"HIIIIIIIIIIEEEEEEEEE—!!!"
The Horse King's neigh was not a sound—it was a cataclysm given voice. The shockwaves materialized into visible rings of distortion that tore across the sky, shredding clouds and shaking the very roots of the Eighth Continent.
Perhaps it was the primal terror encoded within that sovereign scream, but the entire ecosystem of the continent went berserk. Beasts of every capture level, from gentle grazers to tyrant predators, abandoned all instinct except one: flee. A chaotic tide of life stampeded for the periphery, a panicked exodus from the wrath of an awakened god.
That wrath, simmering for millennia, had been ignited by an act of profound indignity.
It began with targeting. Both Saitama and Garou, in their unspoken competition, had independently selected the same prize: the Horse King's immense, muscular hindquarter. To the creature whose very presence defined the land, the approach of these two buzzing specks was an irritant. It retaliated with a dismissive snort—an "Air Cannon" that blasted a canyon dozens of kilometers wide and unfathomably deep into the earth.
They dodged it without breaking stride.
"Hey, Baldy! Race you!" Garou roared, transforming into a dark red meteor.
"Okay!" Saitama agreed, and with a Serious Jump, he effortlessly overtook Garou, arriving at the colossal flank first.
But as Saitama poised to land, he halted, hovering. A rare flicker of something akin to consideration passed through his dead-fish eyes. His senses, deceptively keen, had detected it—a second, vibrant, burgeoning life-force pulsing within the Horse King's abdomen.
Pregnant.
Saitama's personal code, simple and absolute, had a rule. He hung back.
"What's the hold-up?! Getting cold feet?!" Garou taunted, not slowing for a second. He landed on the vast, plateau-like rear with a thud that resonated through the beast's skeleton.
The battle-maniac didn't hesitate. His jaw distended, teeth sharpening into cosmic fangs, and he bit down.
CRRRUNCH—SHLIK!
The sound was of universe-grade leather being torn by sheer will. A mountain-sized chunk of flesh, scales and all, was ripped clean from the Horse King's body.
"HIIIIEEEEE—!!!!"
The Horse King's scream this time was one of shock, outrage, and pain. A tremor quaked through the entire continental plate.
Garou chewed twice, his face contorting in immediate disgust. "Pah! What the hell is this?!" he spat, ejecting the fibrous wad of meat. It hit the ground, forming a new, grotesque hill. "Tastes like desiccated comet dust and regret!"
From his vantage point, King facepalmed, a dry chuckle escaping him. Told you so.
His attention, however, was on Saitama. He sensed the pregnancy. His restraint… is oddly principled.
Nearby, Toriko and Komatsu were statues of shattered cognition. Komatsu's legendary Dragon King's Fang knife slipped from nerveless fingers. Toriko simply stared, his gourmet hunter's mind, which cataloged the impossible daily, utterly short-circuiting. He… bit it. He actually took a bite out of an Eight King… like it was jerky.
But the Horse King was now beyond rage. It was in a state of apocalyptic insult. Its eyes burned with crimson solar flares. Its eight world-pillar legs stomped, and the ground of the Eighth Continent rolled, a seismic wave hurling fleeing creatures back toward its epicenter.
"HIIIIEEEE—!!!"
The ultimate rebuke. Extinction Breath.
Every molecule of air within a thousand-kilometer radius was violently inhaled by the Horse King, creating a perfect, sudden, and absolute vacuum. It was a death sentence for any terrestrial life—suffocation on a continental scale.
The effect was instant on Toriko.
"Guh—!" He collapsed, knees hitting the hard earth. His hands flew to his throat, claws digging into his own skin. His face darkened to a terrifying purple, eyes bulging, every vein in his neck and temple threatening to rupture. The gourmet cells in his body screamed for oxygen that did not exist.
"TORIKO-SAN!" Komatsu fumbled desperately for the life-support badge on his own chest.
"N-No…!" Toriko forced out the word, his gaze locked on the two figures who moved effortlessly in the void. Saitama was casually examining his fingernails. Garou was cracking his neck, annoyed by the lack of sound. A fire, fiercer than any hunger, blazed in Toriko's eyes. If they can… I… will not… yield…
King observed Toriko's struggle, the stubborn refusal to accept aid. He gave a single, solemn nod. This is the will that forges legends.
Then, he looked back at the enraged planetary titan, its breath having stolen the very sky.
"My turn," King stated, his voice calm.
He didn't leap. He didn't blur. He simply took a single, deliberate step forward.
And the world bent around him. The vacuum meant nothing. The raging Horse King meant nothing. He was the Emperor, and the stage was now his.
As he walked, the Emperor Engine within his chest stirred. It began not as a roar, but as a low, tectonic hum—the sound of dormant continents shifting.
Thrum… Thrum-thrum…
The rhythm quickened, deepening, resolving into the unmistakable, soul-shaking cadence of cosmic war drums.
BOOM. BOOM. BOOM.
With each beat, crimson-gold aura erupted from King's form, not as a flare, but as a volcanic geyser of power. It swirled around him, a maelstrom of incandescent energy that spun faster and faster, growing in scale until it dwarfed mountains.
Then, condensation. The swirling tempest of aura was sheathed in layers of impenetrable, obsidian-black Armament Haki, hardening, sculpting, forging itself into a new shape.
When the light settled, a colossus stood astride the plain.
It was a 20,000-meter-tall titan of dark gold and crimson light—the Emperor Armor, manifested not as a suit, but as a Dharma-Form Deity. Its visor glowed with cold, judicial fire, and its presence commanded the very axis of the world to tilt in its direction.
"Th-That's…" Komatsu's legs gave out entirely. He sat hard on the ground, his mind a blank page. Exaggeration had left the dictionary.
Toriko, fighting the blackening edges of his vision, beheld the armored god. The suffocating vacuum, the pain, all momentarily forgotten in the face of this descending myth. It was majesty given a silhouette, an aura that didn't ask for submission—it was submission.
King's purpose was not theatricality. His goal was singular and primal.
Taming.
Every man harbors a fundamental appreciation for two things: breathtaking beauty and supreme performance. The Horse King Heracles was the ultimate expression of both—a living, breathing hypercar of the Gourmet World. Its aerodynamic, power-corded physique, its mane of flowing stellar plasma, its kirin-like, noble features… it stirred a hunter's desire deep in King's soul.
"If I want it," King's voice echoed from within the armor, a grin in its timbre, "I take it."
The principles of breaking a wild stallion and captivating a formidable woman were, at their core, identical. It all came down to a single, decisive act: mastery.
A psychic thread, sharp as a command, shot to his companions. "Fall back. Both of you."
Saitama, already disinterested in a pregnant opponent, nodded and tapped Garou on the shoulder. "C'mon. King's got a plan."
Garou, after a hissed curse of disappointment upon learning of the pregnancy, shot one last glare at the Horse King and bounded away with Saitama, leaving the stage clear.
Now, it was just the two of them.
The Emperor, and the King.
The 20,000-meter-tall dark gold deity looked down at the 22,000-meter-tall titan of living flesh and storm.
King's amplified voice boomed across the vacuum, a challenge that vibrated through spacetime itself: "Your reign of mere instinct ends today. You will learn a new master. You will bear a new rider."
The Horse King Heracles, its extinction breath still holding the land in a airless grip, met the gaze of this new, arrogant mountain. Rage, pain, and now a spark of primal confusion flickered in its planet-sized eyes. This was not a creature to be bitten or chased. This was something… else.
It lowered its head, not to feed, but to charge. The ground for a thousand miles prepared to shatter.
The clash of sovereigns was about to begin.
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