Food Wars: The Fishing System

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The two headed out to locate the Deer King. After all, the entire Food Region Forest existed on its back. They needed permission because of their overwhelming power—with strength matching or exceeding the Eight Kings, protocol demanded they announce their presence.

The Deer King could devastate the entire Food Region Forest if provoked. In the original timeline, Acacia had forced his way through, but only because of his incredible power.

Jiro could pull off the same feat, but a death match with the Deer King was pointless. They were here for ingredients, not to challenge the Deer King.

Although the Deer King was also a good ingredient, it couldn't compare to Acacia's Full Course Menu.

According to Jiro, the Deer King permitted strong hunters in the forest, but with strict rules against excessive killing or wanton destruction. Cross those lines, and you'd face its wrath.

The Deer King might be the most level-headed of the Eight Kings, but that wasn't saying much. Better not to test its patience. While he could handle an enraged Deer King, avoiding unnecessary complications was the smart play.

Once they reached the Deer King, both men unleashed their full auras without restraint.

The moment their power flared, the Deer King's attention snapped to them. Their combined presence was absolutely overwhelming.

One was very unfamiliar, and the other was very familiar.

Jiro had visited the Food Region Forest multiple times—his signature was well known to the Deer King.

——————

"Deer King, we want to enter the Food Region Forest!"

Jiro didn't waste any words and just said it directly to the Deer King. To this, the Deer King just nodded its head. While Yuuki was a stranger, Jiro was a familiar face.

The Deer King trusted that Jiro knew the rules, so it dismissed them without further concern. As long as they didn't massacre everything in sight, they were free to hunt.

This world revolved around ingredients. Food only had value when consumed, so the Deer King rarely interfered with hunters.

Of course, if they pulled something like the Gourmet Corp's rampage in the Human World, the Deer King would obliterate them without hesitation.

After greeting him, Jiro took Yuuki directly into the Food Region Forest.

Entering here was completely different from the outside world. The vastness of the beast auras here was the strongest Yuuki had ever felt.

"Pretty impressive, right? These creatures are no joke," Jiro said with a grin.

"Absolutely. The beasts here are on a completely different level from the outside world. The Fifth Continent really lives up to its reputation as the strongest region in the Gourmet World. But let's track down NEWS first,"

Yuuki replied.

"There's no need to look for that thing. I know where it's nurtured. And besides us humans and the Nitro race, no beast would go and eat that thing."

Jiro explained. He'd known NEWS's location for ages, but the ingredient had one major flaw—it was completely tasteless. Without eating ANOTHER first to unlock enhanced taste perception, NEWS had zero flavor. The local beasts couldn't care less about it.

They had no clue how to properly prepare an ingredient like NEWS anyway.

The IGO had mapped NEWS's location years ago. They just hadn't harvested it because it wasn't ripe yet. By now, it should be ready.

Following Jiro's lead, they headed toward NEWS's location, encountering numerous beasts along the way.

These creatures ranked among the most delicious on the entire Fifth Continent.

Their appearance wasn't coincidental—Yuuki's Food Luck was drawing them in, essentially delivering gourmet meals directly to him.

Naturally, Yuuki didn't refuse such gifts.

Just like that. They gathered various ingredients as they traveled, eventually reaching NEWS's location.

NEWS was meat, but it grew on a tree like a fruit. This tree was rooted in the Food Region Forest.

The tree absorbed the Earth's essence through the Food Region Forest, then produced NEWS on the Deer King's back.

——————

"See? Simple enough. Did you hear its voice?"

Jiro asked with a smile.

Finding NEWS had been surprisingly easy. The few beasts they'd encountered along the way practically threw themselves at them. They were having a much smoother time than Zebra's crew had. When those guys arrived, they'd been swarmed by endless waves of hostile creatures.

If Acacia's Cells hadn't drawn all the creatures away later on, Zebra and the others would have been torn to shreds.

"I heard it,"

Yuuki explained. "To prepare this ingredient, you need to work from the inside out. NEWS has a surface covered in microscopic pores—completely invisible without magnification. For proper preparation, you have to channel your power through those tiny openings and cook it from within. Try any other method, and you'll ruin it completely."

"Cooking from the inside? And through pores that small? That's not going to be easy."

Jiro remarked. Never mind the cooking process itself—just injecting power into it was a massive challenge.

"It's all the same to me."

Yuuki had already mastered both ANOTHER and GOD. While GOD hadn't been complete, handling NEWS was well within his capabilities.

He directed his voice straight into the ingredient. Now he understood why Jiji had sent Zebra and the others to this place. Zebra's sound waves could pierce through anything, just like Branch's lightning. Those abilities were tailor-made for preparing NEWS. Sound happened to be one of Yuuki's skills too, though he seldom relied on it.

He didn't need to. He had other ways of perceiving his surroundings without relying on sound.

Using echolocation to map an area could easily give away his position to an opponent, so he generally avoided it. But now, it was the perfect tool for the job—Yuuki compressed his voice and injected it deep inside NEWS.

The preparation turned out to be deceptively simple.

Harvesting it meant cutting the internal connections that anchored it to the tree. The trick was that you could only access them from within. With thousands of incredibly delicate connections to sever, it was like performing microsurgery on an enormous scale.

A single mistake—the slightest misapplication of force—would ruin the entire ingredient. The preparation would be a failure.

——————

It didn't take long for Yuuki to sever all the connections. The next moment, the enormous mass of meat detached from the tree.

Yuuki carved it up and stored it in his personal space.

Of course, he left two small pieces out for them to eat immediately.

Consuming NEWS grants access to the Back Channel—allowing one to travel to other continents through the World of Souls.

You could access the World of Souls from anywhere—provided you had the right ability. Consuming NEWS granted exactly that power, not only enabling travel through the World of Souls but also creating a small personal pocket dimension. The Ten-Shell Five called it a Mobile Kitchen.

After consuming NEWS, both of their power levels skyrocketed again, and they could now open pathways to the Back Channel whenever they wanted.

By entering the Back Channel and exiting elsewhere, they could achieve an effect similar to teleportation.

"With this ability, capturing the other ingredients and returning to the Human World will be much more convenient."

Jiro said.

Yuuki couldn't agree more.

——————

With that settled, the two of them headed straight back to the Human World. They regrouped with Setsuno and the others, and Yuuki immediately handed out the ingredient.

"That's three ingredients down. Five more to go."

The others, having also consumed NEWS, were stunned. In such a short timeframe, Yuuki had already secured three legendary ingredients. With only five left to go, anything seemed possible.

"For the remaining five, the Fourth Continent isn't a concern—the flower fields have been restored. The Third Continent has ingredients everywhere, though detoxification remains a challenge. As for GOD, we'll still have to wait."

"CENTER is located in Area 0. To get inside, we'll have to fight the Dragon King Derous." Yuuki considered their options.

"And there's still PAIR from the Monkey King. We skipped it, but we still have to capture it."

Jiro reminded him.

"I know. My thinking is, why don't we secure PAIR first? Whether we actually consume it or not, that's a bridge we can cross later." Yuuki hadn't forgotten about PAIR, but its strange properties made him feel powerless to decide.

Regardless of what they'd do with it, they needed to obtain it first.

"Capturing PAIR is a nightmare. Most of the other ingredients can be obtained without directly confronting the Eight Kings, but this one's unavoidable. The damn thing is literally growing on the Monkey King's body."

Setsuno laid out the harsh reality. Never mind how difficult the other ingredients were to prepare—when it came to actually getting them, PAIR was hands down the most dangerous.

"That's not something we need to worry about. If I remember correctly, the Monkey King is the last of its kind, right?"

Yuuki said suddenly.

"That's right. The Monkey King has no offspring—it's the last of its kind. Are you suggesting..." Setsuno suddenly caught on to what he was implying, staring at him in shock.

"Exactly. PAIR wasn't originally part of the Monkey King's species. It was that greedy old Monkey King who devoured all of it, causing it to parasitize his entire race."

"Now, the current Monkey King is the sole survivor. If we eliminate him, PAIR will naturally return to the earth. Then we won't need to worry about preparation at all—we can harvest it directly."

Yuuki explained.

Originally, PAIR required no cooking whatsoever. As long as you could survive the Seventh Continent, obtaining it was straightforward.

But the previous Monkey King's gluttony had caused the ingredient to bond with his species, making both capture and preparation exponentially more difficult.

"Take out the Monkey King? Is that... a good idea? He's one of the Eight Kings!"

Granny Ayame was flabbergasted. She couldn't wrap her head around the idea of assassinating one of the planet's apex rulers.

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