Systematic Survival

16 - Calculations

The bookstore was quiet and barely anyone was browsing the aisles. In a corner sitting in one of the lounge chairs was Matt, head buried in a quantum physics book. He scanned the page with his eyes at a decent speed and then flipped to the next one. This repeated until he finally finished the last page and closed the book.

'Whew, that took a while, but at least I got through it.'

He glanced around for a second before looking disappointed.

'That wasn't enough to train my intelligence? Well, I guess it is 15 now.'

He grabbed up another book from the same section labeled:

[3 Controversial Quantum Theories]

He used [Inspect] on it like he always did with everything he picked up. He often used [Inspect] on anything he passed by as well. He had kept using it frequently with the hope of leveling it up soon.

He continued the same process as he did the first book, scanning all of the relevant information on a page, and then flipping to the next. Though this time, halfway through reading, he heard a notification.

__________

[Training Successful]

+1 Intelligence

__________

His mind surged again, at this point the world just felt clear. Like a filter had been removed from when he used to have 12 intelligence, but now had 16.

'Finally! That one sure took a while. How am I supposed to keep leveling this when I'm at like 50 intelligence? Oh well, I'll worry about that when I get there.'

Satisfied with his stat increase, he closed the book and then checked back in with his boss, finishing his work for the day.

After stepping out onto the busy sidewalk, he stretched and started walking while using [Inspect] on everything.

'So, today is Tuesday, I'll be paid on Friday, and my rent is due on Sunday. So I have five more days. My paycheck will cover exactly $320, I have $112 in my bank right now which adds up to $432.'

Matt kept walking as he brainstormed. People often gave him weird looks since he looked a bit crazy.

'With those added, I just need $368 more, not including food which I will need to buy soon, so that would be probably around $75 more if I want to eat healthily. Eh, I'll just risk the nutrition debuff. So it'll cost me like $40 for junk food.'

His thoughts almost left a dark trail behind him and people kept looking at him a bit scared as they passed.

'So to factor in unexpected expenses and taxes, I'll need to earn around $450 in 5 days. So split in 5, each day I need to earn an extra $90. If I do food delivery, each order usually pays between $5 and $30 depending on the distance. If I take the average and then I can earn $17.5 each. So about 6 deliveries per night are needed to reach $90 on average. Which means that-'

BAM

He had run straight into a street light while thinking.

[-1 HP]

[19/20]

'Shit! That hurt!'

He rubbed his head which now started to grow a small red bump.

'I got a little too caught up in my thoughts. But basically, I need to do a lot of deliveries every day if I want to get that mystery reward.'

He opened his delivery app and then checked the available orders. There were about 8 right now, but of course, it would change throughout the night.