Staring up at the dense swarm of Swallowtail Bats, Shun raised both hands and unfurled Food Honor, ready to wipe them out.
"Food Honor · Thousand-Blade Wind Vortex!"
Facing that black tide surging in, a hard light flashed in his eyes; his fingers became blades as his Gourmet Cell energy roared to a boil.
Without hesitation, he fused that energy with razor-fine Food Honor control, shaping it into countless invisible edges.
Centered on Shun, a blooming of death swept outward in all directions like a lotus in full, lethal blossom.
Swish!
This wasn't a crude area blast—it was precision cutting.
Each air-edge locked cleanly onto the wing root of a single bat, avoiding their comparatively fragile bodies.
A rapid "shhh-shhh-shhh" chittered through the dark.
The charging swarm slammed as if into an ultra-sharp net.
In an instant, wing pairs patterned with beautiful eye-rings were severed from bodies and fluttered down like ash.
The wingless bodies squealed—short, frantic—and then fell like dumplings onto the rocks below, clacking and twitching before going still.
In the blink of an eye, over a hundred Swallowtail Bats were down; only a few, lucky to be outside the arc of the strike, fled in panic into the dark.
Shun let the technique ebb, face composed—he'd shown only a fraction of his strength.
Then his right hand closed in the air; with Food Honor he gathered the drifting, intact wings, compressing them into a large, tightly layered orb before stowing it in his system pack.
Seeing this, Miyoko couldn't help asking, curious, "Shun, what are the wings for?"
"They're first-rate seasoning," he explained. "Grind the scales into the famous Swallowtail Bat spice. Perfect for grilled meat—the flavor will be excellent."
With the bat crisis handled, Miyoko still frowned, sensing something off. "Strange… Swallowtail Bats are timid. They don't attack proactively. Why were they so crazy? It felt like… they were running from something."
If Miyoko had felt it, Shun certainly had.
"Yeah—you noticed too. It wasn't really that they came for us—they were avoiding something and crashed into us…."
His gaze slid toward a deeper tunnel.
There, a mass of dim, purple-black gleams kindled—then three colossal shapes slid into view.
Thick, python-long torsos armored in hard scales. Three eyes burning with feral light on each head. Jaws yawning wide, dagger teeth bared.
The most striking were those three huge, bulb-like eyes on each skull.
"They're here—the overlord of this cavern, the Devil Serpent."
Devil Serpent: a hell-spawned monster by legend, utterly unlike ordinary snakes.
In the Human World its capture level is only 21, but the original strain in the Gourmet World reaches a capture level of 5100.
Of course, these three weren't originals.
Even so, for level 21 beasts, the pressure they exuded eclipsed many above their tier.
Three Devil Serpents ground over the stone, the scraping sound setting teeth on edge.
Their triple eyes pulsed with ominous red in the dark and locked tight on Shun and Miyoko—that was their highly developed infrared sense; to them, darkness meant nothing.
"Miyoko, watch for their venom and regeneration," Shun warned, driving his Food Honor perception to the limit.
One Devil Serpent didn't worry him; three, with Miyoko at his side, demanded focus.
No more waiting—one serpent struck first, its thick tail cracking out like a steel whip, slicing the air with a scream as it swept toward Miyoko, who stood a half-step forward.
The force was brutal; a direct hit would shatter bones even with a hunter's physique.
"Mm!"
Startled but steady, Miyoko leaped—she didn't take it head-on, but sprang away at the last instant.
The tail skimmed past and smashed the wall with a boom, spraying shards.
But as she dodged, a second serpent had already gaped its maw—an eerie glint flared deep in its throat.
"Pssht!"
A jet of purple-black venom lanced out like a high-pressure lance—blindingly fast, its path wicked—and drove straight for Miyoko's landing point.
Even before it hit, the reek alone could make one's head swim.
"Not good!" Miyoko's pupils tightened. Mid-air, she couldn't readjust in time; the venom was about to take her.
At that knife-edge, Shun moved.
His figure folded into the dark and then was simply there before Miyoko. He didn't meet the venom head-on; his hands traced a thousand smooth arcs before his chest.
Under Food Honor, the airflow around them turned viscous and resilient.
"Food Honor · Circular Spiral Wall!"
The onrushing venom touched the unseen wall and sank into a whirl—gentle yet irresistible force tugged it aside, dragging the jet off its original line so it scraped past the two of them and splattered into the rear rock face.
"Hiss!"
Where it struck, stone sizzled like plunged into acid, smoking as it dissolved a gaping hole.
The sheer corrosiveness made the scalp prickle.
Cold sweat misted Miyoko's back; without Shun's block, that would have been fatal.
"Their weak point is the regeneration core—behind the head, near the third vertebra," Shun said quickly. "Normal cuts don't do much. I'll tie up two—hit the spot I said with penetrating force."
Even as he spoke, the third serpent and the one that had attacked already lunged from left and right.
They moved like a team—one snapped to bite while the other whipped its tail again, sealing most of Shun's evasive lanes.
Hemmed by two raging beasts, Shun's face didn't flicker.
"Come on—let me see what I can do now."
(End of Chapter)
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