Puffer Whale - 9

"Damn hunting this thing was a pain the ass but atlas I'm getting paid three times the usual for this, Fang grab on to it before another beasts try's to eat it" I said as I looked at the fresh corpses of the Solid Gold Whale I had just hunted

'Kind of weird it's called Solid Gold even though only 95% of it is pure gold' i thought as Fang grabbed its tail and began to lift it up 'honestly I hate working for these rich ass holes they're always so damn cocky, if it wasn't for the fact my gourmet cells are compatible with fish beasts'

Soon after that I meet up with the client got paid and took all the meat as they only wanted the solid gold corpse as a trophy 'ugh these gourmet billionaires are just as evil as the Bishokukai, no wonder so many of them joined NEO' and with a biter taste in my mouth I left

Soon I made it back to my house a giant fucking mansion next to the ocean with around one thousand acres of land around it and my own personal beach, this whole situation reminds of my past life where I hated teenagers but was also a teenager

Anyways you might be wondering why I bought so much land, and the short answer is if I didn't Fang would become a big problem to the entire human world and the long answer is that Derous by nature are extremely territorial and prideful beings

And when they are away from their parents normally when they fully mature, they start making their own territory very quickly and when Fang was still like 3 years old this didn't happen because he saw me as his parent, but now that he's a bit older he sees me as his master and has started setting up his territory

Normally this would be trouble some but manageable but then you add his ego into the mix and get a total mess, he's just gone see how weak the human world is compared to him and try to stem roll it before getting killed by one of the many secretly overpowered people

And well I don't really want the pet I raised since he was a baby to become someone's lunch, so I decided instead of trying to stop his behavior which is pretty much impossible as its literally in his dna to get his own territory, I would just contain it by buying a large amount of land and just let him have it

Anyways after telling Fang to just go play around I went inside my mansion and began to cook the extremely fat meat of the whale, after 30 or so minutes the meat was done and I called Fang over to eat

After we finished the meal and washed it down with some Mellow cola I got on the back of Fang and began to fly towards our actual main meal the puffer whales, after a while of flying I was extremely close to the cave but on my way I saw Toriko, Coco and Komatsu

Toriko and Coco were able to see me while Komatsu didn't have the speed needed to react to Fang, Coco had a small smile on his face while Toriko had a big grin on his face, it has been a while since I had a chat with those two, around a month or two so it's nice seeing them again

But right now I'm on the hunt and I don't really like slowing down when it comes to things like this so I just smiled and waved at them before Fang went too far away, after a second or two I was at the location and saw the shocked faces to everyone there

I told Fang to just go sit down somewhere because he was too big to fit in the cave before i made my way down the cave, but only a bit after going in I could hear screams coming towards me and who else would it be other then Zongeh the guys who's gone be kidnapped by donkey kong- I mean Bambina

I just turned on void walk and went past them ignoring them entirely, soon I was at a point where I had to decide which path I wanted to go straight or down, knowing that the straight path Zongeh came from was a dead end I decided to just jump straight down

After a while I made it to the scorpion cockroach area and using void walk was able to easily make my way through but after that I was stuck for a while as I didn't have anything similar to the super smell of toriko that originally allowed them to figure out where to go

I would normally use Fangs enhanced senses for this type of situation but he's to big for the cave 'maybe I should have just swam down there instead of going through this cave' i though to my self and I went down another hole

'Nah that would just be to boring' just as I said that a swarm of bats came towards me 'guess I'm finally on the right path' i though before using skillet to crush the bats into nothing but drops of blood after that things started to go a lot smoother

Soon enough I made it to the devil serpent part which I just walked through like usual using void walk, and after that I meet someone that I wasn't really surprised to see but was still a bit nervous to see knocking master Jairo

He was easily able to see through my voile walk and made direct eye contact with me even though I was completely invisible and had hidden all my intent, he stood there and made direct eye contact with me for what felt like hours before he started walking away "kids these days get more and more interesting every year" he said while chuckling

After that happened I sat there for a second thinking about my interaction with him before I started moving towards the puffer whales location and soon enough I made it too the beautifully blue area known as The Sandy Beach Of The Cave

I put my backpack full of cooking equipment down on the beach and took out a large fishing net out of it before I took off my tank top and began to swim down, soon I saw the swarm of puffer whales that looked like a giant puffer whale that quickly began to brake apart

I turned on void walk again and made my way closer to one of the puffer whales, I gently used knocking and easily knocked out the puffer whale, knocking a puffer whale wasn't actually that hard at lest as long as you mastered the basics of knocking

Soon enough I had around 20 of them knocked and captured in the large net thinking that this number of puffer whales would be good enough I made my way up towards the beach and when I finally emerged from the water the first thing I saw was the shocked expression of Komatsu

"I guess you really were faster then me again" said toriko with a big grin on his face "if you really want to catch up you're gone need to eat for another hundred years" I said with a big smile on my face, "are you still going on with that "eat for another hundred" years thing it's been like 3 year dude" Toriko said with an unimpressed expression

"I will stop saying it the day you manage to suppress me, anyways who's the little guy fallowing you two around" i said acting like I didn't know who Komatsu was "he's Komatsu a cook from hotel gourmet who decided to come along with me" as he said that I could see him looking behind me and staring at the net full of puffer whales I had

"Seriously dude you might as well take all the puffer whales instead of just leaving the scraps for us" he said with an annoyed expression on his face "don't worry there're plenty more" i said as I finally put on my tank top and took out a portable stove as well as an bottle of sake from my backpack

"I'm gone make some puffer whale sake want some?" I asked Toriko and Coco as I began to heat up the bottle of sake "nah ingredients tastes better when you hunt them yourself" with that Toriko and Coco took some of their clothes off and quickly began to go down the water

After a few minutes of silence Komatsu finally mustered the courage to talk to me, "uhh if you don't mind can I ask you a few questions Mr Lone Shadow Noah" at the mention of my nickname lone Shadow I instantly cringed a bit, I still don't get what fucking edge lord decided to name me that but seriously lone shadow was there really not anything else they could have called me

"Please just call me Noah I don't really like my nickname all that much" I replied calmly to komatsus question "ok so mr Noah did you actually use to be the personal chef of the four heavenly kings before you decided to become a gourmet hunter"

"Although I did cook for them a lot we never made any contracts or anything making me their personal chef, I was just a less known chef they liked the cooking of" after that was just a back and forth of random questions that I used to keep my self entertained while waiting for the sake to heat up

After a while I put my attention back on the sake which had reached the perfect temperature by now, I quickly took it of the stove and began to remove the poison sack of one of the puffer whales which wasn't really hard per say but wasn't easy either

Although it only took me 25 second to remove the poison sack I could see and feel Komatsu looking at each of my movements making sure to memorize all of them, I then took the fins of the puffer whale and charred them a bit before putting them into the bottle of sake

And after waiting for a long second the puffer whale fin sake was done, after that the only thing left was to do was to turn the puffer whale into sashimi, so after precisely cutting and separating the puffer whale parts I made the sushimi and began to finally eat

The taste was incredible even though i thought it wouldn't be as good as the other ingredients I had eaten due to its lower capture level it completely surprised me with how flavorful it was, and the sake as well was definitely some of the best I had since being in this world

Although in my past life I wasn't really a big fan of alcohol and only drank it occasionally I decided to give it another try in this world after turning 18 which just like in my past country is the legal age to drink, and well it grew a lot on me

I still liked water more but alcohol basically became soda 2.0 for me, anyways while I was slowly eating my meal making sure to enjoy all the favors even manipulating my taste buds to savor the flavor even more Coco and Toriko came out of the water and began trying to prepare the puffer whale

Just like in canon Coco tried to remove the poison sack and failed 3 times in a row, Komatsu was pretty disheartened but became even more so as I kept removing the poison sacks of my puffer whales he even asked coco if he could convince me to help them

To which coco told Komatsu that even if they were friends I probably would not help them with it which was 100% true, so instead coco suggested Komatsu to try preparing the puffer whale instead of himself just like in canon

So as Komatsu began to try preparing the puffer whale I finished removing all my puffer whales poison sack so I began to pack up all my stuff p, and after saying goodbye to the guys I began to move out of the cave at literal Mach speed now knowing the right way in and out of the cave

When I came out of the cave I was greeted with a couple of assassins and criminals that tried to kill me and take my puffer whales, who were swiftly dealt with by Fang as we swatted them away like a bunch of flys not killing them but definitely knocking them out

I gave Fang a puffer whale as a treat before we made our way home again, my hunt to get my self some puffer whales was quite a successful one with only one truly surprising part to it 'the fact locking master Jiro was still able to see me proves that there is still more for me to improve on' although I already knew this my short interaction with him reinforced this idea even more

———

'based to true events'

"The Legend Of Zelda Tears Of The Kingdom is a game that not only erased my already shit sleep schedule for existence but also ate up all my free time for breakfast before devouring my sanity, but the fun doesn't stop there because it then proceeded to shit on my bed and kill my cat 12/10 would recommend and will continue to play " — Goose Man, 30/7/23