Theo froze. What was that? Had he imagined it? Was it the caffeine finally getting to him? He cautiously raised Mug #5 to his lips again and took a sip.
His eyes shot wide open. It was different. Still excellent coffee, far better than the control, but that almost supernatural smoothness, the amplified peak flavour notes from the direct +1 enhancement on the liquid… they were gone. It now tasted virtually identical between Mug #5 and Mug #6, the excellent result achieved through enhancing the inputs and the machine.
He stared at the mug, then flexed the fingers of the hand he'd been holding it with. Had he… un-enhanced it? Just by wishing it? He thought back to the System prompt: New Ability Unlocked. An ability he couldn't consciously trigger. But maybe… maybe it wasn't about activation, maybe it was about intent focused in a different way? The intent to remove enhancement?
His mind raced. Could this be the Level 1 ability? The power to undo his own work? The implications were staggering. Experimentation without wasting charges? Temporary enhancements? Reclaiming charges? No, the un-enhancing hadn't felt like it returned a charge, just… reversed the effect.
He needed to test this immediately. But first… coffee. He'd now had sips from six different mugs, plus larger gulps from #2, #5, and #6 for comparison. The caffeine was hitting him like a freight train, his thoughts buzzing, hands starting to feel shaky. Sleep tonight was going to be a distant memory.
Monday morning was hell. As predicted, sleep had been impossible. Theo felt like a frayed wire, buzzing with residual caffeine, head pounding, eyes gritty. He'd spent the night pacing, mind racing with the implications of the coffee experiment and the potential 'Un-Enhance' ability, occasionally catching his jittery reflection and realizing he looked like a lunatic. He eventually collapsed onto his unmade bed around 5 AM, only to drift in a state of hyper-aware, unrestful pseudo-sleep for maybe an hour before dragging himself back up, feeling worse than before.
But even through the caffeine hangover and exhaustion, the analytical drive persisted. The System. The level up. The new ability. The un-enhance phenomenon. It all pointed to one thing. He needed to verify, methodically.
He lurched towards his desk, booting up his +1 enhanced laptop. It hummed to life with the familiar, improved speed, faster than its stock configuration, though still leagues behind a modern latest and greatest machine. Moore's Law remains undefeated by a mere +1, he thought wryly. This machine, before enhancement, had been an exercise in frustration, freezing on complex web pages, struggling to multitask, occasionally requiring hard resets. The +1 made it usable, functional for his research and forum Browse. A perfect test subject.
He closed his eyes, focused on the laptop, not with the intent to improve, but with the specific intent to revert. Un-enhance. Remove the +1. Return to baseline. He visualized the enhancement fading, the internal structure relaxing back to its manufactured state. He felt the faint, higher-pitched thrum again, confirming the ability wasn't a caffeine-induced hallucination.
He opened his eyes. The laptop looked identical. But when he moved the mouse, the cursor lagged almost imperceptibly. He clicked open a browser, navigating to a heavy, ad-laden news site he'd visited yesterday without issue. The page loaded… slowly. Painfully slowly. Images appeared erratically. Scrolling was jerky, hesitant. He tried opening another tab to check his email. The browser froze completely, the spinning wheel of death mocking him.
"Son of a—" He had to force a shutdown using the power button. He rebooted. The startup sequence took nearly twice as long as it had five minutes ago. He tried opening a couple of simple applications simultaneously. The fans whirred desperately, the system struggling, lagging, becoming unresponsive within a minute. It was undeniable. The laptop was back to its original, pathetic state. The Un-Enhance was real.
Adrenaline cut through his exhaustion. He immediately focused again. Laptop. Enhance +1. Ping. The familiar enhancement resonance flowed through the machine. He rebooted once more. Faster startup. He opened the same news site. Smooth loading. He opened multiple tabs, applications. Responsive. Functional. The +1 was back.
Okay. Mind officially blown. He spent the next hour experimenting, caffeine jitters forgotten in the thrill of discovery.
Daily Limit: He un-enhanced the laptop again, then immediately re-enhanced it. He checked his internal sense of his daily +1 charges, a couple of charges were used on the coffee experiment and he just enhanced his laptop again, so he was running low. But he waited till the full 10 charges were available the next day, and cycled through his laptop, un-enhance, re-enhance. He managed to cycle through his entire 10 charges. Conclusion: Un-enhancing did not consume a daily +1 charge. This was huge. It meant experimentation was essentially free.
Targeting: He successfully un-enhanced his lucky coin, something he had enhanced on the very first day he got his powers (it felt subtly lighter, less defined), then re-enhanced it. He un-enhanced the coffee mug from yesterday, then re-enhanced it. Conclusion: He could un-enhance any object he had previously enhanced, regardless of when the enhancement occurred.
Timer Function: This required more conceptualization. Could he schedule the reversal? He focused on the newly enhanced desk lamp to experiment. Un-enhance in… one hour. He visualized a timer counting down, the enhancement dissolving at the end. He felt the thrum again, but this time it felt… different. Less like an instant reversal, more like setting a condition. He glanced at the clock, making a note. He'd check back in an hour. (He did, and precisely an hour later, the lamp dimmed slightly back to its original brightness.) Conclusion: He could set a timed duration for an enhancement to automatically reverse. The potential applications, temporary boosts, trial periods, self-destructing enhancements, boggled his mind.
Un-Enhance Limit: He spent another ten minutes just un-enhancing and re-enhancing various small objects in his apartment, pens, mugs, the bookshelf again. He felt no depletion beyond the cost of the re-enhancements. Conclusion: There appeared to be no daily limit on the number of times he could un-enhance objects.