Cute Student Days

Cute Student Days

The two entered the large classroom with a few minutes left before class began.

They found seats in a corner. Just as Wang Wen was about to ask the boy about the course progress, a figure appeared before their desk.

The skinny boy looked up at the newcomer in confusion.

Wang Wen's ears twitched slightly. From the corner of his eye, he noticed that the visitor seemed to be a curvy girl. Without looking up, he flipped through the boy's textbook on his own, soon becoming absorbed in it.

His mind kept muttering:

"No, all movement-speed mechanisms below the hundredth floor operate at exactly the same rate. They only seem faster because the reference point changes. That's the greatest difficulty regarding movement speed within the first hundred floors!"

"Hmm, this one's not bad. If you don't have the strength to clear the hundredth floor, stopping at the ninety-eighth floor in a single run gives the best value for your effort. They've kept up with the times. If you're not aiming to break past a hundred, the ninety-ninth floor is a complete waste of time!"

"What nonsense! What do you mean there's definitely food on the 250th floor? Out of my 737 clears, there were at least forty-four times when there was nothing to eat! This is far too imprecise! Garbage intelligence like this made it into a textbook? How many people will it mislead into starving to death?"

While Wang Wen read the textbook with relish, clicking his tongue in appreciation,

the girl standing before the desk was practically struck by thunder and filled with rage.

As the seconds ticked away and more people filled the classroom before class, he only buried his head deeper in the book, growing more engrossed by the moment. The girl could no longer endure it.

"Wang Wen!" she shouted angrily in a shrill voice.

The skinny boy shrank his neck in fright.

Wang Wen set down the textbook and looked up at the girl, his eyes clearly asking, What do you want?

"Stop pretending. I've never seen you work this hard before!" The girl pulled out a letter wrapped in sky-blue paper, bent down to press it onto the desk in front of Wang Wen, and glared with wide, furious eyes. "I already told you I don't want distractions before graduation, so why are you still doing this? This time, I'll spare you some dignity and return it privately instead of making it public. If there's a next time, I'll hand it over to the Department Chair! Do you hear me?"

Hearing the words "instead of making it public," Wang Wen looked around and found large numbers of students watching them. A group nearby was even pointing in their direction, whispering and laughing now and then.

He took the envelope, examined it, and nodded to the girl. "Thank you. There won't be a next time."

"?" The girl had expected him to pester her shamelessly, deny everything, or fly into a rage out of embarrassment. She hadn't expected him to be so casual. It didn't fit the script she had imagined at all, rendering the long speech she had prepared completely useless.

She struggled with herself for a while, but class had begun. With no other choice, she gave a light snort, lifted her neck like a proud swan, and swayed back to her seat. Her close friends immediately gathered around her, whispering among themselves.

Wang Wen took the folded letter from the envelope and opened it. He found it both amusing and nostalgic.

So he had once had such an adorable time too.

The skinny boy beside him leaned closer and clicked his tongue. "You got rejected, so why are you smiling so happily? And man, you were amazing today! First, you pissed off Academy Beauty Cheng Queyi in the cafeteria, and now it turns out you confessed to Department Beauty Yu Zhi. I never knew you could be this impressive!"

Wang Wen shifted his gaze from the letter to the boy's face without speaking, his thoughts wandering freely.

Do girls these days all have to walk around with some kind of beauty title? What was that girl's name again? Some kind of paper?

The teacher at the front began the lesson.

The main topic was the known and publicly disclosed knowledge of the World Tower's various floors.

In this era, technology had changed life.

Aside from a few critical, highly skilled positions—such as cafeteria counter staff—that still required humans, most other labor had been replaced by automated machinery.

For ordinary people to make a living, there were three mainstream paths.

Either they worked hard to secure a highly skilled position.

Or they went to lawless slums or gray zones. Some unscrupulous merchants there were too stingy to pay for even the cheapest automation and only wanted to use human lives as cheap labor. If one didn't treat oneself like a human being, one could probably find work there.

Or they challenged the World Tower every week, using their lives, perseverance, and luck to earn supplies and Points. It was commonly known as climbing the tower.

Of course, for ordinary people, climbing the tower really did mean gambling with their lives, perseverance, and luck.

The professionals at The Academy were entirely different.

Formal students relied on knowledge.

Aside from round-numbered floors such as 10, 20, 30, 100, and 200, which required raw strength to break through by force, the other skill-based independent floors often shared applicable knowledge despite their different scenarios, such as Scientific Deciphering and Mechanism Art.

Knowledge was power!

The first-year curriculum had currently covered the first hundred floors, while the textbook's highest recorded floor...

The highest floor explored and publicly disclosed...

was floor 499.

In other words, another five hundred floors remained blank territory untouched by humanity.

But Wang Wen knew that humanity had actually explored to around the 659th floor during this period, and that number had remained unchanged for decades.

Compared with the textbooks, the additional information was held tightly by major organizations because the benefits brought by higher tower floors were simply too enormous. It wasn't publicly disclosed.

In his previous life, he had been an elite cultivated by the First Consortium using countless intelligence reports and accumulated experience.

If the wheel of history didn't veer off course, the highest floor would be broken twenty years later by the team he led.

The feeling was truly strange.

Wang Wen slowly closed the textbook.

The morning passed quickly.

Wang Wen didn't correct the misleading content in the textbook, nor the even more misleading intelligence explained by the Lecturer.

He would have to explain it and prove it.

And people might easily mistake him for someone seeking attention.

Climbing the tower was already an endeavor that risked one's head. If there were people foolish enough to blindly trust intelligence, then let them die.

Exposing too much about himself wasn't safe. Too many people in this world would stop at nothing to obtain information about the tower.

If the outside world truly learned that he had returned from the 900th floor, what awaited him probably wouldn't be a pleasant game.

The Academy's theory classes only lasted for the morning. Afternoons were usually reserved for some sort of simulated practical training, with instructors appearing only occasionally, making it essentially free time.

After lunch,

the diligent students went to the library or training grounds, while the lazy ones invited a few friends out to shop, play, and bully automation.

"Where are we going?" the boy asked Wang Wen, turning his head. "There's a match this afternoon against those fitness freaks from the neighboring department. Are we going?"

Wang Wen faced The Academy's entrance and pondered. "You go. I want to head out and take a look."

"Out?" The boy's eyes widened curiously. "Shopping?"

"I'm going to try making some money. I can't have you treating me to every meal." Wang Wen said no more. He waved, looked up at the sky, then strode quickly toward The Academy's gate.

The boy chased after him for two steps before slowly stopping. Watching Wang Wen leave through the gate, he murmured softly, "Actually, I don't mind treating you to every meal. Really."

Outside The Academy was bustling. Students who could attend The Academy generally had some Points, so the shopping streets and snack streets did decent business. The shops were basically automated. To avoid transaction disputes, robots making ice cream would rather throw away a wrongly made cone than hand it to a customer.

Many students loved bullying these honest automated machines and never grew tired of it.

Wang Wen's target was clear. It wasn't the shopping street, much less the food street.

He headed straight for the dedicated World Tower teleportation zone.

There was only one World Tower, but there were many portals around the world. Through them, one could instantly appear at the Grand Plaza outside the World Tower.

Their origins were as mysterious as the World Tower itself. People were still studying the teleportation mechanism. There were supposedly some developments, yet no products or formal scientific presentations had appeared to prove it.

Humanity's adaptability was strong. There had already been so many unsolved mysteries in the world that a few more were nothing unusual.

Moreover, many supporting facilities had been planned and built around the areas containing these portals worldwide.

There were many places similar to The Academy.

In earlier times, some areas had even foolishly tried to control traffic by charging admission fees, but those schemes had gradually disappeared.

Wang Wen didn't stop along the way. He took a mask from his pocket, put it on, and walked straight into the portal.

This scene happened to be seen by several acquaintances strolling through the snack street nearby.

"That person looked like Wang Wen?" A girl holding an ice cream stared wide-eyed at the figure disappearing into the portal.

Yu Zhi pursed her lips, frowned, and nodded.

"Only a few top students in the first year are confident they can come back alive from the World Tower. The Academy made it clear long ago that first-year students aren't advised to enter the tower without complete preparation." The girl turned and asked worriedly, "Could he be heartbroken after you rejected him and heading to the World Tower to die?"

Yu Zhi's brows knitted tightly, her eyes complicated. After thinking for a while, she turned and ran toward The Academy.