Tests

Blair had John sit down on a chair before she grabbed a syringe from a table. She took some rubbing **** and applied it to his arm. Then she stabbed the syringe into his arm and drew some blood into it. She then turned on the machine they were next to; its hum filled the relatively quiet barrier as the computer attached to it turned on as well.

"My equipment isn't as advanced or diverse as the Apothecary’s, but it's good enough for this much. Especially since I had to buy it from Danielle, and not for a cheap price," Blair said as she took the syringe back out.

She took it and injected the blood into one of the machines, where it began to circulate and move through several long tubes, not unlike what you would see in the lab of a cartoon scientist. John watched as his blood traveled through the tubes and into a cylinder flask. The flask then disappeared into the bottom part of the machine, out of John’s sight.

A few minutes later

Blair turned to the computer screen as several numbers, percentages, and other statistics John didn’t know the meaning of scrolled past. He watched as she read through each of them. Once the new messages finished, Blair grabbed a chair and slumped into it.

“Alright… I just want to say right now that everything about you is absolute bullshit. Not only do you probably have easily the healthiest blood on the planet to start with, I didn’t see any signs of negative effects, the opposite really. According to the machine, your blood cells are super charged with a light layer of demonic energy, making them different from anything humans should be capable of, which is fucking impossible by the way,” she explained.

"Well… at least that means I won't spontaneously combust and explode," John said in a light hearted, joking tone. Blair looked over to him from her seat.

"I suppose, but now I'm actually curious. You said you got this power when you absorbed the demon's essence as it died, right? And you have a progress bar for gaining more. So, could that progress bar be filled by killing more demons?” Blair asked, half to him and half to herself. "Welp, in the name of science, there's only one way to make sure." She then got out of her seat, but then stumbled back into it.

"Okay… maybe I'm not fully back to 100% yet. I think... I think I should take a nap first," she said with a yawn. John had no reason to disagree, so they both left the barrier, and Blair began to drag her feet to her room.

"I'll probably be out cold for the next two or three hours, so feel free to do whatever you want until I wake up. There's a spare key in one of the drawers in the kitchen if you want to leave for a bit and then let yourself back in. Oh, and if Ganzac comes home before I get up, just wake me up anyway," she told John right before she collapsed onto her bed.

"Oh, hey Blair. If you're still awake, would you happen to know how I could access or get into contact with something called the Abyss Auction? he asked. Blair mumbled something incoherent, with her face pressed against the bed; in return, John took the hint and chose to save it for later. John now stood in the living room, trying to decide what to do now.

Let’s see... Wentworth told me to meet her at the front gates of Ashcroft at midnight, so I still have plenty of time until then. I still have to finish the quest, so I might as well do the pushups, situps, and squats that I still have left, he decided as he began to do just that.

Some time later

John lay on the floor, and wished that he was dead. Gamer’s Body would make the soreness and pain he felt go away, but until it did, John felt like all of his muscle fibres were on fire. He had just finally completed the last pushup he was required to do, and in John's tired mind, it would be too soon if he ever had to do another one for the rest of his life. When he had regained some energy, he moved on to the squats and situps that were still left.

When he approached the situps and squats, John did them a bit more smartly. He would break them into sets, instead of just doing them until he collapsed. He would do a dozen squats, take a small break, then do a dozen situps, take a break, and then rinse and repeat until he was finally done with them all.

"Rip and tear, until it is done," he mumbled to himself. But unlike the video game character that John was referencing to himself, he didn’t refer to demons. Instead, he referred to his poor body and the muscles inside that he had ripped and torn into pieces. Or at least that’s what it felt like to John anyway.

John opened his character sheet, and saw that he had only gained one point in both Endurance and Strength so far. Which proved only one thing, and that was that diminishing returns was indeed a bitch. Currently John had a choice on his hands: he could either save running for later and just take a shower or he could go outside and get it over with now.

There was a good argument for both, and the very large part of John’s mind that hated the form of self **** some call exercise had a clear preference. On the other hand, however, going out to run now would mean he wouldn't have to do it later. Eventually, the civil war in John's mind ended with running now as the victor.

Before he went out, John ripped a piece of paper out of a notebook from his inventory. He took a pen and wrote down that he was going out to run for a bit; he laid the paper on the table for Blair to find and know where he was in case she woke up before he was back.

With that, John went to the kitchen and helped himself to a bottle of water in the fridge. He drank it about halfway before he put it into his inventory to save for the run itself. He tied his shoelaces, and grabbed the spare key Blair had told him about. Now ready to go, he went outside, locked the door behind himself, and began to run.