Capture Level: 78.
This was the strongest beast Shun had faced to date.
In the Human World of Toriko, that number alone was daunting—doubly so here, in the heart of the mist.
The Mistborne Dragon King's colossal head tilted, and the prismatic fog about it turned in sympathy. Those vast eyes had already locked onto Shun.
It didn't strike immediately. Yet the pressure it exuded made the air—and even the mist—seem to congeal. Shun's breath grew tight in his chest.
So this is the aura of a true apex predator…
Coiled beneath the Source-Mist Mother Tree, the Dragon King's titanic frame resonated with the Tree's waves of power—so much so it felt like part of the domain's very laws.
"This fog that never lifts… so it is because of you," Shun realized.
Not just the Mother Tree—this symbiont that amplified it.
The Tree provided the primal source of fog; the Dragon King shaped it—density, behavior—fashioning a rule-field of its own.
Defeat the king, and perhaps the sky over this land would finally be seen.
To say Shun felt no pressure would be a lie. He knew with perfect clarity: against a foe of this tier, a single doubt or step back meant death.
He steadied his breath and drove Food Honor to an unprecedented peak.
Gourmet Cell energy surged; Shun readied himself completely.
At that very instant, the Dragon King's patience snapped—or perhaps it deemed the insect's gaze a sacrilege.
Blinding radiance flared from its crystalline crown.
The light pierced—even the hand-blindening mist couldn't stop it.
"It's moving first? Then I'll move earlier!"
No hesitation. A hard light flashed in Shun's eyes as he stamped down and exploded forward, a bolt charging straight at the Dragon King.
In mid-sprint his hands closed on air—Flavor Edge re-formed in his grip.
"Food Technique · Flow-Sever!"
He barked the name and flickered sideways, angling to slip past the front and carve into the relatively thinner side-belly.
But as he closed, the seven-hued fog around the Dragon King heaved and concretized—a fan of thick fog bulwarks rose in an eye-blink.
At the same time, its titanic tail howled through the air in a lateral sweep.
That speed—on a body this huge?!
Shun's pupils tightened. He wrenched his body around, skimming past the tip of the tail by a hair's breadth.
Flavor Edge slammed at the nearest bulwark—
and rebounded.
The wall's elasticity was monstrous; the counter-shock numbed his arm.
"What—?"
A thunderous roar rolled out—more felt than heard.
Purple, attack-charged beams lanced from the king's eyes like deathly lasers.
Where they passed, even the heavy fog vanished to nothing, twin vacuum tracks tearing straight toward Shun.
Not ordinary energy.
Food Honor shrieked a warning: the violet rays carried extreme danger.
"Can't take that head-on!"
Shun wrung every scrap of speed from his body, his afterimages threading the thinning corridors of mist.
But the rays bent midair—alive, serpentine—hounding him without pause.
The crown flashed again. More lances speared out, weaving into a killing web of light that sealed every escape line.
"…"
Unpanicked, Shun called another technique.
"Food Technique · Circle-Cleave · Thousand Veils!"
Nowhere to run—so he warded instead.
A thousand thin, circular blades bloomed like lotus petals, layering around him in quickening shells.
The violet beams met the veils without an explosion—
they met them with a sickening sizzle.
Shun's eyes tightened. The blade-layers were being decomposed and dissolved—and along the energy threads a chill, chaotic mental force probed for his mind.
In that instant he understood: these rays weren't only physical annihilation—they carried a psychic breaker. A shaky will would be reduced to babble in a heartbeat.
Shun's training had steeled his will to iron—
even so, knives of pain jabbed through his skull. His grip faltered; Flavor Edge guttered.
A fresh beam knifed through the thinning veils and shaved past his left shoulder.
Shhht!
No blood sprayed. Flesh and cloth simply un-became, leaving a smooth-edged wound cut to the bone—numb, not painful, and wrongly cold.
Worse—the psychic pressure clung like bone-gnawing rot, tunneling inward from the wound.
Agony and mind-shock struck together. Shun grunted; his face went bloodless.
He had underestimated the Dragon King's violet death.
His vision wavered, ears thrummed; the king's bulk loomed like a sky-obliterating demon.
Flavor Edge flickered—then snapped into nothing.
"Didn't think… I'd fall here."
His consciousness smudged; the wound crawled wider, meat losing vitality as even his Gourmet Cells' activity was crushed under that alien law.
The psychic seep made his thoughts fray; even keeping Food Honor aloft grew punishing.
A low, triumphant rumble. The Dragon King crept nearer, savoring the last flails of its prey.
Its jaws opened. Dense, seven-hued fog gathered with ruinous power to finish the stubborn invader.
Death fell like a curtain.
And just as Shun's awareness teetered over the brink—
Thoom.
A heavy strike—like a drum—resounded from the deepest depth of his being.
No sound the ear could hear—
a peal rung straight across the soul.
Thoom. Thoom. Thoom.
Beat after beat—louder, stronger.
As if some ancient colossus, asleep for eons, was being called awake by perfect mortal peril—and by Shun's unbroken will.
From within Shun, the slumbering Gourmet Cell Demon… awoke.
—
(End of Chapter)
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