Volume 1, Chapter 4 – Secondary Class, Pastry Maker

The slogan at the entrance of the alley read: “Welcome to Twinmoon City!”

The slogan at the end of the alley read: “Let us build a better tomorrow together!”

The ad in the middle of the alley read: “For only 998, we’ll make you feel so good you can’t breathe!”

What had been an inspirational red-era drama suddenly turned sleazy as hell.

With a strange look on her face, Anran shifted her gaze away.

The NPCs living here had probably already adapted to this wasteland-like rhythm of life. Drink while there’s wine today. In a ruined, desolate place like this, money was all that mattered.

Yeah, money could do a lot of things. The problem was that she had none.

If she relied only on selling cakes, at best she probably wouldn’t starve to death.

Resting one cheek on her hand, Anran stared at the sky for so long that she slowly parted her lips and gave a half-lidded yawn.

“Yaaawn… when is money ever going to fall from the sky?”

With a miserable little pout on her face, Anran was seriously considering whether she should return to her old trade.

A pirate?

No, no, no. Nothing that vicious. With no ship and no crew, what kind of pirate could she even be?

What she meant was a scammer.

It was a very constructive idea.

“Clank, clank…”

Hm?

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What was that sound that suddenly rang out by her ear?

Anran widened her eyes and saw that, at some point, a dog’s head and two paws had suddenly appeared over the edge of her pushcart.

And in the dog’s mouth was a mung bean cake…

“Holy shit! You little bastard! 凸(艹皿艹) How dare you steal my mung bean cake!”

Furious, Anran slapped the chopping board and charged out with the kitchen knife that gave +3 attack.

“Woof, woof, woof…”

The yellow stray dog’s front legs nearly buckled in fright, and the mung bean cake almost fell to the ground. Seeing that Anran’s attack was about to land, it immediately bolted.

And so, in the empty alley, the familiar faces all saw that familiar cake-selling loli suddenly explode into action, chasing Big Yellow with a kitchen knife from one end of the alley to the other, and then from the other end right back again.

“Huff… huff… huff…”

Panting hard, Anran returned to her pushcart. In the end, Big Yellow still got away.

But before it escaped, Anran had shouted a vicious threat after it: “Don’t let me catch you, or next time you’re going in the frying pan!”

The kitchen knife flashed with cold light as she waved it.

Sister Anran was truly a force to be reckoned with: ruthless, and never short on words.

…

The sun sank in the west.

The sun of 1886 looked much bigger than the one on Earth. Orange light spilled down from the horizon, facing directly toward the end of the alley and laying down a thin veil of radiance. That intoxicating color fell softly over the pushcart.

The old city’s nightlife was about to begin.

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Which meant it was also time for Anran to pack up her stall.

After moving aside the stone wedged against the wheel, Anran slowly pushed her cart home.

Firewood, rice, oil, salt, sauce, vinegar, tea…

Was she playing a game, or experiencing life?

Anran looked up at the sky helplessly.

The endless starry sky was right above her head, yet she was trapped in this cramped little space.

Anran’s home was also in the old city. After locking the pushcart behind an iron gate and switching on the light by the door, Anran changed into her slippers and went inside.

The house was very small, with only three rooms: a bedroom, a kitchen, and a toilet.

Inside were all kinds of things Anran had scrimped and saved to buy from the junkyard.

There was even a battered old television, the kind ordinary people didn’t use anymore.

To still be able to see something like that in the age of the stars, it had to be said that the developers’ “love of retro” was acting up again.

After dinner, Anran began her dull life of cake-making once more.

Before she found a new way to make money, it seemed she really couldn’t abandon her old trade after all.

She would warm up first and get familiar with the process.

The chosen food was mung bean cake.

The ingredients and tools were as follows:

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Peeled mung beans that had been soaked for a day, a steamer lined with gauze cloth, a hand-cranked food grinder for mashing the beans, sugar, butter, clean water, and molds.

Wearing a short apron, Anran stood in front of the mirror for a moment. The homey air about her made her charm shoot up all of a sudden. Her already delicate face now seemed wrapped in a different sort of aura, and her slightly baby-fat cheeks were brimming with vitality.

Subconsciously, Anran tugged at her own cheek. Cute. I want to…

Pah. I’m a person with self-control!

Anran went to cook first.

Before transmigrating, Anran knew how to make ordinary home-cooked dishes, but she’d never actually made little snacks like mung bean cake.

But the moment she touched the mung beans, it was as if something had awakened in her, and she began working with remarkable familiarity.

First, she rinsed the soaked mung beans clean and put them into the gauze-lined steamer to steam.

Lighting the fire, washing the beans… Anran handled these simple tasks in one smooth sequence.

She could naturally tell exactly when the mung beans were ready to come out. Next came the food grinder’s time to shine.

Her fair, slender right hand gripped the handle and turned it round and round, and just like that, mung bean paste was produced.

Breathing in the faint bean fragrance, Anran felt a small sense of accomplishment.

At the same time, she marveled at the realism of Night of the Stars. The settings in every aspect made it feel not all that different from reality. No wonder it has been called humanity’s second world.

Here, if you didn’t eat, you got hungry. Once you were hungry, your Stamina would slowly decrease. When it dropped to a certain point, your HP would also begin to fall. And when both reached 0, that was the end of life.

Enough digression. Anran put butter and mung bean paste into the pan. After stir-frying it over low heat for a while, she added the sugar. Seeing that the heat was just about right, she immediately took the fried bean paste out and let it rest.

After letting it cool for a bit, she placed the bean paste into a mold and pressed evenly with both thumbs. After roughly a dozen seconds, when the mung bean paste was squeezed back out, a mung bean cake stamped with an intricate floral pattern was complete.

“Obtained [Ordinary Mung Bean Cake] x1”

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At that moment, a prompt suddenly sounded from the game interface.

Anran froze for a moment before realizing that, in a game, this was completely normal.

[Ordinary Mung Bean Cake]

[Quality: Common]

[Effect: Stamina +3]

In Night of the Stars, items were divided into six different grades. From low to high, they were Inferior, Common, Good, Excellent, Rare, Superb, and God-tier. Equipment, meanwhile, corresponded to white, green, blue, purple, orange, red, and then godly gear, which wasn’t represented by any color at all but instead bore special titles.

To be able to make a Common-grade mung bean cake on her first try, it seemed the previous Anran had actually been quite accomplished at pastry-making.

“Ding-dong! You have successfully crafted Common Mung Bean Cake x1. You have officially unlocked the new class [Pastry Maker]. Intelligence +1, Spirit +1, obtained 3 free attribute points, obtained 1 skill point.”

Hmm…

She had successfully unlocked a secondary class?

Anran opened her panel and, sure enough, a new line of information had appeared in the secondary class section.

[Secondary Class: Pastry Maker Lv1 (10/300)]

She still needed 290 experience to level up.

Judging by the prompt, the 10 experience she currently had came from that Common Mung Bean Cake.

Although unlocking a secondary class was pretty nice, Anran still couldn’t help but complain.

If the class for making pastries was called Pastry Maker, then if there were a secondary class for making staffs, would it be called Staff Maker too?