An hour.
That's how long it took for Theo's meat to turn from delicious to absolutely the worst. And by no means did it have anything to do with the meat's own taste.
'Just keep going, man,' Theo thought as he ignored the sense of a full stomach and went against his most primal instincts, taking another solid bite of the freshly prepared meat.
What he was doing couldn't be done by anyone else, lest they wanted to develop some sort of food disorder.
The human body, just like in many, MANY other ways, had mechanisms in place to prevent someone from harming themselves.
Just as one's strength and speed would be limited to prevent someone from tearing their own muscles—only for this strength to be released exclusively in times of need—just as one would get sleepy at certain hours not due to strict exhaustion but due to the biological clock of their body releasing the melatonin hormone, when Theo ate, his body tried to limit his intake once he reached the limits of what his stomach could naturally process.
What this natural self-defense mechanism failed to account for, however, were Theo's nanites and how they worked around the clock to not only help Theo's stomach break apart and digest the meat but also continue to siphon away a considerable portion of nutrients, infusing Theo's nanite organ with it instead.
The latter part of the process also grew more and more significant the more Theo ate as he came closer and closer to fully filling up his natural need for sustenance, allowing the nanites to take away more and more of the nutrients.
This also led to another interesting loop where every bite of the meat would, through a complicated process, lead to the reinforcement of Theo's hive, which would, in turn, allow him to digest food faster, transport the nutrients more efficiently, and ultimately speed up the nanite production process even more, closing the loop of the self-reinforcing cycle.
All of this, however, meant that Theo had no other choice but to continue stuffing his face with meat long beyond the point where his body signaled to his brain that he was absolutely full.
'I know it would be better to take my time and do it gradually, but…'
Theo gritted his teeth before taking another bite to separate a manageable chunk of meat from the freshly grilled slab. He then chewed it through to break it apart into a mush his stomach and nanites would have a much easier time digesting, only to then swallow while ignoring the urge to instantly vomit it out.
While reaching the point of satiation turned the whole eating process into outright torture, for all the thorns Theo had to suffer through, there were also quite a few roses.
The biggest and most important one of them all was the fact that with the nanite production entering overdrive, not only did the potential of Theo's hive grow through the roof, he was also finally free to spend his nanites on tasks that he couldn't afford to before.
And it was a perk Theo wasn't going to put aside any longer.
'Hey, hive,' he called out in his thoughts as he relaxed in his seat before taking another bite, 'dispatch an analytical subunit to scan my surroundings for passive, degraded, or mutated nanites.'
This was one of the theories Theo had long since wanted to test out. A theory that would explain not only just how in all hell his body was born with the nanite organ but also how, most likely, all the magic, cultivation, and other aphysical shenanigans worked in this world.
In theory, there was now hardly a limit to how many nanites Theo could assign to this task, given how he was going to keep producing them at the highest possible rate for as long as he continued to feast away on the meat. Yet, just like it was the case with many other things, there were some hoops that simply couldn't be skipped over by merely increasing the processing power of the hive's subunit.
Properly scanning the air for any trace of residual, degraded, or mutant nanites would take time, regardless of whether Theo dispatched just a handful of nanites or dedicated all the nanites he could afford. After all, processing the information was but one step of the process that could be sped up, while gathering it?
That step of the analysis simply had to take its time.
Following the hive AI's message, a black mist rose up from the skin of Theo's neck, only to quickly diffuse into the air as it spread throughout Theo's room, scanning it in search of any sort of particles that would prove Theo's simple theory correct—a theory according to which this whole world was merely the future version of Earth Theo was originally born on.
A version that went through enough huge events and enough time to alter it to the point where Theo could no longer recognize it as Earth… but still, just a perfectly normal planet where the mutated nanites became what everyone around Theo considered to be some sort of spiritual energy or magical mana.
Whether that theory was true or not, however, Theo could only wait to find out.
And so, he continued to bite, chew, and swallow, pushing the meat mush down his throat in spite of the convulsing of his chest that his body used to save itself from what it considered an excess of food. An excess that, according to its self-defense mechanisms, his stomach simply couldn't handle.
In the end, it wouldn't be until a whole other hour passed—an hour full of Theo suffering through his constant and ongoing torture—that the results of his analysis would finally come back.
'Shit…'
Theo's face twisted in an ugly grimace, an expression he refused to allow on his face even throughout all of his recent suffering.
'So, for once, Ockham's Razor doesn't ring true, huh?'
For once, the simplest answer appeared not to be the correct one. And while it only opened up a world of other possibilities for Theo to consider, rather than focusing on what was ultimately a set of philosophical questions like "Where did I come from?", "How did I get here?", or "Just how was this body born with an organ producing state-of-the-art nanites?", he turned his attention over to more practical topics.
'Hive, can you compile and process all the information about handling energy from the books we scanned in the library?' Theo requested in his mind, more than ready to finally put his nanites to good, practical use.