Garou's form was a dark red blur against the twilight sky. He didn't just leap; he ascended on a column of pressurized air, halting at eye-level with the towering, confused Demon Serpent. In the instant its three crimson eyes registered this audacious prey, his hand descended.
"Monster Calamity God-Slayer Fist: Piercing Hand."
It wasn't a chop. It was a severing. A surgical strike of absolute penetration.
SHLIK—THWUMP.
The sound was wet, final, and immense. The serpent's legendary metallic scales, which could deflect tectonic pressures, offered less resistance than rice paper. A clean, impossibly precise line appeared from the crown of its head down the entire three-kilometer length of its spine. For a heartbeat, the creature stood bisected, a grotesque monument. Then, with a world-shaking crash, the two halves slumped in opposite directions, mountains of meat collapsing onto the ruined jungle.
Garou landed lightly in the lake of steaming viscera, shaking dark, corrosive blood from his hand with a look of profound boredom. "Clumsy. Annoying."
Saitama, however, was already at the carnage, poking a finger into the exposed, glistening pink flesh. "King! This looks super tender! Do we grill it? Eat it raw? Make soup? The options are stressing me out!"
"Grilling unlocks the fullest flavor," King said, his Emperor Armor dissolving into golden motes of light as he walked, revealing his iconic, stern visage. A faint, knowing smile played on his lips. "But we're in luck. We have a professional opinion on hand." He turned his head, his gaze piercing the dense foliage. "You've watched long enough. Care to join us?"
Thud!
Komatsu's legs gave out entirely, sending him collapsing to the ground. "T-T-Toriko… A Capture Level 5500… one… one hit?!"
Toriko stood frozen, his blue hair plastered to his scalp by cold sweat. As a Heavenly King, he understood the scale of the horror before them. To defeat such a beast would be the fight of his life, a battle that could shatter continents. Yet these strangers… one had treated it like a bothersome weed.
Swallowing the lump of sheer awe in his throat, Toriko stepped from the cover of the shattered trees, his gourmet demon silent for once. "Who… what are you people?"
"Just fellow travelers with an appreciation for fine dining," King replied smoothly. "King. That's Saitama. And the impatient one is Garou."
"An… Emperor?" Toriko muttered, the name resonating with a strange weight.
King's attention shifted to the trembling chef. "We have the ingredients. Would you be willing to provide the expertise?"
Professional instinct overrode primal terror. "O-Of course!" Komatsu squeaked, scrambling to his feet. Almost by reflex, he produced his full kit of specialized cooking tools and approached the mountainous carcass.
What followed was a masterclass. Komatsu, the man with no combat power, became a whirlwind of sublime skill. His knife was a silver flash, parting scale, sinew, and bone with effortless, artistic precision. He navigated the colossal corpse with an intimate understanding of its anatomy, transforming a continent-sized beast into categorized cuts of meat, organs for broth, and glands for seasoning with breathtaking speed and efficiency.
In two and a half hours, a feast was born amidst the devastation. Dozens of dishes steamed, sizzled, and glistened on makeshift stone tables. Charcoal-grilled steaks the size of small cars hissed, their surfaces a perfect, crispy gold. A rich, opaque broth bubbled in a hollowed-out segment of vertebrae. Delicate sashimi, arranged on broad leaves, glistened like pink jewels.
The aroma was a physical force, rich, spicy, and deeply savory, overpowering the scent of blood and ozone.
Saitama and Garou were statues of desperate anticipation, saliva pooling visibly at the corners of their mouths. Saitama's stomach emitted a low, tectonic GRRRROWL.
"Have some dignity," Garou sneered, even as his own throat worked in a hard swallow.
King sliced a portion of the grilled steak. The outer layer crackled, giving way to meat so tender it seemed to melt upon contact with his tongue. An explosion of profound, umami-rich flavor flooded his senses, followed by a tangible warmth that seeped into his very cells. It was more than nourishment. He could feel the dense, vibrant energy of the gourmet cells—the life-force of this world—being absorbed, assimilated, adding an infinitesimal but real layer of potency to his being.
He looked at his two ravenous companions and gave a single, definitive nod.
"It works."
That was all the permission they needed. The feast began.
"Itadakimasu!" Toriko clapped his hands together in the traditional pre-meal gesture, his expression one of solemn reverence for the coming feast.
Exactly 0.01 seconds later—
WHOOSH!
A vacuum-induced gale tore through the clearing. The sprawling, kilometer-long buffet—the grills, the broth cauldrons, the meticulously arranged sashimi platters—simply vanished.
BURP~
Saitama exhaled a contented sigh that ruffled Komatsu's chef hat, patting his perfectly flat stomach as he lay sprawled on a clean patch of stone. "Ahhh. That hit the spot."
Garou, still standing, licked a final speck of juice from his thumb, his gaze sweeping the barren, meat-cleaned bones of the Demon Serpent with clear, predatory dissatisfaction. "Needed salt."
Toriko was frozen mid-bow, his mouth hanging open in a perfect 'O' of absolute, soul-deep shock. For a gourmet hunter, a connoisseur of life's greatest joy, the sight of a legendary feast being inhaled out of existence in less than a blink was a more profound violation than any monster attack.
"Im… impossible…" Komatsu whispered, his professional soul weeping. His masterpiece… gone. Not even a crumb for presentation.
King, the lone bastion of etiquette, calmly finished chewing the single, modestly-sized cut of grilled meat he'd secured for himself. He then handed the remaining, still-steaming portion—roughly the size of a small car—to the stunned duo. "For the chef. You've earned it."
Snapping back to reality, Toriko and Komatsu didn't hesitate. They fell upon the meat, tearing into it with a ferocity that was half hunger, half a desperate need to confirm the flavor they'd worked so hard to create still existed. The explosive taste and the rush of gourmet cell energy confirmed it: they weren't dreaming. The meal had been real. Its consumers were just… unreal.
As they ate, King smoothly steered the conversation. "A trip this deep into the Eighth Continent isn't a casual stroll. What's the target?"
Through a mouthful of divine serpent steak, Toriko managed, "Mmrf… AIR!"
"AIR?" King's memory, indexed like a supercomputer, pulled up the reference. One of Acacia's Full Course ingredients.
Komatsu, swallowing hard, launched into a passionate, if slightly shell-shocked, explanation. "Yes! AIR! The 'Salad' from the God of Cooking's menu! A legendary phantom ingredient! It contains a whole atmosphere within itself—an unimaginable volume of the purest 'air'! Its flavor… it's said each bite unfolds into seven distinct tastes, like consuming a rainbow! Even in the Human World, its juice, diluted countless times, is priceless! A single small cup of the diluted nectar can sell for… ONE BILLION!"
He punctuated the last words with wide, dramatic eyes.
The number hung in the meat-scented air.
For a moment, there was silence.
Then—
"O-ONE B-B-BILLION?! PER CUP?!"
The voice that screeched was high-pitched, cracked, and came from directly behind Komatsu. The chef froze, a chill shooting down his spine. He slowly turned his head.
Saitama was there. When he'd moved, no one had seen it. His usually dead-fish eyes were now metallic disks of pure, avaricious light. His entire face was flushed a brilliant scarlet. A fine tremor ran through his body.
"DID YOU HEAR THAT?!" Saitama shrieked, whirling to face King and Garou, his voice vibrating with apocalyptic excitement. "ONE! BILLION! FOR JUICE! WE'RE GOING TO BE RICH! UNIMAGINABLY, UNSPEAKABLY, UNLIMITED-SALE-DAY RICH!!!"
The promise of culinary power had been compelling. But this… this was transcendent. This was the ultimate discount. This was the reason the universe was created.
King watched Saitama's meltdown with mild amusement. Garou just rolled his eyes, but a cynical smirk touched his lips. Money. How mundane.
Toriko and Komatsu, however, stared at the bald man now vibrating with financial ecstasy, then at the mountains of now-worthless serpent bones. A new, profound, and entirely different kind of terror settled in their hearts. They had come seeking a mythical ingredient. They had found, instead, a force of nature with a one-track mind for bargains. The hunt for AIR had just gotten infinitely more complicated.
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