"Homa, your meal's ready."
A somewhat plump middle-aged woman set a metal tray piled with food in front of Homa.
Compared with Jiang Qi's lunch, which consisted of nothing but a bowl of porridge, Homa's meal was lavish.
There was dry bread, thick soup, meat, and vegetables—though the latter two looked like canned food.
"Thanks, Aifuli. Your cooking's as good as ever," Old Homa said with a smile and a nod. Then he picked up a piece of bread, dipped it in the soup, and took a huge bite.
Looking at that hearty meal, Jiang Qi swallowed involuntarily.
It wasn't that he was greedy...
All right, fine. He was greedy.
He had been eyeing a set meal like this for ages. Unfortunately, ordering one didn't just require money—it also required a certain level of status. As a bottom-tier scavenger, even if he were willing to pay, all he was allowed to order was this kind of mixed-grain porridge.
Noticing Jiang Qi's stare, Old Homa's lips curled faintly upward. "What's the matter?"
"Ah, well..." Jiang Qi immediately felt awkward. Realizing that his gaze had been a little too obvious, he quickly changed the subject. "I just thought... someone might bring your food to you, since you have to watch the shop and all..."
"Heh, that?" Homa chuckled. "My shop only opens for a couple of hours in the morning. It stays closed through most of the day. The real business hours are after dinner, up until midnight. Doesn't interfere with my meals at all."
"I see..." Jiang Qi said, a little surprised. He genuinely hadn't known that.
Then again, it made sense. The bookstore mainly sold entertainment-related things. Opening after dinner was obviously more sensible than operating during daytime working hours.
And if Old Homa wanted to preserve some private time for himself, then daytime really was the better choice.
"Enough about me. What about you? Why didn't you go to work today?" Homa asked. "Don't tell me you really stayed up too late watching movies and couldn't get out of bed this morning?"
"Uh... haha, well, I did sleep in today," Jiang Qi answered vaguely. There was no way he could truthfully explain what he had been doing last night, so he simply went along with the joke and put on an embarrassed expression.
Seeing Jiang Qi react like that, Old Homa looked as though he had finally satisfied that tiny bit of mischievous delight in his heart. Smiling, he said, "Heh. That's why young people need a little moderation. So then—what are you planning to do this afternoon?"
"Well, I was thinking I haven't really taken a break in a long time, so I figured I'd just give myself a day off," Jiang Qi said with a sheepish grin. "I'm planning to go have a look at the town's Mecha Club."
"Oh?" Homa's brows twitched. "So you really are interested in mech fighting?" He gave Jiang Qi a slow once-over.
For some reason, that look made Jiang Qi's heart lurch. He had the strange feeling that something about him had been seen through.
Fortunately, the scrutiny didn't last long. Homa soon smiled again and said, "Well, that's convenient. I've got business there this afternoon myself, so I'll bring you along."
"But let me warn you—our mech fighting here isn't nearly as exciting as Tiangong's. If you're going there hoping to see beautiful humanoid machines, you'll probably be disappointed."
"Haha, come on, Uncle Homa. I'm not a kid. I'm not about to compare this town to Tiangong," Jiang Qi said with a laugh.
Homa smiled too, but said nothing more. He lowered his head and resumed eating his lunch.
As he ate, he casually used his fork to spear a piece of luncheon meat and some pickled vegetables, then dropped them into Jiang Qi's bowl. Jiang Qi hurriedly thanked him.
Embarrassing as it was to admit, that one piece of luncheon meat nearly made Jiang Qi want to cry.
As the salty, savory taste spread through his mouth, he almost unconsciously slowed his chewing, afraid the flavor would disappear too quickly. Even the porridge went down far more slowly than before.
It wasn't that the luncheon meat was that delicious.
It was just that he had gone far too long without tasting meat.
Watching Jiang Qi eat like that, Old Homa kept a smile on his face, but something complicated flickered in his eyes.
Deadwood Town wasn't large, but its class divisions were brutally rigid. Quite a few gang members sincerely believed that scavengers didn't deserve to eat the same food they did.
Hah... no matter where you go, it's always the same, Old Homa sighed inwardly.
Seeing that Jiang Qi was nearly finished with his porridge, he sped up his own pace of eating and somehow managed to clean his tray completely before Jiang Qi could finish his bowl.
"Whew. You done too?" Homa asked at just the right moment, as Jiang Qi swallowed the last mouthful of porridge. "Then let's go. I'll take you over to the club for a look around."
"Ah! Yes! Thank you so much!" Jiang Qi quickly agreed, unable to hide his excitement.
Even though he had bathed and changed into fresh clothes today, he was still, at the end of the day, a scavenger. He had still been worried that he might not even make it through the doors of the Mecha Club. Having Homa take him there was naturally the best possible outcome.
Under the somewhat puzzled gazes of the others, the two of them left the restaurant one after the other.
"Who was that kid?" one gang member immediately asked after they were gone. "Old Homa's new apprentice?"
"No idea. Never seen him before."
"I think I've seen him. Isn't he one of the scavengers?"
"A scavenger? A scavenger gets to walk that close to Old Homa?"
"Who knows..."
Deadwood Town wasn't actually all that small.
After all, with a population of over a thousand, it already counted as a fairly large settlement by wasteland standards.
In reality, though, most of Deadwood Town's buildings were residential houses. The true core district wasn't very large at all—just the area surrounding the central square.
And both the restaurant and the Mecha Club were located within that district.
It wasn't long after leaving the restaurant that the two of them arrived.
An open lot, a ring of walls made from metal frames and sheet iron, and a surrounding set of spectator stands built from the same materials—that was the so-called Mecha Club.
Was it crude?
Maybe.
But being able to cordon off such a large space in the already limited central district of Deadwood Town, purely for the sake of mech fighting as entertainment, was itself enough to show how much the town loved the sport.
The town was quiet in the afternoon, and this place was no exception.
There weren't many people out on the grounds. Only a single middle-aged mechanic, wearing clothes marked with the emblem of the Flying Crow Gang, was busy tinkering with a mech.
It was an extremely... boxy machine.
It looked like a square metal crate about two meters tall.
Tracks were mounted underneath it. At both the front and rear were short, thick gun barrels. Folded along the sides were two heavy mechanical arms.
"This is...?" Jiang Qi asked.
"Burkes No. 3. Though we all like to call it the Iron Box. It's Bauer's mech-fighting machine," Homa said. "The business I mentioned earlier was helping tune it up. Don't let the unimpressive look fool you—this machine ranks in the top three in our town. So? A little different from what you imagined?"
"Ah, well, honestly, it's not that surprising..." Jiang Qi scratched his head.
If anything, this felt more reasonable to him.
A humanoid machine like Glaxia clearly wasn't something wastelanders could afford to play with. A structure like the mech in front of him, on the other hand, looked practical and solid—far more grounded in reality.
Just as Jiang Qi was carefully examining the mech, he suddenly noticed something.
Beside it sat a small crate filled with low-grade energy cores.
At a glance, there had to be at least ten or twenty of them.
And the mechanic called Bauer was taking those low-grade energy cores one by one, inserting them into various parts of the Iron Box's body, while casually pulling out damaged cores and tossing them aside.
Join here to read ahead.
In Star Rail, Ultra-Beast Armored — Have I Caught "Equilibrium"? l (Chapter 80)
Uma Musume, But I Only Have Five Years Left to Live (Chapter 120)
Zenless Zone Zero: I'm a Doctor, Not a Bangboo (Chapter 100)
Ben Tennyson Wants to Join the Justice League (Chapter 100)
TYPE-MOON: Redemption Beginning with the Holy Grail War (Chapter89)
Yu-Gi-Oh! — Transmigrated into the White Dragon Girl (Chapter86)
"Is this chat group even serious?" (Chapter63)
I, Lord Ravager, Utterly Loyal! (Chapter75)
Can Playing Games Save the World? 53
Crossover Anime Multiverse: The Demon Hunter of an Unnatural World 57
From Junkman to Wasteland 35
Weekly Refresh of Overpowered 26
I'm Grinding Proficiency Like 27
From Kiana, Lord Ravager, Onwa 26
Honkai: Is This Still the Prev 26
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