"Hey, James! You chose this class too?"
As I entered the gym, which was the location for the physical training course, I was met by the shining golden boy and the pink-haired amazon. Turns out that we had all three picked it.
"Yeah, I guess I did..."
As they were approaching me, they were carrying two very different expressions. Arthur wore a shining smile while Sophie looked like she had just eaten shit. She also deliberately walked a bit faster than Arthur so she could whisper some things into my ear, "You and me, talk after school..."
"Oh, a confession? I don't know if my maiden heart is ready though..."
"You...!"
"What are you guys talking about?"
Before she could strangle me, Arthur saved me. It was pretty funny to see the large woman get all soft as soon as the hero opened his mouth, jumping right back to him like a bitch in heat.
"Oh, nothing. Just something stupid. Anyway, as I was saying before James showed up, you seem pretty comfortable in the gym. You must've trained a lot!"
'Simp...'
The set of students who attended this class was very different from my previous courses, which made sense as it held in a lot of ways a very contrasting nature.
Firstly we had me, Sophie and Arthur. A bit further in standing by some free weights we had Brad and Bradley talking and laughing loudly. Then we had Adriana and Adam who seemed to share a very casual conversation just to pass the time and lastly, we had Sebastian who was already running on a treadmill.
Luckily, it appeared that we didn't have any extremely traditional nobles in the group who hated commoners. The more I thought about it, the fact that I belonged to a clique where we were all commoners was pretty bad, almost as if we were asking to get noticed and bullied.
I wasn't all that scared about getting physically assaulted or anything like that, what I felt most worried about was how they could make the future difficult. Did they have enough influence to make sure that I couldn't become a hunter in the future? Maybe they could even make it completely impossible for me to even join the weakest of guilds. These weren't things I would like to happen before I could make myself strong enough for society to look at me as an attractive resource that they wanted to acquire.
There was another person in the room though. An incredibly old man, almost looking like a bald skeleton, wearing a pair of gray sweatpants and a black tank top. He was currently just watching his smartwatch as if he was waiting for a text from his lover. I had a pretty good feeling that I knew who that person was and it didn't take long for my suspicion to be confirmed.
A scraggly and weak voice rang out in the gym as he raised his head, "Please gather around students."
Even though his voice was weak, it could be clearly heard in the entirety of the gym, therefore it didn't take many seconds before we were all standing in front of the senior citizen.
"Now, I will be your physical training instructor, Mr. Garcia. With that being said, you are mostly free to train however you want in this gym. As you can see, it has all of the modern machines you might need, free weights going all the way up to 500kg plates, and a gravity room where you can do calisthenics. Feel free to ask me for advice if needed."
And with that, we were off to the races. "Arthur, do you mind showing me how you usually exercise? I am not really that comfortable with a gym..."
Sophie didn't hesitate at all to try her luck at getting closer to the hero, wanting him to show her the different machines and how to practice different exercises.
The other students were also quick at finding their rhythms with Adriana and Adam warming up on the treadmills, Brad and Bradley starting with doing some incredibly heavy deadlifts, and Sebastian going into the gravity room.
'It's truly impressive though...'
The gym was incredible. Clean white all over, machines for every single exercise one could think of, as well as exercises one didn't think of, and several power stations for doing larger lifts with free weights. Unfortunately, I had no idea what I was doing.
If I wasn't so scared about making myself look bad I would have also asked Arthur for advice but, because of the way he saw me, I couldn't bring myself to do so. 'I guess I'll start by doing some warmup exercises in the gravity room...'
There were three gravity rooms, with two vacant as Sebastian occupied one of them. The room itself held the same esthetics as the rest of the gym, with pure white walls and ceiling, as well as a gray floor.
Just next to the entrance there was a panel where you could input your desired gravity, going from 2x all the way to 20x. Feeling a bit cocky after my training sessions at home, I decided to start with a 4x gravity.
"Ugh!" It was a horrible sensation, feeling as if the air all around me wanted to push me down to the ground, but I grit my teeth and pushed through. Wanting to get used to the pressure before I started going through the motions, I began to just walk in a circle which was in itself hard.
Even though my body was already superhuman, having my body weigh four times as much still felt like hell. I couldn't help but get jealous of myself who was sitting at home, still reading a book about animals while sipping on some black tea.
'Don't slack, sub-me!'
'Shut up! I'm trying my best!'
****
[Sophie's Pov]
"You can start with just the bar. It only weighs 50 kg so it should be fine!"
Arthur was currently showing me how to bench press, an exercise I knew from Earth but had never done in my life. Even when I was healthy and went to the gym regularly I was almost always training my legs or using the treadmills to run. Bench-pressing wouldn't let me attain the booty that I wanted after all.
Taking the bar off the rack, it felt so incredibly light that it barely felt like exercise. 'He did say it was light... Guess I'll try to focus on learning the motions!'
I slowly let it down to my chest, which unfortunately restricted the range of motion quite a bit because of the size, and then pushed it up again. While I was repeating this motion Arthur kept on giving me pointers to correct my form, "Don't let your elbows flare out. Keep your core tightened!"
After doing a lot of reps I felt ready to try it for real, with Arthur agreeing as well, "That seemed pretty easy for you. Let's bump it up to 100kg. It might be a bit heavy but I will be right here to spot you!"
The bench press had a panel where you could input the weight by just pressing a couple of buttons so it didn't take long for the plates to magically appear on the bar. As I mentally prepared myself, I lifted the bar again. However, it was quite anticlimactic. 'It's still light...'
It didn't feel all that different from last time with me doing the repetitions with ease. After I was done, we repeated the process and increased the weights.
I was in complete awe at the power that my current body could exude as my working weights, the weight that felt challenging but still possible, landed on 300kg! A weight I could still do 10 repetitions of by gritting my teeth during the last two.
When I sat up, delighted by the refreshing feeling of accomplishment, I saw that Arthur had for some reason gone back into his Eeyore mode. Unable to watch the pitiful boy without my heart breaking, I had to ask, "What's wrong?"
Clearly forcing a smile, he answered my question with an answer that put the final nail in the coffin to my plans of being a maiden, "Oh nothing... It's just that... My one repetition max is 250kg..."
"Oh..."
It took a couple of seconds for me to realize just what that meant. If I could do multiple repetitions with a weight that was 50kg more than when he lifted his maximum capacity...
'Am I a freak?!'
Looking around, I finally noticed that all the other students were gazing at me with curious eyes, probably having seen the feat I just pulled off. For the first time, I felt like I could relate to James. 'I want to hide somewhere... But I guess my body is too big for that...'
"Beautiful lady! I assume that you are part of the A-class, would you care to give me your name?"
A bulky bald student with a scar over his left eye had come up to us and initiated a conversation with me, obviously interested in me for some reason. "Ehhh?! Sure? I'm Sophie Red and yes, I am part of the A-class."
An even wider smile appeared on his face as I reciprocated his words, something I did purely out of politeness. "That's a beautiful name for a beautiful lady. Tell me, is it possible for me to get your number? I would love to get the chance to talk with you some more!"
Knowing what had to be done in order to prevent the situation from escalating further, I politely but firmly rejected his approach, "Sorry. I can absolutely give you my number but just know that I am not interested in anything romantic. I already have someone I like." His face crumbled as his dreams of finding a wife shattered,
"Oh... Hahaha... Yes, that's fine..."
When the man was walking away with a slouching back, an incredibly cute Arthur had to speak his mind as he tried his best not to look me in my eyes, "Sophie... Do you really have someone you like already?"
Too embarrassed to tell him the whole truth, I just put forth a curt answer, "Yes, I do."
'I like you!'