In to the Gourmet World (Toriko)

Ch 31

Just as Toriko was about to attack Tommyrod, the insect man opened his mouth to reveal a pale insect. Toriko immediately jumped back to put some distance between himself and the deadly creature. He noticed Tommyrod looking around, surprised. What was he looking for?

"What are looking for?" Toriko asked, his guard still up incase this was a trick. Tommyrod clicked his tongue and glared at Toriko.

"I'm surprised you didn't notice, then again, I've been told you always had a one track mind in many cases."

"What was that?!" Toriko growled. 

"Your little female friend, she simply vanished." Tommyrod hissed. "Not sure if I should be worried or not, but it has made this more interesting. 

That's when it clicked in the hunter's head. Mari HAD vanished, she was nowhere to be seen, but he could still smell her scent, like she was still lingering in the area.

'Please have gotten outta here!' Toriko hoped. The last thing he wanted was for Tommyrod to target her. She'd had too many incidents where she'd gotten hurt pretty badly, he didn't want her to go through that again. 

"FLYING FORK!" Toriko sent the attack at Tommyrod.

Tommyrod countered by unleashing a giant centipede to take the hit for him.

"Just how many parasitic insects do have in your body?" Toriko asked.

"I wonder how many minutes you can keep up that childish shivering, Toriko?" Tommyrod smirked. "Normally, the limit to how long someone can shiver is two minutes, if not a little more than that. Eventually, your muscles will stop trembling. Most likely a few tens of thousands of watts of energy is simply not enough to keep up with two hours of constant shivering." 

"Even you have a limit." Toriko said. "I'm sure you don't have an unlimited amount of insects."

"There are about 10,000 parasitic insect eggs dwelling within my body. I can't send them all at once, the eggs hatch into my esophagus and in the moment they're born, by body consumes a large amount of energy. The amount is around 1,500 kilocalories per bug. That's the same amount as a person running a marathon."

"So your limit is..." Toriko said.

"Yep, about a thousand more insects." Tommyrod smirked.

Mari's POV

While Toriko and Tommyrod faced off, I was hiding using chameleon camouflage. I so badly wanted to finish Tommyrod and avoid anyone getting seriously hurt, like Match's guys and Toriko. But the plot of the show had already changed with the bears showing up. If I got in the way of Toriko losing his arm, then the Century Soup arc would be ruined. I decided to lay in wait and deliver that final blow to Tommyrod myself instead of Toriko, it was the least I could do. I just hope my energy could last till then. 

I could feel myself growing tired the more I kept my powers activated. I had to release some of the arctic animals in order to conserve energy and I was starting to feel some of the cold. 

They had noticed that I had disappeared, but they had no idea where I was exactly. From what I could tell, Tommyrod had no idea where I was, but Toriko could no doubt smell me. Nothing gets past his nose. What ever bugs were left couldn't find me yet either, I hope it stays that way.

I felt like a predator, waiting to strike at the last moment. My mind wanted to step in to help Toriko, but every instinct I had was preventing my body from moving.

Just you wait, Tommyrod. You won't walk away from this fight unscathed for what you've done and will do.

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