The Mech Touch novel Chapter 7542

Chapter 7542: Frightening Cost

"So this is the fruit, huh?"

It looked deceptively playful.

It did not look like an item that was worth 350 whole Ascension Points.

Instead, it looked like a children’s toy, or a custom piece of candy.

The enlightenment fruit looked like a large version of a red chili pepper. It exuded a sense of heat and excitement, but not much more.

If any ordinary human came across this item, they would never imagine that it encapsulated a huge amount of knowledge and other properties related to an ancient and lost cultivation technique.

It lacked a certain gravitas and solemnity. Aside from a rather subtle and invisible weight, it held no obvious traits that clearly identified its explosive contents.

Ves could not possibly be as ignorant. He had spent too much AP to overlook such a banal matter.

Besides, even if he did not spend so much AP to redeem it, he could read the description that appeared as a popup in his vision. The Mech Designer System made sure that he would not be able to mistake it for anything but an enlightenment fruit.

As he continued to stare down at the fruit that he had just exchanged, three female mech designers stood impatiently a short distance away.

They could read the description as well. Their eyes all betrayed their respective wants and needs.

The girls wanted to ingest the fruit themselves.

Even if the Last Defiance Manual did not match their style or inclinations, they would be lying if they tried to claim that they had no use for this knowledge.

Whether they wanted to gain an additional trump card that they could use on the battlefield, or utilize the vast amount of knowledge to impart similar properties to their upcoming works, none of the mech designers believed that the enlightenment fruit would be wasted in their hands.

Yet despite their varying degrees of desire and greed towards the fruit, they all acquiesced to the decision to allow Ves to take a bite out of the giant pepper fruit.

Of course, just because they agreed with the logic did not mean that their emotions could remain calm.

"Well?" Gloriana impatiently asked. "Will you get on with it, Ves? You are continuing to tempt us with each second of the fruit’s continuous existence. Please end our torment and devour the fruit."

"What she said." Ketis conveyed her sentiment with the least amount of words.

Their admonishments started Ves, causing him to shake out of his contemplative mood.

"Ah. Sorry about that. I got lost in my own thoughts again. I suppose there is no reason to put this off any further."

Ves took a deep breath and began to bite into the fruit.

In his human-sized form, he could never swallow the enlightenment fruit whole.

He had to take several continuous bites in quick succession.

Ves did not linger on the taste, which predictably reminded him of a rather spicy but barely tolerable large chili pepper.

The taste was actually a lot more complex than that, but that was the last thing he cared about.

From the first bite onwards, knowledge already started to pour into his mind.

The rate of transmission accelerated as he swallowed the bitten pieces of fruit.

By the time he ingested the last remaining piece, his body shuddered as he largely lost his awareness of the current environment.

Though he still remained standing, his eyes became empty as he no longer registered the System Space or the mech designers standing in front.

Instead, his entire consciousness became immersed in the forceful rush of knowledge!

It was as if a direct channel had formed from his stomach to his brain.

This high-capacity channel not only transferred a vast amount of theories and other information directly into his mind, but did so in a directed fashion.

There was no way that Ves would be able to perfectly absorb and memorize so much knowledge in so little time.

Yet under the invisible direction of the magical enlightenment fruit, he perfectly managed to internalize the new knowledge in a way that made it difficult for him to forget even a single passage!

It was as if Ves had gained decades worth of deep study on the contents of the Last Defiance Manual in just a handful of minutes!

However, what Ves prized more than all of the raw knowledge was the forceful infusion of mastery and true comprehension.

Just as the description of the fruit had promised, Ves began to understand the principles and underlying concepts behind the cultivation techniques as if he had repeatedly practiced them for almost half a century!

Ves could feel himself growing more formidable by the second.

He knew that if he ever got caught in a desperate situation, he could perform a carefully chosen variation of the Last Defiance Technique that would allow him to instantly convert his latent energy reserves into an immediate outburst of power of violence!

At the cost of digging deep into his corporeal and noncorporeal foundation, he could immediately trade his long-term capital into short-term power, the kind that would enable him to punch far above his weight, if only for a brief amount of time!

He already received an indication of its many dangers from the brief description, but now that he had absorbed the entire enlightenment fruit, its risk factors had been carved into his very bones.

His body briefly shuddered when he truly understood the true cost of defiance.

The technique was not truly difficult to commence at his level of artificial mastery.

What was truly challenging was to maintain a sense of sobriety while all of his senses and emotions amped up due to the enormous boost of strength!

It was human nature to become drunk with power. Ves knew without a shadow of a doubt that the enlightenment fruit could not fully impart the discipline, willpower and experience that was necessary for a practitioner to maintain complete control over himself.

He still had to rely greatly on himself to measure how much power he wanted to convert from this technique and when he should stop before it was too late.

If he did not adequately control the timing and execution of the Last Defiance Technique, then he faced a very severe risk of digging far too deep into his foundation!

While Ves believed that he possessed a far deeper physical and spiritual foundation than most ordinary qi cultivators, that only granted him a larger buffer.

Poor control and judgment would still cause him to deplete much more of his current foundation than he wished, thereby severely crippling his future potential!

Death may be the ultimate consequence for losing control, but the loss in potential was almost just as bad in his opinion!

He knew that the Last Defiance Technique truly had the potential to burn anything so long as it contained any scrap of power.

That meant it was all too easy for him to burn the stuff that he relied upon to achieve greatness, such as Blinky, his companion spirit, or his design seed, which represented the essence of his power as a mech designer!

Sacrificing just a single essential piece of either of them would cause immense and permanent harm to his future progression!

Ves understood that he could never take this dangerous technique lightly.

He could not afford to become complacent and rely on the artificial proficiency granted by the enlightenment fruit to keep him safe.

He would have to practice the technique in controlled or low-intensity conflicts in order to truly gain a measure of control over its formidable output.

"How scary." He whispered as the rush of knowledge finally came to an end.

His expanded and partially digitized mind did not require any further time to digest the knowledge. He already understood the theories and other information by heart.

As long as he worked to address the other shortcomings, he would truly be able to feel that he had gained a sufficient degree of mastery over the Last Defiance Technique!