[1-200] THE MECH TOUCH

Chapter 186: Post-Human

Minutes later, the organ besides his heart flared up as if it had been injected with chicken blood. The torrent of energy that flowed out from his chest almost physically pressed against the insides of his toughened skin. When the waves finally subsided, Ves blissfully returned to sleep.

After his twentieth-or-something awakening, Ves woke up devoid of excessive hunger. His body had finally finished whatever Jutland had initially spurred on. His exposed flesh withstood the alien atmosphere without any signs of degradation. Though his body still generated a lot of energy, most of it threaded through his body in a circle and returned to the strange organ in his chest.

When Jutland finally returned to check his body, he cackled maniacally. "Hahahaha! You're not only survived the process, but exceeded my expectations!"

"What did you do?" Ves asked weakly.

Though the excess of energy invigorated his body, he had a hard time gaining control over it. It was as if the energy didn't belong to him but merely rented space in his body. Sporadically, it even showed signs of erupting, which Ves suspected would be really bad.

Jutland grinned at the opportunity to brag. "I put in twenty-seven years of focused research to use. My Jutland organ is carefully designed and grown to incorporate the best traits of a hexapod's heat organ. Meanwhile, the regulator I've implanted in your spine has spurred your body to renew itself along a modified genetic makeup. All of your cells down to your bone marrow have fully adapted, just as I intended!"

"Did you change my genes?"

"Of course! It's the only way I can force your body to transform with the failing tools I have on hand. Be glad that I found out that you took an initiating elixir. Without that gene boost as a primer, I would have never been able to spur your cells to swap their DNA so effortlessly!"

Ves recalled the M-21 Initiating Elixir gifted by his master. He only received a small boost in attributes from the injection, but he'd been told that it only laid the groundwork for further gene boosts.

If Doctor Jutland recognized that he used that gene boost, then his earlier rants about the relationship between the MTA and the Five Scrolls Compact might be true. Ves tried hard not to think too deep about that connection.

"What else did you do to my body?"

Jutland cackled again and rubbed his hands in a nefarious manner. He rambled on a bit about the various enhancements he developed over the years. His Jutland organ formed his magnum opus, but he didn't limit his research on the humanized heat organ alone.

Overall, Ves received two other major enhancements.

First, his digestive system received a large enhancement in order to be able to process food that regular humans could never stomach. The doctor expanded the range of foods he could digest.

To his relief, Ves did not lose the ability to digest conventional human food. He hadn't lost any capabilities in that area. Instead, his digestive system became even more effective in extracting every possible nutrient out of everything he ate. Combined with the energy provided by his heat organ, Ves required a lot less food to make it through the day.

Next, Jutland implanted a small growth next to his spine that initially directed the transformation of his genes. Now that his body adapted to his revamped genes, the regulator organ mainly functioned as his heat organ's central processor.

For example, the energy cycle within his body had only come into being with the help of the regulator organ. Its cells contained extensive biological programming that coordinated his central nervous system with all of the changes in his body.