Ashe’s expression froze for a moment before he changed the subject. “The Tea Cafe’s closure is one thing; after all, I enjoy looking at beautiful women too. But why are there so many scantily clad men striking poses and prancing around in places called ‘Mud Café’? It’s a real assault on my eyes. If I weren’t an escapee, I’d be tempted to report them to the Sin Hunter’s Hall for damaging the city’s image. There ought to be laws explicitly forbidding this—”
“I’d advise you not to meddle in things that don’t concern you,” Freya warned. “If you don’t like it, that’s fine, but we do. Men are allowed to gaze at beautiful women, but we can’t appreciate handsome men?”
“It’s not just that, I can get over these things since they are, after all, traditional Occupations, even if they’ve gotten a bit large-scale. But what really casts a shadow over me,” Ashe’s face darkened, “is what I saw when I wandered a bit further and came across a construction site.”
“What about the workers?”
“They… more than half of their bodies were mechanical. Their legs had been replaced with wheels, their hands with multifunctional toolboxes, even their eyes with mechanical ones… Had I not seen them drinking and heard their casual conversations, I would have thought they were robots.”
“Robots? That’s unlikely,” Freya waved dismissively. “Fully automated robots are expensive and require frequent maintenance. In comparison, hiring these Mechanical Workers is much cheaper. You haven’t been in prison for that long. Mechanical Workers have been all the rage in Kaimon City for over a decade now. How can you act as if you’ve never seen them?”
“…Are there many Mechanical Workers in Kaimon City?”
“They’re not necessarily found on construction sites. Their hands can swap out parts, and after some basic training, they’re ready to take on various skilled jobs like assembly workers, maintenance workers, or manufacturing workers.”
Freya took a big bite of the Redflame Lala Fatty, her mouth smeared with egg yolk sauce. “Generally speaking, ordinary people who have no hope of becoming Sorcerers mostly switch to becoming Mechanical Workers, and that includes clerks. The only difference is the extent of the mechanization.”
Ashe was taken aback. “Even non-technical labor is mechanized?”“Of course, replacing limbs and spine, internal organs with Mechanical Prostheses offers significant advantages.” Freya poked at her dumpling. “The heart can be replaced with a more powerful ‘Spark Core’, the lungs with a ‘Combustion Engine’ that has greater circulation capacity, and the stomach with an ‘Energy Pool’ that digests and absorbs nutrients more efficiently…”
“Mechanical modifications have become very affordable now. A standard set of Mechanical Prostheses can be paid off with a loan in just three or four years of dedicated work, but the benefits are tremendous: it allows for longer endurance and is more energy-efficient.”
“In tough times, one can barely survive on just water while still maintaining high energy levels; in times of plenty, one can enjoy more physical stamina for more intense sensory experiences.”
“If it weren’t for the fact that Mechanical Prostheses reduce the efficiency of arcane energy absorption in the Virtual Realm, many Sorcerers might opt for mechanical augmentation instead of the much more expensive Biological Prostheses.”
Freya shrugged. “But nowadays, for ordinary people, the ‘all-purpose’ Mechanical Arm and ‘Energy Pool’ Mechanical Stomach are almost essentials. Otherwise, no company would want to hire them. Most practical tools are designed to interface with Mechanical Arms; without one, you can hardly use any tools. For example, the chef in my college cafeteria had a Mechanical Arm fitted with a spatula that could automatically heat, cool, and season. The steak he cooked was especially delicious.”
“And the Mechanical Stomach allows you to eat all your food for the day in the morning and then digest it slowly. It not only increases work time but also saves on food expenses—like this meal, it could be swapped for 30 portions of ‘feed’.”
“Mechanical Workers need only one portion of feed to sustain a day’s work. In other words, we’ve just consumed what would be a month’s ration for a Mechanical Worker.”
Ashe couldn’t understand. “What about the Human Rights Association? The Racial Rights Association? Don’t they care?”
Freya frowned. “What’s it got to do with the Human Rights Association? Nobody’s forcing them to undergo mechanical modifications; it’s all voluntary. The Human Rights Association can’t restrict their freedom to undergo modifications, nor can it stop them from pursuing a better life.”
Pursuing a better life.
Ashe was confused.
After a long silence, waiting until Freya had finished eating and wiped her mouth, he suddenly asked a question.
“If Mechanical Workers save so much money, where do they spend their wages?”
Freya counted on her fingers: “Mud Café, Tea Cafe, casinos, Sugar Store, Drama Voting, clothing and jewelry, Bio-modification, updating chip versions, renewing the Knowledge Screen, ‘Rise of the Sorcerers’, ‘Virtual Realm Fantasy 14’, ‘Miracle World’, …”
After a day of surfing, Ashe knew that the last three were the hottest multiplayer games within the Curtain. The Curtain is the collective information world built by all citizens, akin to the internet. It’s called the Curtain because of its high level of secrecy; apart from the Sin Hunter’s Hall, which manages chips, it’s impossible for ordinary people to find others through the Curtain. In this information world, everyone is ‘behind the Curtain’, invisible.
Also, due to the anonymity, people’s comments in the Curtain can be quite unrestrained. In just one day, Ashe had learned many forms of racial discrimination, gender discrimination, educational discrimination, and occupational discrimination, as well as a variety of slurs.
Even though there were no mothers in the Blood Moon Kingdom, the level of proficiency in swearing still astonished Ashe, to the point where he wished he could exchange his eyes for ones that hadn’t seen such foul language.
He even had a moment when he thought that rules like the ‘speech restriction’ at Shattered Lake Prison might actually have some merit, capturing those who spew filth willy-nilly and reforming them.
As for Drama Voting, it’s a special paid feature of the Blood Moon Kingdom’s television series. Put simply, after viewers have watched the first part of a series, the producers offer a choice of multiple endings. The audience can choose their preferred ending by voting with their wallets, and then the producers will create the outcome as desired.
For instance, in the comic Ashe had read, titled “It’s My Fault for Saying I Like Married Women,” the adapted series might offer several endings like “The male lead lives happily ever after with the female lead,” “The male lead enjoys a shameless life with both female lead and the second female,” “The female lead ends up with the second female,” or “The male lead ends up with the second male,” among dozens of other possible conclusions. Once the audience has watched the first part of the series, they get to choose the ending!
Regarding clothing and jewelry, Ashe discovered today that although Freya’s home isn’t large, she has no less than three wardrobes stuffed with all sorts of attractive clothing and accessories. He thought it was a female hobby, but once he stepped onto the streets, he saw that everyone dressed quite elegantly and upscale, even the male clerks in food supermarkets dressed like scions of wealthy families.
Moreover, aside from middle-aged and older people, most young people were very good-looking, regardless of gender. Even Goblins had clear-cut features, and some individuals’ eyes even contained Starlight—real starlight, the kind that twinkles and shimmers within their pupils.
Clearly, everyone’s appearance had been artistically enhanced by Medics, but Ashe couldn’t really say much about that—he’d also had his face ‘sculpted’ by a Medic.
The reason for purchasing a Knowledge Screen is that updating the chip version also costs money. Most people are born with the Miracle 1 type chip, which is slow, has limited storage space, and is just ‘usable.’ Most adults upgrade their chip to version 10 or above. The newer the chip version, the more powerful the functions, the better the experience, and not to mention, many applications have version requirements; older chips can’t run the newer applications.
The Knowledge Screen is the glass display they were looking at. Compared to the narrow holographic screen displayed by the chip, the Knowledge Screen has higher resolution, larger size, better color, more storage space, and stronger performance.
Although both are information and entertainment terminals, the chip is akin to an implanted smartphone, while the Knowledge Screen is equivalent to a personal computer.
“So you’re saying that most people, after earning money, invest it in adult content, gambling, drugs, body modification, clothing, jewelry, and virtual entertainment?”
“That’s right.”
Ashe opened his mouth as if to say something, but then closed it.
Only after eating the last piece of the milk-egg pancake did he finally ask, “Is that how you are too?”
“Yeah, but I’m not interested in gambling or drugs, and I can’t undergo bio-modification for now because I’m planning to become a Sorcerer in the future.”
“Are you happy then?”
Freya gave him a strange look.
“Very happy.”
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