"...Around seventy, give or take?"
Zebra frowned deeply as he slowly gave the exact information he had just sensed.
"Sev... seventy?!"
Even Fang Mo seemed stunned when he heard that number. "More than seventy Red Nitolos? Damn, was this underground river doing it on purpose?! What's this underground river's TikTok account? I'm gonna cyberbully it..."
"Fang Mo, hold on."
After hearing Zebra say Komatsu was in danger, Toriko grew anxious as well. "What are these Bird People Nitolos you mentioned? What exactly is going on? Is a group of over seventy really that troublesome?"
"Didn't I explain this to you before?"
Fang Mo instinctively glanced at Toriko. "They're the ancient species that the Gourmet Association's bird-man-like GT Robots were modeled after. They're called Nitolos... They can even survive in the Gourmet World. They're insanely strong."
"What?"
Toriko and Zebra froze almost simultaneously upon hearing that.
"Strictly speaking, even if the two of you combined your current strength, killing even one of them would probably be a struggle. And Nitolos differ in individual strength, too."
Fang Mo rubbed his temples, seeming to realize that he had gotten a little carried away. "With the more than seventy Nitolos down there, the moment you two went down, you'd probably get instantly killed. The kind where not even your bones would be left. You should know that this Gourmet Pyramid was built by the Nitolos in the first place..."
That was right. In the original Sweet Cola arc—
To capture Sweet Cola, Toriko and Zebra followed Komatsu's instructions and beat up Salamander Sphinx until they had nearly exhausted all their strength.
What they hadn't expected was—
Just as Salamander Sphinx had been beaten to the point of spraying tears everywhere—
A Nitolo hiding in the shadows ambushed them. It not only stabbed Komatsu clean