The cafeteria of Perland Academy occupied a vast area. Each serving window offered different dishes and the prices varied accordingly.
The cafeteria had three floors in total.
Generally speaking, the food on the first floor was the cheapest and most practical. The second floor offered more refined and expensive dishes. The third floor consisted of elegant private rooms, some even equipped with independent small kitchens where one could order dishes or cook for themselves.
However, the third floor was not completely open to the public; not just anyone could go there. Only students from Class A were qualified to access the third floor using their student cards.
Both Pang Chengyu and Bai Fuling were currently students of Class D, so naturally, they could not go upstairs.
Pang Chengyu held his student card and turned his head slightly. “What do you want to eat? I can take you around the second floor. The food there is better.”
“No need,” Bai Fuling replied. “Let’s start from the first floor.”
Whether it tasted good or not didn’t matter. The player didn’t care about flavor at all, after all, to the player, food was nothing more than a cluster of data, something he couldn’t actually taste. Compared to taste, practicality was what mattered most.
Different foods restored different amounts of HP. Bai Fuling wanted to study what exactly affected this, was it the portion size, the ingredients, or the price?
No matter what, since he was going to research it, he had to start from the very beginning and go through everything. He needed to collect every item once, clear out his backpack and then try to “all in” the maximum capacity.
“Let’s start from the first one,” Bai Fuling said, pointing to the leftmost window at the entrance.
“This is the fast food window. Do you want a hamburger?” Pang Chengyu looked at it and stepped forward.
Although treating someone to fast food didn’t seem very formal, when inviting someone to a meal, you should follow the guest’s preference. If Bai wanted this, then he would just buy this.
“How many do you want?” Pang Chengyu asked.
“Start with a small amount, let’s get twenty.”
Twenty? That’s a small amount???
Pang Chengyu froze for a moment upon hearing this. Then he thought perhaps the other party planned to pack them up and share them with friends. He didn’t mind. After all, he had already said he would treat him and it wasn’t even his own money, it was his father’s card anyway.
So Pang Chengyu asked for a plastic bag from the window and packed twenty hamburgers, then handed the bag to the person beside him.
Bai Fuling’s HP wasn’t fully restored yet. He promptly took out one hamburger and clicked “Use.”
Pang Chengyu looked up just in time to see the transfer student pick up the burger and bring it to his mouth, then open wide.
The burger disappeared in a single bite.
“??!” Pang Chengyu was completely shocked.
He didn’t even see how the transfer student swallowed it in one go… excuse me, that burger was almost as big as half of his face! And it was still wrapped in paper! At least remove the wrapper before eating!
Before he could fully process what he had just seen, the person in front of him repeated the same motion. In an instant, he had eaten three burgers in succession, none of them unwrapped, all swallowed together with the packaging.
Pang Chengyu stood there, completely stunned.
While he was still frozen in place, Bai Fuling, whose HP bar was already full, stopped eating, and put the remaining seventeen hamburgers back into his backpack.
At that moment, he noticed a small number displayed on the bottom right corner of the food icon: 15.
Curious, Bai Fuling clicked to check.
“Hamburger: fast food, not very nutritious but sufficient for satiety (expiry: 15 days).”
What?! It actually had a Half life.
Bai Fuling frowned slightly, realizing reality differed from his expectations.
He had originally thought he could hoard items indefinitely, but now there was a time limit… troublesome.
If that was the case, he couldn’t just casually stuff everything into his backpack. Otherwise, it would eventually expire and waste space.
Better to follow his original plan: test every window first, record how much HP each item restored and then choose a few high value items based on HP gain and Half life.
Although his HP was already full, consuming food still triggered green numerical indicators above his head, which allowed him to see how much HP each item could restore.
“Alright, let’s move to the next one,” Bai Fuling said casually, already walking toward the next window adjacent to the fast food section.
Pang Chengyu was still mentally buffering the scene he had just witnessed. He couldn’t understand how someone could swallow a burger half the size of his face in one bite, without even removing the wrapper.
He simply followed mechanically, swiping his card in a daze.
His gaze remained fixed on Bai Fuling, watching every next action.
The transfer student ordered a new dish.
The transfer student didn’t take any utensils.
The transfer student lifted the plate.
The transfer student opened his mouth.
In a flash, the food vanished into his mouth,
Wait. Where was the plate?
The plate was gone too!!
…No, why could he even eat the plate?!
Pang Chengyu’s eyes widened in disbelief. “Is this guy even human?! Is he a gluttonous beast or something?!”
At this moment, he suddenly felt that eating hamburgers with wrappers wasn’t actually that unacceptable.
Compared to eating plates, paper wrapping suddenly seemed completely reasonable.
The second stall’s worker had also witnessed everything and, in shock, dropped the dish he was holding with a loud “thud.”
Bai Fuling paid no attention to the reactions around him. His focus was entirely on the numbers appearing above his head.
After noting the green values, he turned away without hesitation and moved on to the third window.
Pang Chengyu followed with his student card in hand.
As the saying goes, familiarity breeds indifference. By the time he saw Bai Fuling repeating the same behavior, eating food along with the plates, he had already grown much calmer. He no longer screamed like the others around them.
Bai Fuling looked around in confusion. He didn’t understand why NPCs were constantly triggering giant exclamation marks above their heads whenever he ate.
Isn’t the cafeteria a place to eat? What’s wrong with ordering food and eating it directly? Did the school have some hidden rule about sitting down first?
He was puzzled, but since there were no penalty notifications or rule violations on his screen, he didn’t bother to think further.
Whatever. Maybe this was just an interactive feature to enhance immersion.
So Bai Fuling continued testing methodically, moving from window to window. Everywhere he passed, exclamation marks exploded like fireworks.
After his initial confusion, he stopped paying attention to them entirely. Instead, he even entertained himself with a line of poetry.
In a sense, this scene really did resemble the line: “Crossing, crossing, startling a flock of gulls into flight.” Quite poetic indeed.
Pang Chengyu followed the entire time.
From “how is he eating a whole plate of food?” to “how is he eating the plate too?” to now, “wait, how many dishes and plates has he already eaten and he’s STILL going?!”
The transfer student showed no sign of stopping. He ate his way from the first floor to the second floor, from one end of the cafeteria to the other, without pause.
Pang Chengyu wasn’t even worried about the money. After all, even expensive cafeteria food wouldn’t cost that much. His family was wealthy and even if his card balance wasn’t high, it would still be enough for Bai to go back and forth between floors several times.
What he was worried about now was whether the transfer student would overeat and harm himself, because Bai Fuling was the only living, breathing “fresh” presence in this stagnant, lifeless school. He didn’t want anything to happen to him.
He almost wanted to say: Bai, please stop eating, I’m scared.
But before he could speak, Bai Fuling finally finished the last window’s dishes and stopped eating.
At this moment, he had tested every dish on both the first and second floors and collected all data on HP restoration and shelf life.
Fast food hamburgers currently had the longest Half life, fifteen days. Most other dishes lasted only one day, with a few lasting three.
HP restoration values correlated with price: the more expensive the dish, the more HP it restored.
Well… very typical game design, he thought.
Overall, hamburgers were the most cost effective option. Unless preparing for a major battle that would require large HP recovery, other dishes with one day or three day Half lives were too short to stockpile.
Having made his decision, Bai Fuling planned to only keep hamburgers in his inventory. He turned toward the blond NPC beside him.
Pang Chengyu cautiously asked, “…Are you full?”
“I’m full,” Bai Fuling nodded.
For a moment, it almost seemed like the pixelated blond NPC visibly relaxed.
Bai Fuling continued typing in the dialogue box: “But I still want to buy some to take away. Is that okay?”
“Of course,” Pang Chengyu smiled, finally relieved that the transfer student had stopped his plate eating spree. He wiped the sweat from his brow. “What do you want? I’ll take you there.”
“Hamburgers,” Bai Fuling replied. “I want to take some hamburgers to eat later.”
Pang Chengyu led Bai Fuling downstairs. On both sides, people turned their attention toward him.
Bai Fuling didn’t care. NPCs locking onto the player was normal. The player was always the center of the world.
He walked to the hamburger window and said, “Hello, I want to buy hamburgers.”
Upon seeing him, the worker above the counter triggered an exclamation mark.
Strange… Did it lag?
Bai Fuling tapped the screen repeatedly, trying to interact with the hamburger stall.
His finger pressed against the screen as the in game character bounced up and down in front of the counter. At one point, he even clipped halfway into the glass partition, seemingly about to squeeze inside.
He was enthusiastically attempting to exploit a bug to achieve a zero cost purchase.
The staff behind the counter panicked and stepped back, quickly opening a dialogue box: “O….. okay okay! Don’t get excited, how many do you want? I’ll get them right away!!”
Oh, it responded.
Bai Fuling stopped pressing.
So it had just been lagging earlier. This game really did lag a lot.
“Go ahead and order,” Pang Chengyu said beside him. “I’ll treat you. Eat as much as you want.”
As much as I want?
Originally, Bai Fuling had planned to press “82” to combine with the 17 in his backpack and make it exactly 99. But hearing the blond NPC’s words, he suddenly wanted to test what the purchase limit of this place actually was.
Moreover… What if this was a newbie benefit period? What if, later on, the blond NPC stopped treating him to meals? Bai Fuling thought.
In that case, he should order more right now. Any extras could always be sold at the entrance as a stall anyway. That would be an unexpectedly convenient source of income.
With thoughts flowing rapidly through his mind, Bai Fuling decisively typed:
“Hello, I want 9,999 hamburgers.”
Pang Chengyu: ?
Window staff: ?
Ha, the transfer student really does love joking… wait, he’s serious?!
Author’s Note:
The player is the descendant of the gluttonous beast.
✦ ✧ ✦
Vynellia
[Translator]
☕ A LITTLE SOMETHING FOR THE TRANSLATOR
You have reached the donation ambush. There is no escape. (ง •̀_•́)ง
☕ BUY THEM A COFFEE →
✧ (づ｡•ㅅ•｡)づ ☕ ✧
✦ thank you for reading ✦
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ChaptersChapter 1 · Escape game freezesChapter 2 · Players aren’t allowed to use the main entranceChapter 3 · Players have created a medical miracle!Chapter 4 · If I hit the NPC more, will the NPC drop gold coins?Chapter 5 · Players earn the title of “bus weirdo”Chapter 6 · Players get a prison experienceChapter 7 · So the red bar isn’t for favorability, it’s for anger!Chapter 8 · The player is a nimble catChapter 9 · The player is a “law-abiding” good studentChapter 10 · Players have no morals and are fearlessChapter 11 · Player: What’s wrong? It’s called “Cai Cai Shui Ling LingChapter 12 · The player is the famous Farmer Detective!Chapter 13 · The player raised a new petChapter 14 · The player is a genius dog-riding boyChapter 15 · The player is a sticky, helpful, and kind comradeChapter 16 · It turns out that players aren’t considered human by NPCsChapter 17 · Players are like angels descending upon my side!Chapter 18 · Player: There’s only one truth!Chapter 19 · Why are players farming at the school?!Chapter 20 · Players came to the cafeteria to buy suppliesChapter 21 · Are NPCs model workers?Chapter 22 · If you’re a gay manChapter 23 · Player: Wheelchairs are a useful mode of transportation!Chapter 24 · So the player is actually part of Cat Returns (?)Chapter 25 · Liao Zhi Qiu, a large pet belonging to the playerChapter 26 · Player: Hello, I picked up this corpse.Chapter 27 · Bai Fuling: Players will never dieChapter 28 · Has the murderer been caught?Chapter 29 · Player: Visiting the mental hospital felt as familiar as coming homeChapter 30 · Players’ Adventure in the Mental Hospital: Round 1Chapter 31 · Player: Kid, fly!Chapter 32 · The player who does good deeds every day is truly a good personChapter 33 · The kitten brought back some local specialtiesChapter 34 · Let this adorable kitten stay forever?Chapter 35 · Players, don’t give up on being human!Chapter 36 · A kitten is just a kitten, isn’t it?Chapter 37 · Players want it, players get itChapter 38 · Angel Player and Unlucky Bear NPCChapter 39 · In short, players choose to throw at NPCsChapter 40 · The player just flew away!Chapter 41 · Player: You need to thoroughly understand the bookChapter 42 · Players love to tease honest NPCs.Chapter 43 · He said he was a little hungry.Chapter 44 · Even if cotton essence mutatesChapter 45 · Pure Love TentaclesChapter 46 · Choose to be a kitten?Chapter 47 · Players’ tears are weaponsChapter 48 · Players do not need to breatheChapter 49 · It’s on fire!Chapter 50 · The player is a top-tier rescue masterChapter 51 · How did the player manage to resurrect after killing themselves?!Chapter 52 · Call the player “Little Cat King”!Chapter 53 · What are the consequences of raising the cat-like alienation