him, sending him tumbling head over heels.
The gorilla yelped, scrambling up to see the stranger from Heaven now engulfed in terrifying white flames, his energy visibly intensifying by the second.
This, apparently, was Yamiru's idea of "calling King Kai back."
Having never met the King Kai, Yamiru couldn't just telepathically ping him. Since the guy was MIA, the next best option? Turn his home into a beacon by unleashing enough power to rattle the afterlife.
"Haa—!!!"
Yamiru's muscles bulged, his frame hardening as his aura exploded outward.
BOOM!
A hurricane-force shockwave swept across the entire planet, each successive surge of energy overpowering even its tenfold gravity.
The grass flattened completely—along with Bubbles, who face-planted mid-bite, banana still clutched in his paw.
Yamiru's ki skyrocketed, the pressure so immense even he felt it strain his body, veins throbbing at his temples.
"Sweet merciful stars, who the hell is that?!"
The King Kai's voice—nowhere to be seen—crashed into Yamiru's mind like a freight train, equal parts furious and panicked.