The Mech Touch novel Chapter 2323

Chapter 2323: Digestible

Ves stood in the center of the shrine hall as he viewed a recording of Ketis' battle against the Grand Protector and the Grey Watcher.

In order to vividly observe the battle and capture the most details, he overlaid the actual terrain with projections taken from every surviving footage of the hectic battle.

Ketis had already taken the time to rip every scrap of data from broken armor pieces. Even when Grand Protector Roshaw ripped apart the combat armor of every paralyzed victim, some of them still possessed intact sensors that faithfully recorded what they observed and stored them in backup data chips.

The fidelity and quality of the footage varied wildly, especially due to the large amount of interference thrown up by the dark fog. Ketis only managed to obtain decent results by combining many sources of footage.

Tentacles piercing through bodies. Helpless victims laying paralyzed on the ground. The Grand Protector sacrificing their bodies while ranting about life of all topics. The huge idol of a dark god falling over.

Unfortunately, what happened next got cut off when the fallen statue of the tentacled whale suddenly spewed out all of the darkness without restraint!

The interference thrown from such a huge movement of energy at close ranges overwhelmed many sensors.

That was a pity. Ketis described a vivid, desperate struggle while she was eating lunch. _{freēwebnovel.com}

"Lucky and I never expected the Grey Watcher to survive having a statue fall on him. The way he managed to absorb some of the dark fog is quite abnormal." She spoke while eating the contents of a freshly-produced nutrient pack.

"So this fellow turned into a quadruped flesh monster as big as an elephant, but failed to land an attack on you even after several minutes of high-intensity fighting?" Ves raised his eyebrow as he watched the intact footage for the third time while he chewed.

He held a spoon with one hand and an opened nutrient pack with his other hand. He already added some hot water in the opened packet to hydrate and heat up the contents. He scooped up another spoonful of nutrient slurry and shoveled it into his mouth. A spicy, subtle taste spread through his tongue.

"I already told you, Ves. I'm a Swordmaiden. Just because I'm not a mech pilot doesn't mean I'm any less deadly up close. To be honest, the Grey Watcher would have been better off shooting me with a gun than transforming into a giant mutant. The Grand Protector wrecked my armor. If that Xarnus fellow just bided his time and shot me with a pistol without my notice, he would have been able to take me down."

"Cultists. They never make the most logical decisions. What can you expect?" Ves shrugged while he swallowed his latest mouthful. "I hope you don't follow in that stupid guy's footsteps. I know you prefer to fight with swords, but I gave you that compact laser pistol for a reason."

"That gun is quite useful, if a bit on the small size. It overheated during the battle, though."

The two continued to chat about her battles while they quickly finished the contents of their nutrient packs. They couldn't help it. While the flavor wasn't the best, Ves never tasted anything so spicy, savory and with some unique notes that he had never experienced before.

Due to his altered physique and metabolism, his taste buds were quite dulled. It took a lot of flavor for him to taste something enjoyable. The products of the nutrient processing plant just happened to exceed a certain threshold that made him feel as if he was eating something meaty.

"This is surprisingly good." Ves looked appreciatively at the empty wrapper. "Are all the nutrient packs from this plant as packed with flavor?"

Ketis shook her head. "Not exactly. The output is rather.. variable. Quality control here isn't too strict, especially when it comes to the selection of ingredients. The input changes day by day, which means that each nutrient pack comes out just a bit differently every time. That's one of the appeals of pirate-produced food. For many local Nyxian residents, nutrient packs are all they will ever eat in their lives. Tasting different flavors from the same brand helps keep their meals more varied."

That made sense to Ves. In a barren region like the Nyxian Gap, it wasn't as if there were large, fertile planets and landmasses lit by suns. Cultivating natural foodstuffs required a lot of space, so cultivating plants or cattle in indoor farms was fairly trouble.

While the Larkinsons already encountered a fair amount of sophisticated vertical farms at Ulimo, the energy, resources and manpower put into them was fairly onerous. In the skewed economy of the Nyxian Gap, regular people could never afford to eat organic food on a daily basis.

For this reason, most people simply grew up eating nutrient packs instead. All it took to produce them was to process and mix a large amount of organic matter together. This could be anything from sewage, compost or even industrially-synthesized compounds.

There was nothing wrong with eating such food. It was simply a way to produce food that was nutritious enough for humans to live on at the highest possible efficiency and the least amount of waste.

In the most ideal circumstances, food produced and consumed in an isolated settlement or space station could be maintained in a closed loop.

The meals that the local residents ate were eventually discharged into sewage. That sewage flowed back to a treatment plant which broke it all down. The resulting output would then be brought to a nutrient processing plant much like this one and be made into freshly-produced nutrient packs.

This was simply a human method to shorten the natural cycle of consumption. A more natural cycle involved tedious, wasteful and time-consuming steps such as cultivating crops, feeding some of them to cattle, butchering them for meat and so on. With space and resources in places like the Nyxian Gap at a premium, how could the pirates ever have the patience to go through all of that trouble?

Even so, pirates could be quite creative when it came to varying the flavor profiles of their nutrient packs. Since they depended so much on them for sustenance in their daily lives, Ves discovered that they had become quite skilled at providing them with interesting flavors!

"I made sure to reserve a couple of crates of nutrient packs from this plant that you might find interesting." Ketis smiled knowingly at Ves. "I know you'd love them. They're quite unique."

"Mmmhmm. It's too bad that Lucky isn't doing so well. The local cuisine seems to trouble him quite a bit."

They turned their attention to a mechanical cat that was splayed flat on the floor.

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