Food for the Mind

What is the most terrifying kind of question during your school days?

Is it the "Select all that apply" nightmare, where the exam doesn't even bother telling you whether there are two correct answers or three?

Or is it the kind pulled blatantly from outside the syllabus, inspiring an overwhelming urge to rap the professor squarely over the skull?

I, Orknodi, knew the real answer with absolute certainty.

The scariest question was none of those—it was the kind where the answer key at the back of the booklet was missing entirely!

The 980th Cohort second-year contract fraudster, Bellocasio.

For a novice, the schemes he pulled were dangerous enough to wring bitter tears, but to a veteran player who had mastered the walkthrough across dozens of playthroughs, he posed little threat. I knew precisely how the student council would react, and if needed, I could spark a conflict to pit him against other dangerous students.

I don't just know one solution—I know five!

This situation, however, was entirely different.

"The variety of items on this contract is remarkably extensive."

"Still, we can roughly deduce which supplies are required for which lectures. If we leverage the network of the Western Aristocrat Alliance, we could easily pull off something similar ourselves."

"The influence of highborn ladies is truly formidable. The real question is which lecture to monopolize, though depending on our choice, we might even indirectly manipulate the grades of students enrolled in specific courses..."

Arcadia and Giselle.

A combination I had never encountered across any of my playthroughs.

The sudden emergence of Giselle, an entirely unprecedented wildcard, was now pairing up with Arcadia—who by all rights should have been the poster child of the jack-of-all-trades, master-of-none—and threatening to produce a terrifying synergy of true, versatile competence. Judging by the direction of their discussion, Gift Academy was on the verge of giving birth to a brand-new villainous mastermind duo.

"What are you two doing in the middle of a weekend afternoon?"

I poked my head over the windowsill to peer inside.

The moment my voice registered, Giselle and Arcadia lunged forward across the table, frantically sweeping the blueprints, documents, and pens clattering beneath the furniture in a single blur of motion.

"We were stretching."

"Ehh. Liar."

"A good child replies, 'Wow! You were stretching!' at times like this."

"Wow! You were stretching!"

"Good girl."

It was downright pitiful to watch, reminiscent of parents caught in the middle of adult playtime desperately telling their child they were only playing wrestling. Seeing them scramble so frantically to smooth things over, I took pity and decided to let it slide just this once.

"Di. Aren't you going to build sandcastles on the beach today?" Arcadia asked, smoothing down her dress with forced composure.

"There's a Giant King Crab alert out."

A Giant King Crab could snip clean through an iron broadsword with its pincers. Realizing that clearly wasn't an option, Arcadia offered another suggestion.

"The weather is lovely. How about going for a hike in the mountains?"

"I don't have sunscreen."

Hiking under this blazing sun would scorch my skin right off! For Arcadia, who stayed indoors specifically to shield her porcelain complexion, that excuse left her completely speechless.

"Well then, rumors say there is a library hidden somewhere in the academy, yet no one has ever managed to reach it. Why not try searching for the library?"

"Why do you keep trying to send me somewhere else? Am I bothering you?"

When I pouted and put on a crestfallen expression, Arcadia gasped, pressing both hands against her chest in a flurry of flustered distress.

"No, Di, heavens no! How could you ever bother me? It is merely that we are discussing confidential business at present, so the timing is simply unfortunate."

"I know how to do business too!"

"You do? Then let me give you a simple problem to solve. If you get it right, I shall permit you to sit beside us and listen to our conversation."

"Deal!"

"First, let us assume that you have decided to enter your beloved confectionery market."

"I love chocolate teddy bear cookies!"

"Fufu. Very well. You wish to produce chocolate teddy bear cookies. But if you bake too few, they will sell out and your patrons will leave disappointed; conversely, if you bake too many, you will be left with a surplus of unsold stock, will you not?"

"I'll just eat all the leftovers!"

"If you do that, the established bakeries dominating the local district will slander you, spreading rumors that Di's shop is so unpopular that trays of cookies sit unsold throughout the entire day."

"Then I just beat them up, right?"

"There is a far more refined method."

Arcadia offered a serene, aristocratic smile.

"You analyze the competitor's gross revenue, flagship items, core demographic, and peak purchasing hours, then organize targeted promotional campaigns aimed squarely at those demographics during those exact windows."

Arcadia drew up a detailed spreadsheet packed with precise figures displaying customer age brackets, primary foot-traffic hours, best-selling goods, and average sales volume. She twirled the fountain pen between her fingers and offered it to me upside down.

"Now then, in order to yield maximum returns with minimal capital investment, draft an essay of approximately five hundred characters detailing which demographic, which time slot, and which items you should ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠target to launch a market-share war."

...This was way too hardcore.

I clamped down on the pen with my teeth, staring blankly at the complex figures for a long, agonizing minute before carefully scratching out my response:

(>﹏<。)o尸

"...What is this supposed to be?"

"Surrender..."

"I am sorry for distressing you with such a tedious problem. It was still a bit too early for you, wasn't it, Di?"

Memorizing predetermined quest answers and parroting them was one thing, but there was no way I could solve a real-world problem demanding raw intellectual calculation from scratch. Brainiac veteran players might exist somewhere out there, but I had always been a physical min-maxer who solved problems with sheer brute force!

"Ah, by the way," Giselle chimed in smoothly. "If you head over to the annex, you should find Isabelle and Mr. Son Ocheon."

"What are those two doing over there?"

"They failed the test earlier and are currently wallowing in depression."

"..."

What was that place, a shelter for defeated soldiers?

"You too?"

"Yup."

I ended up here after all—the recovery ward of the vanquished.

"This is why I can't stand smart-asses," Son Ocheon grunted, leaning back against the wall. "The damn second their specialized field comes up, they look down on everyone else."

Mr. Son Ocheon, you looked down on everyone whenever physical labor came up. I opened my mouth to retort, but figured there was no sense in fellow casualties tearing each other down, so I swallowed the barb.

"Aren't you frustrated, Isabelle?" I asked.

"Not really," she replied with a casual shrug. "Dwelling on stuff like that just gives me a headache. Even on an expedition, there are bookworms who decipher ancient scripts, and there are swordsmen who cut down zombies when they come charging out in rusted armor. Everyone sticks to what they're good at."

"What was your role, Isabelle?"

"The expedition leader's personal assistant."

"Whoa."

The leader's assistant? Did that mean she had been groomed as the party's next-generation ace? Even Son Ocheon blinked, ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠suddenly looking at Isabelle in a completely different light.

"Well, well. I thought you were just a soft-hearted gal who cooked our meals, but you've got real talent under the hood, eh?"

"...No ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠dinner for you tonight."

"Gwahaha! A joke, just a joke!"

"I'm dead serious."

"...I was wrong! Please, have mercy!"

Son Ocheon frequently racked up penalty points for rowdy behavior, meaning he could never truly relax regardless of how large his balance was.

"Anyway, since it's the weekend and we have time to kill," Isabelle said, turning back to me, "do you want to go search for that library together?"

"Are you looking for it too?"

"I heard an ungodly mountain of assignments is going to drop starting next week. Once that happens, I won't have the luxury of wandering around hunting for a library nobody can even find."

That was a fair point.

"Isabelle, are you the type who values the journey or the destination?"

"Where did that come from? If I had to pick, the destination, obviously."

"Really? I thought adventurers cared more about the journey—setting off into the unknown for treasure, overcoming trials and tribulations side-by-side with your comrades."

"If the treasure's already looted after all that suffering, we starve."

"Ah."

Putting food on the table was indeed a matter of paramount importance. Busting your back only to earn zero gold and make no progress on your item codex was a tragedy no one deserved.

Above all, this was a world where monsters genuinely roamed the wilds. Step beyond the perimeter of any settlement, and goblins firing poisoned darts lurked on the hilltops. Thanks to competing for survival against such vile beasts in the wild, the local fauna had bulked up by at least a weight class or two. Ordinary folk could hardly travel to neighboring villages for recreation, subsisting on whatever local crops they grew year in and year out.

That's why slaughtering a single pig is enough to spark an entire village festival, or why taverns erupt into wild cheers as if someone rang the bell to buy drinks for the whole house.

In an age where basic sustenance was a daily struggle, there was no romance in the process. With that in mind, I decided to deliver the result without delay.

"About the library."

"Yeah?"

"If you head to the corner of the first floor in the Main Building and order a book from the commissary clerk, he'll lend it to you."

"Huh??"

"So you don't actually need to go wandering around looking for a hidden building."

"Wait, wait, wait. Hold on a second." Isabelle stumbled, catching herself against the annex wall. "Why on earth would a snack bar lend out books?"

"Because the commissary has a Western food counter, right?"

"I have no clue why a school snack bar would even have one of those in the first place, but so what?"

"Books are nourishment for the mind!"

"...Seriously? Just because of that pun?"

"If you don't believe me, go see for yourself."

You hand someone the walkthrough on a silver platter, and they still complain.

"That will be one point per day. Return it before the deadline and your points are fully refunded; miss the deadline, and ten times the daily rate will be deducted for every day it's overdue, so make sure you bring it back on time."

Isabelle stared at the thick, leather-bound academic tome in her hands, utterly dumbfounded.

The commissary sold meal kits of Western cuisine that cooked automatically once set upon a Mana Board. As she walked awkwardly past rows of seated students digging into sizzling hamburg steaks and creamy shrimp risottos, clutch of pages in hand, not a single person paid her the slightest attention.

"Well? Ingenious, isn't it?"

"...I don't know whose deranged ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠idea this rental system was, but I can see searching for an actual library was a complete waste of time."

"Though keep in mind, you can only borrow a book if you know its exact 'menu name.' If you walk up to the counter and say, 'Give me that one, you know, that thing,' you'd be lucky not to get cursed out, right?"

Still, if one merely needed to borrow reference texts assigned by professors, this single counter was enough to squeeze out every drop of value.

Isabelle breathed a sigh of relief, realizing that thanks to Orknodi, she would breeze right through next week's academic crisis. Yet, a nagging question remained.

"How did you even figure this out, Orknodi?"

"I once told the clerk to give me one of everything on the menu that I could afford with my points, and he dumped a massive mountain of books on my counter..."

"...Yeah, that sounds like you."

Orknodi was obsessed with tasting any food she had never encountered before.

"What happened to the books?"

"I got mad and chewed up the pages, so they slapped me with a fine."

"Gwahahaha! Little squirt, I ought to start calling you a goat from now on!"

Beside them, Son Ocheon roared with boisterous laughter. Isabelle, meanwhile, had to frantically summon the saddest memories of her life just to keep from laughing out loud.