The Mech Touch novel Chapter 800

The hunting party eventually packed up their stuff and made their way back to the camp. Each meal they ate during the travels incorporated wild god meat to a degree. The carnivorous Vandals and Swordmaidens insisted on eating it with every meal while it lasted!

Once the cooks became accustomed to working with the tough and heat-resistant meat, they began to get creative with their recipes. The menu began to include items such as god meat hot dogs, god meat curry, god meat cheeseburgers and god meat filet mignon.

Some of the more adventurous Swordmaidens even ate the meat raw or in the form of sushi.

The only ones who didn’t participate consisted of a handful of vegetarians and those with belief and dietary concerns. The Vandals took in all kinds of people, even those who should have belonged to other states.

Most people happily munched on the god meat every chance they got though. Nobody got tired of the taste of god meat. Chewy, filling and suffused with fat, the taste of meat from a creature that was hundreds of years old truly satiated their stomachs in a way that fake meat synthesized from nutrient packs could never match.

"We should turn Seven into a farm and rear these wild gods for the slaughter!"

"It’s not worth the effort, idiot. It takes a hundred years for a wild god to grow to this size."

"Eh, haven’t you forgotten about the timespace stuff? Time runs more than ten times faster on this planet!"

"That won’t last forever! All of this crap is only happening because someone forgot to turn off the Starlight Megalodon’s FTL drive when they left!"

When the hunting arrived back to the camp, Ves heard that the ancient city of Mulak eventually opened up to a substantial trade.

One of the ways the negotiators used to put some pressure on the city was to show them footage of their successful attempt at slaying one of the dreaded wild god at a distance.

Though the strength of a wild god without a beast rider paled in comparison to a sacred god, both creatures suffered from the same fatal flaw. If the Flagrant Swordmaidens ever came into hostilities with the sacred gods at Mulak, then they wouldn’t be able to resist, because their lack of mobility and ranged firepower completely turned them into sitting ducks!

Though the Swordmaidens heavily favored melee mechs, they hadn’t completely sworn off the use of rifleman mechs themselves because they faced many situations where a monopoly on ranged superiority proved decisive.

Besides, even if their rivals attempted to take advantage of their lack of ranged firepower, they would quickly find out that the Swordmaiden melee mechs made up for it by closing in quickly with the help of their superior mobility!

The wild gods and sacred gods completely lacked this capability. Perhaps the only sacred god that could inflict some losses to the mechs was Hokaz. The Tyrant of the Wastes possessed a formidable range with his lightning powers, but the problem was that the lightning storm only covered so much ground.

As long as the mechs dispersed and surrounded the city from all directions, even the king of the gods wouldn’t be able to clean them all up. The sacred gods who plodded along for several days in indecision and willful ignorance began to realize that these strangers from beyond the vault of the gods might not take no for an answer.

Burying their heads in the sand wouldn’t make the looming threat go away.

In fact, the Vandals possessed the ability to destroy the city of Mulak at an even further range than that. Having witnessed a small taste of the might in the hands of the ace mech-like Hokaz, the Vandals came up with a means to bombard the city of Mulak from a distance to break their will.

Though orbital bombardment from the fleet wasn’t too feasible due to the tendency of the astral winds diverting all of the artificial meteorites off course, the Vandals could still construct a makeshift artillery cannon and have it fire shells so powerful that they flew far despite the influence of six times standard gravity!

Still, the Vandals would rather not resort to this means. They wanted to conclude a quick and painless trade so that they could quickly get moving. There was no point in trying to subjugate Mulak, and as descendants of spacers in the service of the CFA, they enjoyed a lot of rights, even if they seemed to have forgotten their roots!

Therefore, from what Ves had heard, Commander Lydia took charge of the negotiations herself and lightly coerced the ancient city into agreeing to a substantial trade.

It could have backfired on her. For all the threats she induced, the Flagrant Swordmaidens actually had no intention of following through with them. It was all smoke and mirrors in an attempt to bewilder the natives into choosing the least-bad options of placating the outsiders.

All of this happened over a span of a few days. Ves didn’t particularly care about the methods, though he admired Commander Lydia’s savvy. She exerted just enough pressure to force the city to acquiesce, but not enough to set off their pride and provoke repulsion.

"So what’s the trade deal?" Ves asked Ketis.

"According to Mayra, we agreed to repair some of their ancient broken-down machinery. We’re also supplying them with basic power reactors, antigrav modules, food synthesizers, water purifiers, luxury food stock as well as a library’s worth of basic handbooks and manuals related to agriculture and mechanics."

"Sounds like a good mix of short-term and long-term benefits. Mulak will definitely be able to soar with these goods."

None of the items Ketis mentioned sounded particularly valuable to Ves. Their 3D printers could easily fabricate them from extremely basic materials such as iron, copper, titanium and the like. Their designs were so obsolete that even Ves could cobble them together by hand if need be.

Naturally, the yokals wouldn’t be able to tell the difference. To them, all of these gifts had been machined so precisely that only a god of craftsmanship could build such divine products!