I summoned the rest of the vacation buildings, but we didn’t find anything good.

“Time for junk food.” This time, I built the [Majestic Oceanfront Sanctuary], a large three-story hotel with a blue, gold, and bronze facade. I led everyone to the corridor that branched off the lobby and showed them the vending machine. “Everyone can give it a try, and you can keep whatever you get.”

I handed Prince Baiyu a token and showed him how to use it.

“Put it inside this coin slot, press the button under the items you want to get, and wait for it to drop into the pickup box.” I demonstrated it all for them.

The machine made a beeping sound when I put the token in and a musical tone when I pressed the button under the [Grimoire Grape] soda. The mechanism inside the vending machine sprang to life. The others crowded in front of it to see what was happening as the metal coil behind the soda bottle rotated, pushing the soda off its shelf and into a cushioned collection tray.

“Then just take the item from the bottom of the machine.” I reached into the box at the bottom of the machine and took out the soda.

[Grimoire Grape:

Grape-flavored soda.]

On Earth, the drink would have been in an aluminum can, but here it was in a glass bottle with a cork.

“My prince, why don’t you start?” I moved out of the way.

“I’ll get the same thing.” He had no problem using the vending machine, and he had a huge smile on his face when he got the bottle of soda.

“My lady, what are these things?” Scholar Wu pointed at a pack of instant noodles.

The items were labeled, but she was confused because there was no such thing in this world. There were three kinds, [Chicken Noodle Soup], [Seafood Tom Yum Noodles], and [Amazing Biangbiang Noodles].

“You empty the contents of the packet into a bowl and add hot water. Wait for a bit, and you’ll have a bowl of noodles. Why don’t you try it?” Suddenly, I saw something red in my peripheral vision, and when I turned my head, I found out that it was the Demon Chef’s glowing eyes. I realized that he had never seen these since I hadn’t bothered making them.

After all, how could instant noodles ever compare to the chef’s cooking skills?

Scholar Wu and my eyes met in wordless communication. We both stood aside and let the chef take the three items first. Then we all trooped to the kitchen where we watched him boil water and follow the instructions written on the side of the three paper packets.

The [Chicken Noodle Soup] and [Seafood Tom Yum Noodles] both had just the noodles and a flavor packet with a few sad little dried vegetable bits in them. When Deming put their contents in a bowl, the expression on his face spoke volumes. Adding hot water cooked the noodles, but Deming was too disgusted to even try them, so his assistants divided the result into smaller bowls which they served to us.

Scholar Wu was quite curious about this new type of food.

“Not too bad for something you can cook fast. It could be useful when camping,” was her verdict.

I tried it out myself and found that it was very normal, like something I would have eaten back on Earth.

The [Amazing Biangbiang Noodles] were a different story. Aside from the noodles, it had a packet of powdered spices, dried vegetables, minced nuts, dried shrimp, and three tiny bottles of chili oil, a soy sauce-based flavoring, and sesame oil. Also, this time the noodles had to be boiled and drained before adding the other ingredients and cooking it again over low heat.

Biangbiang noodles on Earth were long, thick, and flat. It used to be an obscure dish, but the name became viral because of the complexity of the Chinese character for “biang” which was made of up nine radicals, for a total of fifty-eight strokes. My parents and I had a lot of fun trying to write it. This world’s biangbiang noodle version seemed the same.

Deming tasted the resulting dish with a neutral expression on his face and Fengying let us know what he thought. “Acceptable.”

Lari cheered and was first in line to sample it. Immediately after tasting it, his eyes started to water and he doubled over, coughing. “Hot! Hot!”

A member of the kitchen staff rushed to give a piece of bread to alleviate his suffering.

The more adventurous among us, including Scholar Wu and Prince Baiyu, tried it out, too, and they all either praised or complained about the extreme spiciness of the dish.

“I think I’ll pass,” I said with a smile.

We returned to the vending machine in good spirits after that. Everyone was able to get either a soda or a snack item like potato chips, popcorn, cookies, and candy bars. We shared all the items with each other.

“This candy is too sweet. I feel like my teeth will rot,” said Yinuo.

“Try these potato chips, they’re great.” Lari poured some into Yinuo’s hand.

“Popcorn is the best.” Mo shoved a handful into her mouth.

Once we had finished off all the food and drinks in the machine, we got to work.

“Here’s our plan. The [Sunset Radiance Resort] will serve as our dumping ground since it has a big walk-in freezer and refrigerator. I’ll summon the [Majestic Oceanfront Sanctuary], [Salty Siren Inn], and one more [Sunset Radiance Resort] where people will gather all the items and bring them to the main resort. Fengying will supervise.”

My apprentices cheered. They were the ones who would use the vending machine while the others would collect the bottles from the bar and the food from the resort.

The [Sunset Radiance Resort] was a very fancy place with a fully-stocked pantry and kitchen full of fresh vegetables, high-quality meat, rare spices, and exotic ingredients like truffles, bird’s nest, abalone, ginseng, etc.

We didn’t really need them since I had plenty of money, but I was a bit embarrassed to admit that I really only wanted the junk food that reminded me of my original world. Therefore, I hid my intentions by collecting all the expensive items, too.

It was a bit of a squeeze, but I managed to place the three buildings side-by-side for maximum efficiency. My apprentices and staff went back and forth between the buildings carrying as much as they could in cloth sacks.

“Have fun!” I took out a loveseat for Prince Baiyu and myself, and we sat under a tree chatting while I waited for the others to finish. When they were done with a building, I banished it and put another in its place. This continued until the storage area in the resort was full, whereupon I went there and put all the items in my inventory for later. I reckoned I now had enough vending machine junk food to last me for another year. “Thank you, everyone! Now let’s enjoy the rest of our vacation!”

For the last time, I removed all the buildings and replaced them with the [Sea Melody Pavilions]. This was one of the buildings we had explored earlier, and I chose it because it was made of five individual villas, each with a high wall for privacy.

“See you later!” I said to the others before taking Prince Baiyu’s hand and walking to the farthest villa. Because of the high walls, it didn’t have a good sea view, but it was the most private one.

It had a small but quite charming courtyard whose centerpiece was a blue-tiled plunge pool surrounded by lush plants. The vacation villa was a wooden one that vaguely reminded me of the ones in Bali, possibly because of the wooden panels carved with intricate floral designs that decorated its exterior. There were only three rooms inside, a living room, dining room, and bedroom, all furnished with wooden furniture upholstered in blue and white stripes.

“I want to swim,” I said to my boyfriend.

“Me, too.”

“Wait for me here? I’ll put my swimsuit on.”

“Swimsuit? What’s that?”

“It’s clothing for swimming.”

He raised an eyebrow. “But we don’t need clothing to swim.”

“What?!”

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