The heavy iron tongs slammed violently against the thick thermal display glass separating us. The blackened metal tips hovered exactly two inches from my right cornea.
I didn't flinch. I didn't lean back. My vision bypassed the improvised murder weapon entirely, tunneling straight through the smudged glass to lock onto the dripping, seared fat of the prime-rib roasting on the heat-plate behind her.
My newly evolved E-Rank circuit was actively cannibalizing my own muscle tissue just to keep my spine straight. Producing adrenaline required caloric energy. I possessed none.
"My internal organs are currently digesting themselves to keep me alive," I stated. My voice dropped into a hollow, jagged rasp, entirely stripped of any biological survival instinct. I finally tore my gaze away from the calories to meet her dark, furious eyes. "If you are going to shatter this glass and murder me, I need you to do it after you hand me the prime-rib. I refuse to die on an empty stomach."
The tendons in Kazrana's neck pulled taut. The sheer, unapologetic pragmatism of a starving provincial completely derailed her intimidation tactic.
She drove the heavy iron tongs into the massive, steaming cut of beef, tearing it off the heat-plate and violently slamming it into a premium cardboard box. Boiling grease splattered against the brass counter.
"Take it and choke on it," she spat, shoving the heavy box across the metal surface. Her dark eyes burned with a bitter, humiliated sneer as she glared at the surrounding cafeteria. "Seventy-two hours of Disciplinary Maintenance. Serving overpriced fat to unbadged trash and useless aristocrats."
I didn't take the box immediately. The radiated heat bled through the cardboard, pressing against my freezing palms like a physical lifeline. My eyes dropped to the glowing crimson band pulsing tightly around her right bicep. The institutional penalty marker.
"You skipped Instructor Cicero's class," I noted. Flat. Informational.
Kazrana's jaw locked. Her pride, already battered by the apron and the tongs, violently rejected the judgment of a commoner.
"Listening to a glorified mechanic lecture me about theoretical fluid dynamics is a waste of oxygen," she snapped, crushing the lid of the pastry box down with unnecessary, aggressive force. "I went to the sparring rings instead. A Proctor caught me on my way out."
Skipping a theory lecture to prioritize physical conditioning. A fundamentally sound tactical decision for a Haldia student. Getting caught by the disciplinary proctor while doing it, however, was a severe operational failure.
I picked up the prime-rib box.
"I attended Cicero's class," I said, my voice a deadpan flatline. "I used fluid dynamics to explain how to successfully detonate a noble's chest cavity. He awarded me fifty demerits and practically classified me as a domestic terrorist."
Kazrana's angry, rapid-fire breathing stalled. She stared at me, her brain violently trying to reconcile the concept of a provincial casually threatening to explode an aristocrat's chest in a classroom.
I looked from the takeout box back to the pulsing crimson band on her arm.
"Your tactical evasion of his lecture was the correct choice," I added. "Your stealth, however, is apparently garbage."
"My stealth?" Kazrana repeated.
The word carried zero volume, dripping with pure, concentrated venom. She leaned directly over the heated brass counter, completely ignoring the rising steam, her hands gripping the metal tongs like a murder weapon.
"I am going to reach across this carving station, rip your vocal cords out, and we will see exactly how you dodge that."
I didn't blink. I looked at the heavy iron pincers, then back to her eyes.
"Rip them out after you box the tarts," I said. My voice dropped into an absolute, hollow void. "I need the sugar to pay for my oxygen today. And my internal organs do not have the calories to bleed right now."
The muscles in her jaw locked. The lethal threat died instantly in her throat.
She stared at the absolute, deadpan vacancy in my expression. A normal first-year threatened with brutal physical mutilation by a Haldia student did not calmly treat their own murder as a minor logistical delay. The sheer, unadulterated absurdity of it completely broke her algorithm.
"Kazrana!"
A heavy fist violently slammed against the brass counter two stations down.
A senior catering overseer glared at her, his pristine white apron stretched tight over a massive chest. He pointed a heavy meat cleaver directly at her station. "You are on Disciplinary Maintenance! Slicing, not socializing! Move the line or I double your shift!"
Kazrana's jaw locked so hard I could hear her teeth grind. She stared at the overseer with the specific, terrifying intensity of someone actively visualizing him catching fire.
But her aristocratic pride collided directly with the humiliating reality of her institutional punishment. She swallowed the murder. Her hands resumed moving, aggressively—but carefully—shoving the delicate spun-sugar tarts into a separate box.
"You are sitting at negative AP," she muttered through gritted teeth, sliding the heavy haul across the steel counter. "Yet you are liquidating sixty Credits on premium cuts and spun-sugar. What kind of completely unhinged scam are you running?"
"The meat is to prevent my internal organs from shutting down," I stated, tapping my wrist against the brass ODICIOS terminal. A soft chime confirmed the deduction. "The sugar is a preventative toll. The entity I am bribing is highly volatile. Crush those tarts, and my access to oxygen is permanently revoked."
Kazrana stared at me for three full seconds. The violent, unfiltered hostility in her eyes stalled, completely derailed by the sheer, unadulterated absurdity of my logistical priorities.
"Why the fuck do I even ask you anything?" she spat. Her voice was a jagged hiss of pure, migraine-inducing regret. She shoved the takeout boxes across the brass counter with enough aggressive force that they nearly skidded off the edge. "Every time you open your mouth, you sound like a defective terminal spitting out randomized, schizophrenic bullshit. 'Access to oxygen.' Are you actually insane, or just permanently brain-damaged?"
I caught the heavy boxes before they hit the floor. "Both are statistically probable today," I noted.
The tendons in her neck pulled taut. She closed her eyes and pressed two white-knuckled fingers against the bridge of her nose, looking exactly like someone actively fighting the urge to set the entire cafeteria on fire just to end the conversation.
"Alchemy Fundamentals," Kazrana said flatly, her eyes snapping back open, her voice dropping into a low, exhausted promise of violence. "I am going to intentionally trigger a localized meltdown at your workstation."
"Take a number," I said, picking up the heavy, grease-warmed bags. "The queue for my institutional termination is currently wrapping around the building."
She let out a guttural, half-strangled groan of sheer frustration. "Just choke on the fat and die before class."
I pivoted away from the brass carving station.
One step. Five. Ten.
At step fifteen into the southern transit artery, the biological debt called its due.
No warning. No gradual fatigue. My newly evolved E-Rank circuit aggressively ripped into my intercostal muscles, actively cannibalizing my own physical mass just to keep the freezing anomaly poison from crystallizing my lungs. The stone corridor violently listed to the left. The edges of my vision bled into white static.
The Atrium was too far.
I did not break my stride. I smoothly shifted the delicate box of spun-sugar tarts to the crook of my left arm, plunged my bare right hand directly into the premium takeout carton, and seized one massive, steaming cut of prime-rib by the bone.
I sank my teeth straight into the meat.
Scalding grease blistered my lower lip. The hot, rendering marrow and seared fat hit my empty stomach, and the INHERITANCE passive violently detonated.
The thermodynamic friction of the conversion was absolute biological violence. The freezing anomaly poison occupying my nodes slammed into the high-density, burning calories. Thick, pressurized white steam hissed aggressively outward from beneath my pristine collar, venting the catastrophic temperature shift into the sterile corridor air.
Ahead of me, a group of third-year Glyphron aristocrats abruptly halted. Their expensive leather boots locked against the stone.
I didn't slow down. I walked straight toward them, mechanically tearing roasted meat from the bone with my bare teeth. My face remained a completely vacant, deadpan canvas. My uniform was immaculate. And literal steam was venting from my neck like an overheating locomotive.
The aristocrats violently flattened their spines against the corridor wall, yielding the entire passage to the steaming lunatic.
"Architect's mercy," one of the aristocrats whispered, his spine slamming against the cold stone wall. "Is his... is his body smoking?"
"Don't look at his eyes," the girl beside him hissed in sheer horror, aggressively pulling her friend backward. "He isn't chewing. He's just destroying it. He looks like a freshly summoned Manifest anomaly."
I didn't blink. I didn't slow my pace. I walked straight through the parted corridor, a localized engine of steam, grease, and absolute deadpan pragmatism.
The fat-to-protein ratio of this cut is genuinely exceptional. Five stars. I am no longer facing imminent organ failure. I will have to tip Kazrana next time.
Halfway down the transit artery, the massive cut of prime-rib was nothing but a clean, polished bone.
I dropped the bone into a brass disposal bin along the wall with a sharp clack. I pulled a napkin from the bag, meticulously wiped the grease from my hands and jawline, and adjusted my immaculate collar.
My circuit was stable. The shaking in my legs had ceased. The engine was no longer redlining.
I maintained my steady pace, holding the pristine, completely untouched box of delicate spun-sugar tarts in my left hand.
I just needed to acquire two iced mochas, and then I would be ready to pay the toll for my oxygen.