Toriko turned to Branch, the formidable tengu-like chef who stood ready with a massive pack slung over his shoulder. "Please," Toriko said, his voice grave. "Ensure the remaining AIR and the other ingredients we gathered on the Eighth Continent make it back to the Human World."
The Human World was starving, its ecosystems shattered by the Four Beasts' invasion. This mission of mercy was the core of their original quest.
Branch thumped his chest with a resonant thud. "On my life! They'll get there!"
Toriko nodded, a weight lifting from his shoulders.
Just then, a powerful, rhythmic churning of water echoed from the bay. A massive, sleek silver dorsal fin cut through the surface, speeding toward the shore.
"Ah, right on time," the Upside-Down Immortal murmured, a pleased smile on his face. "Toriko, for your journey across the Gourmet Sea to the Seventh Continent… your carriage awaits. Meet the 'Train Shark,' Capture Level 605."
All eyes turned to the water.
SHARK-BOOOO—!
A behemoth over a hundred meters long breached the waves. Its body was a masterpiece of hydrodynamic engineering, gleaming like polished chrome in the morning light. This amphibious marvel was the luxury liner of the Gourmet World, its segmented body housing spacious, comfortable cabins.
"Whoa!" Saitama dashed to the water's edge, his eyes sparkling. "A shark train?! That's the coolest thing ever!"
The Train Shark, perhaps mistaking Saitama's shiny bald head for a giant, tantalizing egg, lunged. Its cavernous maw snapped shut with a sound that promised obliteration.
CRUNCH!
The sound of shattering enamel was deafening. Saitama's head didn't have a scratch. Several of the Train Shark's dagger-like teeth, however, now floated in the water.
"Hey! That's just rude!" Saitama scolded, delivering a swift, admonishing thwack to the shark's snout.
BONK.
The colossal beast's eyes spun into spirals. It listed sideways, foam bubbling at its mouth, temporarily out cold.
King watched from a short distance, his expression deadpan. "…Idiot fish." It was unclear if the remark was for the shark or a certain bald man.
At the cliff's edge, a more private farewell was underway.
King stood before Atashino, the enigmatic physician. Her form-fitting white coat did little to conceal her striking, mature curves. The perpetual mask and the gauze over her right eye only added to her aura of intelligent, secretive allure. Their brief but… thorough… 'consultations' over the past few days had been mutually enlightening, revealing both her peerless beauty and her masterful skills in 'biological systems maintenance.'
They were adults. This was a port-of-call romance, intense and finite. Words were superfluous.
"The Seventh Continent holds dangers the Eighth cannot compare to. Be wary," Atashino said, her voice low. The sea breeze played with a strand of her hair escaping her hood. The single visible eye held a complexity he chose not to dissect.
King's smile was gentle. From within his clothes, he produced a delicate silver bracelet set with a dark red gem that seemed to hold a captive ember. "A token. It holds a fragment of my will. If you ever face a true crisis… break it. I will know."
He clasped it around her slender wrist. She didn't resist.
Then, in a move hidden from the others, she tugged her mask down just enough. The kiss was brief, fierce, and final.
"If fate allows," she whispered against his lips, then pulled away, turning her back without a single backward glance, walking away with the same decisive grace she did everything.
King watched her go, a faint, appreciative smirk on his lips. Then, with a click of his tongue for Horse King Heracles—who flicked its tail with regal boredom—he turned and strode toward the shore.
One by one, the team boarded the now-groggily-conscious Train Shark.
"All aboard! Destination: The Seventh Continent!" Toriko stood triumphantly on the shark's head, arm outstretched toward the vast, uncharted horizon.
SHARK-BOOOO—! The cry was more subdued this time, wary. The great beast powered forward, cutting a white wake through the azure sea.
Inside the Train Shark's luxurious dining cabin, Sunny held court, swirling a glass of luminous nectar.
"The Seventh Continent," he began, "is the second largest landmass in our world, surpassed only by the Fourth. It's known as the 'Continent of Mountains' for its staggering peaks, and colloquially as the 'Monkey Restaurant.' Total area… approximately 840 million square kilometers."
Saitama's jaw dropped. "Wait, what? The entire surface area of my Earth is only 510 million! You could fit my whole planet on that continent and still have room for a moon!"
"This Earth has been… expanding," King mused aloud, drawing on his meta-knowledge. "Ever since Gourmet Cells first appeared, the planet's surface area has grown to be about 659 times its original size. It's still being 'cooked.'"
The statement hung in the air, a reminder of the truly cosmic, absurd scale of the world they were in. The hunt for PAIR was not just a journey across a sea, but into the heart of a planet that was itself a living, growing feast.
King tore off another hunk of steak, chewing with deliberate, unbothered force. "Big, small, doesn't matter. All I care about is whether it's got ingredients worth my time."
Suddenly, Komatsu, who had been plastered to the cabin's reinforced viewport, let out a squeak. "A… a sea urchin? No! It's… it's pollen!"
After hours of voyaging, the Train Shark had breached the boundary waters of the Seventh Continent.
The sight that unfolded stole the breath from every seasoned hunter.
A world of titans. Trees were living mountains, their canopies holding up the sky. Grape clusters hung like constellations. Single blooms could have swallowed a metropolis. Common roadside weeds stood with the haughty grandeur of crystalline towers. This was a realm where scale itself was a form of violence against perception.
"This… defies biology…" Toriko whispered, his voice hushed with awe.
Even King felt a flicker of genuine astonishment. The manga's panels were a pale sketch compared to this overwhelming, breathing reality.
RUMBLE—
The tremor wasn't in the ground; it was in the air. Clouds were shredded apart by the passage of heads—bald, mountainous, each over ten thousand meters tall. Several colossal beasts, species unknown to any gourmet log, peered down. Their eyes were pools of primordial malice. Their open maws were not mouths, but gravitational anomalies promising utter erasure.
"Uncatalogued species," Coco's voice was tight, his Gourmet Detector whirring frantically. "Capture Level estimates… exceed three thousand." His Poison Membrane snapped over his skin, a reflexive shield.
The Four Heavenly Kings tensed, battle auras flaring. Yet, the beasts only stared, strands of saliva like silver waterfalls dripping between world-shattering teeth. They did not advance.
"The rule the Upside-Down Immortal mentioned…" Toriko murmured, helping a trembling Komatsu to his feet. "No free hunting on the Seventh Continent. They need… permission."
Coco nodded slowly, uneasily. "An ecosystem with… bureaucracy. I didn't think such a thing existed."
"It means we have a grace period," Sunny analyzed, his hair subtly coiling. "But also that we are guests, bound by a host's law. We cannot simply take."
"Law? Grace?"
King's voice cut through the tension like a cleaver. He let out a short, derisive laugh, his eyes gleaming with contempt for the very concept of imposed order. "What a pathetic fairy tale. Listen closely—whatever 'rules' this backwater used to play by…"
He took a single, decisive step forward. An aura erupted from him—not just power, but a declaration. It was the essence of rebellion, of 'Absolute Evil' that recognized no master, no treaty, no natural order but its own will. It shredded the invisible restraint hanging in the air.
"…are obsolete. I am here now." His gaze swept over the looming titans. "My appetite is the only law that matters."
Before the final syllable faded, he was gone. Not a blur, not a dash. A vacancy in space where he had stood.
The next instant, he reappeared—not on the ground, but standing on the nose of the nearest ten-thousand-meter-tall beast, as casual as a man stepping onto a curb. He looked directly into its planet-sized eye.
"You're in my way," King stated, his voice calm, conversational, and carrying the weight of a cosmic edict. "Move."
The beast, a sovereign of this titanic realm, frozen for a moment by the sheer, impossible audacity, could only stare. The ancient 'rules' of the Seventh Continent, which had governed for eons, shattered in the face of a will that simply refused to acknowledge them. The hunt, under new management, had begun.