"Food Technique · Circle-Cleave!"
Gourmet Cells roared through Shun's body. His right hand grasped the air—and the weapon wrought from pure energy and Food Honor coalesced there: Flavor Edge.
Faced with the two-pronged kill from above and below, he advanced instead of retreating—his body whirled like a cyclone.
A perfectly pure, perfectly silent circular blade wave burst outward from him as the center.
There was no sound—but it carried a sharpness that could cut anything.
Pft.
Two faint entries echoed almost together.
The lizard diving for his throat lost its head in an instant.
The one skimming the ground for his waist was shorn of both forelimbs and half its skull in a single sweep.
The ring-shaped trajectory enveloped those last two cunning hunters and reaped them in one blow.
Shun settled from the spin, a faint gravity between his brows.
He didn't bother to look at the bodies. With a flick of his hand, he stored those two Mist-Hidden Lizards—along with the earlier disabled ones—into his system space.
Nine Mist-Hidden Lizards, wiped out. The fog remained, but the area fell briefly into deathly calm.
Having broken the pack's encirclement, Shun didn't linger.
His Food Honor stayed razor-focused; within several hundred meters he "held" terrain, life-signs, and energy flows in his heart.
He understood: the lizards were just one of many predators here. Stronger, trickier things waited ahead.
As he pushed on, more fog-adapted oddities emerged.
There were Fog Toads, ghost-silent and able to jet corrosive acid—their strikes had no windup, forcing Shun to read the sudden coagulation of acid microparticles in the air to pre-evade.
There were Greatmaw Burrowers, lurking beneath soft marsh-mire, springing up in a flash with barbed tongues to coil and snare.
There were swarms of Phantasong Bats, whose chaotic flight paths layered disruptive sonics across the fog.
…
Most of these beasts were Capture Level 20–40. Alone, one or two were no threat to Shun—but they were everywhere and nowhere, ambushing under perfect cover of terrain.
Without Food Honor—and without the system's backing—he'd already have been someone's dinner.
He fought as he went, and harvested as he fought.
Rare ingredients piled up in his pack. At the same time, his movements grew cleaner; his application of Food Honor in battle and exploration deepened.
Not just passive sensing anymore—he began to guide the pulse of his own life-energy, resonating with the environment so hazards surfaced earlier to his perception.
The deeper he went, the more the fog itself began to change.
Its hue was no longer simple gray-white; a faint, unstable undertone bled through it.
Life-sign count dropped—but each remaining presence burned much brighter.
"Looks like I'm nearing the center." Shun slowed his steps.
At last, after threading a "forest" of colossal bioluminescent lecanor that glowed a fierce ghost-blue, even through Food Honor the scene ahead made him catch his breath.
The core was a vast basin. Its middle wasn't ground at all but a slowly turning vortex of seven-hued mist.
At the vortex's heart, a gigantic, alien plant loomed.
His Ingredient Encyclopedia named it: Source-Mist Mother Tree.
As the name implied, a special plant that manufactured the fog.
So it was true—the fog blanketing this land flowed from this.
This "tree" had no leaves in the usual sense. Its trunk was a half-transparent, colossal jade-like cylinder, from which countless vein-like air-roots radiated, shining with prismatic halos as they plunged into both fog and earth.
The "crown" was a mass of endlessly opening and closing structures like living spiracles.
Each open-close exhaled thick, inescapable vapor—as if this organism were the heart and lungs of the entire mist-bound world.
An overwhelming surge of life energy and a primal fog-making wavelength poured off the Mother Tree. It felt like the embodiment of the rules governing this mist.
Even without looking at its full form, Shun felt its monumental presence.
"Hm?"
Alongside that awe, he sensed another powerful energy.
Curled among the Mother Tree's roots lay a titanic beast.
[Mistborne Dragon King (Mammalian class · Overlord of the Fog)]
Capture Level: 78
Habitat: Only in the core domain where the Source-Mist Mother Tree stands; symbiotic with the Mother Tree; the absolute ruler of the mist field.
Length: 155 m
Height: 12 m
Weight: 400 t
Price: Unquantifiable. Nearly every part qualifies as a quasi-legendary ingredient. The heart (Dragon-Heart Mist Core) and crystalline head-crest (Mirage Jewel) are beyond price.
Profile: The Mistborne Dragon King is the ultimate evolution among mist-adapted life such as Mist-Hidden Lizards. Over ages of co-existence with the Mother Tree, it has fused deeply with the laws of this fog.
Proud and violent, it treats the Mother Tree as its inviolate domain and annihilates any who approach.
It can freely shape the seven-hued mists for attack and defense. Its Mirage Breath carries both dissolution and paralysis, and it can marshal fog into solid chains and claws.
Its meat, long steeped in the Tree's energy, contains intensely pure life essence and a unique "oneirogen factor." Properly processed, it greatly heightens cellular vitality and tempers the mind; mishandled, it induces derangement.
Apex predator of this ecosystem—its very existence is the deadliest symbol of the Mist Prohibited Zone.
Shun's expression grew solemn as he read.
A 78. Far beyond any foe he'd faced. Not just a gap in strength—here in a place where sight was worthless, the field itself favored the king.
The Dragon King's colossal crystalline crown turned slightly.
It had clearly fixed on the intruder. Yet it did not strike at once. Coiled beneath the Mother Tree, its vast bulk seemed almost one with it.
…
(End of Chapter)
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