Once the decision was made, neither Blue Nitro hesitated. They shot forward at once, one of them making straight for Midora's back.
"Core Extraction!"
The technique could supposedly blast a planet's core clean out of existence. But before they'd even started moving, Midora had already sensed it coming.
Midora didn't have Destructive Knocking. He couldn't do what Master Jiro did, sealing part of an attack's force inside his own body while releasing the rest outward. So there was no way he'd let this hit land on him.
Master Jiro's mastery of Destructive Knocking meant his fighting style traded wounds for kills. His own injuries didn't matter, so long as he could seal that power away, and the opening bought by taking damage was enough to finish an opponent outright.
That wasn't how Midora fought. His style was every bit as savage, but he had no interest in tanking an attack like this head on.
The instant the Blue Nitro made its move, Midora spun around and opened his mouth.
"Meteor Bombardment!"
A terrifying beam of energy roared out from between his jaws. In the original story, this attack had sent Acacia flying clear out of the universe. A Blue Nitro stood no chance of weathering it now.
The blast tore away most of the creature's body in an instant, leaving it with nothing left to attack with. Only the fact that it was a Blue Nitro kept it from dying outright. Anything else would have been wiped out on the spot.
But a heartbeat later, a small vial shattered, and strange liquid sprayed across the wounded Blue Nitro's ruined flesh.
"You lot really don't hold back with the good stuff, do you?"
Midora recognized it immediately. Healing Water. Something he'd never forget for as long as he lived. He'd gone after that very substance once, back when he'd tried to save Frohze.
He'd nearly died getting it. And the price of chasing it down had been steep: Frohze, already at the edge of death, had forced through a cooking technique she had no business attempting, and it had killed her.
He knew better now. The Healing Water would have worked. Frohze had simply chosen death, consumed by her own bitterness, and never came back.
Master Jiro had used Healing Water in the original story. So had Toriko. Midora found himself almost speechless watching these creatures wield it now. Their strength left something to be desired, but their bag of tricks was nothing to scoff at.
Healing Water. Life Pearls. Food Luck. All of it was real, all of it in play. To Midora, none of it changed the outcome. It just made things a little more tedious.
While he was still shaking his head at the absurdity of it, Joie struck. His famous knife, Cinderella, flashed in his grip, and a Divine Culinary Technique erupted into hundreds of millions of blade edges, all converging on Midora at once.
Midora's tongue snapped out, warping into a massive barrier that swallowed the attack whole. It looked devastating on paper, hundreds of millions of strikes raining down, but the force behind it was spread far too thin. Against Midora, it did nothing.
The moment he blocked it, the Blue Nitro that had already regenerated came at him again, a Ground Sloth Impact crashing down. This time Midora didn't dodge. He met it with a Hunger Fist of his own.
The clash left him untouched. The Blue Nitro's arm exploded a second time. That was the gap in raw power between them, plain and simple.
Caught off guard, Midora would have taken damage tanking a hit like that with his bare body. But braced and ready, trading blow for blow, he held the clear advantage.
"Almost there, almost there! Just hold him a little longer and it's done!"
The second Blue Nitro was busy readying the Golden Can. It wasn't something you could simply pull out and use, it needed preparation. But before it could finish, Midora was already standing in front of it, closing a fist around the golden container.
"No idea what you're playing at, but you're being a little too obvious about it."
Midora had no clue what the thing was thinking, but it didn't matter. He'd already decided it was an idiot. Its two companions were locked in a brutal fight with him, everyone's attention fully occupied, and this one was over here fussing with some strange device instead of joining in.
Anyone with half a brain would know exactly what that meant: it was charging up something big. Midora wasn't the reckless type. In the original story, the only reason Joie had managed to seal him away in the first place was because Midora had spent so long watching, tracking Food Luck instead of acting.
Food Luck wasn't something ordinary matter could measure up against. Guarding against it took real caution.
Midora had to stay sharp, stay careful. That caution was exactly what had gotten him sealed before.
But this time, Midora had already replicated Food Luck for himself. There was no chance he'd let a Blue Nitro sit there charging its ultimate move unbothered. So he simply crushed the can in his hand.
A terrible force detonated between his fingers. The golden container burst into countless fragments. Midora had no idea what the thing actually was, but it clearly hadn't been anything good.
Whatever killing move they'd been building toward, the Golden Can had obviously been the vessel for it. Destroy the can, and whatever they'd been planning had nowhere left to go.
"You... you actually destroyed a Golden Can!"
The remaining Blue Nitro stared, eyes wide with disbelief. Even Joie looked stunned. To them, the Golden Can was practically a sacred relic, untouchable.
And now Midora had just shattered one without a second thought. What did that even mean? If he could crush a Golden Can this easily, could he do the same to NEO?
Everything they'd spent years planning, all of it, undone in a single moment. The Blue Nitro's confidence crumbled on the spot. All that careful groundwork, gone, because Midora had wrecked it without even trying.
"Enough talk." Midora didn't care whether the thing's spirit was broken or not. His fist came down on the Blue Nitro's head, and its skull dissolved into ash in an instant. Blue Nitro could die too, it turned out.
Healing Water was useful, but not when there was no head left to heal. And this one hadn't been carrying a Life Pearl either. Midora didn't know why, but he knew this much: whatever this thing had been, it was dead for good now.
One down. Midora didn't let up, turning immediately on the last one. These creatures had never really stood a chance against him to begin with. One more punch, and the second Blue Nitro was gone too.
As for Joie, the moment things turned ugly, he ran. Only a fool would stand and trade blows with Midora here. His only thought now was Acacia, wherever he was.
He knew that much for certain: reach Acacia, and he'd be safe.
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Hello there, how y'all been?
Logged into this account after a long while, and I still see 30-40 readers a day, it genuinely makes me happy to see people still commenting and interacting in the space I created.
For my first ever translated fic, I never expected it to blow up like this.
Thanks for still giving your love and stones to this fic. Love you all.