“Aba aba…”

Mandison, along with his four socially awkward companions, encountered the Zhen brothers, who were out hunting. They followed them up the mountain and, upon seeing everything before them, the brothers, already not the most eloquent, began to stutter.

Something about eating boxed lunches and speaking eloquently, something about everyone almost evolving from "cavemen" to civilized people living in houses, and how everyone was doing…

They had heard the Zhen brothers' densely packed words all the way up the mountain.

And now, the moment Mingmei handed them boxed lunches, they immediately took them and ate quietly.

Without a single question.

Mingmei's memory was good; besides Mandison, the others seemed to be her classmates?

"Your attire is a bit strange…"

Lu Xiaoyao, naturally drawn to any excitement, saw Mandison's arrival and the attire of those with him, and her curiosity was immediately piqued.

Everyone present had long escaped the embarrassment of being covered only by a few leaves. They wore things woven from animal hides and tree vines, but what these people were wrapped in didn't seem like the animal hides they were familiar with!

"Hey! The outermost layer is the skin of a feral beast?" Someone recognized it suddenly!

"Yeah."

Having finished the boxed lunches Mingmei gave them, they nodded.

"Whoa! You guys are so fierce?"

Lu Xiaoyao exclaimed in surprise after realizing this. Mingmei, on the other hand, could tell that the feral beast skins they were wearing didn't seem to be from the same kind, indicating they had killed more than one.

Indeed, very fierce!

Small ones in groups, large ones alone. Mingmei had to give them a thumbs up, no matter which kind of dinosaur they had taken down.

However, she didn't remember this group of socially awkward mushrooms from her class being so powerful?

With the boxed lunches in their mouths and Lu Xiaoyao leading the conversation, these people soon became more articulate. Then, Lu Xiaoyao's gaze fell on Mandison beside them, and she said thoughtfully, "Is it because you, Mandison, are especially strong?"

"Not really." Speaking of which, Mandison looked at the four of them, like invisible mushrooms. When they saw Lu Xiaoyao's gaze turn to their side, they immediately looked relieved, which amused him.

"It's mainly because they're smart. They asked me to join them in tricking those wild beasts and feral beasts. I'm usually the bait."

Mingmei: "Wow~"

Lu Xiaoyao: "Huh?"

Mandison's answer successfully made the four of them the focus of everyone else's attention again. Immediately, the four of them felt uncomfortable all over, wishing they could find a wall and just face it, unwilling to see them.

However, recently, whether it was this large-scale team battle game or the sixteen-person dormitory, which was a socially awkward hell in the Second Military Academy, they had improved a lot.

The four of them stood together, and someone suddenly said, "It's okay, they're just dumb."

Everyone: =.=?

"You've all earned enough game credits for the end of the year, right?"

Mingmei asked this question out of the blue.

Socially Awkward Student A: "We finished a long time ago."

Socially Awkward Student B: "We were done right after National Day."

"Huh? You guys are that fast?"

Lu Xiaoyao looked at these classmates with a ghostly expression, full of the surprise of "Don't lie to me, I haven't read much."

Socially Awkward Student C: "Didn't the later games have death montages?"

Socially Awkward Student D: "To avoid social death and not become famous, we stayed up late grinding the game."

The four socially awkward students said in unison, "That's right! To avoid social death, grind!"

Mingmei: So, they're still just a bunch of socially awkward people at heart.

These people were speaking as if they should have been full of energy, but when these four said it, it inexplicably gave people a sense of loss.

It sounded more like—emptiness—after finishing a task.

"Stop chatting, it's still early, there's still a lot to do, let's get to work."

Mingmei coughed lightly, breaking the increasingly awkward topic, and took away the dejected Lu Xiaoyao.

Lu Xiaoyao: In the end, I'm just too weak!

Mingmei took her to process the animal meat, hanging it in a ventilated and shady place to dry, as a food reserve for the upcoming winter.

Mingmei took the black fruit and smeared it on the jerky, dyeing the meat a sauce color.

This soy sauce fruit was also accidentally discovered by Mingmei and her harvesting team some time ago, and now they rely on the saltiness in this soy sauce fruit to extract salt.

Unfortunately, Mingmei prefers white salt to soy sauce.

"It would be nice to have salt."

"Let's take it one step at a time. Since you like this black sauced meat, let's dry that kind of dried meat."

Lu Xiaoyao, who had come out of her sad mood from just now, heard Mingmei's sigh and comforted her, "It's good to have something to eat. If not, we can put some fruit on it to season it, anything is fine…"

As she spoke, she smacked her lips, amusing Mingmei.

"What are you laughing at?"

"I'm saying, you can still look so greedy at this time." Mingmei said, and directly dried several pieces of jerky that were not marinated in soy sauce fruit.

"What's wrong with that? Anyway, I said I'm not picky~"

"But you don't like to eat the food I make."

Lu Xiaoyao: "How can that be the same?"

Lu Xiaoyao rolled her eyes at Mingmei and, seeing that there was no one around, pulled Mingmei aside to say some "heartfelt words": "Meimei, let me tell you, you have to have a little… sense. It's fine if Mu Chen can cook, you… if it's not necessary, don't do it in the future."

Mingmei: "…?"

…

In the evening, Julian and Lu Gui, another team that went out hunting, also brought back several players.

One of them was very abrupt in the crowd, and the bloody aura all over his body rushed towards them, shocking the players.

They had never seen such a person before!

Not to mention they hadn't seen it, Julian and Lu Gui, who met this person, hadn't seen it either.

At their first meeting, he directly used a bone knife to cut off the head of an animal that looked like a deer in front of them.

With the gushing blood from the neck, the other party immediately drank the deer blood, which immediately caused discomfort to the stomachs of the others present.

Lu Gui even suspected that the other party was not a player, but a savage NPC in the game.

As a result, when the other party finished drinking the beast blood and handed them the corpse, gesticulating that he wanted to join them, they had to admit that the person in front of them was a student.

Mingmei also knew this person.

During the previous exchange in the combat class, he was the one who instantly knelt down to her and admitted defeat, Hu Ge'er.

What she didn't expect was that the other party was even more savage than the wild men they first encountered, the Zhen brothers.

The other party also recognized Mingmei. The Hu Ge'er, who was still "I am strong, I am strong, I am awesome" and showed off in front of Lu Gui and the others, immediately turned into a big cat, directly approaching Mingmei to show his goodwill. When Mingmei gave him food and asked him to eat, he didn't doubt it at all and swallowed it in two bites.

You know, Julian and Lu Gui are not the Zhen brothers, and they explained the function of Mingmei's food to the other party along the way.

Even so, the other party ate such unpalatable things with relish, which was also very surprising.

"Boss!"

After eating, Hu Ge'er, who found that his language system was "unlocked," worshiped the boss as the first thing.

When he directly pounced in front of Mingmei, Mu Chen was fortunate enough to hold the other party's head with one hand, otherwise the other party would have hit Mingmei directly.

With such a big guy of nearly two meters, Mingmei would probably be injured if she was suddenly hit.

"Thank you, Boss, for the grace of rebirth! I will be your little brother from now on! I will do whatever you want!"

Mingmei: "…"

Hu Ge'er shouted in one breath, and everyone in the crowded cave was silent when they saw all this.

Only Mu Chen, who was holding the other party's head with his hand, was seriously considering how likely he was to crush the other party's head with one hand.

Is this guy an idiot?