Bab 8: 008

There was nothing much for Jack to do but take a set of clothing that was well suited to do sports and get his body moving through the town.

But even after having been running for an hour straight and doing a hardcore mass building workout that he remembered from his times playing soccer right after the run, he barely gained anything besides fatigue.

In truth, it didn't look like his attributes increased at all. That made him wonder why the other ones that were not Strength and Endurance went up so fast.

[Strength and Endurance need an accumulation of mass in either muscles or lung capacity. Unlike Agility and Intelligence which both profited from the experiences of your two lives, there was no such benefit for those two other aspects. As such it will take longer to train STR and END. You will have to train yourself as any normal person would.]

When he heard that explanation from KISS he could only sigh.

So all it meant, in the end, was that his stat increase in STR and END was only 0.8 its value than the normal 1.0 he would otherwise gain. And the fact that he gained AGI faster than INT was probably a hint that he was a dexterity type of character. So his AGI was somewhere over 1.0 in value gain.

Still, he didn't like it being so low. He would at least aim it to be double-digits as his base value.

Even if he barely came sweating after having done his running and muscle gain regime, it was still a bother.

His genetic trait seemed to make it easier to train, but yet again he still didn't gain a point.

Well, in some way it was nice to at least know you didn't feel like dying inside after doing such training. So he would always take this trade for taking longer any day.

Though it still sucked to start from rock bottom. He missed his old trained body a little bit. It was well defined.

Now he had a slim body but with barely any visible muscles. Guess at least he was not overweight?

And he felt like if he did not do any training now, he would still feel healthy enough to beat his older self easily in sports.

Guess being herculean is not something to scoff at. It really had a passive effect besides just being there to increase the values.

Maybe if he put enough effort into his training, he could also become an Olympic athlete? Nah, scratch that. He was not aiming for something like that.

All that aside, Jack had his goals and finally prepared to get some singing practice in and closed himself up in his room for the rest of the day and started to beat those chords until they felt hoarse and he barely could talk.

At some point, his aunt knocked on the door.

"Are you alright in here? You sound like some dying cat. Don't tell me you are doing a contest with them?" When she asked that the sound of some street cats meowing down below at the streets could be heard through the open window.

That got Jack a little bit uncomfortable. Did he really sound like a dying animal with his voice.

"Sorry, I guess I am way out of practice...Did I bother you? I didn't notice you were back already."

When Leah saw him being shy about it and placing his mic away on the table it brought a smile on her face. "Hehe, don't worry about it. Just don't overdo it. It didn't sound half bad when you started. Though from a certain point on you sounded like a wrecked engine."

Jack lightly rubbed his throat and then took a sip of water.

"I guess I should quit for the day." He also looked at the clock when saying that. It was really getting late and he had to stand up early in the morning. "Better get myself ready and then get some sleep."

Leah only smirked lightly. "You know I wasn't saying you need to stop or anything? The decision is all yours to keep going if you want. It just sounded a little bit concerning, that's all."

Jack just looked at her with a blank face. "Rub it in more, will you?"

With that answer, his aunt just left after laughing lightly.

'KISS, was I really that bad?'

[Hmm, the Host should not worry about it. Everyone starts from the ground. Does the Host wish to use his 10 skill points for singing?]

'NO! Just...make sure my voice doesn't get destroyed, KISS. Tomorrow is the first day of school for me so I wouldn't like to be the mute guy. Also, you could have mentioned that I am overdoing it.'

[Host could have restrained himself in his training if he wishes only for that. Neither did I get the request to monitor your sound quality.]

'Right...I WILL get this skill up to the 30 mark on my own, even if I go to the limit every single time.' His pride suddenly flared up and he just demanded from himself to get better as a singer.

[As you wish.]

Though his training just now only increased it by 2 points. And that with his higher recovery rate active so that he didn't get any damage to his voice.

He still had a long way to go. But the more concerning thing was that it did grow his insecurity of actually having a bad voice...

Sighing and slapping both his cheeks he went ahead and took a shower.

In the mirror while brushing his teeth he could also already see that his black eye was completely healed up and only a small discoloration remained that looked more like some dark bags from bad sleep.

'Well, overusing the recovery function sure got rid of that fast. Hey, Kiss. What I still wanted to ask. Is this function using up my lifespan? I know that cells only have a limited amount of time where they heal near-perfectly. Even Wolverine had that problem at some point.'

[You are talking about telomeres. That is not a problem. I am ordering your body to reproduce cells that come directly from your stem cells. Basically, I am copying you and replacing old parts with new ones constantly.]

Jack was surprised now 'So you are not only regulating my healing but also controlling my very biological functions. No wonder you said you are smaller than Nanomachines...Just a question. Can I regrow limbs?'

[That is possible.]

'Damn, so you are saying you basically made me an axolotl. It also makes me kinda creeped out.]

[Partly, yes. But you are not immortal if you ask about that.]

'Okay, I think we talked enough about this. Surprisingly I would not even know what to do with my life if it went on for hundreds of years. I think I also read about a mythological story once where the wish for immortality became a constant pain of suffering the moment your very consciousness starts to deteriorate...God, I am going freaking senile already with this shit. Is it an aftereffect of thinking stuff through too much?'

[...]

Jack just went back to his room and worked for a little bit on his game to get his head free from depressive thoughts and then went straight to bed.