Chapter #2 – The Toriko World
MC POV:
*Huff* *Wheeze* *Strangled breath* *Dying dolphin/Justin Bieber sounds* *Huff*
Ok, so challenging the world when your weak and starving isn't a great idea.
I decided to make the first page of my notepad into a 'Things Not To Do' list with that being the first one.
It was mostly to distract my mind from how painful this movement was for my body.
I made my way up between the ruined buildings to reach a higher point while breathing like I just ran a marathon.
'*huff* This is really *huff* one crappy start, *huff* I'm afraid *huff* my body won't be able to manage much longer.'
I barely managed to pull myself over the ledge of the highest rooftop I could find in the near vicinity and caught my breath.
With a weak body and it being night, I could barely see much of my surroundings.
What I could see was the ruins of other buildings and the pockets of small fires going from other homeless trying to stay warm.
They were hundreds of us left, just barely managing to hang on from scraps and hiding in the cracks with our heads down.
'*Sigh* Life is fair, humanity is the one that's cruel.'
My eyes sharpened.
'And I am no different.'
I turned my head away from the homeless to make my plan.
I did feel sympathy for them; however, there wasn't anything I could do to help without getting myself killed in the process.
My body is weak and on its last legs as it is.
If I tried to yell or run to them in warning, what would happen?
They would either ignore me as an attention-seeking child or perhaps, they would heed my warning and run.
Do you think they would spare my out of breath, small body a glance?
No, they would hope I am the first obstacle between whatever is coming, and them.
This is the simple nature of humanity at the core.
Don't get me wrong though, if I had the ability to, I wouldn't mind helping those I see in front of me.
Right now? I have no such ability.
This world was made bright and sunny by its anime producers, but the hard truth is that it's only bright and sunny if you have power.
I mentally organized some of the information I had on this world.
'I will need to search for real information to see if the world is different from the anime and manga, but from what I remember, a few points should be the same.
1. The entire planet was alive. The lore stated that hundreds of millions of years ago, a space race called the 'Nitro' came to this planet. The Nitro was a humanoid troll-like race that was similar to farmers in that they planted seeds, cultivated them, and waited for them to bloom before harvesting. The only difference was that their targets were not fields but planets.
The Nitro chose Earth as a candidate for becoming a Gourmet Planet and injected it with Gourmet Cells by a meteorite. The material expanded, enlarging the planet and became the source of all life and deliciousness on the planet.
The Cambrian Period began, and many lifeforms started to develop at an accelerated rate, and their species prospered due to the Gourmet Cells.
The lore even went on to explain how the universe was formed and many other things, but I will get into that later.
The world of Toriko is home to a broad and diverse assortment of powerful and unusual animals, usually referred to as "Beasts." Most beasts resemble our world's animals; however, some may be a cross between several species from our world, or they may be something completely different from anything in our world.
There are things like BBQ pigs that are truck-sized flaming pigs, trees that grow ready to eat meat, chocolate volcanoes, vegetable gardens in the sky, ready to eat grass made of pasta, steak plants, ramen bowl octopuses, solid gold whales, and a genuinely crazy assortment of bullshit fantasy type things.
And the environments were also magnified to insane levels.
This planet is at least 100x the size of the Earth I am used to. The Human world is only a small percentage of the planet at around 30% of the surface, while the other 70% of the planet is the Gourmet world.
This part was a bit iffy, but the Human world was shown to have around nine continents and various islands with a human population of 31.2 billion people. Some natural obstacles or barriers separate the Human and Gourmet worlds. No regular humans ever entered the Gourmet world or risked immediate death.
The Gourmet world was mainly divided into eight areas that were each ruled by one the Eight Kings.
Beasts of such power that one on them, the horse king, once became angered while running across the ocean, and with one of its massive hooves, it stepped on an island. The anger coming off the beast was transmitted in the aura its footprint left behind, and the island has not grown a single blade of grass in centuries as a result.
Likewise, when the same horse king was in a good mood, life bloomed in its vicinity at a rapid pace.
The kings are apex predators of the entire planet.
The gourmet god, Acacia, was a man who, five hundred years before canon, appeared with the highest-level ingredient on the entire planet, GOD, and ended the worldwide human war that was going on for centuries.
He gave pieces of GOD to every countries leader and spoke to their humanity to stop the war. It worked, and Acacia disappeared from the known world soon after.
Acacia was also the man who first discovered and harvested 'Gourmet Cells' from a unique jellyfish he found and injected them into himself to become a 'Gourmet Hunter.'
He was the first 'Gourmet Hunter' in the entire world.
Acacia had three disciples, Ichiryu, Jiro, and Midora.
Ichiryu went on to form the IGO or International Gourmet Organization. After the war ended five hundred years before canon, Ichiryu began the journey of setting up the IGO to control the world without corruption.
I don't know how it worked, but by the time of canon, the IGO was already a mammoth of the Human world with control of most countries on at least seven of the nine continents.
Ichiryu gathered gourmet hunters, created a distribution system of ingredients, set down 'Gourmet Laws,' and connected the people of different countries to form the most peaceful time in the world, the 'Gourmet Age.' A time in which humans lived in harmony and growth under the IGO's watchful eyes and quested for yet unknown culinary delights.
The IGO is similar to the World Government of the One Piece world but without any corruption.
The IGO resembles the united nations in its gathering of the world's nations, but it also stands above them.
Each nation or country is still its own place, but they became members of the IGO and benefited from the international exchange of ingredients and resources as long as they follow the 'Gourmet Laws' set down by the IGO.
In all honesty, it was both a miracle and a sign of Ichiryu's ability in how he managed to truly bring peace without causing endless bloodshed. He truly made a world-leading organization without corruption.
Every high-status position in the IGO was given to an accomplished gourmet hunter, and Ichiryu treats them all as friends.
Do you know what one of the highest causes of an empire's collapse and or corruption is? It's when the ruler who formed the empire passes on, and someone else takes his place. Through the years, corruption seeps in, and even if the army and walls are invincible, it will rot from the inside.
The IGO doesn't have that issue since high leveled gourmet hunters can live for centuries at the very least. Of course, many still die for different reasons. Being a gourmet hunter is a job where your dancing on the edge of a blade after all.
Anyway, back to my main point.
Ichiryu formed the IGO.
The IGO set up a 'Capture Level' system from levels 1 to 100.
A Capture Level is a numerical rating applied by the IGO, which indicates the difficulty of successfully capturing a particular Ingredient. Considerations used in assigning capture levels can include a beast's fighting strength, but also their dangerous habitats, the other powerful creatures living alongside them, and the difficulty of successfully preparing or eating them.
The capture level scale is 'calibrated' against the strongest beast in the Human World, the sole creature at capture level 100. The more powerful beasts of the inhospitable Gourmet world are normally too remote and powerful for the IGO to determine their levels, so they are referred to as having 'unmeasurable' capture levels. Likewise, there are also ingredients within the Human World that are considered "below capture level 1" that usually comprise extremely easy to get foods that pose little or no danger.
A capture level does not always refer solely to fighting strength, also taking account of the environment, rarity, and any other guardians or obstacles, but when it does, a level 1 beast is described as harrowing enough to require at least a group of ten professional hunters, without gourmet cells, all armed with shotguns.
Next up is Jiro.
Jiro….well not much was said in the manga about what Jiro did during the centuries, but by the time of canon, he was widely known as 'Knocking Master Jiro.'
'Knocking' is a non-lethal method of capturing wild beasts. It generally involves striking the nerves or pressure points that control the movement of living creatures with the use of specialized techniques or the use of biodegradable needles fired from various implements, known as Knocking Guns. This way, any beast can be transported alive. However, the location of these nerves is different in every species, so a considerable amount of knowledge and experience is required to use Knocking techniques or Knocking Guns effectively.
During canon, Jiro was a small old man who was always drunk and went around 'casually' hunting in high leveled danger areas of the Human world and often leaving beasts in paralyzed states for decades during his drunken journeys.
Don't let his old age fool you though, that man was a monster who did some insane things in canon. By the end of the manga, with his full power unleashed, the man…...knocked…. the planet…. HE.STOPPED.THE.ROTATION.OF.THE.FUCKING. PLANET.
Yeah, you don't fuck with that guy.
Moving on, Midora went on to form an organization directly opposed to the IGO. It was called the 'Gourmet Corp,' and they were the main antagonists of the anime.
Their goal was simple.
Hoard all the highest-level ingredients, evolve their gourmet cells and eventually build an army to fight for GOD when it reappears.
Basically, the IGO was the world organization that gathered, researched, developed, and spread ingredients over the world for everyone to share.
The Gourmet Corp was a terrorist organization that wanted to do the same thing, but instead of sharing, they wanted it all for themselves.
Childish, I know, but that's just how it was. Humans will be humans, no matter the world.
5. Gourmet cells are the 'superpower' of this planet. Beasts are evolved by nature, but humans were only slightly enhanced by nature to be less fragile in the face of disease and such things.
Following Acacia, gourmet hunters appeared after injecting the cells found from that jellyfish, which was named the 'Gourmet Jellyfish.'
The gourmet cells evolved the body, mind, and spirit to higher levels by consuming high leveled prey from the world.
Each person's cells birthed a Cell Spirit that usually took the form of some kind of demon. I only have facts from the manga to go off of, and it's a bit fuzzy, so I'll wait till I can get real-world information on it.
Gourmet cells evolved the human body and took simple science topics and magnified them by crazy bullshit scales.
Manipulating elements, adapting to extreme environments, enhancing specific body parts to extreme levels.
Gourmet cells were something that could match a Super Saiyan's cells in how bullshit they were.
For example, the four main characters of the anime, The Four Kings, Sunny, Coco, Zebra, and Toriko.
Sunny's ability was the sense of 'touch.' His enhanced sense of touch is used through his feelers, which are .1-micron wide strings that extend from the tips of his hair. Although far too thin to be seen by the naked eye, Sunny's feelers are always spread around him in a 300-meter radius, probing the environment. The hairs' sense of touch is very delicate, approaching the sensitivity of fingertips. This gives Sunny constant feedback on everything around him and lets him explore the environment via touch alone; he can even defeat beasts without having to look at or be near them this way. His feelers can sense things from low and high temperatures, pressure, and painful stimuli, while a final type of feeler that is virtually indestructible is used for battle. Each feeler can also hold up an incredible amount of weight. And the start of the canon, each of his feelers could hold up to 250,000 kilograms, and he had over 300,000 such feelers. There were drawbacks to his powers as well.
Coco's enhanced sense as one of the Four Heavenly Kings is vision. He has the ability to see non-visible spectra of light due to the high amount of cone cells in his eyes and can read electromagnetic auras to predict an animal's (or person's) next action. This serves as the basis of his fortunetelling abilities. Coco's visual processing abilities are similarly enhanced to keep up with this visual prowess. Coco can even see that a creature is going to die through his perception of a much broader part of the electromagnetic spectrum.
He also has a body that was exposed to so many poisons that it adapted to be able to harness and create its own poison. He was known as a poisonous human who could coat his entire body in poison or shoot out many different types of poison as an attack. There were drawbacks to his powers as well.
Zebra's enhanced sense as on the Four Heavenly Kings is hearing, which was dubbed as 'Hell Ears.' Toriko claims that Zebra can hear a coin fall from "tens of kilometers away." Due to having gained considerable experience killing countless beasts, Zebra can actually hear when an enemy is going to die, analogous to Coco's ability to see that a creature is going to die through his perception of a much broader part of the electromagnetic spectrum. He has shown an incredible versatility of uses from sound, such as the echolocation ability of a bat, and he created many sound-based attacks that are directly destructive. There were drawbacks to his powers as well.
Zebra has also trained his body to be extremely durable and powerful through environmental training and through fighting beasts.
Toriko's enhanced sense as one of the Four Heavenly Kings is smell. He uses his highly developed sense of smell to gather information.
For example, he was able to determine that a female Battle Wolf was pregnant by the faint scent of amniotic fluid. He is even capable of detecting pheromones with his sense of smell. He can use smell alone to fight in complete darkness, although not very effectively. Later in the series, Toriko was able to smell a piece of the ground and determine the exact order of what stepped on the place for centuries. He could then pick up the scent trail and follow it to its end.
His Gourmet cell's main special ability is the enormous strength he can display. At the very beginning of the series, Toriko demonstrated immense strength, easily wielding a 76 mm steel rod wrapped with elevator cable as a fishing pole. There were drawbacks to his powers as well.
If I want to be truly free, I need knowledge, training, and gourmet cells.
6. There are a few different paths I can take.
The manga only really spoke of a few primary professions for those with the cells, but from what I can remember, there are Gourmet Hunters, Revivers, Chefs, Wholesalers, and probably many more.
Gourmet hunters are those who actively hunt for prey for a living. There are many reasons for why they do it, but the main goal of all gourmet hunters is to assemble a 'Full Course.'
Due to the difficulties inherent in securing certain ingredients, many have trained their abilities to superhuman levels, some of them even possessing gourmet cells to do so. Be it unusual displays of strength, phenomenal speed, or unrivaled endurance, these hunters are known for their capacity to surpass any normal, armed human being. While brute force may be the status quo, there are some known for using Knocking and other peaceful methods of collecting their quarry. Many gourmet hunters have artificial immunities to poisons by injecting themselves with a solution made from poisonous plants and animal venom over a period of time: this creates various antibodies.
To prove their worth, gourmet hunters tend to create full course menus made up of ingredients they've hunted, so that clients can see how good they are, though this isn't compulsory. The higher the quality of the gourmet hunter's full course, the stronger the gourmet hunter in question. Gourmet hunters tend to do their jobs solo, though there are some exceptions. Sometimes groups are formed, though this does not necessarily mean that they work as a team. This also might attract chefs to which the gourmet hunter can form combos with.
A Full Course Menu, or Full Course, is an individual's "ultimate meal." It contains eight courses that he or she has selected as their favored dishes:
Hors d'oeuvre
Soup
Fish Dish
Meat Dish
Main Course
Salad
Dessert
Drink
A full course can be assembled by anyone, but hunters and chefs are the main ones who seek to assemble one.
Next are Revivers.
A Gourmet Reviver is a protector of ingredients who tries to prevent them from being exhausted and, in some cases (if they possess the skill to do so) revive them.
They have the authority to arrest anyone who poaches. They are ostensibly neutral when it comes to hunting, choosing to take neither the side of a Gourmet Hunter nor a beast if they are in a battle, but will step in when an ingredient is being illegally poached or is endangered or when a comrade or civilian is in danger.
Following them are Chefs.
Chefs, also known as cooks, are individuals who are skilled in the preparation of ingredients. In the world of Toriko, chefs have a high status, which exceeds that of celebrities. In the gourmet age, their influence surpasses that of politicians, religious leaders, or artists. Since the most valuable things in the world of Toriko are ingredients, chefs are held on equal grounds to them.
A chef is considered "top-class" depending on the quality of their work and the ingredients that they can successfully prepare. Restaurants tend to be given rankings (or stars), which in turn reflects the ranking and ability of the chef in charge.
Chefs tend to form partnerships with gourmet hunters, known as Combos. Just as the strongest gourmet hunters form combos with the best chefs, so that the chef can cook the best meals, it is the same vice versa, so that the chef can obtain the highest quality Ingredients.
Many high-ranking chefs are also former gourmet hunters themselves and therefore are formidable combatants.
Gourmet Wholesalers are food vendors who primarily deal in trading and selling the ingredients caught by gourmet hunters.
They usually sell their goods for the market price but may also bid their food items off to the highest bidder, with prices starting off at the general market price. Gourmet wholesalers can also deliver large quantities of goods, ranging from luxurious restaurants to privately owned butcher shops.
Some wholesalers and hunters may even form a type of close partnership similar to combos where the wholesaler can act as a private informant to hunters on new ingredients and the best locations to find them, and may even help them to reach their destination by working as a hunter's personal transport.
There are many more jobs out there, especially for artisans of different crafts, but for those with gourmet cells, they mainly stick to one of those four jobs.
The vast majority of these people are those who started off as regular humans, and after gathering enough achievements, they were able to get their hands on cells to inject themselves with.
I'm not sure about the specifics, but less than 1% of the 32 billion population should have gourmet cells.
Only a few hundred were ever shown in the manga, so once again, I really don't know.
Of course, a regular human had endless career paths they could follow, but there was no way I wasn't going to try and get my hands on gourmet cells.
'That should be most of this worlds information.'
{Beep!} {Beep!}
My eyes snapped out of my thoughts at the sound.
It took me a second to realize it was the timer I set before I sighed and mentally turned it off.
I rubbed my forehead and added all the points I made about the world into my mental notes for future reference.
'*Sigh* that wasn't pleasant, I should be careful with mental alarm clocks in the future.'
I looked up and saw a light in the distance before taking a deep breath and letting myself calm down.
"It's time."
The mission for survival was about to begin.
Chapter End.