Jack was covered in sweat and looked like he just came from outside weathering a rainstorm without an umbrella. He went to the bathroom and took off his clothes which were clinging to him from his sweat.
As he looked in the mirror, he could not help not opening his mouth wide. He had a chiseled stomach clearly displaying his abdominal muscles, his arms seemed more muscular, and even his posture has improved.
He took a quick shower and then he went back to the mirror and observed himself alike a narcissist.
"Damn," Jack said to himself," I hope this is not only in my head."
He found a way to raise his fitness level to an average healthy living grown up from a sickly overworked nerd in with time spent in the gym. He felt like he just swallowed the most potent steroids in the universe.
He made different poses in front of the mirror and could not help giggling like a moron a how fit he looked. If anyone saw him at that moment, he would probably dig a hole from embarrassment and jump in it to hide.
Jack was conflicted between happiness and a sense of crisis soon after. He enjoyed the new him, but it could also mean his symptoms were only getting worse. His mental illness was progressing at an ever faster pace, and it worried him terribly. The doctor from last time gave him no confidence at all, and he decided to find a better one with at least an intelligence and wisdom score of seven.
Jack didn't even realize he subconsciously already treated the status window as something real when he made that decision.
He went to his bedroom and took some old clothes the burglars didn't take and put them on. As he was holding the towel, he said scan, but the resulting window only said Wet towel.
Jack put the towel to dry out in his bathroom and went downstairs.
He passed a bookcase which the burglars did not pillage.
He looked at the books and said ", Well, I guess they were not intellectuals."
He looked at one and said scan and a window popped up.
Book: "Leo Tolstoy - Anna Karenina"
Beneath the author and the title of the book were two buttons.
First one was details and the second one was absorb.
Jack retried details, and it was still locked, but when he tried to activate absorb he was pleasantly surprised.
He only felt a mild pain in his head, before the whole book appeared in his mind including the preface and translators notes.
He tried another one, and it was War and peace by the same author. It left a bit bigger pain in his head after absorbing the knowledge from it, but otherwise, he was feeling fine.
He absorbed the whole shelf, and then he wanted to smash his head into a wall from a massive headache that followed.
A migraine-like headache lasted for 15 minutes, and he Jack was incapacitated from even moving a finger during that time.
As he came to his senses again, he cursed at his stupidity.
He almost blew a fuse in his mind and for what Russian literature collection.
"Maybe I can recite War and peace to a monster in his brain and kill it with boredom," he smirked.
What he needed was methods for fighting with a spear, knife and a sword maybe not to expand his knowledge of Russian literature.
Jack looked at the time, and it was 3.30 pm so he could still get to a library or a bookstore. He quickly found some bookstores nearby and decided to go there first since a big library was quite a distance away from his home.
He called a taxi again. As he waited he browsed the internet for books on fighting, and Jack managed to find some, but the scan button only showed his phone and not the content he was currently browsing.
The taxi came he drove Jack to the first bookstore. After he paid for the fare, he went inside and looked for a martial arts section, but it was almost non-existent. It had a book called Decisive Judo: A step by step introduction, A guide to martial arts, Krav Maga Quickstart guide and Karate: The Complete Kata.
Jack was disappointed since there were no books on handling knives or spears, but he quickly got down to business and absorbed them.
This time there was no headache as the content was significantly lesser than before. While Jack was moving towards the exit, he noticed a hunting section and wilderness survival books. He picked up some Bear Grylls books and some books about trapping.
After he absorbed them, he got a small headache, but it was nowhere near as severe as it was after the Russian realism collection.
Jack soon noticed the store clerk was observing him for just standing in front of bookshelves and sometimes closing his eyes in agony and repeating this for a while. He probably looked like a person on drugs to the store clerk. He picked up a cheap book on survival and went to the cash register.
He hailed a cab on the street and went to a University of Chicago library he found some more books, but nothing he was particularly happy about.
He called another taxi, and by the time he came home, it was 7 pm. Jack ordered himself a pizza for dinner and tried out some moves from the books he absorbed.
It was awkward at first, but he soon managed to apply the basic moves from karate with some proficiency. Jack could not objectively judge his success, and he considered joining a dojo as he saw in the movies. He figured he would have more success also in finding and absorbing martial art books in a dojo and even get hands-on practice and an objective assessment of his progress.