The Mech Touch novel Chapter 1598

Chapter 1598 Sixth Offspring

Gloriana's personal chefs were highly-trained and acclaimed in their craft. Their ability to manipulate ingredients and develop tasteful and sophisticated dishes was unsurpassed on Cloudy Curtain.

Dr. Lupo, the new chef and exobiologist that Ves recently recruited from a refugee settlement, possessed different strengths.

While he was not as adept in the culinary arts as as an elite second-class chef, he was a very capable exobiologist!

As a fully-fledged biotech expert who specialized in nutrition, he created and modified his own ingredients. This gave him an unsurpassed ability to cook meals that were extremely delicious, nutritious and fulfilling!

Perhaps his biggest value was that he could study a person's precise physical and genetic condition and use the results to tailor the ingredients for maximum benefit!

This was such a new concept to Ves that he quickly became intrigued.

According to Dr. Lupo's boasts, his food was so beneficial that they could strengthen someone's health, appearance and longevity over the long-term!

However, something like this sounded too good to be true. Ves soon became skeptical at Lupo's outlandish claims.

"How much does your food actually affect our health? How many years longer will I live if I keep you on as our chef?"

Lupo smiled sheepishly. "I'm still in the early stages of my research. For now, I've only started with studying ingredients that are already known to be nutritious and applied my own tricks to them. It will take some time and a lot of funding for my original research to bear fruit."

"In other words, you're far from a senior in this field, is that right?"

"I'll become an authority in the field of nutritious solutions sooner or later! Believe in me, Mr. Larkinson!"

Ves shrugged and turned to Gloriana. "What do you think? As long as Lupo doesn't poison us, I'm inclined to give him a chance."

While she looked troubled, she was sober enough to recognize Dr. Lupo's value.

After a moment, she came to a decision. "I'll allow him to work in the kitchen as long as he's limited to ingredient preparation. I want my chefs to do the actual cooking."

That sounded fine to Ves. He even added another suggestion.

"I'll also assign some guards to pay extra attention in inspecting the meals."

The guards from the Avatars and Glory Battalion already subjected all the meals reserves for Ves and Gloriana to rigorous scans.

To Ves, such a precaution was hardly necessary. His metabolism was so abnormal that he could easily digest most types of exobeast flesh without any problem!

Unfortunately, Gloriana was not as robust. Though her extensive genetic modifications and other augmentations made her much less susceptible to poisons and other toxic substances, she was much closer to a baseline human than her boyfriend.

If someone as smart as Dr. Lupo really wanted to kill Gloriana by poisoning, then he just had to develop an ingredient that was deathly without tripping any alarms.

This was why Ves posed an additional demand to Dr. Lupo.

"Don't use any customized ingredients without verifying their safety and effectiveness in lab conditions." He ordered. "I'll make sure my guards are capable of distinguishing between authorized and unauthorized ingredients."

"What?! That will take weeks, if not months!"

"SHUT UP! You'll accept this term, or you can kiss your generous budget goodbye!"

Dr. Lupo had no choice but to acquiesce.

Though he didn't know Dr. Lupo for long, Ves already figured the man out. He was just like any other obsessive researcher. As long as he enjoyed enough time, funds and facilities to pursue his research, he would agree to anything.

The extensive background check that Crindon performed on Lupo did not identify anything worrisome about his loyalties. His previous school and employer were normal companies that no longer existed once the sandmen overran their facilities.

Lupo also didn't appear to share any relations to fringe groups such as the Five Scrolls Compact.

While Lupo's obsessive tendencies strayed fairly close to uncomfortable territory, he was not as extreme as Dr. Jutland.

Since Ves required the services of a high-caliber exobiologist, he was inclined to give him the benefit of the doubt. He just had to make sure to curb Lupo's enthusiasm with sufficient checks and balances.

Once this morning incident ended, they commuted to the Mech Nursery.

There, Ves and Gloriana first paid a visit to the Avatar's recently-upgraded medical facility.

Ves paid careful attention to Davia Stark's ongoing physical treatments.

"We have made fair progress in treating our patient's injuries." A doctor reported to Ves. "She should be ready to wake up within two to three weeks, depending on any complications or adverse reactions that might arise."

"Take your time and be thorough. Madame Stark is one of the first beneficiaries of my charity. I don't want any of the veterans I've selected to die under our care. Is that understood?"

The doctor gulped. "We shall do our best, sir."

As the doctor moved away to supervise Stark's ongoing treatment, Gloriana turned to Ves in confusion.

"I didn't object to your decision to start a charity. I think it will do good in increasing your reputation, which will only make you more pleasing in the eyes of my dynasty. I'm just unsure why you've diverted some of your precious time to check up on this refugee's condition."

"Davia Stark is not just a pity case, Gloriana. She's a future asset. Don't you see?"

As the pair left the Avatar base, Ves asked a question to his girlfriend.

"Have you ever worked on an expert mech?"

"Not really." She shook her head.

"What does that mean?"

"While I haven't had the privilege of contributing to the design of an expert mech, I did enjoy an opportunity to assist in the design of one." She explained. "I mostly helped with testing, verification and number-crunching. It was an amazing experience. If the intended end user of the expert mech wasn't my older brother, the lead designers would have never allowed me to participate in this project!"

"Ah, I recall that your older brother is an expert pilot."

"Yup. Brutus has always been the closest brother to me. I love him very much. It's too bad he's not happy about being born as a boy. He's always been obsessed about proving himself. That's probably why he managed to break through to expert pilot."

Just like any other proper Hexer, Constance Wodin had six children.

Gloriana was the youngest and the apple of her mother's eye. As a woman and the sixth child, she enjoyed a level of pampering incomparable to her other siblings aside from the firstborn.

What Ves found very remarkable about her branch of the Wodin Dynasty was that Constance managed to raise both an expert pilot and a Journeyman Mech Designer!

Although the expert pilot was a man who was a few years older than Gloriana, it was still an impressive feat that provided Constance with a lot of acclaim!

Hexer society regarded her as a model mother! Every child of hers went on to become exceptional in their chosen vocations!

"What makes an expert mech an expert mech?" Ves asked. "Besides the obvious, that is."

Gloriana wistfully sighed. "Expert mechs are very fascinating to me. You could say that my specialty is already geared towards designing expert mechs. It's impossible for expert pilots to leverage their abilities with a standard mech. Even if they're put in the cockpit of an expert mech tailored to someone else, they're only able to display a fraction of their potential."

"Expert mechs are custom mechs by definition."

"Exactly." She nodded. "It's a shame that low-ranking mech pilots aren't as valued. It's always been my dream to give every low-ranking mech pilot the opportunity to buy a mech tailored to their piloting ability."

"There are way too many mech pilots to service them all, Gloriana. At most, you could develop a base model with a lot of adaptability. You could then develop a very advanced software suite that would accept all kinds of input about the mech pilot and let it churn a modified mech design that somewhat fits the customer better."

She smiled ruefully at him. "I've already thought about that. It's a potential solution, but way more complex than you think. A software suite can't possibly be as good as me in customizing a mech. Even if I somehow develop one that is, I'm not sure that it's wise for me to release it. Won't I be making myself obsolete if I do?"

"I think there's much more to mech design than that. You'll doubtlessly be able to explore a way to distinguish your mech designs outside what an automated design suite can do."

As someone who already handled a Terran auto designer, Ves knew what he was talking about. No matter how good these nifty software could get, they could never completely make a human mech designer redundant!