As expected, on the day of the Demon Army Defence Raid event, the Tree Mall was bustling with life more so than ever before. Dungeons and Pandas, being the (literal) epitome of shops in the Tree Mall, had given cultivators and their families a reason to get out of the house and enjoy it.
The hawkers had already expected this and prepared way more food than usual. Many around the Tiangong Shopping District had started to become regular patrons of the stores. Without the hassle of finding any tables, people just had to wait until it was their turn to order, making it a big hit in the neighbourhood.
It had reached a point where the hawkers had even asked Jin if it’s possible to allow their regular customers to book tables at the front of their store. Jin naturally agreed to it since such staunch support for the store just proved their food was getting better. (in fact, healthier too)
Asking the System to add such an option on the app, was considered as a small friendly gesture or maybe even a privilege for them.
The Panda Burger instance made use of the increased people count to finally reveal its new breakfast menu in conjunction with Qian Qian from the Bakery Instance. The ‘Imperial Baker’ (or that was what Lynn teased) was seemingly starting to collaborate with Jin’s people like the drinks stall owner in the Food Pyramid Instance. The owner had been selling soft boiled eggs in the morning together with her toasted bread to supplement his income. As for the Panda Burger instance, it had a more westernised form of breakfast, similar to Wacdonalds.
The so-called ‘Panda Pancakes meal’ featured pancakes looking like a panda’s head. To make things even more interesting, the panda pancakes had been imprinted with ‘dark brown’ spots on either side of the pancakes to simulate the black spots a panda has near its eye (or on its eyes). The pancakes varied in regards to where the spots appeared and sometimes both sides of the pancake had it.
Qian Qian, with the help of the Orc engineers, had created a customised pancake maker that allowed for such imprints. Fortunately, they had benefited from an increase in manpower courtesy of the Salamanders. As part of the new animal tribes, they had been given the task to help Qian Qian and Panda Burger mainly because of their new cultivation that allowed them to control heat.
The Sassy Salamander Cultivation.
While throwing massive fireballs was not too far-flung off in the future based on their cultivation, they still received their education from a mix of Flame Ripper and the Fire Wyrm Ants who had a natural affinity towards the fire. At the same time, Lynn refrained them from learning from Peppers and deemed her ways as something akin to the forbidden arts.
Naturally, the little mage bellator loved to create trouble and learning that she was not allowed to do so, made her more inclined to explain her ways of explosive magic to the Salamanders. (Perhaps, Lynn was using reverse psychology to prompt Peppers to teach?)
Speaking of Lynn, the Restaurant Train Instance was jammed packed with people too. There wasn’t anything new on the menu, yet everyone was practically gorging on every food possible for the various buffs Lynn’s food could provide.
The dish which had been ordered the most on that day was definitely the onigiris. Rumours had spread (all started by a certain bored Devilman) stating that there was a set of onigiris that would give an overall boost to strength, agility and vitality as well as chi generation all packed into one meal. This made people go on a search frenzy to see which of those random onigiris had it.
And true to his craftiness, Kraft would occasionally fan the flames by sneakily walking amidst the customer who bought it and quietly buffed their onigiris by adding Evon’s strengthening drug concoction in it.
One or two lucky random cultivators made an uproar upon finding the holy grail of onigiris and immediately posted it online. However, truth be told, the sneaky Fox Bellator had already researched them beforehand and knew who were the major influencers that participated in the advanced raid. All it took was a bit of nudge and that Meibo post spread like wildfire in the dungeon scenes.
In the meantime, the redemption counter for Dungeons and Panda was also filled to the brim with people who were there to redeem their T-shirts.
When asked if there was a T-shirt size, the red pandas at the counters stated that they had already customised their shirts based on their previous dungeon runs. For the cultivators who entered for the first time, the sizes were prepared on-site and some of them only had to wait for 15 minutes or so to receive their shirt.
As for the shirt, it had a simple graphic design on the right chest corner at the front of the shirt. With a pocket to contain the design, a Panda holding a sword was depicted there. However, what most cultivators failed to realise was that their graphic shirts were customised to the type of weapons they were using. For example, Xiong Da’s shirt had a Panda holding a two-handed war club weapon.
A short text was placed at the left side of the shirts’ sleeves, namely, the word “Pandaren” (or “Xiong Mao Ren”) in Chinese. What it meant was literally “Panda People”, and this was to give the cultivators who had dedicated their cultivation ‘hobby’ or profession to this particular dungeon supplier a sense of belonging. As for the Pandawans who had registered (naturally all of them had pre-ordered), theirs had been printed with the Pandawan title instead.
For both Pandawans and Pandarens, they all noticed that a set of numbers was also stitched onto it right below their titles. At first, people assumed that it was the registration number imprinted on the shirt.
It was only after one of the newcomers pointed out that the numbers looked like today’s date, and someone followed up with the deduction that it was actually the dates the cultivators had entered the shop. Through that astute inference, many began to appreciate the fact that Jin did not treat them as a digit on his database.
Instead, this showed that they were born as Pandarens on that day and date, allowing them to forge a better identity with the Dungeon Supplier store. To the Pandawans, this was no longer some store but a place where their second family belonged.
One last special thing about this customised shirt was that on the right side, there was a Velcro patch with a badge on it. The badge was specifically made for this raid alone, and only those who participated would have it.
Should they wish to sell it, Jin could not stop them at all, but each and every one of them would be limited to that one. The design of the badge was similar to what they were going to experience. There were multiple floating platforms in the foreground of the badge while a stereotypical demon with bat wings was kneeling down, covered with swords, axes and lances.
At the bottom of the badge, it wrote “Demon Army Defence.”
For a simple-looking shirt to provide a collective identity between cultivators and offered exclusivity, made them feel extra special. It had inadvertently made the customers want to start gathering more of these in the future.
