26 System vacation (1/2)

Ensen slept for quite a long time. After all, it had been a long time since he had last stayed up so late, not to mention how focused he was. Because of this, he woke up the next morning feeling oddly refreshed and comfortable.

Slowly getting up from his seat, Ensen stretched his arms out. Looking around, he wondered why he had such a good sleep. There didn't seem to be anything in sight except the hard wooden surface of the table.

Unknown to Ensen, the system slightly sighed in relief. After he noticed Ensen beginning to stir awake he had taken back the blanket and pillow to make sure he didn't notice what he had done.

Since it wasn't really a big deal, Ensen simply assumed it was because of how exhausted he was last night. He did fall asleep working after all. Preparing to sit back down, Ensen's stomach began roaring at him for food.

Noticing it had been quite a while since he had last eaten, he walked towards the kitchen slowly still gradually waking up. Without much thought Ensen walked towards the beat-up fridge and grabbed the handle, opening it.

Randomly grabbing the first thing, he saw, Ensen grabbed a stick of butter that was on a container hanging on the inside of the drawer. Taking the stick of butter, he began walking towards a cabinet, pulling out a plate.

Slowly unwrapping the stick of butter, he suddenly froze.

'I'm really not awake.' Ensen muttered to himself in both embarrassment and amazement from him about to eat a stick of butter, just barely realizing it.

Trying to focus harder to make himself wake up, Ensen quickly grabbed a cup of ice-cold water and chugged it. Feeling the cold water rushing down his throat, Ensen's body quickly woke up in response.

Smiling in satisfaction, he turned his gaze back to the stick of butter. Gently re-wrapping the stick, he began to take the butter back to the fridge when he stopped once again, this time in thought.

'I should repay Kaitlin somehow.' Ensen thought to himself, wanting to do something as a way of expressing his thanks to her, although he did not know what he should do.

He briefly thought about either baking or cooking something for her to enjoy, such as cookies or pasta. However, this idea was quickly thrown out, mainly because she would most likely believe Ensen was trying to poison her for some reason. Another reason which Ensen didn't think it was a big deal was his cooking skill. While he had begun to doubt his self-proclaimed amazing skills in the area after the visit to the high-class restaurant, he had previously done negotiations with Jennifer, he still believed his skills were better than I rank at the very least.

”Could you re-evaluate my cooking skill for me, please? I feel like you left out some areas or unfairly judged.” Ensen said, genuinely believing his statement.

[Very well, the system will re-evaluate the cooking skill rank immediately.]

After a few moments, the text was replaced with another sentence.

[The host is correct, the system has made an error in judgment. Please check the new ranking for a more accurate representation.]

The system wrote formally as if replying to an angry customer.

With an ecstatic smile, Ensen quickly opened the status and quickly navigated towards the cooking skill. However right as he saw the cooking skill, his smiled suddenly reversed into a heavy frown.

[Cooking Skill: i -]

Taking aback from the decrease in his skill, Ensen Began to glare around the room randomly.

”Why did it decrease?! I could probably beat the chefs from the restaurant I visited in a cook-off.” Ensen screamed in anger and arrogance. He had worked very hard and had an ingenious creation that would soon gain global popularity, that's what he thought at least.

[The system had not properly taken into account the host's attitude towards cooking, which severely decreases the performance the host can properly give. As such, the skill level has been decreased towards a more suitable level. However, the user is on the edge to de-ranking even further if your skill deteriorates.]

The system wrote formally, clearly stating the reasoning behind his actions.

Crossing his arms in annoyance, Ensen decided to ignore the system for the moment in favor of eating his breakfast although it was almost midday at this point.

Not in the mood for anything fancy, Ensen quickly threw together a peanut butter and banana sandwich and continued working on his design. At this point, he had completed most of the work. While he only focused on the larger and influential decisions, he had confidence that the system would pick up the slack in the more minor areas to ensure it turned out well.

Ensen proceeded to work on the plans for the next few hours, not taking a break in the slightest. The more substantial break he had taken since breakfast was when he checked the notification on his phone when he was looking at school plans that were publicly available online to draw influence.

As Ensen approached being around 90% done with the design, he hit a sudden roadblock. He had developed a small headache shortly after breakfast that began to slowly expand itself throughout the hours he had been working non-stop. At this point it had grown into a large headache that severely handicapped Ensen, making it extremely hard if not impossible to continue working.