The Mech Touch

ly dubious.
Who knows which pieces of information are true and which ones the half-drunken mech pilots made up on the spot in order to brag about their experiences? ”

Ves smirked as he scratched the savannah cat ’s chin.
Fortunately, he already sent out Lucky on his own snooping mission!

”The key to gathering information is to corroborate it with multiple sources. ”

”Will that even be possible with our current approach? The hunters can make complete fools of us by sticking to the same story even if its pure fantasy! ”

”What I said still applies. ” Ves calmly replied.
”You just have to find a different type of source, preferably one that isn ’t beholden to the same motives as the original source. ”

”Is that why you sent out Crindon with orders to try his luck? ”

He nodded.
”That is one of the means.
I still have another means. ”

”And what is that? ”

”Hehe, that ’s a secret. ”

In fact, the secret that Ves alluded to happened to be resting right on his lap! He just didn ’t want to mention it out loud because of the monitoring systems that were surely keeping an eye on the courtyard.

He also opted to wear his organic cat ear attachments again despite his increasing suspicion that they served as organic sound recorders that secretly transmitted its data to House Laterna ’s specialized receivers.

Being paranoid was okay, but being too obvious about it only engendered further suspicion.
Ves already knew that he already merited a lot of attention for being the only Journeyman in Kemila.

The best way to deflect suspicion was to let the monitoring systems see what they wanted to see.
By acting as casual and unconcerned as possible, Ves hoped that many people would overlook the aspects he wanted to keep under wraps.

”Maow.. ” The organic savannah cat turned his head so that Ves could scratch his ears.

”Oh, what an adorable little fellow you are! ” Ves grinned as he pampered the feral cat with rubbing and scratches.
”Am I your favorite human? ”

”Maow… ”

”Haha, that ’s okay.
So which humans do you like the most? ”

”Maooow… maoow. ”

”Hehe.
What about the huge cats? Which one is the strongest? ”

”Maow! Maaaaooow! ”

”Mhmm.
The biggest cats aren ’t always the most impressive ones. ”

To Gavin, Nitaa and anyone observing Ves, they probably thought he was spending his days playing with the feral cats that roamed the streets of Kemila.

Just like every other part of Felixia, the Asco Continent also featured a lot of cats.
Different from the Eron Continent, the cats on Asco weren ’t the docile, hug-friendly creatures designed to be as harmless as possible.

The cats of the Asco Continent had to hunt for their own food or depend upon the generosity of the humans who had better things to do than feed a lot of cats every day.

Asco ’s feral cats merely livened up the place a bit, but served no other purpose.
House Laterna hadn ’t made them sentient or turned them into spies.

This sounded odd to Ves at first, but then he realized that the hunting teams were probably a lot sharper than innocent tourists.
They firmly kept the roaming feral cats off their compounds for fear that they carried listening devices in their bodies.

Nonetheless, even if the feral street cats weren ’t allowed to enter the sanctums of the hunting teams, they still witnessed a lot of conversations!

The only problem was that getting useful information out of them required a lot of interpretation and guesswork on his part.
Cats such as the savannah cat on his lap exhibited the intelligence and attention span of a four-year old kid, which meant that Ves had to question a lot of cats in order to combine many tiny snippets of information into coherent clues.

A few days passed by as Ves kept waiting and gathering more information.
Aside from collecting intel from his subordinates and the feral street cats, he also received valuable information from Lucky.

”Meow meow. ”

”Uh huh. ”

”Meooow. ”

”Interesting. ”

”Meow meow meow. ”

”Do you really think so? Crown Cats do deserve their reputation. ”

”Meow! ”

As Ves retired to his hotel room at the end of the fifth day since arriving at Kemila, he developed a pretty good picture of the local situation.
He even learned enough dirty secrets of various hunting teams to rule them out of consideration.

When it came to the huge cats, his alternative intelligence sources weren ’t of much use.
The feral cat community of Kemila mostly heard about them in passing.
They never met them in person aside from the few captive huge cats brought to the holding cells.

”That was another disappointment. ” He sighed.

Only a couple of captive huge cats occupied the underground holding cells.
When Ves inspected their spirituality, he sensed nothing different from the average feral cat on the streets.

As far as he was concerned, the huge cats were genetic abominations who relied purely on the strengths programmed into them by House Laterna ’s genetic researchers.

For this reason, Ves began to doubt whether any genetically-modified cat on Asco possessed any spirituality at all.
This potentially included Zeigra, though accidents could always happen.

His mind came back to the Dragon Cat.
Of all the huge cats who resided in the hunting zones around Kemila, only the pure exobeast gave him the most hopes of obtaining what he wanted.
The abilities she presumably possessed sounded very much like a spiritual phenomenon.

Still, the Dragon Cat ’s ability to influence the moods of mech pilots and make them lose their cool sounded rather… underwhelming.

If Ves had a choice, he would rather opt for obtaining a spiritual fragment from Zeigra.
The Mech Cruncher ’s affinity to metal, even if exaggerated, fit a lot more with his vision for the Devil Tiger!

Yet the thought of hunting down a famed Crown Cat made him recall Calabast ’s rebuke.
Was the risk really worth the reward?

Ves felt enormously tempted to chase after Zeigra regardless of how poor of an idea it sounded.

”Zeigra is perfect for my Devil Tiger! ”

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