141 System's Upgrade

As he made his way downstairs, he found the kitchen in a devastating state. It looked like a war zone. There were burn marks everywhere and no food could be found in the fridge. Shaking his head in disapproval, he got to work. Aida who had been peeking over at Light secretly cheered when she saw him getting into action. She was already salivating from the thought of finally getting to eat good food again. Yukio was actually a decent cook, but in the end, he was only a 10 year old and his experience was extremely limited.

Light's first step was to clean up the kitchen again. The twins also chipped in and helped clean everything. The microwave, oven and multiple pots had been decimated, so they decisively threw it out and replaced it with a new one. They also frequented multiple houses and restaurants to acquire the necessary spices, vegetables and meat. Soon, the refrigerator was fully stocked with food again.

That night, they all sat around a bonfire as they enjoyed the first good meal in almost a month. They all thought 'Finally, a good meal!' in their heads but no one dared to vocalize this thought with Aida in their presence.

Light had made a ginseng chicken stew filled with valuable ingredients (ginseng, bird's nest) that they found in the houses. If the owners were still around, they would surely have cried knowing that their most precious material had been taken.

Everyone exclaimed in happiness at the meal and quickly cleaned out the pot. Light volunteered to keep a watch out over the night since he had gotten plenty of rest. No one refused and went into the RV to sleep. Sitting out by the fire, he looked up at the beautiful night sky. Without the air pollution and city lights, he was able to see the entire Big Dipper and many other constellations.

Ace was also sitting on the side, drinking a beer, enjoying the night sky while muttering to himself. Light turned his head to look at Ace and asked, amused, "Are you still practicing your singing?"

Hearing this, Ace's eyes livened up and he scrambled over to Light, eagerly asking, "Yes! Want to hear?"

Light laughed at his eagerness and said, "Sure, go for it."

Ace sat straight up and inhaled deeply, preparing to sing.

"Mmmmmm ahhhh ohohohohohoh ooooooo uuuuuuuuuuuuu ahhhhhhhhh mmmmhmmmmmmmmmmm" Ace sang very passionately, flailing his arms from side to side.

Light almost fell over from shock. He cut him off, "What was that?!"

"Oh! Last time we chatted, you recommended that I pick a song with no words."

Light jumped up in fright, "No! This isn't what I meant at all. Maybe you should confess with no music or just play some music in the background." He definitely did not want to be responsible for Ace's poor life choices.

Ace responded somewhat downcast, "Oh... ok….." Then he trudged off to research some more.

Light laid back on the ground, patting his chest in fear. Good thing he sidestepped that landmine, disavowing any responsibility.

Laying there unmoving for another 5 minutes, Light suddenly jumped up again, calling out in frustration, "Ahhhh why can't I just leave it alone."

He begrudgingly walked over to Ace who was focusing intently on his laptop. Sitting before him, Light closed Ace's laptop and said in a serious voice, "I have something to tell you. You are tone deaf and have poor taste in music. Look up romantic poems in your web browser, memorize it and recite it instead."

With that, he left the thunderstruck Ace and went back outside to the fire, feeling much more relaxed. Light began practicing his illusions in the dark. His powers were much weaker than when he had initially swallowed the gem but the concept was the same. He was able to conjure anything that he could imagine. However, the realism of the illusion depended on his imagination and ability to visualize a scene or an object. It's extremely easy for one to pick out that something is wrong if even the shadow is cast incorrectly on the object.

His first step was to practice with smaller objects until he could make something realist looking. From there, he will continue to grow his repertoire until he could create a full scene like he had before. He spent the rest of the night focused on refining these skills.

Aida woke up the next morning with an eager expression. She had long decided to reintegrate the System after Light woke up. Aida had unknowingly developed a small amount of fondness towards the system and felt bad that it had to stay offline this entire time.

After informing everyone that she would be unavailable for some time, she closed her eyes and focused on waking the system with Xiao Ai's guidance. Everyone else tacitly decided to stay indoors and guard Aida as she upgraded.

Closing her eyes, Xiao Ai and Aida moved into her mindscape where the system lives. Aida's mindscape was blank except for 9 servers that sat in the middle of the empty abyss. Xiao Ai hopped towards the servers and said, "System~ It's time to wake up! Did you have a nice nap?"

To Aida's surprise, the system responded by groggily opening up a chat box popped up showing [ 😴 ] Xiao Ai giggled and continued to poke and prod the system as it slowly booted up. It made a classic whirring noise that many old desktops made when they were being turned on, it was a cute and nostalgic sound.

The scene before her was quite silly. A bun was poking and prodding at a set of 10 servers that continually responded with a variety of sleepy and angry emojis. She never thought she'd see a scene like this in her lifetime. She also never realized the system had so much personality. It was clearly not a morning person. She also realized that she would have to start treating the system more equitably and more like a human than a computer.

After a while, the server finally woke up.