Chapter 129: The Hunger of Reality and the Bread Glitch
In the world of the System, hunger was just a status bar. If the bar went red, your HP slowly dropped. You didn't feel the growl in your stomach; you just saw a notification. But now, in the new world, reality was hitting hard.
"Von... I think I'm dying," Aki groaned, leaning against a tree that was no longer made of code. "There's a strange, hollow feeling in my middle section. It's like my stomach is trying to eat my spine. Is this a new type of curse?"
Von (Volt) looked at his own hands, feeling a weakness he hadn't felt in a thousand years. "It's called 'Actual Hunger,' Aki. We aren't being powered by the server anymore. We need organic fuel. We need to find food that hasn't been 'rendered'—we need to find something that grows from the dirt."
Rena was already ahead of them, kneeling by a stream. She was trying to catch a fish, but without her 'Auto-Loot' skill, the fish simply slipped through her fingers. "I can't hit it! The hitbox is too small! Or maybe... it doesn't have a hitbox at all! It's just... slippery!"
Aki's Desperate Command
Aki, driven by the sheer terror of an empty stomach, looked at the faint golden scar on his palm. "I still have a little bit of the Admin-Root in me. Maybe I can just... summon a feast? Just one last time?"
"Aki, no!" Von warned. "The world is fragile. If you force a system-item into this new reality, it might cause a 'Physical-Conflict'."
But Aki wasn't listening. He was thinking of a giant loaf of crusty, warm bread. He whispered the old command: /spawn_item_bread_01.
The air in front of Aki rippled. A loaf of bread appeared, but because it was 'System-Data' trying to exist in 'Real-Matter,' it didn't look right. It was vibrating. It was glowing with a neon orange light, and it was floating three inches off the ground.
"It looks... delicious?" Aki reached out.
The moment his finger touched the bread, the 'Glitch' spread. The bread didn't just stay bread. It began to duplicate itself, but each copy was smaller and harder. Within seconds, Aki was buried under a pile of a thousand neon-orange, vibrating rock-hard buns.
The Real Lesson
"My bread! It's attacking me!" Aki muffled from under the pile.
Sai used his shield to dig Aki out, laughing for the first time in days. "See? This is why we can't rely on the old ways. In this world, if you want bread, you have to grind the wheat. If you want meat, you have to hunt the deer."
Von looked at the pile of glitching bread as it slowly dissolved into white smoke, unable to sustain itself in the real world. "The System is gone, but the 'Hunger' is the first step toward true life. We aren't just surviving a game anymore, Aki. We are building a civilization."
Aki stood up, spitting out a piece of neon-colored crust. "Fine. But if I have to hunt, I'm using my daggers. And I'm naming the first deer 'Architect' just so I can feel better about eating it.