Saitama's form blurred, reappearing directly in front of Toriko and Komatsu. He clasped his hands together, his eyes radiating a desperate, shimmering hope that was utterly at odds with the monster-mist still dissipating around him.
"Please!" he begged, his voice cracking with earnest desire. "You have to let us help you find that 'AIR'!"
Toriko jerked back, nearly inhaling a chunk of serpent meat. He studied the bald man—harmless, almost comical in his plain tracksuit. But the memory of the three-kilometer feast vanishing in a blink was seared into his gourmet soul. This was no ordinary glutton; this was a phenomenon.
"Well, I…" Toriko began, wiping grease from his chin, his gourmet instincts warring with survival sense. His words died as a primal alarm shrieked in his nerves. "ABOVE YOU!"
A shadow fell, sharp and lethal. A Death Mantis, a hundred meters of chitin and scythe-blades, dropped from the canopy in utter silence, its forelimbs poised to scissor Saitama's head from his shoulders.
"Capture Level 4800!" Komatsu screamed, his voice a mouse-squeak of terror.
Saitama didn't look up. He didn't shift his stance. He merely raised his right hand in a languid, backhanded wave, the way one might dismiss a gnat.
POW.
The sound was flat, contained. The Death Mantis didn't just die; it un-existed in a localized, pink mist that rained lightly upon the ferns. Not a single drop touched Saitama.
"…"
Toriko's jaw hung slack, his brain refusing to process the input. Komatsu simply froze, petrified, the meat in his hand hitting the ground with a soft thud.
King let out a long-suffering sigh. "Pay him no mind. He has no sense of theatrical timing." He focused on Toriko, his tone shifting to one of pragmatic business. "Regarding the partnership…"
He laid out the logic with crystal clarity. In this universe, supreme ingredients required supreme chefs. Raw consumption was barbarism and a tragic waste. They needed Komatsu's genius. And Toriko, by extension, was their guide to the ingredients worth cooking.
Toriko's shock melted into dawning, exhilarating comprehension. He surged forward, gripping Saitama's hand with both of his own, his eyes blazing. "WELCOME TO THE TEAM!" A journey that promised certain death had just transformed into a gourmet safari.
Garou snorted from the sidelines, arms crossed, oozing disinterest. But King's keen Observation didn't miss the subtle tilt of his head, the slight flare of his nostrils. Seven distinct flavors from a single bite… The martial artist in him was intrigued by a challenge to his senses.
"Then it's settled," King declared, rising to his feet. "But before we embark on our scenic tour…" He turned his gaze toward the trembling, dark depths of the jungle. A low, rolling thunder of growls, roars, and cracking timber was building into a crescendo. "…It appears we've attracted the local dinner crowd. And frankly," he added, cracking his knuckles, a low thrum of the Engine vibrating the air, "I'm still peckish."
The forest erupted.
It wasn't a charge; it was a geological event. A living tsunami of fur, scale, fang, and claw exploded from the treeline. Ancient, towering trees that had survived millennia were snapped like twigs. The ground itself seemed to boil with monstrous forms.
Komatsu's gourmet detector erupted in a continuous, hysterical screech. The numbers on its display weren't climbing—they were spinning.
1200… 1500… 1800…
Every single beast in the oncoming cataclysm was a disaster-level entity. In the Human World, the Four Beasts at Level 100 were an extinction event. This was a cavalcade of hundreds of creatures each many times stronger.
"I-It's… it's the end…" Komatsu whispered. His legs dissolved. All strength, all will to flee, was washed away by the sheer, soul-crushing magnitude of the threat. He simply folded.
Toriko's face turned the color of ash. Sweat sheeted down his temples. He'd braved the Gourmet World's horrors, but this… this was a localized apocalypse. Numbers. It was all about the relentless, overwhelming numbers. No single entity, no matter how strong, could stand against this endless tide. They'd be buried, drowned, worn down to nothing.
Instinct took over. He scooped up his paralyzed partner, slinging Komatsu onto his back in a fireman's carry. "KING! RETREAT! NOW!" he roared, veins bulging in his neck. "YOU CAN'T FIGHT THIS! NO ONE CAN!"
He prepared to launch himself in a desperate, doomed breakout run.
King, however, didn't even turn. He watched the monstrous wave approach, a calculating gleam in his eye. Saitama was already rubbing his hands together, a line of fresh drool tracing from his lip. Garou finally uncrossed his arms, a vicious, anticipatory smile spreading across his face as he cracked his neck.
"Ants," King said, his voice calm, yet carrying over the approaching roar. "You keep using that word."
He took a single, deliberate step forward. The Emperor Engine within him didn't roar—it shifted into a new, deeper gear. A pressure began to build, not of sound, but of presence.
"But you see, Toriko," King continued, a terrifying serenity settling over him. "You only need to worry about the ants biting the elephant…"
He raised a hand toward the incoming cataclysm.
"…if the elephant bothers to notice it's being bitten."
The beast tide was upon them. King's smile turned sharp.
"Garou. Saitama. Dinner service is open. Try not to make too much of a mess."
However, facing a tableau that would turn the marrow of any Gourmet Hunter to ice, King's expression remained one of profound boredom. Saitama and Garou mirrored this nonchalance, their postures slack, as if observing a tedious parade rather than an oncoming extinction event.
Garou even stifled a theatrical yawn. "This is the welcoming committee? I've had more intense warm-ups brushing my teeth."
"You fools! This isn't the time for bravado!" Toriko's voice was raw with panic, his feet carving grooves in the earth. On his back, Komatsu had succumbed entirely, a faint froth at his lips, his eyes rolled back into his skull.
King's hand came to rest on Toriko's shoulder—a touch as light as a falling leaf, yet it carried an inexplicable, anchoring weight. "Breathe," King said, his voice a calm island in the storm of sound. "Consider it handled."
The beast tide was a living cataclysm. At its forefront, a Scale-Tiger the size of a battleship, its metallic hide screeching, bloody maw agape. Behind it, a phantasmagoria of nightmares: six-winged drakes shedding corrosive feathers, tri-headed hydras with venom steaming from each maw, pachyderms of living magma that cracked the earth with each step. The collective pressure was a physical wall, thick enough to choke on.
They were meters away. The Scale-Tiger's hot, reeking breath washed over them.
Then—
BOOM.
It was not a sound heard, but a concept felt. The first beat of a cosmic heart. The primal shockwave of creation.
The Emperor Engine—Ignition.
An invisible dominion erupted from King. It was not force, not energy, not killing intent. It was Authority. A proclamation of hierarchy written into the fabric of life itself. It whispered a single, irrevocable verdict to the essence of every charging beast: Your existence is contingent. Your lease is revoked.
"I grant you stillness," King murmured. The words were not a spell, but a seal.
The effect was instantaneous, absolute, and utterly silent.
The Scale-Tiger's charge became a forward slide, its monstrous momentum carrying its lifeless bulk to skid to a halt at King's feet, eyes glazed. The six-winged drakes fell from the sky like stones, wings folded. The hydra's three heads sagged in unison, hitting the ground with three soft thuds. The magma-elephant's inner fire guttered and died, its stone hide cooling to cracked grey.
In the span of a single, held breath, the roaring, earth-shaking tide of monsters became a perfectly preserved sculpture garden of death. Not a mark on them. No wounds, no struggle. They were simply… switched off. As if the animating spark of their gourmet cells had been gently, decisively, blown out.
The silence that followed was heavier than any roar.
Komatsu had long since passed into unconsciousness. Toriko stood paralyzed, Komatsu a dead weight on his back, his own mind a white canvas of sheer, uncomprehending terror. His gourmet cells, usually a source of power and instinct, were curled in a fetal position of dread.
Zebra's Sound-Wave Bomb? The thought flickered, a desperate attempt to categorize the uncategorizable. But no. Zebra shattered mountains and eardrums. This… this didn't shatter. It erased. It didn't attack the body; it voided the soul's contract with reality. These beasts didn't look slain; they looked like puppets whose strings had been simultaneously, neatly cut.
He stared at King's broad, unconcerned back, the man already turning away from the sea of corpses as if from a minor inconvenience.
In that moment, Toriko wasn't looking at a man, or even a king.
He was looking at a natural law wearing human skin.
What… his mind screamed into the void, …in the name of all that is delicious… ARE YOU?!
Patreon Rene_chan