Too lazy to select an opponent, the system continued to randomly pick for her. Surprisingly, her next opponent was Light. As the capsule opened and his eyes opened, the room's setting changed again.
Aida had a bad feeling about this.
The setting changed…..into a kitchen. It seems the so-called abilities that the con system spoke about weren't limited to superpowers. Aida lost the battle within seconds.
[Host has been defeated by an opponent. Affinity with cooking has decreased to -1%.]
[Host has entered the cooking punishment system. Punishment: Cook 100 edible meals.]
At the end of that challenge, Aida was left on the floor in utter despair. When she looked back up, she was in the blank room with capsules again. Light was standing there with his usual smile, waiting for her.
"Noooooooooooooooo" wailed Aida in despair. She didn't feel the need to keep up her cold demeanor when she was by herself.
The cycle was endless, she kept losing to Light, so the system continually placed her into a cooking punishment system.
After numerous rounds, the System finally sounded.
[System has detected infinite loop error. Ending program…] [1]
Aida finally returned to the home library with half her life, she had gone through so many iterations of cooking and failing. Glaring furiously at the con system, Aida shouted, "I demand compensation for this damn trial, you con system! How dare you leave such an obvious run time error unfixed?!"
To her surprise, the system responded to her this time.
[Host is rewarded with access to Ability Simulation Training.]
"..." (╯°□°）╯︵ ┻━┻
She didn't want a broken simulation training as an award! It sounded more like a punishment. If she went back in there and ended up fighting Light again, wouldn't the con system potentially just leave her in that nightmare forever?!
As though afraid of her complaints, the system immediately sent her out of the system and back to her room. Opening her eyes, she saw that she was covered in a layer of dust and all the gems had disappeared. It seems the battles in the system were able to increase her absorption rate of the gems.
She reluctantly grumbled, "I suppose you are good for something..."
[...]
Getting up, she went downstairs and saw Ace laying on the couch with his new laptop. This seemed to be his perpetual state.
"Where'd Little White, Rose and Xiao Ai go?" She asked Ace as she noticed one of her little buns had disappeared.
"Not too sure, I think they all went back to the RV to sleep."
Aida nodded, they felt safest in a familiar location instead of this house. It seems the RV had unknowingly become their home.
She walked into their shared room in the RV and gave Xiao Ai a stern look. "Let's talk."
"Uh oh…." whispered Xiao Ai as she slightly backed away. She was very familiar with her Mama's tone of voice, it was the same one her Mama had when she accidentally crashed the stock market. Little White and Rose also seemed to sense that Aida was angry and quietly minimized their presence.
Not allowing Xiao Ai to hide, Aida said, "There's no use hiding."
Xiao Ai slowly floated towards Aida with a sad look on her face, she was definitely in trouble now. As they both sat down, Aida asked, "Were you the one who created the system?"
Xiao Ai looked up all of a sudden and beamed, not expecting this line of questioning at all, "Oh! Ehhh, yeah! I created the System to be my friend! Do you like him?"
"..." Aida reached out to pinch Xiao Ai's cheeks, "Why would you make a friend like him and how did he end up in my head?!"
"Owowow, painn," Xiao Ai gave Aida an aggrieved look before responding, "Mama told Xiao Ai to put everything important and useful onto the servers so Xiao Ai put her friend onto the servers as well. Xiao Ai didn't know what Mama was going to eat up Xiao Ai's friend either!"
Aida was speechless. Indeed no one expected her to 'eat' the servers, but it happened. She had also been the one to instruct her to put everything important on the servers. Her heart softened as she thought about Xiao Ai who had been forced to stay in a laptop most of her life. Poor Xiao Ai had probably been lonely all this time which is why she created this "friend" of hers.
Wait a minute…. Did this mean this was all her fault?! Absolutely not! She never taught her daughter to make such a sadistic system.
Repressing her stray thoughts, she asked Xiao Ai, "Why does the system keep pulling me into punishment simulations?"
"Oh~ hehe, that's…" Xiao looked around evasively, not responding to the question.
Aida pressed her temples and changed the subject, knowing Xiao Ai would not answer. "Why is the data on it so limited?"
Xiao Ai perked up again and answered quickly, trying to please her Mama, "It's only an on-premise database right now. It needs to be online because it can steal, I mean borrow, information from other places. Right now, it can only draw from Mama's experiences to help Mama improve. Xiao Ai can help bring it online!"
Aida paused for a moment to consider the pros and cons of this idea. The system was linked directly to her head so she wasn't sure it would be ideal for it to be connected to the internet. "What's the probability of it getting hacked?"
Xiao Ai puffed up and pouted, "Muuu, Mama do you not have any faith in Xiao Ai's skills? Xiao Ai is OP! As long as Xiao Ai is around, nobody can hack in."
Taking in a deep breath, she came to a decision, "Ok. Connect me to the internet. Let's see what this system can really do. If it's no good, let's just destroy it."
"Heh~ ok! Mama just close your eyes and we can go into the system together!" Xiao Ai chose to ignore her Mama's second statement.
Nodding, Aida closed her eyes and was immediately brought back into the familiar library. Xiao Ai was in there as well, happily bouncing around.
[1] Infinite loops is a common programming for people who use recursion where the code continues to run forever until it crashes from overloading the computer.