I purposefully reduce the number of subthrusters firing up to lure the guy on my tail. He’s not really biting, like he’s suspicious of an opponent that can only run up and right, but eventually comes to bite my bow. Did it work?
I suddenly move down to the left, do a half turn, and point the bow cannons. I check to see if his still aren’t pointed at me, and fire into his bow, blowing him up.
“<Aah!? Dammit!!>”
“Yes yes, I won. My long awaited ten puni prize money!”
“<Ah, ah, there!>”
I check my phone, and see I’ve received ten puni, as I exit the simulator called a cockpit. That’s what I was doing, a match in the Mercenary Guild’s simulator with ten puni on the line.
We spent ten days hunting eels for travel expenses after the fashion show, and we’ve been taking a break these last couple of days. My record in these two days is eighteen wins and sixteen losses.
It’s not my first time doing this, but my win rate has gone up a lot. I have more wins than losses. Are they just weak?
There are losers in the form of spectators watching in front of the simulator, and my butler Iris. She even has a drink for me.
“Good job master. How was it?”
“Thanks Iris, I can strangely win now. And I can do more matches in a day. I’m not even that tired… but my body feels a bit weird.”
“Gettin’ carried away, uh!?”
“Yeah, yeah!”
“One more!”
“Even brought a gynoid to show off!!!”
“They’re too big…”
“Occidental Industries… How much?”
“The butler girl gave me a flier.”
“Wha? Thanks. Eh, they have an experience corner and stuff…”
“You people get hooked by these corporate promotions so fast… How much? What experiences?”
These onlookers ruffling my hair are annoying today, but I’m feeling good, so I ignore it. Iris then puts a finger on her forehead and lets out a big sigh. Why?
“Master… Did you forget that you have implants and nanomachines in your body? Why did you install things such as a learning assist implant if your memory is lacking?”
“Ah.”
“Oh, cheater! We got a cheater!”
“Damn you! Of course you’re gonna win if you have stuff like implants!”
“No, that’s normal, right? Are you a naturalist?”
“These low earners…”
“Don’t go there!! I’ll kill you!!!!”
“You can bet on the simulator, but I’ll throw you out if you fight!!!!”
Uwah, we got a little carried away, and a guild employee entered the scene.
“I didn’t do anything. That guy got pissed on his own.”
“The guy provoking is ten times worse!!!”
“In a fight, both are at fault, and both get thrown out of the airlock naked!!”
““I apologize.””
We bow. Mercenaries are weak to authority figures, or influential people in general, but uh, Iris? Why did you kick my knee and made me kneel? Iris?
“Wow… She so elegantly kicked her master to make him kneel, sat on him, and crossed her legs…”
“Seriously, how much?”
“The starting price is two hundred thousand…”
“Incidentally, I am fully tuned, so the final price was six hundred thousand. I can fight bare handed thanks to my orichalcum alloy armor, use magic, and shoot a laser cannon on foot.”
“Strooong. What the hell is Occidental Industries fighting?”
“People’s insatiable desires. I mean, look at that chest and flapping eyelashes. That’s the work of a pervert…”
“Well, lot’s of people… Mercenaries, like that. Masochist tendencies.”
“This is starting to damage my reputation! Get off me, Iris!!”
“Iris? Can you please stay in that position for a while?”
Asks the guild employee, and Iris says yes, showing no sign of moving. Well, something’s squirming, but I can’t move!! What is this?
“And so, we are done checking, and we can inform you that in light of your achievements, you have been promoted to Grassland one. Here is your new physical card.”
“Wow… He got promoted in a dogeza with a girl’s ass sitting on him…”
“Let me take a picture to remember this moment. Ah, thanks for the pose, Iris.”
“Iris!”
“May I have that picture? I will send it to the other ladies.”
“Iris!?”
“Oh oh, here you go.”
“Fuhyahya! You should be made fun of!”
“Yeah! We’re single, and you have a gynoid and a wife. That pisses me off!!”
“He has three wives besides me.”
“Iris!!”
“Are you for real!!!!?”
“This guy in this pathetic position!!!?”
“I’ve been busting my ass as a mercenary for twenty years!! I don’t even have one!!”
“Mister Genma here has been a mercenary for less than a year. So stop slacking off and wasting money!! You have debts to the Mercenary Guild, don’t you!!?”
As mercenaries around me self-destruct, Iris finally gets off me, so we leave.
And now we have a photo of Iris sitting on me with her legs crossed, a double peace sign next to her face, and a really nice smile.
▽▽▽
At night, we always take it easy having dinner at the bar counter, but I receive a little proposal from the girls. It’s actually bigger than that.
“Wait wait, wait. Let me see if I get this straight. You went to a high class food printer restaurant to have lunch without me and Iris!?”
I was left out!!!
“Getting those ten puni was more important, right? How did that go?”
“It seems the implants are doing their job. Master’s win rate has gone from thirty to fifty percent.”
“Ooh~! And you said you got totally beaten in Zadar, right~!? That’s great~!”
“I feel as though if that was all, perhaps you should have been implanted with more.”
“True, maybe we should get him something better.”
“I wanna talk about the high grade food printers.”
Let’s go in that direction, because I feel like Iris is picking things for me and I’m scared.
“It was crunchy~.”
“I could feel the meat fibers, ya know?”
“It was powdery.”
“That’s all over the place!! They were food printers, right?”
Food printers take stuff like animal plankton and algae food cartridges, and process them into meals.
Because of that, bitter, spicy, and astringent tastes are pretty much eliminated. It’s impossible for something like wheat dissolved in water to have fibers or be crunchy. And I’ve never felt it was powdery.
“What you all tried was this Mastery Chef Ver.8.07. It uses regular food cartridges, but also exclusive food texture cartridges. The materials cost more, but the difference in the cost of the food cartridges themselves could be said to be negligible.”
“We brought something for you. There was that curry rice you eat every seven days, so we bought you some.”
I was acting like I was in the self-defense force. Space has more stuff than the ocean, but it’s easy to get my sense of what day it is twisted…
I also give the girls an allowance every week, so I make it the day I eat curry rice so I don’t forget.
Leaving that aside, there’s curry rice. A plastic deep plate with three indentations, with brown soup and white rice separated in two big portions. The remaining one has a divider with vertically cute egg on one side, and something that looks like fukujinzuke pickles on the other.
I inspect the ingredients a bit, and see squares of what looks like meat, what looks like potatoes, something soft that’s like onion, really orange carrot, something green that looks like broccoli, and thin green strings that look like bell pepper.
First, I try a bit of the rice, and I’m surprised when I chew. The rice is in grains. So is the one from the regular food printer, but I don’t feel them separately the way I do with this.
I bite what looks like meat, and it makes a small sound. Normally, food printer meat feels like something out of a retort bag, so I’m surprised.
The broccoli feels like broccoli, like I can feel the hundreds of small petals. I’m impressed by how they get in my teeth, and annoyed.
The same goes for the potatoes. They’re not potato flavored lumps, they feel like potatoes.
The boiled egg yolk is perfect. The powdery texture can’t be reproduced with a normal food printer, so I’ve only been having soft-boiled ones.
Needless to say, the curry tastes like curry. Perfect medium spicy. I don’t think you can make curry taste bad but it’s pretty hard to make something better than curry roux.
I’m just glad it still exists after the Earth was destroyed.
It’s not like the regular food printer stuff tastes bad. It’s edible. It tastes fine, but it never quite feels right. But this replicates the texture too.
“Is this really not organic?”
“We could see it being made in a half-transparent case. And they brought us exactly how it came out.”
“That was interesting~~~.”
“Although that one was for show, and it was written that the real things are different.”
“By the way, a Master Chef costs four hundred eight thousand. With the installation costs, we’re looking at about half a million… What do you think?
Let’s get it! It’s going to use up all the money from eel hunting, but everyone’s in agreement. Also, we have one against and four in favor of getting more implants. I think they want something bad.
Join my patreon to support me and read ahead.
Thanks.
Tetsujin V was around 300k credits so that printer is quite pricey~