After entering the Forest of Food, Kael didn't waste a second. He headed straight for NEWS.
NEWS grew atop a mountain peak. It wasn't attached to any creature's body—just rooted there like a natural formation.
That didn't surprise Kael in the slightest. In this world, bizarre ingredients were everywhere. In the Human World alone, there were things like Barbecue Trees. Meat that grew on trees, in water, buried in soil—it was all normal here.
So meat growing from a mountain wasn't strange. The only difference was that this one was NEWS.
And despite sitting there in plain sight, no creature bothered with it. Capturing NEWS wasn't particularly difficult either. The real challenge was entering the Forest of Food safely and actually finding it.
The Deer King and the countless beasts within the forest were the biggest obstacles.
As for the cooking difficulty? Kael wasn't worried at all.
The moment he laid eyes on NEWS, the ingredient "spoke" to him.
It gleamed openly at the mountain's summit, yet no beast showed the slightest interest. The reason was simple—taste.
Without eating ANOTHER and unlocking a new sense of taste, neither humans nor beasts could perceive any flavor from NEWS.
The same went for several of the later ingredients. Only GOD actively emitted aroma—because its purpose was to harvest all the ingredients on Earth. The others required an awakened palate to taste anything at all.
So NEWS just sat there, untouched.
On top of that, beasts had no idea how to prepare it.
Its cooking difficulty wasn't on the level of ANOTHER, GOD, or ATOM—but compared to most super-special ingredients, it was still extremely challenging.
Some humanoid beasts gave rise to chefs. But the vast majority did not. And even among those that did, their skills were nothing compared to Nitro chefs or human masters.
They simply weren't capable of handling ingredients of this level.
So NEWS remained there—within reach, yet out of grasp.
Looking at it, Kael immediately understood the preparation method.
In short, it required slicing.
But during the slicing process, force had to be distributed evenly across every single cell of NEWS.
Each cell needed to be struck with uniform power—like tenderizing meat—except the force had to reach every cell simultaneously. And the required adjustments changed dozens of times every ten seconds.
Under those conditions, only someone like Zebra, who controlled sound with his Devil's Hearing, could manage it.
Or someone whose control over strength rivaled the Monkey King.
Such people were rare.
But Kael possessed both abilities—and far beyond that.
In terms of force control, he had long surpassed the Monkey King by an immeasurable margin.
As for the Devil's Five Senses, he didn't need to copy them. He already possessed the Divine Senses—a perception ability that far exceeded the Demon's level.
And no, this wasn't something like the "God's Tongue" from the World of Food Wars.
This was an entirely different realm.
Once he understood the method, Kael moved.
In a single instant, NEWS was sliced cleanly from the mountain.
The countless steps that would overwhelm others meant nothing to him. He didn't even give the ingredient time to react before the entire preparation process was complete.
It was like when Komatsu learned Food Honor and prepared the Puffer Whale—so fast that the whale itself didn't realize it had been cooked.
Taking a bite of NEWS, Kael nodded in satisfaction.
The ability it granted was useless to him now—but the flavor was undeniably excellent.
And for food like this, Kael had always had a weakness.
After consuming NEWS, one could open the Back Channel—a pathway into the Spirit World.
It was an incredible ability. For travel, one could enter the Spirit World and traverse through it, achieving a kind of spatial jump.
For training or tasks, one could envelop themselves within the Spirit World. Inside, time flowed differently—while only an instant passed outside, decades, centuries, even millennia could pass within.
In the original story, Acacia had nearly died. But when his back channel evolved, he broke free of his predicament—and even consumed GOD before Toriko could.
It was an absurd power.
But for Kael, it was unnecessary.
Having begun his transformation, he could already manipulate time and space at will.
To him, time and space held no real meaning anymore.
He could enter the Spirit World freely without restriction. If he wished, he could even expand the Back Channel to envelop an entire continent.
Ordinarily, someone who ate NEWS could use the Back Channel to create a small spatial enclosure—roughly the size of a room. The larger the space and the farther the movement, the greater the energy consumption.
For Kael, there was no consumption.
These abilities were as natural as breathing.
That was the terror of being on the path to becoming a Gourmet God.
Even at the earliest stage of transformation, he was already this monstrous.
Though the power was useless to him, obtaining such an ingredient still pleased him.
Afterward, Kael wandered through the Forest of Food.
There were still plenty of exceptional ingredients here. As long as he didn't slaughter recklessly, the Deer King wouldn't interfere.
After all, nature operated on survival of the fittest. The Deer King wouldn't stop ordinary hunting.
Only when hunting escalated to the brink of extinction would it step in.
Kael strolled casually through the forest, completely unconcerned about danger.
Even if the Deer King decided to attack him now, it wouldn't matter.
For others, the Forest of Food was a death zone.
For Kael, it was little more than his backyard.
After capturing several high-level, incredibly delicious ingredients, he finally left the Forest of Food.
Somewhere deep within, the Deer King quietly let out a breath of relief.
Though Kael had been polite, a being of that caliber entering the Forest of Food would make anyone uneasy.