20 years old, that's how old I was now and i had accomplished and experienced many things since I was isekaied into this world, as of right now I'm 240 cm tall and 300 kilograms I should be as muscular as zebra though I haven't seen him since he went to prison over a year ago
I do sometimes wonder how he's doing though after remembering that he views the entire thing as just training I still remember when I met one of the heavenly kings, I was just 16 year old and still a chef at Fisshuparadaisu when one day sunny just came out of nowhere and asked my dad to cook his fish dish Skin Whitening Tuna
Of course he said he would provide the ingredients as well as pay well of the whole thing but instead of accepting my dad decided to make a counter offer, instead of him i would be the one cooking to which sunny just agreed and just waited for he food
When I came out with his dish which I would say I made perfectly and even give some actual flavor to, he quickly found out by using his sensors that I had gourmet cells and before eating we had a quick conversation where he questioned me about my gourmet cells
After that and asking him to stop using his sensors on me I just went back to the kitchen and waited for him to finish, saying he enjoyed the food would be an understatement as he was incredibly impressed by my ability to add flavor to it without ruining its effect was amazing and that it had an even better effect on his skin then before
But even so it was surprising that he asked me to be his combo but i swiftly declined, but he couldn't take no for an answer and tried 4 more times to convince me to no avail, after that day he sometimes came back and even bought the other kings with him
Feeding much less satisfying all of them would be an impossible task for most chefs in the world but due to my gourmet cells I was able to keep up with them and impress all of them with my cooking, and also surprisingly just like sunny zebra wanted to combo with me
Unlike sunny though when I said no he looked like he was gone explode with anger and threatened me, but after I stood my ground and said no again he seemed to respect me a bit and stoped telling me "don't get cocky" or maybe because the other heavenly kings were getting ready to fight him if things went south
And that's how I met the heavenly kings, some of them came around maybe once or twice a month and I became pretty good friends with all of them and surprisingly I became the most chummy with zebra of all people, I think it's because we both just hate egotistical people who can't back up their words
Though I'm definitely a lot more tolerant of those type of people then zebra, anyway at the age of 18 I quite my job to become a gourmet hunter which to most people seemed like an incredibly stupid thing to do
Why give up a job that's paid you over 15 million yen every year to go become a gourmet hunter which is pretty much the riskiest job in the entire world, a job where you either need to be a super human or have some incredibly advance technology that could cost millions, and that's just to survive as one
If you want to be an successful one you need it be strong enough to destroy skyscrapers with a single punch, you have to suppress any human limitations and become a walking nuke an beast among human that's why 2 of the heavenly kings are classified as dangerous beasts instead of just humans
And of course knowing all of this my dad tried his best to stop me from quote on quote ruining my life but after a lot of arguing and doing some stuff to prove I had what it takes to be a gourmet hunter, he was forced to respect my dissuasion and with a heavy heart let me to what I wanted to do
Obviously though I didn't have to deal with what most gourmet hunter had to deal with including all the stuff mentioned before because I was not only over qualified but also prepared to become one, I got a nice apartment in gourmet town and let me tell you the rent was fucking insane it made New York apartments look like a steal in comparison, but I was still able to pay for it with the money form my job as well as by selling some items I had collected over the years
And of course I would eventually move somewhere else but i need some credit as an gourmet hunter before I could move out of here and still gets jobs, so I waited and waited for that opportunity slowly building up my reputation and after 4 months I got my first big job
To get the teeth of an crocodile shark which was annoying but nothing that challenging and after around 3 days I got the teeth delivered in perfect condition, how you might ask well because I masted the advance techniques of knocking
It took me several years to find, learn, and master it mainly because of my lack of resources but I did it, and when I say it's a big deal I mean it's a really big deal because the amount of people who have been able to do advance knocking techniques are less then a hundred and the amount who have mastered advance knocking can be counted on both my hands
So adding even one person to that list was an incredible sight to behold and it's not like I was private about my knocking, in fact I was pretty public about it boosting my reputation and credibility incredibly to the point people were putting my name along with the heavenly kings
As for my gourmet cells for the longest time I was unable to evolve them due to various reasons so I just bought some high quality quality ingredients it might sound weird considering I'm supposed to a gourmet hunter on par with the 4 kings but cut me some slack ok
after eating the ingredient I met with my appetite demon again and after asking him a bunch of question I was able to learn more about him such as the fact he was made you black gourmet cells and that god gave him information about the future such as when god would appear again
He also gave me an ability of his which would let me turn invisible and hid my emotions and such making it basically impossible of almost anyone to find me, it was a good ability but I questioned if I would ever use it again when I got the ability to make back channels later on
He told me that it would be stupid of him to make his ability useless to anyone with access to back channels and that instead of replacing his ability it would add onto it and improve it even more
After i evolved my gourmet cells I felt confident in hunting higher level ingredients like the ones from ichiryu's list, so obviously after evolving Fangs cells as well, oh I forgot to mention that I named the Derous hatched Fang because of his singular fang laugh at the unoriginal name all you want I'm still the one with a fucking dragon as a pet
Anyways after evolving his gourmet cells Fang didn't want to eat any of the food I got for him so just like toriko I decided to go get some Blue Blood Corn or BB Corn for short and well it was actually pretty tough to get but a few full powered cast iron skillets and some help from fang i managed to get a couple kernels
I of course went straight to Wul Volcano and began to descend it, the heat felt unbearable for a solid minute before my cells fully adapted to it and made it feel normal fang on the other hand didn't have as adaptable cells as me and had to suffer a bit more before he could get his food
It took a very hot minute literally and figuratively but at the end we managed to pop the kernels as expected and we ate almost all of it, I also made sure to store some of the extra BB Corn so I could sell them later on the market for some extra pocket change
After that i made my way to the vegetable sky to get my hands on the king of vegetables Ozone Herb, I decided to walk the way to train my body instead of just flying on Fang like I did to get here, it was a bit harder then i though it would be but still manageable
At least until a storm happened and I tried to eat the Lightning Phoenix needless to say I got my ass kicked but Fang was there in case things went south and killed the Lightning Phoenix with a mini copy of an Extra Dimensional Laser that I taught him with my knowledge of the attack
I honestly hate to say it but as of right now Fang is just way stronger then me, and it honestly amazes me that he's still a child as the Derous species fully develops at the tender age of 100 years old, and most only fully master their power at around 1000 years old
The reason I know all of this information is because the status thing basically has an entire Wikipedia page on his species, and it seems to be less of just a status screen and more of a guide book to taking care of him as well and training him and making sure he's happy
Anyways after we killed and ate the Lightning Phoenix which unsurprisingly leveled up my gourmet cells we made our way to the top and into the Vegetable Sky where we proceeded to eat almost all of the vegetables, but more importantly we managed to open the ozone herb on the first try and after eating it we opened and store a couple more before going back home
With the ozone herb done I decided to just relax a bit, well I was gone relax but then out of nowhere my knife broke and sure I might not have developed as strong emotions for my knife as komatsu did with his but I still saw it as not just a gift from my dad but, an extension of myself that I had used for many years now
So needless to say I was a bit saddened and annoyed by it just randomly breaking for no reason, so I made my way to Melk Mountain talked to melk the second who told me she could finish my new knife in a year, to which I pulled the your not melk card
Told her I could go talk to her dad for her if she made my knife to which she accepted and after jumping straight down heavy hole, getting a bit spooked by the scorpion demon cattle and talking to melk about why I was their and how melk the second was doing I took a bunch of melk stardust and went up heavy hole
After meeting up with melk the second and explaining to her what was actually going on with her dad I made a meal for my new knife
As much I would like to get a knife made with it I even before even coming here, so of course I told her not to use the fang and she asked me why to which I just called over Fang who had just been enjoying the mountain and pointed at him
After the shock of me owning a Derous calmed down a bit she realized exactly why I didn't want the use the fang and quickly put it away, if you still don't get it imagine if your best friend took the teeth out of your great grandmothers corpse and made a cooking knife using them that you had to look at everyday
Well I guess Derous now sees me more as his boss/master but the entire situation is still fucked up no Matter what, so instead of that I suggest we used to talons and feathers of the lighting Phoenix I had recently hunted, so after figuring out stuff like the shape of my new knife and getting a good nights rest she was ready to make my knife
It was gone take a while so I decided to go hunt around the mountain with Fang while melk finished the knife, and as we lost track of time while going around the mountain a massive thunderstorm came out of nowhere and while I was thinking about what could have caused it
I failed to notice the giant storm cloud that had formed on top of the mountain, after a hot second the top of the mountain but more pacifically melks house was hit with a giant thunder bolt so I quickly got on Fang and flew up the mountain reaching the top in less then a second
When I went inside the house I saw melk sitting down and looking at my newly crafted knife, although it had the shape of a normal chef's knife it clearly had the same patterns as an Damascus knife with the edge of it having a deep yellow color, but the most noticeable thing about it was that it was covered in electricity
After picking up the knife I looked back at melk and noticed he had multiple new small scars all across her hands so helped her get back up, it seems the large amount of Lightning Phoenix feathers used to make my knife attracted or created the thunder storm
As for melks new scars then don't seem to be that big of a deal and she got back to perfect condition after a day, so after 3 days I left melk mountain with a bag full of melk starburst, a new knife, and all the skills I learned from copying melk
She was a bit sad that I was going away probably because I was the first human being she had talked to in years but of course I had more ingredients to hunt and many more thing to prepare for so you
can probably guess why when I went out hunting, I was for the most part very quick
So after that I look a long break Geary satisfied with my new knife, but of course eventually I went back to hunt even more delicious ingredients and the first thing on my menu was mellow cola, well it was more of an extra for getting that cook book but hey a cook book isn't an ingredient and I'm a gourmet hunter
Anyways when i arrived at Sand Garden my cells easily adapted to the extreme heat in a minute or so, fang took a bit longer but after fully adapting our cells to the temperature I just flew on Fang all the way to the gourmet pyramid, well I did take a small detour to the gourmet desert
But after the small detour I finally made my way to the gourmet pyramid and due to my stealth ability I avoided any beast that was inedible, actually my appetite demon never gave this technique an actual name maybe he forgot, nah he doesn't seem like the type of person to forget maybe it didn't have a name in the first place
Well considering I'm the 2nd user of this ability I might as well name it, so after thinking for a bit I came up with the name void walk, though ngl it is a bit on the edgy side still a decent name I guess, so I made my way down the gourmet pyramid and in a week I found the book
This castle I guess was no joke even I struggled with it and almost starved a couple times but thanks to my ability to chose what flavors I want to taste as well as naturally enhance the flavors of food by simply eating a couple of the inedible food became perfectly normal to me at lest
And even better for me I found the salamander sphinx which was actually a tough fight at first before I quickly realized it would cried a lake of cola if I just cut it a bit with my knife ability not to be confused with emy actual knife which I believe should only be used for cooking
So after that whole struggle me and fang decide to go on another long break, and before I knew it i was 20 and the canon had already started, I would say I used my prep time very well a lot better then even I expected though I do have to say I didn't have this amount of will power before I came to this world
Maybe it was another unknown gift from god, maybe I developed into having a lot more willpower then before with out realizing it, or maybe because this is a shounen anime word everyone I just has a lot more determination
But whatever it is I'm happy I was able to develop this ability or maybe personality
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Man this took a while not because it was hard but because life has been just fucking with me for a week straight and I needed a lot of time to fully recover from all that bs but I'm back now