Novel Full Chapter 441 - 441 Highest Tech Cookin
Once Freddy had finished detailing the various uses of the stovetop, and ensured there was no questions, he moved everyone over to the final feature. It was set off to the left of the door, and was a large cabinet without any shelving in it. The hole structure looked more than a little cyberpunk. Neon strips of light were constantly running along the edges and up into the ceiling flashing red, yellow, white, pink, most colours you could think of really. The top of it looked like heavy welded steel and had various tubes sticking out of it. The right side had a panel with numbers 1-9 and letters a-z on it with a holographic display above it.
"This right here, is the food summoner. Enter the code for the food you want and then the amount and you can get it sent straight here. Hitting enter twice without putting anything else in and you'll send things back. For example…" Freddy stopped speaking and strode up to the panel, with a flash of fingers and more than a few beeps and boops he'd punched in a code and pressed enter.
The colours running alongside the machine stilled for a second, keeping all to their current form for five seconds, before the cabinet lit up like the sun. Kat was forced to glance away as she felt her eyes started to burn, but the first thing she did was activate her slowed time and pumped as much energy as she could into her tail. Kamiko was reacting as well, but it was slower, and Kat wasn't having that. Shooting her tail up from behind her to block Kamiko's eyes to make sure she didn't take any damage.
Kat could feel the demonic energy rolling off the machine as Kat winced, shutting her eyes and scrunching them up while hoping the spade on her tail was enough to protect Kamiko from the lights. When the energy finally started to die down, Kat heard a "Woops" from Freddy
Lowering her tail and turning back to him, Freddy let out a light, embarrassed cough. "Um… sorry sorry misses. I… I somewhat forgot about that. I have resistance to light based attacks and er… I never had an issues with the machine. Sorry sorry"
Kat ignored the answer for now and turned to Kamiko. *If Kamiko is fine, I'm willing to take that answer in good faith and just forget about it. I'm sure any damage, however major or minor I took from the flash was healed by my regeneration but Kamiko isn't so lucky.* "Are you alright?" Kat asked.
As Kat lowered her tail, Kamiko took the chance to rub her eyes a bit before biting the inside of her lip. She could tell she was in a 'dangerous' situation. She couldn't lie of course, and she didn't want to mislead Kat… but she could feel her eyes watering and it wasn't the most comfortable feeling. Still, she had the strange feeling Kat would attack a higher ranking demon if she admitted to being hurt. That was silly though… right?
"I'm mostly fine Kat. You managed to get your tail to cover my eyes rather quickly after all" said Kamiko, hoping that Kat would accept that as her answer.
Kat, did not in fact accept that as an answer, but it did put her in an awkward situation. She'd been around more than enough children to recognise the face Kamiko was currently wearing that said 'I'm not really fine but it was an accident and I don't want to complain'. A bit complex, but something very familiar to her anyway. *Well now I'm torn. Obviously Kamiko isn't completely fine, but the fact she was able to say she was mostly fine is a comfort at least. I do want to chew Freddy out for this one, but Kamiko doesn't want me to…
And this isn't like back at the orphanage or at school. Plus Kamiko is a lot older then those kids were at the times I stepped in despite their wishes. Wait… how old IS Kamiko? I… I never asked? Though… it isn't really the type of thing you do ask human women. Does that still apply to de- yes, nevermind I remember Kamiko avoiding the topic when it came to her mother several times.*
*Still, now I'm not sure. She's shorter then me yes, but not that short. She seems childish but I get the impression we're not that far apart age wise… wait… could she be older then me?* Kat almost shivered at the idea but without asking she couldn't confirm it. *Ok you know what. Let's not ask about her age. I don't think I want to know either.*
Kat turned back to face Freddy, arms lowered but her tail raised just behind her head. A smile on her face but her eyes hard. "Well, if no harm was done, I won't say anything else." Said Kat "Shall you continue the explanation Freddy?"
Freddy turned back to the machine to hide the wince noticing the way Kat had worded her dismissal. Taking it as the best he was going to get, Freddy gestured to the pile in the machine. It was a plate piled high with potatoes all stacked in a rough pyramid to fit more on the plate. "So, what I did was enter the command for potatoes, and here they are. Specifically sweet potatoes of course."
"Why was the light so bright just to bring in some potatoes?" asked Kat letter her teeth show when she smiled after asking.
Freddy though, was still a high-ranking demon, so he wasn't exactly intimidated. Still, what Kat and Kamiko didn't know was that safety was actually pretty important to Gluttony demons. There had been too many instances of people in that faction with regeneration powers that got overly careless when in danger, causing multiple issues, some weird then others.
These included, body parts in the food when someone chopped a finger off and couldn't be bothered to remove it from the meat, other times when demons took extreme damage from some cooking flames and used their regeneration stores up before nearly dying and falling into said fire.
Finally, a rather famous incident of two brothers in a cooking competition that someone ended with them, their four assistants, two bystanders, the panel of six judges and the cameraman all ended up in a coma, many lasting over a decade, with one of the brothers remaining in one for a century.
Thus, if Freddy's superiors found out he was being so blasé about Kamiko's injury caused by his own lack of knowledge in this area, he'd be skinned alive… literally. Of course he'd be healed afterwards and then forced to eat the cooked skin. But as I said, Kat and Kamiko didn't know this, so while he didn't want to risk it, he felt pretty safe.
"What, teleporting food across dimensional boundaries without use of D.E.M.O.N.S teleportation abilities has some side effects. Mostly energy dissipation once the food arrives, and we couldn't put it into heat or motion that might damage the food so we turned it all into light" explained Freddy
"Wait. You don't just have a warehouse full of food and a local teleportation array?" asked Kamiko, a confused look on her face.
Freddy shrugged. "I don't know the full details, just that it's more efficient for us this way. I believe it's because of how expensive warehouse pricin is, and that spacial expansion charms apparently have a negative effect on both shelf life and food stability, which we can't have because of the time reducing aspects we have in the oven and the stovetop.
"It does have some upsides though. The biggest one is that we can have a number of farms spread out across the multiverse in places where the land price is essentially zero. We then set up storage facilities and then sometimes we hire farm workers or some demons do it themselves. This allows all the food to be extra fresh.
"Also because seasons are different in each dimension we can stagger crops so that we always have everything fresh. These potatoes were probably picked this mornin if I had to guess. Or well, I doubt it was mornin wherever they were picked but you get the idea"
*Huh. I guess… that makes some sense. Still, that's one hell of a distribution network. Multiple dimensions worth of crops just to feed a large amount of Gluttony demons. Still I wonder why Greed doesn't do that.* "Um, if you don't mind my asking, why doesn't Greed do something similar?" asked Kat
Freddy grinned at that question and said. "A few interestin laws. You can't make final products off Hub. There are rules against it, and you can't transfer completed items away from the Hub unless they are a personal item.. There are a few other reasons as well, such as large scale demonic enchantments being forbidden off Hub as well. They cause wonky stuff to happen if you ain't in a Hub after all"