Sunny's expert touch confirmed the worst. "His neck's broken. Multiple fractures in his ribs. Internal bleeding—lots of it. In a normal environment, he'd be dead three times over."
"But he's not normal," Coco observed, his voice weak but analytical. "Look."
Despite the catastrophic damage, Zebra's body was subtly shifting. The muscles around his neck pulsed rhythmically. Faint vibrations emanated from his core, spreading through his broken frame like ripples in a pond.
"His Gourmet Cells are adapting," Toriko realized, awe creeping into his exhausted voice. "Even unconscious, even broken, they're learning from the attack that did this."
Sunny's hair gently cradled Zebra's head, aligning his spine with impossible precision. "Don't move him too much. Let his cells do their work. We just need to keep him alive until—"
Zebra's eyes snapped open.
"GAH!"
The sound was less a word and more a subsonic explosion of pure, undiluted irritation. The ground around them cracked. Boulders for a hundred meters rattled. Birds—what few existed in this death zone—fled in terror.
"WHO THE HELL HITS SOMEONE THAT HARD?!"
His neck, still clearly broken, twisted independently of his body as he glared at nothing in particular. The effect was deeply unsettling.
Toriko blinked. "Zebra. Your neck."
Zebra looked down at himself, seemed to register the ninety-degree angle of his own head relative to his shoulders, and grunted. "Tch. Annoying." He reached up with both hands, grabbed his own head, and wrenched.
CRACK.
The sound was horrific. Sunny flinched. Coco's eyes widened. Toriko's remaining hand instinctively went to his own throat.
Zebra rolled his newly-aligned neck, flexed his jaw, and sat up as if he'd just fixed a minor inconvenience. "Better. That monkey's got a mean right hook. Didn't even see it coming." He paused, sniffed the air, and glared at Toriko's missing arm. "You lose that in the same hit?"
"Apparently," Toriko said, flexing the stump. The Demon Arm membrane still pulsed there, a protective remnant of his Gourmet Cells' survival instinct. "Coco saw it coming. Saved us with poison puppets."
Zebra grunted approval. "Good. Hate dying." He looked around at the devastation—the craters, the severed limbs of their puppets, the distant, mocking silhouette of the First Cry Tree. "So. What now? We're down one arm, one poison supply, and I've got a headache that could crack mountains. And that thing is still up there, waiting."
He jabbed a thumb toward the tree, toward the unseen Ape King who had just casually dismantled them in less than a heartbeat.
Sunny's hair coiled thoughtfully. "He gave us a head start. A game. Reach the top, get the fruit, survive."
"A game." Zebra's voice dripped with incredulous fury. "He nearly killed us and called it a game?"
"That's what makes him terrifying," Coco said quietly. "To him, we are playthings. Amusements. The fact that we're still alive isn't mercy—it's entertainment value."
Toriko was silent for a long moment, staring at the tree. Then, slowly, he raised his left hand—his non-dominant hand—and flexed it.
"I've trained my right arm my whole life," he said quietly. "Every punch, every knife, every capture. It was my weapon. My tool. My identity."
He looked at his companions—battered, broken, but alive.
"Now it's gone. And we're facing a god who can kill us without trying." He paused. "So what?"
Sunny blinked. "So... what?"
"So we adapt." Toriko's eyes burned. "Zebra's neck just healed itself in minutes. My Demon Arm is already building something new at the stump. Coco saw death coming and cheated it. You kept your head when we all 'died.'" He grinned—that insane, impossible grin that had carried them through every impossible challenge.
"We're not done. We're not even close to done. That monkey wants a game? Fine. We'll play. And when we reach the top, when we take that fruit, he'll learn what real chefs can do with just a little bit of time and a whole lot of appetite."
Zebra snorted, but there was respect in it. "Crazy bastard."
Coco allowed himself a faint smile. "That's why he's our leader."
Sunny's hair began weaving again—splints for Zebra, a harness for Toriko, sensory threads to watch for the Ape King's return. "Then let's stop sitting around. The game's started, and I don't intend to lose."
One by one, they rose. Broken, battered, diminished—but not defeated.
The chase continued.
The imposter Kaka's expression grew even more complicated, a mixture of awe and genuine horror flickering in its eyes.
"Mr. Sunny," it began, turning to the flamboyant Heavenly King, "you blinked."
Sunny's face went pale. "I... blinked?"
"Less than one-tenth of a second. In that time, the Monkey King had already decided your fate. But because you weren't 'playing'—you weren't actively engaging—it considered you 'out' and simply... moved past you." The imposter Kaka swallowed hard. "The fact that you're alive at all is because the Monkey King was momentarily confused by the sudden appearance of four identical targets. That moment of confusion saved you. Otherwise..." It didn't need to finish.
Sunny's hands trembled slightly. Less than one-tenth of a second. A single blink. That was the difference between life and death at the hands of this being.
"Mr. Coco," the imposter continued, "you saw the attack coming. Your foresight activated, and you responded with the poison puppet technique in the instant before impact. The Monkey King noticed this. It found it... interesting. That's why it didn't pursue you after the initial strike."
Coco's jaw tightened. His foresight, his greatest asset, had been reduced to a curiosity for an amused god.
"And Mr. Toriko." The imposter Kaka's voice dropped. "You didn't try to dodge. You didn't try to block. You tried to counter. Your right arm wasn't destroyed by the Monkey King's attack directly—it was destroyed because you reached out to grab its wrist as it passed."
Toriko stared at the stump of his arm, the Demon Arm membrane still pulsing there. "I... reached for it?"
"You reached for it. Against an attack you couldn't see. Against an opponent whose speed defies comprehension. Your Gourmet Cells recognized the opportunity before your conscious mind could. They tried to capture the Monkey King mid-strike." The imposter Kaka shook its head slowly. "I have never seen anything like it. You should be dead. Instead, your body sacrificed an arm to preserve your life and buy you a future chance."
Silence fell over the group.
Toriko looked at his missing arm, not with despair, but with a dawning, terrible understanding. His cells had acted on instinct—an instinct to hunt. To capture the uncapturable. To fight a god.
"So," Zebra's voice grated, cutting through the silence, "let me get this straight. That overgrown furball treated us like a playground. Hide-and-seek. Rock-paper-scissors. A blink was enough to get Sunny 'out.' My 'charge' was me volunteering to get my head spun like a top. Coco's fancy future-sight made him a 'curiosity.' And Toriko's instinct to fight back cost him an arm but impressed the damn monkey enough to keep us alive?"
The imposter Kaka nodded slowly. "That is... one way to summarize it, yes."
Zebra was silent for a long moment. Then, slowly, a sound began to build in his chest. Not a growl of frustration. Not a shout of anger.
A laugh.
Low at first, then building, then roaring—a laugh of pure, incredulous, defiant fury.
"BAHAHAHA! We got played! By a monkey! We, the Four Heavenly Kings, got used as playground equipment!"
Sunny stared at him like he'd lost his mind. "Zebra, this isn't funny!"
"IT'S HILARIOUS!" Zebra howled, clutching his still-healing ribs. "We walked in here thinking we were hot stuff! 'Capture level this, Eight Kings that'—and this thing treated us like toys! Do you know what that means?!"
Toriko looked up, a dangerous light in his eyes. "What?"
Zebra's grin was savage, bloody, and utterly unhinged. "It means the gap is even bigger than we thought. It means we're not even close. And that means," he leaned forward, his broken neck long forgotten, "when we finally close that gap—and we WILL close it—the victory is gonna taste SWEETER than any ingredient in existence."
Coco's eyes widened slightly, then narrowed in thought. Sunny's hair coiled thoughtfully. Toriko's remaining hand clenched into a fist.
The imposter Kaka watched them, something shifting in its expression. These humans... they should be broken. Terrified. Ready to flee. Instead, they were planning. Adapting. Growing.
"Mr. Zebra is correct," it said quietly. "The Monkey King is playing because it is bored. It has been bored for millennia. Nothing challenges it. Nothing surprises it. Until today."
It looked at each of them in turn.
"You surprised it. Your tricks, your instincts, your sheer refusal to die—these are new flavors to a palate that has tasted everything this world can offer. That is why you're still alive. Not mercy. Novelty."
Toriko stood up slowly, cradling his wounded arm. "Then we need to stay novel. Keep surprising it. Keep giving it new tastes, new games, new reasons not to end us instantly." He looked toward the First Cry Tree, its star-like fruits glittering in the darkening sky. "And while we do that, we climb. We reach the top. We take what we came for."
The imposter Kaka hesitated, then spoke: "There's something else. The Monkey King... it's not just playing randomly. There's a pattern. A rhythm. I watched from afar, and I noticed—"
It stopped, eyes widening.
Behind them, less than ten meters away, the Ape King Bambina sat on a boulder, chin resting on one massive hand, watching them with undisguised, delighted interest.
"Roar~ (Don't stop on my account. This is the best part.)"
The bonfire crackled.
Nobody moved.
Nobody breathed.
The game had just entered its next round.