Several Blue Nitro were still discussing what to do when a terrifying wave of energy suddenly swept through their meeting hall, the place they proudly called their Noble Dining Room.
Arrogance clung to them like a second skin.
The moment the disturbance arrived, every Blue Nitro's expression changed.
They knew exactly what it meant.
Without question, Acacia had started causing trouble again.
"Dammit. It's Acacia. He heard our conversation. That bastard definitely won't sit back and do nothing."
No one understood Acacia better than they did. The man was domineering to the core.
Every ingredient in the world, in his mind, already belonged to him. Of course he would never allow someone else to collect them.
And with his strength, overhearing their discussion had been trivial.
"Go check on him immediately. The Gourmet Eclipse is still some time away. If he starts making a mess now, cleaning it up will be impossible."
The moment Pair finished speaking, he shot out of the hall.
Yet his heart was tangled with doubt.
He and Acacia shared a secret plan. Their true goal had never been sealing NEO.
Pair had developed human emotions. Because of that, he cared about his old companions. He wanted them to return alive.
That was why he had cooperated with Acacia in the first place.
But now he wasn't so sure anymore.
Was Acacia really acting?
That man had manipulated even his own wife to death.
He had schemed against his own disciples.
Pair had no doubt that if those three ever stood in Acacia's way, Acacia would kill them without hesitation.
Worse still, Acacia held absolutely no compassion for humanity. As long as it pushed him closer to his goal, he would sacrifice anything.
That obsession made Pair uneasy.
He no longer knew whether Acacia truly intended to rescue their people... or if he planned to devour everything.
In truth, Pair had already glimpsed part of the truth.
Acacia was an utterly selfish man.
For the sake of his appetite, for NEO, he was willing to become the enemy of the entire world.
Disciples. Wife. Children. Humanity.
All of it was expendable.
Even in the original story, when NEO eventually spat everything back out, that had merely been incidental.
If saving NEO required sacrificing those lives instead, Acacia would have done it without hesitation.
Soon, the Blue Nitro arrived where Acacia was.
After hundreds of years spent forcefully maturing his cells, Acacia had long since lost his human appearance.
What remained resembled a twisted monster.
His mind held only one thought.
Devour everything.
Several grotesque Neo Spawns had already been released from his body. They scattered toward the different Areas.
Acacia could no longer sense Kael's location.
From the Blue Nitro's conversation, he had learned that someone named Kael was collecting the ingredients one after another.
So he expanded his perception across the world, trying to locate him.
Find Kael, and the problem would solve itself.
But after scanning the entire Gourmet World, Acacia found nothing.
Anyone capable of capturing that many ingredients should be a powerful being. Yet none of the presences he sensed stood out.
It made no sense.
But for Acacia, uncertainty had a simple solution: mass bombardment.
He had also noticed something else.
The Snake King of the Area 4 had disappeared.
Which meant Kael had probably already been there.
So this time, in addition to sending Neo Spawns across the other Areas, he dropped several onto the Area 4 and Area 3 in particular.
If Kael was there, one of them would find him.
Acacia hated variables.
Variables ruined plans.
So he preferred to eliminate them in advance.
"Acacia! What are you doing? Why are you acting on your own?"
The Blue Nitro stood at the edge of a massive crater, their faces grim as they stared down at him.
Acacia's strength had already surpassed them completely. In truth, they had no choice but to trust he would follow the plan.
Their questioning was little more than a show of bravado.
If Acacia truly decided to fight, he could wipe out every Blue Nitro present in an instant.
Not that it mattered much. They would simply resurrect anyway.
That was exactly why Acacia never bothered.
"What I do is none of your concern," he replied coldly. "Instead of bothering me, why not figure out how to deal with that man collecting the ingredients?"
Disdain colored his voice.
Among the Blue Nitro, only Pair earned even a sliver of respect from him.
Acacia himself cared little for others, but someone who valued companions at least resembled a living being.
The rest?
They were nothing.
Creatures that lived only for ingredients.
Trash.
If he didn't still need them, he would have already disposed of them. Watching them irritated him.
Even their so called immortality meant nothing.
If NEO devoured them, they would not die.
They would simply be sealed forever inside its stomach.
And if they could not die, they could never resurrect either.
"Bastard!"
The other Blue Nitro erupted in anger.
They called themselves the Gourmet Nobles.
Yet now they were being insulted by a human.
In ancient times, humanity had been nothing more than livestock they raised to prepare GOD.
But after Acacia appeared, everything changed.
Humanity slipped out of their control.
Before they realized it, Ichiryu, Jiro, and Midora had grown into monsters.
Their old tricks no longer worked.
They didn't even dare appear in the Human World. If Ichiryu's group found them, the outcome would be disastrous.
The change was suffocating.
Humiliating.
______________________________________________________
Chapter 262
"Get lost."
Acacia glanced at them once, uninterested.
Then he closed his eyes again.
The Blue Nitro hovering above burned with fury, but just as he said...
What could they do?
Nothing.
In the end, they left in silence.
After departing, each of them headed toward different Areas. They needed to find Kael.
Acacia had already released Neo Spawns, but they didn't trust that alone.
If they found Kael and could kill him, they would.
If not...
They would call reinforcements.
Soon, strange monsters began appearing throughout the Gourmet World.
Wherever they appeared, they devoured everything in sight.
The Eight Kings quickly responded.
Except in two places.
On the Area 7, the Monkey King was already dead. The monkey tribes had to fight on their own.
For top tier powerhouses, the Neo Spawns were manageable.
For the monkeys, they were a disaster.
By the time they finally killed the creature, the tribe had suffered enormous losses.
Fortunately, it had not been Acacia himself.
Just a fragment.
The Area 4 fared even worse.
With the Snake King gone, the giant serpents faced the threat alone.
And Acacia had dropped multiple Neo Spawns there.
Without an Eight King guarding the land, the losses were catastrophic.
But none of that concerned Kael.
Because a Neo Spawn had appeared in front of him as well.
Acacia had not located him.
Instead, he had thrown a spawn directly at the end of the Wisdom Heat Bridge.
Acacia knew Kael would eventually come searching for ingredients.
So he simply placed a Spawn there and waited.
A trap.
And it worked.
Kael ran straight into it.
When he saw the creature, his first thought was simple: Ugly.
The second followed immediately: Disgusting.
When these monsters first appeared in the original story, they were just as horrifying. Like something ripped straight out of a Lovecraft nightmare.
Back then, their only real purpose had been to die spectacularly, showing just how powerful the Eight Kings and Jiro truly were.
Even so, they weren't weak.
One had even bitten off Jiro's arm while he was still sealed. He only recovered it later using Cure Water.
But that was sealed Jiro.
Not the real one.
The moment the monster spotted Kael, it charged.
Not because it recognized him.
Because its instinct was simple.
Devour.
Everything.
Human or otherwise.
It existed only to consume.
Only death could stop it.
"You think I'm like Toriko and the others? That easy to deal with?"
Kael looked at the creature with mild annoyance.
A flicker of energy stirred inside him.
The monster vanished.
No explosion.
No flashy technique.
It simply ceased to exist.
Kael's energy had already evolved beyond Calories. It was transforming into something closer to divine power.
A higher tier of existence.
Even the tiniest trace of it was enough to erase the creature completely.
Forget the Neo Spawn.
Even if Acacia himself stood here, Neo would not be able to devour Kael's power.
Kael could now truly destroy Neo.
Others couldn't. Neo was a Gourmet Demon. Even after death, it could survive inside another person's cells.
Just like it had with Acacia.
That was why the Blue Nitro planned to seal it instead.
But Kael didn't need sealing.
If he killed Neo, he could even open the dimension inside its body afterward.
Time and space meant nothing to him now.
No need for complicated rituals like forcing it to eat the Full Course of Anger.
After eliminating the monster, Kael turned his attention to ATOM.
The ingredient had fallen from space and now flowed across the Cloud Volcano like liquid light.
All he needed to do was remove the poison.
In the past, he would have needed to follow the ingredient's voice carefully.
Now?
Completely unnecessary.
Even his Gourmet Energy had evolved.
With a single thought, he simply rewrote the ingredient itself.
Poison... gone.
It was an absurdly overbearing ability.
But for Kael, it was excellent news.
Just like that, ATOM was his.
The moment he finished collecting it, a massive aura erupted somewhere on the Area 3.
"Hmm? The Crow King fighting a Neo Spawn?"
Kael raised an eyebrow.
"This time Acacia really lost his mind... he's dropped way too many of these things."
In the original timeline, Acacia released one monster per Area.
Now the Area 3 alone had several.
The Fourth was the same.
The Crow King was currently battling one of them. If left unchecked, the creature would devastate the Area.
As its ruler, the Crow King had no choice but to intervene.
Kael had no intention of joining the fight.
Because he had already noticed something else.
Someone nearby was secretly watching him.
Kael's perception of space had become extraordinarily sharp.
The intruder had only just arrived.
A Blue Nitro.
Silently observing him from the shadows.