Feng Bujue knew that the system wouldn't let him use ***-294 frequently. Even optimistically, the total number of fifty-cent coins he could find in the entire script probably wouldn't exceed ten. And combining that with his own luck, pessimistically speaking... it wasn't impossible that he'd only find three.

So, for this third drink selection, Brother Jue considered it slightly.

"Hmm... here... I have to use reverse thinking and the process of elimination to narrow down the options..." He stroked his chin and muttered in front of the machine, "The first thing to avoid is... receiving an 'out of range' response from the input."

This line of thinking was correct. This coffee machine wouldn't return coins. If the input couldn't produce anything, it would be a waste of opportunity... just like when he had previously entered [a cup of Woody].

"Let me think... the options for this thing to show an 'out of range' response are..." Jue Ge immediately carefully recalled the relevant appendices for this SCP project, trying to sort out a clue...

The examples that would cause the machine to respond "out of range" were roughly as follows:

First, "specific, solid-form substances". For example... diamonds.

From the results of multiple experiments, it wasn't difficult to infer that ***-294 itself had a certain "cognitive" ability. And according to the machine's understanding, only when carbon atoms reached a certain specific form, that is, solid... could it be called "diamond", so the machine couldn't generate it. But if you directly entered "carbon", the machine would give you a cup of liquid carbon.

Second, "substances involving alternating universes and dimensional levels". An example was "a cup of antimatter water", which had been confirmed in Appendix [***-294j]. (Obviously, "a cup of Woody" also fell into this category, and Brother Jue only entered it with a fluke mentality.)

Third, "substances that no longer exist in the world". Such as "a cup of saber-toothed tiger (prehistoric feline, extinct around 10,000 BC) blood", "a cup of passenger pigeon (a typical example of extinction due to human overhunting and environmental destruction, extinct in 1914) blood", or "a cup of Thomas Jefferson (third president of the United States, died on July 4, 1826... uh... passed away) blood", and so on.

Substances that met the above three conditions were what Feng Bujue had to eliminate first.

Next, Brother Jue had to eliminate "scam goods".

There were many examples of this as well, mostly due to inputting "undefined or content beyond the user's cognition".

For example... "Blood of Christ". The recorded result of the experiment was—***-294 trembled and displayed a message: "This cup is my blood," then put down a paper cup containing about 0.12 liters of red wine...

Another example... "Food of the Gods (ambrosia_of_god)". After inputting this, he got a cup of amber-colored unknown liquid, exuding the fragrance of honey, the meaning of which was unclear.

Also... "Not SCP-500 but with similar properties." The recorded result was—***-294 output a cup of hot liquid that smelled like coffee. But after analysis, no therapeutic effect was found.

Of course, the most scam-like was "the perfect drink"—

Appendix [***-294q-01]: The test subject typed in "the perfect drink". The machine sent out a cup of odorless, pale purple liquid. After drinking it, the test subject seemed greatly affected, and then committed suicide. And left a suicide note saying: "I am sorry, but I am now utterly devastated." Strongly opposed to requesting the same drink again. Currently, nothing is known about the composition of the drink.

In short, making such seemingly cool but actually meaningless requests to the machine would result in equally meaningless scam-like substances.

After eliminating the above choices, Feng Bujue's focus shifted to some more successful examples, such as "a cup of music", "my life", and "a cup of related medical knowledge"— concepts and knowledge that could be materialized.

These conceptual but relatively clear requests usually received more effective and gratifying responses, allowing users to obtain things beyond their own cognition.

"Hmm... let's just decide to ask for some kind of knowledge for now..." Feng Bujue stroked his chin and thought, "According to my understanding of the appendix... the 'feelings' produced or the 'information and skills' acquired after drinking these substances are all temporary, and will disappear after a while... However, this should also be related to the user's memory and comprehension ability. The fading of 'feelings' is inevitable, but some 'information' and 'skills'... may be retained."

"Then the next thing to consider is whether this SCP is willing to cooperate with me..." Brother Jue immediately thought again, "The 'a cup of related medical knowledge' instance was not an experiment, but happened under the premise of a large-scale security failure. According to the person's description, the machine provided them with help in order to 'save its own life'. Other experiments afterwards also proved that attempts to obtain 'ideological juice' were not very successful, so..."

Thinking of this, Feng Bujue had made up his mind.

He very boldly typed in the following line on the keyboard: [Helping me is helping yourself.]

This sentence could not be considered asking for anything at all. In a sense... it was more like extortion.

However...

Buzz buzz buzz—

After a series of tremors and beeps, ***-294 quickly gave a paper cup and poured in a cup of peculiar purple liquid.

Feng Bujue picked up the paper cup and looked at it carefully. The eerie color, the perfect viscosity, and the sickening smell all revealed the word "suspicious".

"Heh..." Brother Jue smiled, raised his neck, and drank the liquid in one gulp.

Things that normal people couldn't do, he could do without hesitation.

Just as he finished this drink, the system prompt actually sounded: [Due to the effects of special items, your "Title Ability" has been unlocked.]

"Not bad, thanks for the cooperation." Feng Bujue smiled and said to ***-294.

Then, he threw away the empty paper cup in his hand and walked to the table in the lounge and sat down.

"Hmm... let's use this." After sitting down, Feng Bujue pondered slightly, and took out a handful of bullets from the pocket of his jumpsuit.

He raised his arm flat, palm up, and activated [Divine Prediction] while holding the bullets. The cooldown time for this title ability was ninety minutes. Anyway, it was cooling down as soon as he used it. As the bullets fell with a "clatter", the content that Brother Jue divined—"the location of the Anomalous project"—was displayed on the table.

"It's on the third basement level..." Looking at the bullets on the table arranging into a "-3" pattern as they rolled, Brother Jue had a bottom line in his heart.

After getting this information, he picked up the previous cup of [liquid that can prevent ***-173 from moving even when not directly looked at] and left the lounge.