It was about half a year ago that Rakshar captured Pyongyang.
This means that the metropolis of Pyongyang has gone half a year without any logistical movement, and its plantings and infrastructure have been ruined.
The city is a malformed living system that cannot survive even a month without an influx of food and materials.
Upon entering Pyongyang, the army immediately had to order large-scale supplies from South Korea.
"Large-scale recruitment of supplies for Pyongyang"
While the soldiers may have been able to get by on jjambap, the hunters were different.
As high-income Hunters, they weren't satisfied with the army's jjambap, so they sent their own professional chefs and supplies to the Guild Headquarters.
TLN: jjambap is slang for military supply meals.
As a result, the area around Ryugyong Hotel, which they had taken over one by one, had become a hotbed of high-end chefs.
"Ah, Sister Han Ha-ri, Knight Master Chun So-yeon, would you like to dine?"
The owner himself comes out to greet the TTG Temple executives as they enter.
"Yup~ How's business going?"
"Hmph, feeding thousands of people every day, there's no time to rest."
TTG Temple also hired a large number of locals from Naju and brought them to Pyongyang.
The TTG Temple had revitalized Naju's local commerce, but the war had slowed it down, and the generous travel expenses paid to local restaurant owners and employees made them excited to come to Pyongyang.
"The owner of the chicken restaurant next door says he fries a thousand chickens a day."
"That's right, chicken!"
Ha-ri exclaimed, her eyes lighting up at the mention of chicken.
"So-yeon, I'll go get some chicken."
"That soy sauce."
Ha-ri gives a thumbs up and heads out the door. So-Yeon and Yappy are the only ones left.
"What would you like to eat?"
"Anything as long as it's nutritious."
"And you just threw up enough nutrients?"
"------"
Yappy was silent, so So-yeon picked something off the menu.
"I'll have the pork cutlet set meal."
"I see. Uh-uh~ You are very beautiful."
It was a sincere compliment, but Yappy pouted and didn't show much of a reaction.
Organic beauty standards meant little to her.
"Where is the main fuselage?"
"It was completely destroyed, and it was said to be tainted by the Demon Lord's magic."
So-yeon told Yappy what the gods had told her.
"All that was salvaged was the reactor and the memory data. Lord Yappy will have to build a new fuselage himself."
"We must hurry. I will be out of this barbaric organic body as soon as possible."
"It looks good, doesn't it?"
"This?"
Yappy smirked and gave So-Yeon a rotten look as she fiddled with its hair.
"Only two eyes."
"No wonder."
"If it only has two eyes, how does it see the rear? And why can't it link up with the reconnaissance drone cameras? How does it monitor the outside area?"
Yappy's complaints didn't end there.
"It only has two arms. How can I fix it if it breaks? How can I multitask? I need more arms first. Poorly armed. Lack of diversity in external armor."
While Yappy was complaining about the limitations of humanity, a tray of food arrived.
"Food is here."
Korean-style pork cutlet, hamburger steak, and a pork cutlet set meal topped with fish cutlets and salad.
"This is the most problematic."
"A tonkatsu set meal?"
"It symbolizes the inferiority of an organism that has to rely on its sense of taste to select its food."
Yappy went on to explain the efficiency with which machines can operate for hundreds or thousands of days on cheap electricity from nuclear reactors.
"Therefore, the most perfect evolutionary path is to mechanize all organic matter through cyberware modification. I'm surprised you didn't blow up the taste cells in your world."
"Yeah, yeah, just eat it. You can modify it later or not, but for now, you need to eat."
"Mmm."
Yappy shot a disgruntled glance at So-Yeon, who was overhearing his reasoned thoughts, but picked up the pork cutlet with his bare hands as if replenishing his energy was a priority.
"Why are you picking it up with your bare hands?"
"What's wrong with it?"
"It's dirty."
"I can wipe it off when I'm done."
"If you get it on your hands--- Eh, give it to me so I can slice it."
So-yeon sliced the pork cutlet.
"Here, eat."
"Meat fried in oil contains more calories than the recommended daily allowance...!"
Yappy's long-winded talk continues as she puts the cutlet into her mouth but her eyes widened as she chewed on it.
The combination of juicy, fatty tempura and sauce that bursts out with each bite. The waste of energy due to excessive carbon emissions and the poor absorption of oil by the human body──
"Stains?"
Real meat, not 3D-printed meat, which is the main culprit of carbon emissions, slaughtered from live animals.
On top of that, the tempura fried in high-temperature oil is crispy and the demi-glace sauce is sweet.
It was a shock.
The first bite of pork cutlet, eaten by a machine that hadn't eaten in a thousand years, after acquiring the body of an organism, caused a huge electrical impulse in Yappy's biological brain.
-Buddlebuddle
"Lord Yappy?"
Without replying to So-yeon's question, Yappy gulped down the pork cutlet, the accompanying mushroom soup and cola.
"------"
After inhaling the pork cutlet in a flash, Yappy suddenly noticed So-yeon's gaze on her.
Yappy excuses herself, trying to avoid the "delicious!" gaze.
"It was an emergency in order to replenish my energy."
"I see."
Though she didn't understand human language, Yappy guessed she was mocking her. It was a mindset that had no place in a machine that valued only facts.
"Here's your chicken, Sir Yappy, have you finished it already?"
"What is that?"
Yappy eyed the box of chicken that Ha-ri had brought.
"Hmph, isn't it marinated chicken, the traditional Korean food?"
"I ate fatty, high-calorie food earlier. I don't want to eat fatty food again──"
"Come on, try it and decide!"
Ha-ri held out the spicy chicken, which brought a fresh shock to Yappy.
"What is this--- what is it?"
"Alas~ This is called 'delicious'."
"Delicious?"
That was the day a machine learned about the concept of being delicious.
* * * * *
After finishing their meal, the three headed to the top of the Ryugyong Hotel.
This desolate hotel, which had been under construction for "50 years" with the intention of building a skyscraper that would surpass the 63 buildings in South Korea, had been completely taken over by the roots of the World Tree since the Demon Lord Rakshar had made it the tombstone of the World Tree.
However, now that it has been turned into a world tree, Leon is staying there to watch over it.
The interior is desolate, as only the exterior has been completed and the interior has been suspended for 20 years, but there is a story that the interior will be repaired at the level of the Great Hall of the Gods because of the symbolism of the World Tree.
"Lord Spinner, come."
~The top floor~
Yappy ran into Leon, who was waiting for her in what would normally have been a suite.
"Your Majesty."
"Haha, this isn't the fuselage I'm used to seeing."
Leon smiled with satisfaction as he looked at Yappy, the product of the gods' delicate work.
"So, how do you feel in your new body?"
"Uncomfortable------"
"Well, I suppose you could stay in that body if you wish, but──"
Yappy shook her head. If Yappy wanted to stay in this body, she would need at least six more arms than she had now.
"Well, if that's your choice, I'll respect it, but------"
Leon chuckled, kissing the back of Yappy's hand as he would any noble lady.
"It would be a shame for me as a knight to lose the opportunity to serve such a beautiful lady."
"Pfft------"
The back of her hand tickled. Yappy had seen Leon's routine courtesy time and time again, yet she felt an odd tickle as she received it.
'Why does my body temperature rise when it's just the back of my hand that he's touching? Organic flesh is strange.'
Yappy realized that he needed to get a new fuselage built as soon as possible.
"I've ordered the workers below to prepare the necessary facilities. There's plenty of iron, so you can build it as you wish."
Leon patted Yappy on the shoulder and promised to help her with whatever she needed.
As they entered the workshop, Yappy was unsure of what to do with her awkward human arm, and Heto said to him,
[You don't seem to be used to the human body].
"Yes."
Heto's voice rang through her ears, and Yappy responded awkwardly.
"My reactor is not equipped. And yet you can communicate?"
[You are a Holy Knight because you have a noble soul, not because of the strength of your body.]
"To me, the substance called soul does not exist."
[Of course not, for the soul is not matter.]
Yappy raised the hammer.
The heavy stellar iron could not be melted by any amount of firepower.
It takes a miracle of the gods to bend even the heart of a star into shape.
For a Holy Knight, a living saint, stardust is bent and shaped by meaning alone.
After hammering away to polish the bent star iron, Yappy complained that something was not going her way.
"Too few hands. I need a second arm."
In Yappy's workshop, there are many mechanical arms. There were mechanical containers that were assembled by a network, and there was a high-tech facility that could project a design in 3D and gauge its expected completion.
But what was there now was unreasonable organic flesh. Dissatisfaction with it set in, but Heto spoke in a stern voice.
[Whatever your flesh, you are my blacksmith and the Holy Knight of the Lionheart, and your hammering is the miracle-working power of the gods]
Yappy remembered her hammering.
Recalling the words of Holy Knight Antoine, she recalled the moment she was recognized by Leon.
[Under far worse conditions than now, you forged the Lionheart King's armor.]
Despite producing thousands and tens of thousands of armors and weapons, Yappy failed.
Automatically produced from perfect blueprints, the stardust armor was, at best, a standard issue for soldiers, and only the divine armor that Yappy forged unleashed the true power of stardust.
Stardust armor is a miracle of the gods, a vessel for blessings. She knows from data that it was never just about the percentage of stardust in the armor.
She looked at Vulcanus' armor and realized how much it lacked.
She looked at Leon's holy sword and realized it was a miracle that her perfect calculations could not produce.
[The armor you completed is in no way inferior to the star iron armor created by the glorious blacksmiths of the past. You already have the skills completed, so all you need is a strong arm to hold the hammer.]
Years of experience, great skill, and expensive materials, those are the things you need to be 99% perfect.
The true 1% comes from the miracle of hammering.
"The hammer is perfect."
And with that misguided declaration, the hammer comes down.
The fully awakened blacksmith of the gods worked miracles of her own volition.
* * * * *
To make a long story short, Yappy quickly returned to his mechanical body.
After three days and three nights of hammering, eating only food brought to him by Ha-ri and So-yeon, Yappy quickly completed his fuselage, and after another four days or so, he returned to the familiar design.
"It's made of stardust, so it's shiny, but why did you keep it the same size?"
-For connectivity with other specialized equipment.
No need to tinker with the compatibility of other platform armaments.
Plus, now that he's a fully fledged Holy Knight, Yappy can move forward with his long-overdue "grandiose" plans.
"By the way, it's interesting that you're able to switch back and forth between your human 'body' and your robotic 'flesh'."
Ha-ri glanced at the capsule in the center of Yappy's workshop.
Yappy's body, forged by the gods themselves from the World Tree, slept with its eyes closed in a medical machine that Yappy had built himself.
-Given to me by the gods. I can't just throw it away, so I'll just keep it.
"It's a pity~"
-What a pity, inferior organism.
Yappy jumps on Ha-ri's head and slaps him with his mechanical arm. Ha-ri smirked at the familiarity of his behavior.
"Well, that's what Lord Yappy is like. Sometimes I'll take you to eat with me to eat good food!"
-Not that I would ever participate in such inefficient eating behavior.
Yappy ranted but the next day.
"------"
"------"
Naju TTG Temple Chicken Branch.
The gray-haired girl they met at the chicken restaurant chosen for the Knights' group dinner frowned and poked at the chicken leg in her mouth.
"You said it was inferior?"
"It's market research for a chicken franchise."
"You're full of shit!"
After that, the gray-haired, silver-eyed beauty was often spotted, so it must be a deeply meaningful market research for the Yappy franchise.