3 Cooking

At the end of the long and tiring day, the stall owner handed Mel 100 units. The moment Mel received the 100 units, a message appeared.

[Task - Earn 100 units Completed.]

[Reward - Improve Learning capability a bit]

Mel walked home after a tiring day. He went to the convenience store and purchased some groceries to cook, nodded at the old lady and returned home to cook. After eating he felt full and refreshed and then took out the Training Card and willed it to activate.

Another day passed by as Mel calmly practiced making crepes. The next day Mel once again went to work and earned a 100 units by the end, but he didn't get any further rewards. He went back home and practiced making crepes again.

Three days thus passed. Mel had been becoming a good crepe maker with rapid speed, partially due to the learning buff. Today after returning home, he cooked his meal for dinner and surprisingly found that he had improved a bit.

When he activated the training card for chef, he quickly began making crepes. By now he had become quite good at making crepes. When he made the fifth crepe of the same peak quality in a row, the stall suddenly changed. The stall now made and sold a different kind of fast food.

A month had passed by in this fashion. Mel had quietly become a hidden attraction for his delicious street food. Initially he was working under the crepe stall, but he began to soon work with all other kinds of stalls preparing other street foods and was cooking all of them really well.

As his popularity increased, his sales and his profits increased. Stall owners now gave him percentage profits instead of lump sums. This day at home, he finally made a food that actually felt tasty. Not just tasty, but his eyes went misty when he remembered that this was like the food his mother cooked.

As a result, Mel received a training card for a chef. He calmed himself down and was about to activate the card when he suddenly wondered why he was blindly following the system. He didn't know why he did it, but the simple act of creating some progression seemed to take him out of the despair.

He activated the card, but was immediately confused. He was in his own kitchen. But then he saw his mother and was dumbstruck.

"Mel, what are you waiting for? Help me out!" Mel's mom yelled.

Mel dumbly nodded, unable to process what was going on amd followed her instructions. However, after cooking the meal she wasn't happy with the result and the two began remaking the food. This continued for the whole day without rest when Mel suddenly opened his eyes, realizing it was a dream.

Mel walked towards the bedroom with tears in his eyes, but he suddenly looked forward to tomorrow, when he could 'meet' his mom again through the training card.

During this month, he had finally saved up 1000 units and the system alerted him.

[Task - Earn 1000 units Completed.]

[Reward - Improve learning capability a bit]

Mel could see the pattern. Earning and saving money improved his learning speed. One day, inside the training card world, while cooking as his mom supervised, she randomly commented that Mel was looking weak and asked him to work out.

Mel somehow grabbed onto that momentary statement and the next day he went for a run in the morning. Within minutes he was out of breath, but he persevered until he panted his way through a kilometer, circling back to his house.

[Task - Run 1 Km complete.]

[Reward - x1 Training Card (Gym)]

When Mel received this notification, he saw that that running had turned into a daily task, where the more he ran, the better the reward.

Activating the card, Mel found himself in a gym with all kinds of high tech equipment and a dangerous looking trainer.

"You look like a heap of soft bones! I will work you out and make you a mean machine!" The trainer boomed while patting his chest.

Twenty four hours later, Mel found himself in his own room, however his body was in a daze and a lot of fear. The gym instructor did exactly as he was told in the past 24 hours and Mel couldn't even escape if he wanted to. Mel could still feel the horrible pain all over his body. Tired to death, he decided to rest since it was a weekend.

Resting on his couch, Mel looked at the internet. There were all kinds of news, moat of which related to dungeons, guilds, powerhouses as well as monsters and herbs and treasures.

In his own city, Pinewood city, Mel read that there was one dungeon. However it was an extremely large dungeon and no one knew how deep it went. Rumors kept pegging it to have at least 25 floors, but the official record seemed to be 20.

At the end of the day, Mel used the training card for chef. However, this time the card didn't just last an entire day. He spent an entire week in the card learning all kinds of different dishes from his mom. This was clearly because of his own cooking ability rising rapidly.

Next day Mel decided to change jobs so he could earn more. He was getting at least somewhat confident in cooking and applied at a fairly popular cafe as a cook. After being tested with a few dishes he was quickly hired. The lade owner of the cafe was giggling with delight at finding such a good chef for cheap.