Mara promised to help me arrange a meeting with the prospective buyer and she would send me the details once things have been arranged.

As for now… She went back to finishing the potato omelette and I got to watch her orgasm another two times before she was finally done.

She even unashamedly licked the entire box clean and I pretended to be busy with my Codex to let her keep her dignity.

Once she was finally done, she set the container aside carefully and reverted back to her usual self, wiping her mouth with a handkerchief delicately.

She let out a contented sigh, "That was the best food that I've eaten in my life, Tera."

I looked up from my Codex, "I'm glad you like it. It's actually pretty simple so I can teach you if you want."

She shook her head, "I'm not even going to try. Amber has already told me how their attempts all fell short of yours and it actually left them even more dissatisfied. If I were to do so, I'm sure I would end up even worse than they did."

I would like to refute that but I couldn't because what she said was true.

She then turned to me, "So where are the rest of your crew?"

"Well… Amber's getting new furniture for the ship, Lea's shopping for gardening tools for our new hydroponic garden and Ries is getting tools and parts to maintain the ship."

"Oh, right… Ries… She's a Maochatte isn't she?"

I nodded, "Yes. Why?"

"What is she like? I heard from Amber that she wasn't being honest with herself, whatever that means."

What even is Amber telling her in her calls?

"She really likes machines and guns and… I believe what Amber means is that she probably wants to join our… Err… Bedroom activities… But she's too embarrassed to admit it."

"Hmm… I see… In that case, why don't you just pull her in yourself?"

I grimaced, "I… I'm not used to having multiple partners so this is still new to me… I guess it just feels like I'm taking advantage of her?"

"Hmm… Amber did tell you that a war almost broke out just to normalise polygamy right?"

"Ah…. I heard about it, yes."

"Mmhmm~ So I'm pretty sure you know that Ries wants to join in but she's also embarrassed to admit it. Shouldn't you make the first move then? Why are you letting her make the first move instead? You are the head of this harem, shouldn't you be the one claiming your girls instead of the other way around?"

Ugh… Not you too, Mara… But I guess I really didn't consider Ries's position in this… I guess I'll have to think about it later.

Speaking of which…

"Just asking… But I can get modded here right?"

Her eyes sparkled, "Oh? Is Tera interested in getting some mods for yourself? Are there any mods you're looking for?"

"I've been in some fights and there were some enemies who seemed to be able to move faster than normal, turn invisible, or even have blades pop out from their arms. I'm kind of wondering what they did to be able to do that…"

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"Oh, that's easy. Although all the things you've said are Cyware mods and not gene mods."

"You can make yourself move faster through cybernetic mods?"

"Of course. Although that mod in question is ridiculously expensive and also really risky. There's actually gene mods that could do it as well but… The risk for the gene version is even greater than the cyware variant."

"What's the risk?"

"The cyware variant is known to have the risk of the user frying their brains after prolonged use while the gene variant has made people go insane before."

I blinked, "And… People still use it?"

"You can't deny that it is powerful and incredibly useful. It's pretty much like slowing down time. As long as you don't use it too much the risk would be relatively low, though the threshold for it actually varies from person to person."

"It's illegal isn't it?"

"Very much so. Which drives up the price even more. You could afford to buy yourself a C Class ship with the price of one alone."

"Damn… That is pretty expensive… And the people I've seen use it did belong to large organisations so I suspect that they were sponsored to get them?"

Mara nodded, "That's one of the reasons people might choose to work for such organisations. You get access to mods that you normally wouldn't be able to afford on your own."

"So… Those cyware mods… How do you even install them on you? Since, you know, I've never been modded before… If I want to add arm blades to myself, what is the procedure?"

"Well, for starters, they would have to cut off your arm and crack open your skull."

I thought she was joking until I saw her deadpan expression which told me she was absolutely serious.

"Wait… Really?"

Her lips curled upwards slightly, "It's not that surprising, is it? They would need to fit the blade into your arm which would not happen if your arm is still flesh and bones. It's not like they could just hollow out your arm and put a blade in there."

Ok… I can see that… I guess they would just replace the entire arm instead which would be much more efficient and better in the long run…

"So why the cracking open of the skull?" I asked.

"Well, you need to be able to control the arm right? And your arm is now a machine instead of being part of your body so you need to implant something in your brain to be able to control it like it was your original arm. Thus, they would need to do some rewiring in your brain by implanting a neural link. The good news is that unless there's some big hardware update, you only need to do this once and it should work for all cybernetic implants after that. Assuming you don't switch out your own neural link yourself, of course."

Ouch… Just thinking about it makes it sound painful…

"Then what about gene mods? What kind of mods can I get?"

"There's a lot actually. There's one for invisibility as well, which is pretty much a mod that allows you to consciously change your skin pigmentation to match with anything. The most popular one would be super strength of course, since that is pretty much all purpose."

Ok, that sounds cool… And I suspect that I might have even run into a few people who had modded themselves with super strength before…

"So how do those mods work? Do I also just take a pill like the last time where I wanted to grow a dick?" I asked.

She nodded, "For most of them, yes. Although there are some mods that might need injections instead. Like the invisibility one since it needs to be injected into your bloodstream.

"And what are the drawbacks of it? Since Cybernetics require me to cut off parts of my body… There must be something you need to sacrifice for gene mods as well, right?"

"Oh there certainly is. It's something that is called… Credits."

I raised an eyebrow at her and she chuckled, "Fufu~ I am being serious though. Gene mods are way more expensive than cyware mods. For that speed mod that you mentioned earlier, it would cost at least ten times more as a gene mod as compared to a cyware mod."

"In other words… Cybernetic mods are for poor people?"

"Fufufu~ That's actually not wrong. Only people with Credits would be able to afford quality gene mods that don't kill you after using it for a few days."

Right… I remember her saying something like that back when I was trying to get a dick for myself as well. That one was six hundred thousand Credits by itself and that was just to grow a dick on me.

Granted, the large price was more because of the fact that I was making a custom gene mod than the effects of the mod itself.

She also mentioned that these mods are considered luxury mods instead of practical mods which would be a different category altogether.

"So what gene mods would you recommend to a Merc like myself?"

She smirked and tapped on her personal terminal before sliding it to me.

"Take your pick~"

I picked up her terminal and scrolled through the list.

There was the standard super strength as she said, then there was also telescopic sight, night vision, hardened skin and also the camouflage skin that she had mentioned earlier.

Then I scrolled even further down and…

Woah… A mod that grows a fire sac in your body so that you can breathe fire out from your mouth?!

Then there's one that grows a toxic sac that lets you spit globes of poison or even inject it through your bite?!

Damn, there's really a lot of choices here… This might take a while…