Darkness.
Endless and absolute.. so complete he couldn't tell whether his eyes were open or closed.
Dampness.
Heavy, suffocating, seeping into his mouth and nose until he tasted mud and decay
Dirt.
It was wet, cold, and reeked of rot, smeared across his face.
"Cough… cough!"
His consciousness felt as though it had sunk into the depths of the ocean, struggling to rise.
He coughed violently, hacking out mouthfuls of muddy grit..
Where am I?
He tried to open his eyes, but his eyelids felt unbearably heavy, as if they'd been glued shut. With great effort, he managed to pry them open a sliver.
But.. He couldn't see a thing. His body felt as heavy as lead; even moving a finger took effort.
Worse yet, something was pressing down on him from all sides. He felt buried, crushed, unable to breathe properly.
"What the… what's going on? Am I buried alive?"
A chill shot through him, and the last of his strength surged up.
He twisted his body desperately, his hands clawing upward.
His fingernails quickly packed with cold, wet dirt, but he didn't care. Instinct pushed everything else aside.
"Damn it, open up!"
He roared inwardly, his arms mechanically repeating the digging motion.
He didn't know how long he'd been doing it, but suddenly the pressure above his head lightened, and a faint gray light filtered through along with a rush of cold air.
Saved!
His spirits surged. Using both hands and feet, he scrambled upward like a worm bursting out of the earth, finally tumbling out of the shallow pit in a muddy heap.
"Haa… haa… haa…"
He collapsed at the edge of the pit, gulping down air. The icy wind felt like blades slicing through his lungs.
He breathed ravenously, overwhelmed with the relief of surviving.
After a long moment, he forced himself up and looked back at the spot he'd crawled out of.
It was a crude dirt grave, with a crooked, roughly carved tombstone beside it.
Instinctively, he leaned over and wiped away the mud. A few uneven characters came into view—
"Yamcha's Tomb."
"Yamcha?"
He froze, the name striking him with a strange familiarity.
Wasn't this that character from the manga? That tragic "Yamcha"?
A cold wind blew across him, and he shivered, only then noticing the state of his clothing—torn, ragged, no different from burial clothes.
He looked down at his mud-stained hands… and the several terrifying scars across his chest.
Wait.
A memory stirred. Slowly, he raised a hand to his face.
On his left cheek, a distinctive scar ran vertically across his eye.
His heart tightened as an absurd, impossible thought rose in his mind.
He staggered toward a nearby puddle, not caring how filthy it was, and leaned over to see his reflection.
Staring back at him was a face both familiar and foreign.
Messy black hair stuck to his cheeks, sharp features—and two scars crossing over his left eye.
This… this was Yamcha from Dragon Ball?!
"Holy shit!"
He couldn't stop himself from shouting, completely stunned.
Transmigration? I transmigrated? And became Yamcha?
That same guy whose battle power was measured in the hundreds, blown up by a Saibaman, and later reduced to a background character—that Yamcha?
What the hell!
He slapped his own face hard, and the reflection in the puddle did the same. It hurt. It was real.
This wasn't a dream.
He had really become Yamcha.
Calm down… calm down… He forced himself to breathe, then took in his surroundings.
What he saw made his barely steady mood crash instantly.
This place was a wasteland.
Everywhere he looked, there were only shattered walls and ruins.
Skyscrapers that had once towered over the city were now twisted steel frames, their dark, hollow windows like empty skull sockets.
The ground was pockmarked with massive craters, and charred car wrecks lay scattered everywhere.
The entire world seemed washed in nothing but gray and black—silent, suffocating.
Far in the distance, he could make out the silhouette of several iconic domed buildings, though they were partly destroyed.
That was… West City.
A thought struck him like lightning.
West City destroyed… Yamcha dead… "No… it can't be…" His lips trembled as a far more terrifying realization took shape.
This wasn't the main Dragon Ball timeline he knew.
This was Future Trunks' timeline.
The bleakest, darkest future—where the Z Fighters had been wiped out and the world was ravaged by the two Androids.
In this world, Son Goku had died from a heart virus.
Vegeta, Piccolo, Krillin… everyone had been killed by Android 17 and Android 18. Yamcha, of course, was no exception.
So I really did crawl out of a grave just now… A chill surged from the soles of his feet all the way to his skull, freezing his blood.
"What kind of cosmic joke is this…"
He muttered, face drained of color.
Other transmigrators either became Saiyans, Namekians, or at least started with a system.
But him?
He transmigrated as an Earthling whose battle power had been obsolete for decades, dropped into a nightmare-difficulty future, just crawled out of his own grave, and didn't even have beginner gear to start with.
Just as Yamcha was sinking into despair, a piercing shriek suddenly tore through the sky!
Boom!!!
A distant building instantly disintegrated into dust under a blinding energy blast!
The massive explosion made his eardrums ache, and the ground beneath him trembled violently.
Yamcha stiffly lifted his head, staring toward the source of the blast.
That direction… it was the city center he'd just seen!
His heart pounded, and a name slipped out in shock: "Androids…"
They were nearby!