Chapter 834: Space Upgrade, Spreading Infamy
Pulling the others from the churning ocean one after another, Toriko lifted his head, his senses catching something plunging at extreme velocity through the clouds.
The object tore through the stratosphere at blinding speed, resembling a falling meteor, yet it radiated concentrated vitality and biological presence.
Much like the apex beasts carrying astronomical Gourmet Capture Levels.
Soon, the flaming meteor pierced the cloud line, its descending blaze inciting widespread panic.
Under the watchful gazes of Toriko and the others, it slammed dead-center into the ocean.
"Those things... they're back?"
Just moments earlier, the swarms of automatons blanketing the cities had taken flight in unison, vanishing into the bellies of colossal battleships before warping away.
That sudden retreat, coupled with the global natural cataclysms earlier, had left the world paralyzed with dread.
Ichiryu's expression remained grim. He had come to recognize that this planet was fragile, or rather, that those foreign entities were terrifyingly powerful.
Having once considered himself perched atop the absolute summit of human martial achievement, Ichiryu felt an urge to scale higher once more.
Even more ravenous than his ambition was Midora's hunger to devour every gourmet delicacy in existence.
The martial artist named Son Goku had displayed absolute, unassailable might.
An unbridgeable chasm of pure power, one that left Midora shuddering to his very marrow.
"What do we do now? Does the World's Number One Gourmet Tournament proceed?"
An organizer clad in a black uniform posed the question hesitantly, receiving no answer.
With the entire planet reeling from cataclysmic devastation, indulging in entertainment was out of the question.
"Prioritize disaster relief and catalog ecological damage. The Gourmet World requires an extended period of recuperation," Ichiryu decreed. Midora held his silence, silently endorsing the decision alongside the International IGO.
"Ha... Hahahaha!"
Kaito Shirogane crashed into the sea. While it lacked the comedic ease of Saitama's moon-leap in the One-Punch Man world, he now commanded the biological capacity to fly directly from the lunar surface back to Earth.
He had broken the physiological ceiling binding ground-dwelling organisms. In a genuine sense, Kaito Shirogane had begun his metamorphosis into an authentic cosmic lifeform.
Naturally, this was an expansion of his biological survivability; it did not automatically mean his raw destructive yield surpassed every entity confined to planetary surfaces.
This novel freedom brought Kaito immense satisfaction. He laughed aloud, his voice rippling across the ocean swells. The sea had been battered by a succession of monsters, and subterranean volcanoes churned beneath the mantle; scarcely any aquatic life dared surface.
Kaito cared nothing for the desolation. He strolled across the waves, a thread of Ki channeled through his Martial God's Ultimate Intent providing more than enough leverage to tread the open water.
In the upper atmosphere, the traces of golden and black Ki had largely dissipated, yet the lingering heat of that apocalyptic clash still hummed against his skin.
Kaito extended a hand, tracing the drifting currents of foreign Ki.
By now, the Reincarnators, divine Contractors, and mechanical frames had completely vacated this reality. Even the Black Kings had vanished into the cracks of space.
The world, having exhausted its utility, was abandoned like a hollow husk.
From this vantage point, Reincarnators, Contractors, and the digital entities of the Machina Court were little more than swarming locusts.
Pondering this, Kaito halted. Crouching down, he reached into the ocean depths.
With a slight shift of his palms, his kinetic force stirred the deep currents into a vortex. Spiral power surged, dragging a shard of pitch-black luminescence up from the seabed and straight into Kaito's grasp.
[You have acquired Special Construct: Shadow]
Kaito rolled the fragment between his fingers. It straddled the boundary of the physical and intangible, offering zero tactile resistance, feeling as insubstantial as thin air.
Yet it carried a distinct [Presence]. He could sense the dark substance possessed genuine mass, capable of exerting physical influence upon its surroundings.
That was the primary reason his senses had latched onto it.
The secondary reason was the residual trace of [Ki] clinging to its core—the Ki of the wrathful One-Armed King!
Kaito still did not comprehend the root of that man's fury. The answer likely held the foundational mystery behind the birth of the Black Kings.
Yet he held little authentic curiosity toward those historical grievances.
Instead, his focus was drawn to an entirely different deduction: if plot characters of Son Gohan and Clark Kent's caliber could fall into the ranks of the Black Kings, what other figures were bound within that faction?
Their ultimate objective remained opaque, though it was evidently not the wholesale extermination of Reincarnators.
If eradication were their singular design, the Infinite Dimensional Space would never have been permitted to foster apex operatives.
Kaito himself had crossed paths with Black Kings multiple times throughout his growth. In the Marvel universe, Black King Clark and Black King Rhongomyniad had manifested concurrently, wielding more than enough power to extinguish his life permanently.
[Special Construct: Shadow]
[Quality: Unknown]
[Description: The interstitial boundary separating Spaces and planes—a shadow cast across the Sea of Chaos.]
[Effect 1: Unknown] (May attempt coordinate anchoring within the Goddess's Sanctuary)
[Effect 2: Potential Factor. This item is stained with the Potential Factor of Special Plot Character: Son Gohan. May attempt extraction at exorbitant cost.]
Kaito's eyes flickered. The value of this remnant was unexpectedly immense.
Though One-Armed Gohan met a tragic end in his native timeline and met an equally somber fate here, that in no way diminished his terrifying ceiling.
According to the lore Kaito possessed, Son Gohan's latent potential was staggering. Beyond the unique Ultimate state, he had unlocked his dormant power twice to temporarily eclipse his father, Son Goku.
A threshold that Prince Vegeta had spent his entire life striving toward, yet had repeatedly failed to claim.
At pivotal moments in history, Son Gohan had genuinely surpassed his father to stand as the undisputed apex.
The linchpin of that supremacy lay within this boundless potential.
A wellspring of power that, in the distant future, would blossom into the form known as Beast Gohan.
Stowing the black shadow into his inventory, Kaito surveyed the system prompts flashing before his eyes and confirmed his extraction.
Streams of silver data converged from every vector, swallowing Kaito whole.
His senses were stretched across an infinite plane, threatening to dissolve into the stream.
At the exact instant he was hauled out of the world, his Limit-Break Spiral caught the distant tremor of the cosmos: a golden pillar of Ki boring through sequential spatial dimensions.
An enraged Super Saiyan, wielding the Doorway to hunt across the multiverse!
[All Reincarnators are required to vacate the Space within 1 hour. The Space will initiate its Primary System Upgrade.]
The broadcast echoed through the public plazas, plunging the crowds into stunned silence.
Every operative stood bewildered by a prompt without historical precedent.
It read like an unscheduled maintenance notice issued by an amateur game developer.
Yet the Infinite Dimensional Space was no game, and they were far from lucky players.
They harbored no illusions about compensatory rewards; they felt only visceral dread toward structural instability.
No one could predict whether this update spelled salvation or ruin. Such an event had never occurred in spatial history.
The Infinite Dimensional Space can upgrade?!
Within the sanctuaries of the major assemblies, the apex Reincarnators reacted with distinct gravity. Having weathered numerous high-tier secondary and primary worlds, they were well aware of the older Spaces operating beyond their own borders.
Those elder Spaces had existed for epochs, their operatives were vastly stronger, and their veterans held a deeper grasp of spatial mechanics.
They understood that the Space was fundamentally an engine harvesting Information through deployed Reincarnators.
"Does this mean the Space has finally amassed enough Information to trigger a structural ascension?!"
A bronze-skinned combatant named Ice—a master of all three forms of Haki paired with exceptional hand-to-hand proficiency, currently serving as the second-strongest operative under Tan Zhishan—murmured in realization. He had demonstrated his mettle during the Philippine Incident, briefly suppressing an unconscious Mercenary Tao while dismantling title-tier operatives from rival syndicates.
His performance had earned Tan Zhishan's high regard.
Though stripped of his sovereign title as the Final Sun, Tan Zhishan had not been hunted down by ambitious rivals as many had anticipated.
While the Final Empire had collapsed in all practical terms, Tan Zhishan had successfully preserved his core inner circle.
Relieved of the burdens and vanity tied to the title of Sovereign, he had ceased his feud with Silent Life Qiqi, living far more unburdened than before.
Tan Zhishan nodded slowly, his thoughts involuntarily drifting toward that monster, Mercenary Tao.
Brokers within the Space had begun circulating grim intelligence: an immense number of Reincarnator squads had been wiped out in an operational world, spanning both Third and Fourth Steps.
Top-tier combatants had perished.
Rumors claimed an auxiliary officer within Destiny's Upper Seven Seats had been slain.
Shortly thereafter, Fenrir of Avalon in the West District, Snow of the East District, and Energy Tyrant Aka, Fifth Seat of Destiny in the South District, returned in succession, confirming the rumors.
In a Toriko-based universe, a catastrophic anomaly had prompted simultaneous interventions from the Void Paradise and the Machina Court.
The Space had deployed three waves of Reincarnators into the meat grinder.
Confirmed casualties exceeded thirty high-tier operatives—a slaughter far surpassing the tragedy of the B711 world.
Then, an even more earth-shattering revelation surfaced.
The sovereign who unified the West District and reigned as the undisputed apex of agility, Heaven's Pilgrimage Yoko, alongside the East District's King of Monsters—the lethal martial artist who had vaulted from novice to Sovereign tier in a single cycle, Archetype of Terminus and Genesis: Mercenary Tao—had been deployed to the same front.
Both had demonstrated absolute, overwhelming dominance.
The telemetry provided by Energy Tyrant Aka was blunt: both individuals occupied a tier so vastly detached from ordinary top-tier operatives that the comparison included the Sovereign Monarchs themselves.
Tan Zhishan reflected upon the intelligence he had purchased with a C-Rank Singularity Point, the memory of his duel against Mercenary Tao replaying in his mind.
While the man back then was still a far cry from the overwhelming titan Aka described, every single time Mercenary Tao surfaced, his power had scaled exponentially.
When Tan first caught wind of him, the boy had merely killed a prospective talent of his—a novice named Bo who was considered a promising candidate for a unique title.
The kid hadn't even breached the Third Step.
Back then, Tan Zhishan hadn't spared Mercenary Tao a second thought, casually issuing a bounty through his subordinates.
By the second time his name reached Tan's desk, he was already capable of swiftly executing standard title-tier combatants.
Recognizing the boy's alarming trajectory, Tan Zhishan had refused to play the arrogant villain feeding resources piecemeal. He deployed his most trusted lieutenant, Mahakala, and paid a steep price to contract two additional top-tier Reincarnators to secure the kill.
He had even personally overseen the perimeter.
From that moment on, reality had unraveled into the absurd. A rookie who had been inside the Space for mere months had dismantled the joint ambush of Mahakala, Su Qingqiu, and Thread of Thought with contemptuous ease.
And when Tan Zhishan moved to intervene personally, the King of Miracles had stepped in to bar his path.
Looking back, his analytical judgment and operational execution had been spotless, yet Mercenary Tao seemed cloaked in an unnatural providence.
An irresistible momentum that defied all suppression.
"I imagine Mercenary Tao brought back something extraordinary for the Space," Tan Zhishan remarked, exhaling a plume of smoke. He had abandoned his grievances against the man, thoroughly resigned in defeat.
When he previously offered coordinates to the Monster Dimension for a joint venture, he had still harbored ulterior motives.
Now, Tan Zhishan grew increasingly convinced that compared to Yoko Ekaterina, Mercenary Tao was the true champion favored by destiny.
Shielded by foreign titans when frail, and entirely beyond mortal reach once ascendant.
"Let's go. We'll lodge in the Sanctuary for a while."
Tan Zhishan rose, settling his resolve.
Stripped of his sovereign mantle, joining another assembly would no longer provoke political upheaval.
Ice and Mahakala froze, struggling to swallow the reality that their leader intended to fold under a former adversary.
"What? Do you two still fancy crossing fists with that monster?"
Tan Zhishan challenged them dryly. Both Ice and Mahakala shuddered involuntarily.
Having clashed with Mercenary Tao directly, the three men exchanged wry glances before breaking into helpless laughter, dissolving into teleportation light to vacate the premises.
Within another assembly's private realm, azure skies and drifting clouds remained pristine, yet the atmosphere was heavy with despair.
Professor Ye Kai adjusted his spectacles, having reverted his avatar to its original male visage.
Having witnessed his sister's descent into madness and her ultimate demise, he had found closure.
Yet within Azure Sky, others were beginning to fracture.
BOOM!
Draconic magic roared through the estate grounds. With a hollow detonation, a training dummy forged with exorbitant Dimensional Points was blasted to smithereens.
Training within private lodgings was vastly inferior to utilizing the official training facilities. Reinhardt's outburst was pure venting—or perhaps a desperate attempt to provoke a reaction from those around him.
"Sister Mori-Summer... Reinhardt is..."
Ye Kai ventured hesitantly.
Ever since President Ryo's fall, Reinhardt had sunk into brooding melancholy, his rage reignited by Mercenary Tao's latest exploits.
Mori-Summer sat in a black sailor uniform, her features frozen in cool detachment. She thought back to the boundary that had demanded decades of ascetic meditation for her to breach, only for Mercenary Tao to shatter and surpass it within mere days.
"Let him burn. If he doesn't vent the fury, it will suffocate him."
"If he insists on treating an entity like that as an enemy... it's far better he squanders his tantrums here."