Exercising his right to think

Just as John had finished getting himself presentable, he was immediately **** to get ready for P.E. by getting dressed in the Locker Room.

Putting on his clothes manually felt a bit odd to John, but he did so nevertheless. After dressing in standard Academy gym clothes with a white t-shirt and dark blue shorts, he then stored his clothes in his locker and locked it just to make sure they would stay there.

Taking this as an opportunity to test how much a single point in Endurance would do for him, John for once eagerly accepted the prospect of having to use his body instead of wanting to die from Conroy’s… rigorous training exercise.

Once he was inside the main gymnasium building, John subtly took stock of the relationship scores of everyone inside. While most were hovering at about -50 or the like, a few were actually in the positive. For a moment considering the prospect of increasing that to get a girlfriend or something, John soon dismissed that on the grounds of potentially putting them in danger and attracting more attention than was necessary.

While John didn’t feel strongly about anyone here besides Vanessa and Frank; he certainly wouldn’t risk condemning any of his classmates to **** just because he made friends with them or something.

“Alright, you bunch of zygotes, I want 15 laps around the court and 100 pushups from each of you; it’ll be a nice warm-up before a good old game of dodgeball! Now get a move on!” shouted Coach Conroy before blowing his whistle.

As his classmates began to jog at varying speeds and levels of enthusiasm, John took off at a slow jog to test his limits. He slowly increased his pace until he was about halfway between jogging and running, and he felt like he could maintain it for a good while without completely dying on the inside.

However, this was much faster than what John would have been able to do just a bit over a day ago. In addition to that, he felt like he could actually keep this up for a decent amount of time, maybe around 10-15 minutes if he had to take a guess.

After a few laps, John was beginning to feel a bit strained, but it was another situation for most of his classmates entirely, as many began to slow significantly and others stopped completely to catch their breath. Which, of course, made Conroy scream at them about their pace being “so slow my grandmother could do it.”

As John finished his very last lap, he collapsed onto the cold gymnasium floor, too exhausted to even move. A few of his classmates joined him on the floor, while others either just weren’t able to do the full distance or were simply too athletic to be exhausted by this.

After a few minutes of resting on the cold, wooden flooring of the gym, John slowly got up, dreading the fact that he had to do the pushups in addition to the already grueling workout.

John waited for a few more seconds to recover some of his strength before moving to a corner of the gym where he wouldn’t be disturbed and laid down on the ground before beginning the push ups.

Quickly finding out that he could not do all of them at once, John did as many as he could before resting. Just halfway through, his arms were screaming at him to stop, but John was simply too tired to care at this point.

After a short while, John finally finished his pushups with a triumphant groan and promptly collapsed face first onto the wooden flooring beneath him.

When John finally decided to roll over, he noticed a popup right in front of his face, which he promptly read despite his exhaustion.

Achievement Unlocked: Sick Gainz, Bro.
Exercise to the point of exhaustion.

+1 Str
+1 End

Even in his exhausted stupor, John appreciated the boost to his stats.

At this point, most students had either given up or finished, and so out Conroy went, dragging a bag full of balls of varying sizes and colors.

The class was divided into two teams, and as usual, it was the athletic and popular students such as Frank and Vanessa against the weaker students like John, with a few sprinkled into each category to seem like he didn’t intentionally arrange the teams this way.

While John was tempted to use his abilities to try and win this, he reasoned that it might draw too much attention to him, since a major increase in his abilities and balls being thrown at him just happening not to hit him would look majorly suspicious to anyone Abyssal.

As soon as everything had been set up, Coach Conroy blew his whistle, and the game began.

Unsurprisingly, John was one of the first to be aimed at. John leaped to the side to avoid the ball whistling past him, and as soon as he had gotten to his feet, yet another one was launched towards him. Catching the ball that was barreling towards him, John felt a dull pain in his arms that quickly faded away thanks to his abilities.

Throwing the ball back at the closest person with as much strength and accuracy as John could muster, which was admittedly not much, he just barely managed to hit a jock on the other team that was preoccupied with throwing a ball at one of John’s teammates.

This move was clearly a mistake, as the other team now saw him as a threat and began to focus their fire towards him.

While John managed to dodge the first and second volley, a third one managed to hit him square in the chest, stunning him to the point where he wasn’t able to grab it out of the air in time.

Accepting defeat, John sat down on the sidelines with the rest of his teammates that had been eliminated. He preoccupied himself mainly by watching the game and thinking about what he could do to improve his equipment.

Gym went by fairly quickly, with only a couple games being played thanks to a few select people on his team lasting longer than others. However, John didn’t make any major breakthroughs in the design department.

When class had ended, John got dressed into his uniform and exited the Academy.

John waited around for a bit, trying to figure out where Faith could be.

While he was waiting, he remembered the ability points he still hadn’t used from the level up he had gotten earlier.

After a moment of thought, John put 2 points into Endurance and 3 points into Wisdom. Mainly to increase his channeling rates and to increase his mana regen.

In response, John felt his body slowly shift as he put the points into Endurance, likely to just make him generally tougher. While the Wisdom was a bit more subtle, and John didn’t feel any immediately apparent change.

Shortly after, John spotted Faith presumably waiting for him in the parking lot, leaning on a blue car whose type John couldn’t identify, just as his bus had left the school lot.

Too late to back out now, John thought and approached her.

When he felt like he was within earshot, John smiled and said, “Hello, I think it’s quite obvious why I’m here by now.”

Faith simply looked at him and sighed, “Alright, if you’re sure this is what you truly want… Just step into the car.”

As she finished saying that, the door to the two front doors opened. Faith began to climb into the driver’s seat and motioned for him to get into the other seat.

Hesitating for a moment, John walked around the car and got into it as well, closing the door after him, and buckled his seatbelt after spending a moment trying to find it.

The interior of the car was really nothing special from what John could see, with simple fabric lining much of it and a central console which housed a radio and a touchscreen that was used to perform a few standard tasks.

However, Faith just smiled at him as he looked around the interior. “You haven’t seen anything yet,” she said before placing her hands on the steering wheel.

Suddenly, the dashboard lit up, displaying a series of messages, John could only catch a few of them as they rapidly flashed by, which he noted mentally.

Mana Signature Identified: Faith Elemine
Thermal Check… Nominal
BPM Check… Nominal
Fingerprint Scan… Match Found
DNA Scan… Match Found

After the various scans and checks were complete, the screen went dim for a moment, and the entire appearance of the car’s interior suddenly changed. The seat John was sitting on suddenly became much comfier. More importantly, the central dashboard expanded, and a face, not unlike the ones on stick figures John had drawn when he was younger, appeared.

Hello, Faith. Where will we be driving today?

Faith gestured towards John and simply replied, “Home, we have someone Dad needs to meet.”

“Very well,” the face replied, and the car began to pull out of the parking lot, and the face was replaced with a map after a loading icon briefly displayed. After inspecting the map which was reminiscent of many GPS maps John had seen, it listed an arrival time of forty-three minutes.