Richest Man: It All Started With My Rebate System-Chapter 46: Intelligence Upgrade Effect

Steven gamed until evening before he paused and set the controller down. He had been on the sofa for most of the day and his body was starting to register the fact.

He stood, stretched his stiffened body, and walked to the kitchen.

As he moved through the preparation, his mind drifted back to the meal at the restaurant the previous evening. The duck. The scallops. The way each element had been built to complement the others rather than compete. He found himself wanting to cook something in that direction, something with the same intentionality.

He opened the refrigerator and looked at what he had. He didn’t have enough ingredients to replicate it.

But the ingredients weren’t actually the problem. He could drive to the grocery store in twenty minutes and come back with whatever he needed. That wasn’t the obstacle.

The obstacle was technique. Restaurant-level food wasn’t just about quality ingredients assembled in the right order. It was about understanding what happened to those ingredients under heat, and why, and how to read those changes and respond to them in real time.

That knowledge came from years of deliberate practice in professional kitchens. He had absorbed things working alongside the kitchen staff at the restaurant, more than he had realised at the time, but absorption wasn’t the same as mastery.

He knew the gap existed. Eating at that level last night had made the gap visible in a way it hadn’t been before.

He decided to cook something simple and do it properly.

But if he was being honest, the meals weren’t the only highlights of last night. There was also the effects his intelligence upgrade brought.

He had never thought that by adding two exclusive points to the stat, he would be able to differentiate what the wine and food were made of.

He has been taken by surprise yesterday and only managed to control his emotions because he was in a public space, and didn’t want to embarrass himself.

But now that he’s at home and thinking about it, he can worry as much as he wants to. Though, strangely, he’s not even reacting that much.

It was probably because he has been exposed to a few impossible things these past few days, so something like that didn’t really register as it would had.

Still, the effect brought by the intelligence upgrade was not to be overlooked. Being able to differentiate what the meal and wine are made up of, is a skill that a culinary master should have.

Even as he’s cooking dinner, he’s noticing something that he hadn’t noticed before. Vague but almost instinctual information are being fed to him through his brain. Like the angle he was holding the pan. The precise moment the butter stopped foaming and the heat window opened. The way the smell of the garlic shifted in the last thirty seconds before it crossed the line from golden to bitter.

He was responding to all of it without consciously deciding to. His hands adjusted before his mind had formed the instruction.

He set the spatula down for a moment and stood still.

He was doing things he hadn’t known how to do yesterday. Not dramatically, not at the level of a trained chef, but the difference was there and it was not small.

The Intelligence upgrades had done something to how information sat in his memory and how quickly his brain connected cause to effect. He hadn’t expected it to extend to cooking. He wasn’t sure why he hadn’t. Intelligence wasn’t narrow. It touched everything that required processing and response.

"I’ll definitely set time aside to practise properly," he muttered to himself.

It wouldn’t just be related to cooking. He wanted to sit with the upgrade deliberately, test its edges, understand what it had actually changed and what it hadn’t. He had no idea if he would find any useful information or some of the effects would only surface in relevant situations.

Dinner was ready fifteen minutes later. He served himself, carried the plate to the dining table, and sat down.

The first bite told him immediately of the difference between today’s dinner and that of two days ago.

The food was better. Not by a dramatic margin, but the improvement was real and undeniable. The seasoning was more considered. The textures were where they were supposed to be. The flavours had been coaxed rather than simply assembled.

"Nice," he said proudly, with a small satisfied smile.

He ate slowly, paying attention to each element the way he had the night before. The plate was clean in less time than it had taken to cook the meal. He sat back for a moment, then stood and took everything to the kitchen.

He did the dishes, dried his hands, and walked back to the living area.

He wanted to continue gaming but the fatigue of a full day on the sofa had settled into him in a way that made the idea feel more like obligation than enjoyment. He set the controller down and reached for the TV remote instead.

He switched the input from the HDMI to the streaming platform and connected his account through the app. The home screen loaded and filled the display with a grid of thumbnails.

He scrolled without urgency, until something caught his attention. He found something that looked worth an evening and selected it.

The opening sequence began, but his mind wasn’t on it yet.

He was thinking about the Reserve Card sitting in its case on the side table.

The question had been sitting in the back of his mind since Hargreaves left. He had thought through the logic carefully — the credit infrastructure, the settlement timing, the uncertainty around whether the rebate would trigger at the point of purchase or at the point of settlement. The custom debit card resolved the uncertainty permanently. But that was three to four weeks away.

In the meantime, he had a card he hadn’t tested.

He wasn’t going to simply trust that it would work without knowing. He needed to know whether the system treated a charge card transaction as money leaving his account or as a deferred obligation. The difference mattered. If the rebate triggered at point of purchase, the Reserve Card was useful immediately. If it triggered at settlement, it was less predictable and harder to plan around.

He thought of testing the card but he would only be able to do that tomorrow. But the issue was what he was going to spend on.

He already has everything and his old habits won’t let him to just go out and buy things randomly. While he has more than $4M in his account, he still couldn’t do it.

His thoughts moved to the Superleggera sitting in the garage. The MSF course was Saturday. The timeline was already moving.

What he hadn’t sorted out was the gear.

Riding a machine like the Superleggera without proper equipment wasn’t something he had any intention of doing. The bike produced 200 horsepower in street trim. It weighed 152 kilograms.

It was, by measurable definition, one of the fastest production motorcycles ever built. Riding it in casual clothes wasn’t a risk. It was a decision that eliminated the margin for error that kept people alive.

He needed a helmet, a jacket, gloves, riding trousers, and boots. All of it at a standard that matched the machine. Not because of aesthetics, although that was part of it. Because the gear was the difference between walking away from a low-speed incident and not.

He could delegate the sourcing to the concierge or contact Hargreaves and have everything arranged without leaving the apartment. But gear at that level needed to be fitted in person. A helmet that wasn’t sized correctly was a helmet that didn’t perform correctly. A jacket without the right shoulder and elbow positioning was armour that wasn’t where it needed to be. These weren’t things that could be handled through a phone call and a delivery box.

He immediately picked up his phone, went on the Internet and started searching for the location of the premium riding gear store closest to him.

He found one shortly and got its location. It was located in Southwest Freeway. He saved it, so that he won’t forget it.

With that settled, he let the decision go and turned his attention back to the screen.

The movie had been running for fifteen minutes. He picked up the remote, navigated back to the beginning, and restarted it properly.

He settled into the cushions and watched. The film was good enough to hold him, and by the second act, his mind had stopped running through the day’s remaining inventory and simply followed the story.

He queued a second film when the first ended, and a third when the second finished, falling into the particular rhythm of a late night with nowhere to be and nothing pressing.

He turned the television off just past midnight and went to bed.

***

The next morning, Steven was done with breakfast before nine.

He had trained the previous two days in succession and today was a rest day by Raymond’s structure. His body appreciated it. The sessions had been moderate in load but consistent, and the particular tiredness that he was now feeling in his chest and shoulders was the productive kind .

With no training and no other obligation on his schedule, the morning was open. He had no intention of filling it with the console.

He changed into a clean pair of the dark chinos and a white Oxford shirt, picked up his car key fob, phone, and key card, and left the apartment.

A few minutes later, he stepped out of the elevator into the underground garage and walked to his car. He got in, entered the store’s address into the navigation system, and pulled out of the garage.

The GPS projected a short drive. Southwest Freeway in light morning traffic was a different road from the same stretch at rush hour, and the city moved cleanly past the windows as he drove. He kept the speed measured and let the car settle into a cruise.

He thought briefly about the Reserve Card test as he drove. Whatever he spent at the gear store today would serve the purpose. High-end riding gear was expensive and the transaction would be clean.

If the rebate triggered, he would know the card worked with the system. If it didn’t, he would go back to his ordinary debit card, while also waiting for his custom debit card.

Either way, he would have his answer. 𝘧𝓇ℯℯ𝑤ℯ𝘣𝓃ℴ𝓋𝑒𝑙.𝑐𝘰𝑚

He saw the store’s sign from the road before the GPS called the turn. He signalled, pulled off the freeway, and found parking without difficulty.

He stepped out into the morning air, locked the car, and walked toward the entrance.