"Bastard!" Setsuna's eyes turned cold. He threw a punch directly at the sky-obscuring giant hand.
A terrifying shockwave, transcending sound and acting directly on the soul level, erupted.
The star-plucking, moon-grabbing giant hand seemed to be stung in the palm by a steel needle. It shuddered violently and then withdrew.
The Blue Nitro, subdued by Jiro's pressure points, watched in disbelief.
"You... you repelled the [Hand of God]?" One Blue Nitro shrieked, its voice filled with absurdity and terror. "That is the ultimate life form surpassing all existence!"
Setsuna withdrew his fist, frowning slightly as he looked at that Blue Nitro. "What was that thing just now? You seem to know something?"
The Blue Nitro exchanged glances. Finally, the lead one spoke, its voice trembling with awe:
"Although we are Gourmet Nobles, we would not spend hundreds of millions of years cooking a single planet. Such an ultimate delicacy is fit only for the true Gourmet God."
"The galaxy you inhabit is merely the God's dining table. Earth is just an appetizer on that table, nearing completion."
"We Blue Nitro are servants attending to the 'God', responsible for tending, cultivating, and ultimately presenting the 'dish' upon the God's table!"
It looked again at the increasingly radiant 'star dumpling' within the barrier, its tone complex: "You thought you were clever, using GOD to replace Earth and endure the final cooking..."
"You thought you saved Earth? No! You have unintentionally upgraded an 'appetizer' into a... far more enticing, far rarer 'main course'!"
"NEO, which has devoured millions of life-bearing planets, is far more delicious than this Earth! This 'new dish' has instead further piqued the 'God's' interest!"
Hearing this, Setsuna raised an eyebrow, genuinely surprised.
'God? Dining table? This setting doesn't seem to explicitly exist in the original work. NEO was the final boss.'
'Wait,' Setsuna quickly thought of another point, his expression turning strange. 'In the original work, it was the White Demon inside Toriko who acted, defeating NEO with a single blow, thus ending the disaster.'
'So, those so-called gods don't actually not exist, but rather, they didn't truly appear because they feared the White Demon?'
Setsuna felt somewhat displeased. Those gods feared the White Demon, but not him?
"This is truly irritating." Setsuna's eyelids lowered. Just as well, since his resurrection, he had never fully unleashed his own power.
His previous enemies, whether Imu or Acacia, were too weak. Those fights weren't even warm-ups for him.
Now, he could use these gods to test the limits of his current power.
Setsuna stopped thinking. He transformed into a silvery-gray streak of light, shooting straight into the vast, fathomless universe.
It must be said, this universe truly embodied the concept of size equating to power to the extreme.
When he first saw the Mother Snake, Setsuna thought its 220,000-kilometer length was already colossal.
But compared to the 80 million-kilometer length of the Space Taipan, the Snake King, Mother Snake seemed as insignificant as an ant.
Yet none of this could compare to the true gods. These gods used galaxies as their dining tables. Their height was measured in light-years. Even entering space, it was difficult to see their full form.
Setsuna couldn't even see where the enemy was, because the god was so immense that vision alone couldn't encompass it.
His own scale relative to these beings was like a single point on a two-dimensional plane trying to observe a giant in three-dimensional space.
He couldn't even visually confirm where the enemy was, let alone fight them.
Fortunately, Setsuna's small cosmos was powerful enough, acting like the most precise radar, enveloping a vast galactic region with a radius exceeding 100,000 light-years, centered on the solar system.
Setsuna's mind automatically constructed a real-time, three-dimensional projection, finally allowing him to 'see' the existence of those gods.
In Setsuna's 'sensory map', he saw five silhouettes whose immensity defied description.
They looked like vague humanoid figures condensed from cosmic nebulae, or 'conceptual aggregates' composed of countless galaxies, clusters, and dark matter clouds.
A single swing of these gods' arms spanned thousands of light-years. A single breath could disturb the rotation of stars across several spiral arms.
One of the gods was casually reaching out, plucking a fully cooked planet from the 'table' before it.
The scene was like a human picking up a grape and popping it into its mouth, which resembled a black hole.
Setsuna locked onto the god that had just reached for Earth, the one whose hand had been relatively close to the planet.
"Then, let's begin!" Setsuna's body suddenly erupted with brilliant silver-white aura.
The muscle lines of his body became even more perfect, filled with explosive power. The aura was entwined with golden lightning.
Super Earthling Form!
This was a unique transformation Setsuna had developed based on Super Saiyan 3, combined with his own multi-faceted characteristics.
It integrated multiple amplification abilities: Eight Gates Released Formation, Baryon Mode, Conqueror's Haki's Infusion, Food Honor, Cosmo, Shunko, and more.
Super Saiyan 3 provided a 400-fold increase over base form. Setsuna's form, in terms of the combination of quality and quantity, achieved a 500-fold increase over base.
The moment the transformation was complete, the sheer aura caused the galaxy to tremble, as if Setsuna's own 'weight' exceeded that of the galaxy. The surrounding asteroid belt instantly turned to dust.
Setsuna let out a long howl and charged towards the god he had locked onto.
The god noticed Setsuna's movement and was quite surprised. To it, this was no different from the food on its table jumping up to fight back.
But it didn't seem angered, merely curious. It gently brought its hands together, trying to 'pinch' Setsuna, wanting to see what kind of novel bug this was.
The 'giant hand' descended. The area of its palm could accommodate dozens of solar systems.
Countless stars and nebulae passing by were instantly obliterated under this 'gentle closing', like sandcastles swallowed by a tsunami.
A supernova explosion caused by a star's destruction couldn't even raise a proper spark within its palm.
Facing this world-collapsing attack, Setsuna felt a flicker of surprise.
Because he sensed no energy fluctuation from the god's attack. It seemed to be merely a pile of brute force.
Setsuna darted through the gaps between the nebula-like giant hands and threw a punch at the god's arm.
A shockwave that pulverized atoms, a blade of light that tore space, an incredibly terrifying wave of energy converged and erupted at this single point.
"Ultimate Galaxian Explosion!"
A burst of brilliant light comparable to a supernova explosion erupted. Countless starry illusions composing the arm trembled violently, flickering erratically. Several nearby stellar projections directly extinguished.
"Hmm?" The god made a sound, carrying a hint of pain.
But this was not a serious injury, merely the annoyance of a mosquito bite.
Setsuna was somewhat numb. His attack had just annihilated a region equivalent to over a dozen solar systems in size. Yet to the god, it was merely being stung by an insect.