When he realized this, Michael became ecstatic. It seemed, he not only needed to depend on written information, but he had also to depend on other sources like tutorial videos.
It was also at this point that he began understanding the implication of the system by claiming that he needed to collect information.
The information related to culinary was not only in terms of words, but seeing the process in itself was also a way of collecting the information.
Realizing this, Michael focused on the video, silently watching as the progress increased.
After the video ended, he looked for another video, and one by one, he began watching them.
This process was taking quite some time, considering that videos had varying lengths. Some videos were extremely long due to too much explanation, while others were brief, simply demonstrating the process.
Michael then thought of something else. Instead of watching the video slowly, he could fast forward it. As long as he could see something, that was enough.
It was just like reading, where he did not need to understand each and every terminology that he encountered.
So, he decided to try this out, as that was going to be way more efficient than watching a video after another.
Just like before, Michael had realized that after watching several videos, the rate at which the progress increased had slowed down.
It was clear, most of the information that was contained within the videos that he was watching later on were a repetition of what he had already watched before.
And when he realized that watching in fast forward did not affect the progression, he immediately decided to start watching videos that were based on a particular topic at a time.
He followed the topics as they had been listed in the books that he had read, and slowly, he could see that he was almost at 100%.
Due to how much he was so focused on watching the videos, he had almost forgotten about eating lunch.
Still, he went ahead and made an order, and when the food was delivered, he ate everything as fast as he could, before he continued watching the videos.
Finally, as evening was approaching, what he had been waiting for arrived.
[Beginner level chef skills. Progress: 99%... 100%]
[Experience full. You have acquired Beginner level chef skills. +1 SP.]
Just after he received this final notification, he felt that his mind was suddenly filled with information.
At first, he could not understand most of the things, but as the information was digested, he began understanding them, finally, feeling as if everything was natural.
At this moment, his chef skills had reached the beginner level. At the Beginner level, he could be compared to those chefs that had just graduated from culinary schools.
As the information sunk in, Michael revealed a smile.
One had to know, those that went to the culinary schools usually spent several years before coming out after graduating.
But for him, it only required two days. After just 2 days, he had achieved what others needed years.
Even though he had not yet tried out his current skills, Michael was confident that his skills had already far surpassed his previous level.
While in front of the top tier chefs he was just a newbie, in front of ordinary people that knew nothing about culinary, he was someone with some skills.
At this point, Michael felt motivated. It was not only due to the fact that he could see the future as long as he continued reading, but, it was also related to the fact that he had received an SP.
With this, he would be able to buy something within the store.
But at the moment, Michael did not have the intention of purchasing anything. In any case, something that was valued at $100,000 was not enough to be able to solve his current problem.
It would be better for him to continue accumulating the SP, and buy something that he needed later on, according to the circumstances that he would be facing.
Deciding to take a break for a little while, Michael slumped on the couch in the living room, facing the ceiling.
At the same time, he brought out the system panel, before accessing the system store.
Within the system store, he began going through each category once again. Previously, he did not actually dive much into the categories, but this time, he wanted to explore them as much as possible.
And as he was passing through the Media and Entertainment category, he realized something.
Within this category, he could actually buy things like movie scripts, song compositions and so on.
But at the same time, he found something that surprised him. That was, he could actually find the skills that were related to Media and Entertainment.
For instance, beginner level guitarist was priced at 0.5 SP.
If he converted 0.5 SP into cash, that would be $50,000! Michael could not help but wonder, what kind of resources would require him to spend $50,000 in order to be able to get the information related to being a guitarist at the beginning level?
In order for him to be able to acquire the beginner level chef skills, he did not even need to spend much. If Michael had to calculate, the books that he had read were just two, whose price was less than $100.
As for the videos that he had watched, the data that was consumed was not that high as well, and by estimation, Michael felt that it was less than $40.
In fact, he had not even watched all the videos that he had downloaded. He had only watched about ⅕ of them, with the rest of the videos being useless at the moment.
It could be said, as compared to the expenses incurred when it came to purchasing the resources and reading, acquiring a skill from the system was way expensive.
But at the same time, if the time required to read was to be added, it could be said, gaining the skills directly from the store was way easier.
While it was expensive, Michael thought, he could acquire a skill for 0.5 SP, then the skill would give him 1 SP in return. At that point, he would have earned 0.5 SP for nothing.
But this thought had only appeared in his mind when suddenly, the content on the screen in front of him shifted, with a message being displayed.
[The skills that can be bought from the store cannot grant SP. Only the skills acquired after the host has acquired information will grant SP.]
This immediately cleared any ideas about using the easy way out from Michael's mind.
It was not that he had no intention of acquiring a skill from the store, but not now.
He would only consider doing something like this in case it was an emergency, and he had no time to read.
Michael realized, currently, the skills that were available only reached the intermediate level. And, the price was half of the SP that one would be able to gain after leveling up.
Simply put, intermediate level skills were priced at 5 SP, considering that intermediate level skills granted 10 SP.
With this out of the way, Michael became determined. He wanted to have the chef skill reach the intermediate level. That way, he would be able to gain 10 SP.
As long as he had enough SP, he would be able to acquire not only money, but even power.
In normal situations, even if a person had money, it would not be guaranteed that they would be able to acquire a company.
But with the system, as long as he had enough SP, he could purchase any company that he wanted.
In fact, he did not even need to purchase an entire company, he could just buy shares of a big company, which was something that would grant him considerable power.
As he thought about this, he went back to the study room. There, he opened the boxes that contained the study materials that had been delivered the previous day from the library.
It took him quite a while to be able to sort out all the books, arranging them on the shelf that was present within the study.
He categorized them according to the level such as beginner level, intermediate level and so on.
After he was done, he took a book that was on intermediate level culinary skills. The intermediate level of the chef skills involved techniques, and world cuisines.
Just like before, Michael began reading, not planning to understand anything. It was just that, after he had read for a little while, he realized, despite him only reading, he could not even read most of the things.
It was at this point that Michael understood, his education level was becoming a little problematic.
He had stopped learning in middle school, not having joined high school. With such an education level, it was really going to be a little difficult for him to be able to read more complex books.
While it was true that he did not need to understand what he was reading, but he at least had to know how to read the word, right?
As he thought about this, he suddenly thought, why not start by reading the topics that were taught in high school? That way, he could at least have a foundation, which would make it easy for him to be able to read more.
The moment that he thought about it, he took action. Instead of going to the library, he just went online and downloaded some PDFs, before he began reading... maths.
[Beginner level mathematics skills. Progress: 65%]