Gloriana's personal chefs were highly-trained and acclaimed in their craft. Their ability to manipulate ingredients and develop tasteful and sophisticated dishes was unsurpa.s.sed 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-cla.s.s 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 unsurpa.s.sed 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 a.s.sign 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 distinguis.h.i.+ng 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 a.s.set. Don't you see?"

Gloriana peered through the transparent wall and studied Stark's unconscious body for a few seconds.

"She must have been a decent mech pilot in her prime, but she hardly appears to be exceptional now. Her injuries and lack of physical conditioning has deteriorated her body so much that she's not fit to pilot mechs. While I can't judge her skill and mental state, they are bound to have degraded as well."

While this wasn't a strict rule, a mech pilot's health was roughly correlated to their piloting ability.

A mech pilot with a healthy body could bear a lot more strain. A fit and healthy body not only enhanced a mech pilot's fluency in combat, but also allowed them to maintain their peak condition longer.

As mech designers, both of them already knew this. In fact, both of them were also much more capable of a.s.sessing mech pilots than other mech designers.

Ves grew up in a military family with lots of mech pilots. Gloriana systematically studied the mental and physical properties of mech pilots in order to advance her design philosophy.

Yet even after several minutes of studying Davia Stark's medical data, Gloriana soundly dismissed the refugee as an ordinary wounded mech pilot!

"I don't see what you like about this mech pilot." She frowned. "Some of the other veterans you've rescued from the refugee settlements are much more promising. They only require a month of rehabilitation before they're ready to join your Avatars or Sentinels."

Ves cared nothing about the nine other wounded veterans he wasted his valuable recruitment quota on. Their only purpose was to give his charity something to do and obscure his reason for forcibly taking Davia Stark away.

"There is more to Davia than you realize. Perhaps you should study her more carefully."

Gloriana shook her head. "You have some odd hobbies, Ves. You're not the only one who is busy. I don't have time to waste on this pet project of yours."

Inwardly, Ves sighed. Gloriana's inability to discern Stark's true potential was a very hopeful sign that he could keep this treasure in his possession.

Crippled or not, a real expert pilot was simply too valuable. Even if Stark opened her mouth and claimed that she was an expert pilot, with her inert force of will, not a single resonance detector would be able to prove her claims!

Ves had already checked. She was so incapable of exciting her force of will that she was even weaker than an expert candidate!

This meant that in everyone else's eyes, she was no different from a mortal!

Though expert pilots were often seen as superhuman demiG.o.ds, their physical bodies were no different from regular humans.

Most of the time, a state invested in an expert pilot by paying for a significant amount of expensive genetic treatments and augmentations.

However, Stark appeared to be a clear outlier as she seemed to be a pure baseline human.

That puzzled Ves a bit. How could any state, even an impoverished border state, neglect their expert pilots?

Had this woman somehow advanced to expert pilot under the noses of everyone?

Whatever the case, Ves was determined to solve this puzzle sooner or later.

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 a.s.sist 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 partic.i.p.ate 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 c.o.c.kpit 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!