Jake was a twenty year old man who still lived with his mum, this was not because he was a shut in but he had been looking after his sister and mother after his father died from cancer three years prior, his mother had a rare disease that had taken the use of her arms and legs away from her.
He worked multiple jobs to try and earn enough money to pay the bills and feed his family, due to the lack of money causing less food than necessary available and the extensive work he did every day, his body had become thin and weak.
People seemed to enjoy bullying the weak since multiple times a week he was beat up and had his money stolen, he knew he couldn't resist or else he'd have to go to the hospital and he can't afford to do that, so no matter what he needed to avoid it.
His week had been especially miserable since he'd had one of his payments lowered due to failure to perform correctly and uniformly, once he exited the fast food restaurant he'd just worked at for three hours and was heading for the next job a man who seemed to be a coworker confronted him"Hey, why don't ya hand us the money?"
When Jake went to do so he was kicked in the leg, The man seemed to face a direction and pointed at him "Look at this pussy, not even putting up a fight" He then stomped on Jake's left fingers, directly breaking them until another man yelled
"Stop" He exited the shadows slowly before grinning evilly and pulling out a knife "You need to leave something left of him for me" He stabbed directly through the same left hand of Jake, before slowly pulling out the bloodied knife, twisting it to cause more pain and stabbed the right hand, Jake couldn't hold it anymore and he let began to let out a scream until the first man covered his mouth and pulled out a gun
He smiled "Why not?" This was when he was stabbed in the artery on both his legs letting out large gushes of blood, as Jake's consciousness began to fade he thought over and over the same three words
'I am sorry, I am sorry' this repeated and repeated until... Bang! His life was ended, it was like he was just floating through a black void further and further but after who knows how long it was he saw light in the direction he was heading.
As he got closer he became more conscious but once he reached the light a grey glassy wall appeared and blocked him, he was forced into the wall by the same force that had been pushing him through the void. When he hit the wall he was projected the other way and the wall cracked releasing light through.
When a chunk of the wall broke off and more light was released he was propelled faster and faster till he opened his eyes and saw the same grey light being emitted from his body before dispersing in the air, he also realised his body had been restored to a fitter, stronger state with none of the previous injuries.
When the light stopped he began walking to the job he'd been previously approaching but he saw very strange occurrences, he saw plants begin changing and growing rapidly, he saw pets barking in people's backyards as things changed to the environment they'd become used to, soon unnatural colours began to emerge on their fur such as a german shepherd (a dog breed) with mostly golden-yellow fur but with multiple black lightning bolts scattered across, running around at speeds that could compete with a car or a meter long cat curled up, licking itself and purring.
He then noticed something really obvious, every human being around was sleeping other than him, this caused him to hope that people had parked their cars before they fell asleep or massive crashes would happen.
He directly headed straight home to check on his family and found they were okay, his sister seemed to have gotten home from high school and was sitting with her head resting on the table completely in unconscious and his mother was just laid down in bed, she probably would have been asleep anyway.
He then went to lay down, as soon as he hit the broken mouldy couch a he heard a ringing like church bells, the sound your supposed to hear the moment before you die, but instead of this when the sound ended a voice that reminded him of Siri on his dad's old phone "You have been chosen by the Immortals to lead this world to use Qi like other worlds"
The look on Jake's face was priceless "How the hell am I gonna do that?"
"To assist, you have been granted a mental assistant that will give you knowledge in exchange for your own work powering the transfer of knowledge and items"
"If you say so" After he said this a neon orange panel appeared his his mind, it had several different buttons such as:
(Knowledge Shop) Locked
(Point Quest Board) Please click here
(Stats) Locked
(User Count) Locked
Since it said so he clicked the second option and a menu appeared beside the first with a big delete tab symbol in the top, the new things that showed were:
Current tasks:
Option 1-Low intensity repetitive basic exercise training-2KP (Knowledge Points)
Option 2-Mid intensity repetitive basic exercise training-7KP
Option 3-High intensity repetitive basic exercise training-10KP
Jake clicked on the one that says medium and another screen popped up
Quest details:
-75 Pushups
-100 Sit-ups
-100 squats
-75 Lunges
-15 km jog
-2x per day
-3 Days
Confirm Choice (Yes) (No)
Jake hesitated but remembered his body wasn't weak anymore and clicked yes. He then heard a bell ring three times "Please Navigate to the newly unlocked tab"
He exited the quest board and looked at the system before quickly clicking the one other than quest board which didn't say locked next to it, this was Stats:
User=Jake Thompson
Cultivation level=N/A
Skills=N/A
Body Stats (1 =Average human) .:
-Strength =1
-Agility =1
-Physical Endurance =1.5
-Mental Endurance =1.75
-Vitality =1
-Intellect =0.75
-Accuracy =1
Jake read down the list, he was happy about his endurance stats until he got down to intellect and saw that it was lower than average, maybe he needs to do some studying, too bad he can't afford to do that "To earn money, sell copies of knowledge received from the store to quickly earn money, to unlock the store continue the quest chosen"
Jake recalled what had been said several times, he blinked several times before he hit the deck and began exercise, he just managed to get through a cycle but then he collapsed from total exhaustion. He fell asleep the instant he hit the couch "Humanity will now be awoken"
Lily, Jake's younger sister lifted her head and saw her brother crashed on the couch, at least he wasn't working like always. After multiple hours Jake woke up and was going to began working out again when he saw the sun going down, missing one night shift won't hurt anyone but 100kg dudes who's dinner contains 100% fast food.
Lily who was ecstatic to actually have her brother here, completely ignored the fact he was healthy, as soon as he woke and got up she jumped onto him and gave him a hug, it was the first time in over a month she had seen him awake "Your back!"
Jake smiled "Yeah, I guess I am"
"You want to watch a movie?"
Jake was about to respond when an urgent broadcast was shown "A unknown substance has now been detected in the atmosphere, it is causing the mutations of all forms of life, plant or animal, wild or domesticated, please be wary of all living things, please directly contact emergency services if anything bad occurs, if anyone has valuable information please contact our station"
Jake wondered if anyone would believe him if he said he'd been tortured and killed and failed to be sent wherever dead people go, any instead had the power of those worlds be emitted from his body causing mutations of other living things, he didn't think so.
He just continued with the exercise and forced himself into consciousness with his own will, in the earlier stages of his work life this was the method he mostly used, just one after the after, don't even think about how many just one, now another.
Sweat drop after sweat drop, collapse after collapse and exercise after exercise, Jake eventually made it through and went to lay down, much to the dissatisfaction of his sister.
Once he woke up and checked the time with the cheap clock that'd been on the wall for years, the time was now 9:00, he still had time to go to work for another 5 hours until 2:00 when the delivery service closed till 8 luckily he only took the night sift from 8 to 2 so 6 hours, he wouldn't have to many problems, thus he headed into work.
Other than fast food delivery and exercise over the next two days Jake also did other jobs like package delivery and home cleaning (obviously for others).
Finally after two more hellish days of work a two dings could be heard "Quest completed"
(1589 words)