Training Fun

John finished the last of his “lunch”, if that’s what you could call it. For even though Ashcroft Academy itself was an elite school, the lunch it served was less so. In fact, John doubted that the “beef” in the meal had ever seen an actual cow before. He internally sighed as he swallowed the last bite and got up to put the tray away. He looked around the cafeteria as he did so, but both Frank and Vanessa were nowhere to be seen; apparently they had better things to do than eat lunch in the cafeteria. What those things could possibly be, John would rather not think about.

Tray now put away, John heard the bell for the end of lunch ring, and with every other student, he began to make his way out of the cafeteria. Today John had a double period of P.E. John already knew that today’s P.E class would be one out of two things, either they would go outside to run around the track field and do other forms of exercise or they would play dodgeball indoors. And as much as John usually felt like **** itself after the former, it was still preferable over a broken nose from being hit straight in the face by a ball that seemed to be thrown at him at Mach speed.

You know, since my stats increase when I exercise, I actually kinda hope that we go outside to the field today. Huh, never would’ve imagined that thought would actually cross my mind, John thought to himself as he made his way to the changing rooms. Once inside, John tried to make himself as small as physically possible in an attempt to avoid detection from Frank and his buddies. He got about halfway to the stall before he felt someone put their arm around the back of John’s shoulders. John turned his head to see that it was Frank behind him.

“Well, if it isn’t shrimp dick Newman. You know, buddy, it wasn’t nice of you to leave me alone to get chewed out by the Brighton bitch yesterday like that. I wanted to pummel you real good for that today, but I’m in a really, really good mood right now. So here’s the deal, today I’ll let you go and tomorrow I’ll ask the Coach if we can play dodgeball. That’s where it will be me, you, the dodgeballs, and the crowd to watch me cave your face in,” Frank told John as he shoved him towards one of the stalls and walked away as one of his cronies gave him a high five.

John stumbled his way into the stall and grabbed the wall to balance himself. He closed the door, locked it, and leaned against it. A part of him was glad that he was able to avoid Frank’s beating today, but another part dreaded what was to come tomorrow.

Alright, if I wasn’t sure about training my physical stats before, I definitely am now, John thought to himself. That’s when a popup appeared before him.

Huh, that’s the second quest now that has a different design. Never figured Gaia to be the type of developer that does stealth patches, John thought to himself.

Message from one of Gaia’s helpers:
Gaia is currently indisposed right now, so just don’t worry about it right now. This and any other changes to your system should be fixed within the next 24 hours.
Here’s some experience for the trouble.
+50 Exp

John slowly blinked to himself as he read and reread that message. He shook his head confused as he dismissed both the quest and the message and accepted the free experience. With a few quick taps on his inventory, he changed from his normal uniform into his gym clothes. Afterwards, John stood around and waited inside the stall so that he could get out after Frank and his buddies leave. A few minutes later, John unlocked the door and creaked it open slightly. He looked around the room, and saw that Frank and all the other jocks had already left and it was just John and a few other known nerds who had also hid in the stalls. He left the stall and made his way to the school’s track field.

Now outside, John had to raise his arms to cover his eyes from the bright noon sun. With his shielded eyes, he looked around the field to see that the football team was off to the side to do their own practice while everyone else stood in a loose circle to begin their warm up and stretches. John power walked his way to the circle of students to join them before coach Conroy could see him and chew him out for being a little late to class.

Their warm up was pretty standard. They had to try to touch their toes, jog in place, and do some other basic stretches. While this barely constituted as a warm up to some of the more athletic students, John, however, could already feel sweat form on his forehead and under his armpits by the end of it. Afterwards, they all continued to stand around in a circle and took a short break as coach Conroy went around and began to assign numbers to everyone from one to four.

John was assigned to the second group, who did pushups in one minute intervals. They each had one partner to count the number of pushups done, and after every minute they would switch places. Due to this being one of the requirements for John’s quest, he worked hard to try to do as many pushups as physically possible. After a full minute full of blood, sweat, and tears, John did exactly eleven push ups before he began to see stars. To John, this was actually quite impressive, due to the fact that the last time he had been assigned to do this, he had barely managed to do seven push ups within the same amount of time. So all in all, this was more evidence that higher stats meant better results. With ragged breath John got up as his partner, another lanky nerd like him, began to half heartedly do his own work.

After 20 minutes of pure ****, John’s chest was on fire after the amount of work he had done, however, he continued to do as much as his pained body allowed. Until finally, when they reached the half hour mark and coach Conroy began to call out for all of them to switch assignments, John finally got a popup that said he had gained one point in Strength and Endurance. With pained breaths and lungs that felt like they wanted to explode, John trudged his way to the start of the track field as he opened up his quest to check his progress.

69/100 push ups completed

Great, just means I’ll have to do more while at Blair’s house. Hope she won’t mind if I end up needing to borrow her shower, John thought to himself as he caught his breath and began a slow jog around the field. Needless to say, John was nowhere near the front of the group and was soon lapped by the students in the school’s track team. However, unlike before where he almost always tied for dead last alongside the other out of shape students, John found himself comfortably in the middle of the crowd and seemed to be at about average. Due to his nerdy nature, John knew that a single lap around the field was 400 meters, which meant he would have to run 25 laps exactly in order to complete that objective of his quest.

Some time later

John felt like he was about to throw up. The world seemed to spin around him and his shirt was drenched with sweat as more sweat dripped down his face and onto the floor beneath him. This was the condition he was in after exactly five laps around the field. As John began to feel the tender kiss of **** on his lips, he was saved by the bell. He **** himself to limp back to the changing rooms despite the protests of his legs which felt like they were on fire. Soon enough, however, John was in and out of the shower and reequipped his normal uniform. John made his way out of the school and to the front gate. That’s when he realised that he had two choices: he could either call a Bluber to the bookstore or he could run there himself in order to complete that objective of his quest. John began to silently cry on the inside as he made his choice and began to make his way to the Palace of History on his own two feet.