Opening his eyes a white light began to flood into his pupils and he had to take a second to adjust. Eli looked around dumbfounded, there were no walls and it was just endless whiteness in all four directions. Looking upwards, the ceiling was composed of medium sized white tiles that continued out in every direction endlessly. Next he looked down at his feet Eli and had incidentally shocked himself as he was completely naked other than a pair of black boxer briefs that were tightly attached to his skin.
The shocking part however was his body really had gotten bigger. Eli could tell that just by looking at himself he had accumulated a considerable amount of muscle, his chest, thighs and biceps had all become more defined and he even had abs peeking through.
There were no walls to the practice room, it just seemed to be white light that stretched out in all four directions to no end.
"So this is the practice room huh?" Eli spoke to himself. "Kinda makes sense." Without hesitation he began continuing his workouts, he wasn't sure if he could benefit from practicing in this strange location but tried nonetheless.
15 minutes later a notification had popped up on the system.
[INT +1]
'Intelligence? How peculiar…' Eli was stumped. 'Why would my intelligence increase after working my body?' Pushing these thoughts to the back of his mind he continued to tire his body.
Soon after, Eli felt he was about to reach the end of his stamina limit, however as he did he felt instantly rejuvenated. This reaction prompted Eli to open up his interface, initially he was surprised, his MP bar was currently at maximum capacity. He then noticed a side panel which had not existed before marked "Settings". Intrigued he opened the tab and was greeted with a list of options. Reading down the list everything was beginning to make sense to Eli, there were settings labelled as "Infinite Mana", "Infinite Stamina", "Infinite Health" all followed by ticks. Further analysing the settings tab he found a "Recordings" Section, however every section underneath stated it was empty.
More pieces of the puzzle were coming together and Eli decided to continue working out, utilising the endless space of the practice room. Many hours later Eli was sweating and he looked at his interface, gleaming.
[DEX +1]
[END +1]
[STR +1]
[INT +1]
Eli was delighted that his attributes would increase even in this virtual environment, especially after his 9 hours of exercise he felt they were well deserved. Moments later a notification appeared on his screen-
[Interference detected]
-everything began shimmering and he awoke to find a nurse crouching over him while he was on the floor.
"Are you okay? How are you feeling?" Three more nurses had run into the room, one was holding a syringe with some sort of clear liquid in it.
"Yeah yeah I'm fine, I was just uh taking a nap." Eli stated, in a somewhat convincing manner. The nurses on the other hand were visibly concerned.
"I told you, you need to stay here for longer, you're clearly not fine." The nurse crouching over him said as she slowly stood up. Eli was now aware of the cause for concern, he was covered in a sweat and heating up. To them it must've seemed like he was feverish. 'So the practice room actually affects my body, that makes sense, I guess that's why I was actually capable of increasing my stats. But why did my intelligence increase?' Mid-way through his thought process a small girl came stumbling in the room.
"God, I was only gone for 3 hours and you managed to make a mess." Faye was panting, clearly out of breath from hurrying to the room.
"Hey Faye…." Eli trailed off scratching the back of his head while smiling. '3 hours? That doesn't sound right. I was in the practice room for nearly an entire day.' Eli was puzzled.
"Are you feeling okay? I knew that I should not have left, you were acting funny!"
"Faye, calm down, honestly I'm fine, I don't even know what all the fuss is about." He lied, clearly aware of what all the fuss is about.
One of the nurses performed a routine check-up on Eli and cleared her throat, no one addressed the elephant in the room, which was that Eli now had an incredibly muscular and extremely lean physique. He was not too concerned with this situation as he was lost in his thoughts once again.
"So my body reacted to the exercise even though I was in the training room, plus my intelligence attribute increased and to top it off time moved 3 times faster when I was practicing." Eli mumbled to himself. "Oh of course! That makes perfect sense!"
"What's that?" One of the nurses holding a clipboard looked at Eli confused. In fact everyone in the room was focused on Eli, all with puzzled looks on their faces.
"Hmm? What?" Eli looked up and realised that he was speaking out loud. "Oh nothing, I was just thinking." He said with a half-hearted smile.
'It's some sort of hyperbolic training simulation, but it must be inside my mind, that's why time was accelerated and my intelligence increased. Damn, that's actually kinda cool.' Eli chuckled to himself.
….
A couple days passed, Eli had been training for two days straight, most of his time was spent inside the practice room and thus felt much longer to Eli, it was almost 4 days! Eli had just completed his Active quest reward and only had to complete his daily quest. Since he'd been training for so long he chose to open up his interface to view his current capabilities.
[Name: Eli King]
[Race: Superhuman]
[Class: N/A]
[Affinity: N/A]
[HP: 60/60]
[MP: 10/10]
[LV: 2]
[EXP: 410/500]
[Inventory: 1/12]
[STR: 11 DEX: 10 END: 11 INT: 12 LUC: 6 POW:5]
[Unique Trait:]
[Adaptability- You're biological make-up is capable of constantly adapting to the environment around you.]
[Drain- Absorb Mana for 2.5 Seconds. (Cooldown: 2.5 hours)]
[Autonomous:]
[Desire to grow- 10% Increase to growth characteristics]
[Rejuvenation- Passively regenerate 0.25 every minute]
[A Date with Death- After staring death in the face, you have now adapted to resist intermediate fear.]
[Determined Lv3- Raises attributes by 10% when 'Focused']
[ERROR// Level 6 required]
Eli was pleased with the interface, his body had stopped the unnatural growth but he looked completely different to how he looked several days ago. He was now about 6"1 and probably weighed around 90 kilos. Despite this, he still looked lean, more like a model than anything else. With his current stats he was at the peak physical fitness of a human, he was beginning to live up to the term superhuman. What excited him the most was that after completing his daily quest, he'd finally become level 3 and he could not wait for the rewards this milestone would grant him.
[Daily Quest- Plank consecutively for 30 minutes. 0/30]
[100 Exp]
'I could do this in my sleep' Eli thought as he comfortably poised himself into position. He wasn't being overconfident, because he really could do it in his sleep, there was even an occasion where he fell asleep just to awake and find he was still in the planking position. 30 minutes later.
Not even breaking a sweat Eli was surprised at his own body and he had completed the daily quest.
[Daily Quest- Completed: 100 Exp]
[+10]
[Level Up:]
[Lv3]
[Max Health +10]
[+1 Free Stat point]
[Key to Nebula Unlocked]
Eli instantly threw the Free attribute into Strength, for the same reasoning as before. It's true that this time he did have a Mana bar, but he still had no way to utilize it, making strength the most practical choice.
The area that surprised him the most on the other hand, was the 'Key to Nebula' as there was nothing new in his inventory. He found it quite strange as he had now idea how to activate it.
Then with that thought, a white glowing doorway appeared from thin air right in front of him with white robotic lines stretching out in all four directions. Eli couldn't see through the other side and it looked very much two dimensional like a piece of paper. He raised his hand to touch it but his hand went straight through, this caused him to abruptly pull it back out. After inspecting his hand and realising there was nothing wrong, Eli walked through the glowing doorway.