Chapter 712.3: The Night That Decides The Fate Of Port Gallon
Chapter 712.3: The Night That Decides The Fate Of Port Gallon
His eyes started to unfocus as he stared into the distance, and on the faces of many others sharing his status a similar expression could be seen as the indulged themselves in the food.
It felt like they had somehow lost...
Admiring the wide range of expressions and the guests devouring food like starving wolves, Ample Time took a glass of champagne from a passing attendant’s tray.
The drink was one of Wutuo Xilande’s treasured collections, produced in the distant Triumphant City.
Those Wislanders truly knew how to brew alcohol.
Raising his glass toward the guests from afar, he seemed instead to toast some distant friend, lightly clinking the glass against a beam of light descending from the banquet hall’s ceiling.
“Cheers!”
...
The banquet officially began.
The first-floor buffet was mainly for NPCs.
The second floor, meanwhile, was opened to players active around the harbor region. Shareholders and employees of Baiyue Strait Development Company, as well as personnel from affiliated organizations, could enter freely. Independent players only needed to symbolically pay a 50 silver entrance fee.
While the guests continued stuffing themselves, Tomato Eggs emerged from the kitchen and collapsed heavily into a chair, cursing under his breath. “Fuck... Your granddaddy here is exhausted.”
Even as a constitution type over LV30, he was utterly drained. If he had not been an awakener, he might genuinely have died from exhaustion.
To be fair, the region truly deserved its title as the wasteland of the wasteland. The locals’ understanding of food basically amounted to crushing ingredients into mush, throwing in whatever they had, and boiling everything together. The richness of both content and flavor depended entirely on the family head’s financial capability. Generally speaking, the wealthier the family, the stranger and more varied the food became.
Even hotels mainly catering to foreign guests behaved that way.
Although the locals ate with great enjoyment, the Burning Corps players unanimously declared they could not stomach it. After staying long enough, they would rather eat luncheon meat from cans than dine outside, and often simply ran back to the military cafeteria near the harbor save point for every meal.
To improve the stationed troops’ food situation, and also to deliver a little New Alliance culinary shock to the locals, Ample Time had dragged him over to teach the hotel chefs how to cook.
Just teaching those 20 or so clumsy idiots how to cut vegetables had nearly given him high blood pressure.
He finally understood how the Bull and Horse Squad felt when teaching the militia how to fight.
Several of his disciples hurried over the moment they saw him sit down, massaging his shoulders and pounding his back attentively. Even the owner of the Triumph Grand Hotel himself came over with a flattering grin and personally poured him tea.
“You’ve worked hard, mas... Oh no, you’ve worked hard, sir, hehe.” He suddenly remembered that these people disliked being called “master,” so he hurriedly corrected himself.
An iron man personally teaching the hotel kitchen how to cook! Just spreading that news alone would probably keep the Triumph Grand Hotel popular through the following year.
During the period the owner watched Tomato Eggs teaching the chefs to cook, he had truly broadened his horizons. Who knew ordinary ingredients could be transformed into so many bizarre variations? Just pork alone could apparently become hundreds of different dishes.
Forget the fact that the bosses were actually paying to rent his hotel. Even if they used his kitchen for free, he would still think it worthwhile!
Tomato Eggs took the water and drank a mouthful before unable to resist complaining. “How the hell did your previous guests eat that stuff? Seriously?”
The owner froze in confusion and scratched the back of his head, completely unable to understand the question.
After holding it in for a long while, he finally answered pitifully. “Sir, before this, we cooked the food before serving it.”
Tomato Eggs’s eyes widened in anger. “...”
Holy shit.
So apparently simply heating the damn thing up was already considered enough for people of the Poro Province!
...
Glasses clinked, dishes piled up chaotically, and before anyone realized it, the banquet had entered its final stages.
Guest after guest waddled out of the Triumph Grand Hotel clutching swollen stomachs. Their overstuffed appearances perfectly demonstrated how satisfied they were with the meal.
Sitting by the second-floor window and watching the guests leave one by one with bulging bellies, Roshan could not help muttering, “If these people ate a little less, more people would be able to fill their stomachs.”
“Hmmm?!” Tail subconsciously pulled the skewer from her mouth, but after noticing Roshan’s gaze remained outside, she quietly stuffed it back in.
Gently blowing across the tea in her cup, Sisi placed it back onto the saucer. “Oh, that wouldn’t happen. More people would starve instead.”
“What do you mean?” Rourou withdrew her gaze from the window, while Sesame Paste, who had been staring at the moon absentmindedly, also curiously looked toward Sisi.
Sisi answered casually, “Even the administrator can’t do it. Maybe the developers who can directly alter data could, but obviously we can’t help them by eating less.”
Roshan tilted her massive head and looked at Sisi. “Why not?”
Sisi thought briefly before she sighed, “Have you ever fed marmots?”
Sesame Paste cheerfully raised her hand. “I have! They’re tiny and super cute!”
Roshan nodded too, though her fluffy face still showed confusion.
Dropping a sugar cube into her tea, Sisi continued, “Those creatures aren’t tiny or cute at all. They’re incredibly vicious toward their own kind. Even when food is abundant, they’ll still fight over it. If the strongest one doesn’t eat first, the other marmots won’t have any chance to grab food from tourists and can only wait for the zookeepers to feed them.”
“And humans are far more cunning animals than other creatures. Even if we distributed food to every survivor like zookeepers, there would still always be someone taller, fatter, and stronger who would use intimidation, temptation, or methods we could never imagine to take food away from weaker people.”
“No matter what kind of production relationship is established, we must choose whether formal equality or substantive equality comes first. Either we use what we think is correct behavior to regulate what they do while people constantly probe the blurry edges of the rules, or we establish clear rules and let them fully unleash their instincts within those boundaries.”
Roshan still looked unconvinced and pouted. “Can’t we have both?”
To her, the two ideas did not seem contradictory. Wouldn’t it be enough to simply write every correct thing into the rules?
It was like how Kelly enchanted bullets with magic. They would be able to force everyone to follow the rules as long as they enforced it hard enough, right?
Sisi rubbed her forehead, struggling to think of a simple way to explain such a profound topic, when Tail swallowed another mouthful of food and let out a satisfied burp. “Murppp! Rourou really has grown into an adult. Very good, very good. Only children make choices. But reality’s different. This is a game! Doggy Light would never give you something that good for free. The cost of your decision probably gets secretly paid the moment you make the choice.”
“Huh?!” Watching Tail speak with complete seriousness while Roshan stared blankly in confusion, Sisi froze briefly before smiling. “Actually, Tail’s right. Exactly like that.”
Thinking about it, games really were a great invention. No wonder primitive humans learned to dance around bonfires before they even learned calendars or arithmetic...
...
The NPCs were not the only ones who stuffed themselves. The players were equally greasy-faced from overeating. There was even a line outside the second-floor restroom, and some desperate players simply went downstairs to use the first floor toilet instead.
Awakeners possessed terrifying appetites, especially those who had reached the fourth stage of their genetic sequence and the strength type monsters. Their everyday metabolism was not especially exaggerated, but if they truly let loose, they could devour half a cow in one sitting.
As for where all that excess mass went... Their powerful digestive systems simply expelled it.
Inside the first-floor banquet hall, Ample Time, slightly drunk and hovering on the verge of disconnecting, waved a finger while rambling drunkenly to Old White beside him.
“This banquet alone pulled in at least hundreds of millions of silver in investment for our plans. Once those guys return to Silvermoon Bay, the amount might multiply several times over... By then, not only Port Gallon, but even French Fry Harbor’s building material supply problems will be solved.”
Supporting the swaying drunk while helping him toward the save point, Old White joked, “So Port Gallon earns Gallons and spends Gallons. They don’t even need to think about bringing a single cent home, right?”
Ample Time grinned and rolled his neck. “Exactly! Ahem! Though, that doesn’t include us. We don’t want those useless piles of paper anyway. We want things even more valuable. Why not turn them into something truly valuable before bringing them back? The locals won’t just stop hating us for smashing their emperor’s rice bowl, they’ll actually thank us for it!”
Old White laughed. “In the old days, you probably would’ve sold their kidneys too.”
Ample Time rolled his eyes. “What nonsense are you talking about? I never sold kidneys, thank you very much. And even if I considered it, I only ever considered the renewable kind. Besides, when did that idea become mine? Wasn’t it those idiots on the forums constantly talking about selling Roshan’s skin, Garbage’s hide, and the constitution types’ kidneys to farm money? I just happened to find them a buyer while doing quests.”
Of course, because that buyer also did business with marauders, the players eventually farmed him as a monster too.
Whatever it was, that happened long ago.
After another hiccup, he continued, “Honestly, compared to attracting foreign merchants from Silvermoon Bay or Lifestyle Profession players active nearby, what I really want is to spend the billions of Xilande Coins sitting in the bank. If we keep relying on tiny sneaky operations like this, we still won’t finish spending it all even after the Xilande Empire bankrupts itself.”
“Tiny sneaky operations?” Old White looked at him in confusion.
If he remembered correctly, the Xilande Empire had imposed a blockade on them. Goods were no longer entering through the Everflowing River’s inland ports.
“Huh? We didn’t tell you?” Ample Time looked equally surprised before lowering his head and muttering to himself. “I thought you already knew.”
At the exact same moment the two walked toward the save point, shadowy figures were quietly approaching the Xilande Army’s defensive line along the ceasefire border under cover of darkness...