Anyone who has gone through a diet, or a new exercise regime, would tell you that it's not easy work. Sometimes, it could feel like it's not even worth the trouble. And there were many days that I felt that way.
Losing that first 10 kilograms was easy compared to how hard I had to work to continue losing weight. After a few months of hard work, I barely managed to get down to just under 100kg (220 lbs) and to be honest, nothing new happened in all that time but my routine of visiting the gym every day and going through my workout.
Don't get me wrong. I felt myself getting stronger, and in my head, I knew that my weight loss slowed down because I was slowly building muscle, and muscle weighs more than fat. But the lack of that visual progress got in my head sometimes.
Scratch that, most of the time.
That, and the fact that it seemed like the System was kind of stingy when it came to gifting me more PPs made it hard for me to bring myself to the gym some days.
What the action stories that had some sort of similar tasks as my Fortitude tasks always glossed over is that it's a whole lot of damn work. 10 kilometres is a long way and doing 100 sit-ups and pull-ups (even in smaller batches of, say, 10 at a time), is almost like torture.
Safe to say that I didn't complete all three tasks within a day every day after that first time around.
By the end of the three months, I barely scraped enough PPs from the daily Fortitude tasks to 4.8PPs. If you're keeping track, that means that I was only able to complete the daily Fortitude tasks for half of the three months.
This was mostly from the fact that I just ran out of time during the day. Instead of spending hours walking to get the 10km task done, I moved up to a jogging pace of 9km per hour, which I broke into smaller, more manageable segments of 20 minutes at a time. Alan introduced me to a variety of muscle exercises that helped develop my muscles more evenly than the basic core and arm work that the sit-ups and pull-ups provided, so some days I simply decided to do these other exercises than the tasks.
I felt better about myself. Sure, I was still considered a little bit overweight, but at least I wasn't medically considered obese anymore. I felt like I had more energy, and it kind of sounded a little bit corny to say, but I saw the world in a new light.
As the days passed and I kept working on myself, several guild members who used the gym got to know me, and I got to know them. Even Anthony and Gary, the two guild members who were there that saw my Registration stats seemed to have developed a little bit of respect for my dedication to improving myself.
As I walked up the front steps to the entrance of the guild building one day, about to do my daily workout, Penelope called out my name.
She was dressed in a simple white pair of Nike sneakers, a pair of dark-blue seamless leggings and wore a plain black cropped hoodie.
I had seen her now and then over the three months in the guild building, but we never managed to find a time when neither of us was too busy.
"Penelope…" I answered back. I suddenly felt awkward as some of that childish crush memories rushed back to me. She looked amazing to me, even if she was only in normal workout clothes, I felt a little bit underdressed.
For the gym!
She play-punched me in the arm, "I told you, it's Penny now," and we climbed the last few steps together.
"Sorry, how are you? Penny?" I emphasised her name as I stiffly tried to talk to her casually.
She grinned a dazzling smile at me, and I was sure I started to blush uncontrollably.
"Not bad, not bad," Penny said as we got to the reception desk, "You look amazing by the way!"
If I wasn't blushing hard enough before then, I was now.
"Ah," I said as I laughed uncomfortably, "Thanks, you're too kind."
"I mean it," She smiled, "I see Alan often, and every time we talk, he's been gushing over how hard you've been working."
Every so often, I get an errant thought that I've been imposing too much on Alan's time and resources, so it was nice to hear that he's enjoyed keeping me accountable in my weight loss journey.
Surprisingly, but not surprisingly since she was dressed for it when I made my way to the right past the scanner to go to the gym, she followed.
"Hey, I've been meaning to reach out to you for a while, but it's been really busy lately," Penny said, her voice sounding genuinely apologetic.
"I've been hearing about it," I said, "Something to do about an A-tier Dungeon that needs to be cleared quite soon?"
"Yeah, exactly! Hero's Stand has been recruited by the AGA as one of the guilds involved in clearing it, so a bunch of the higher-tiered members have been busy preparing for the dive."
The Australian Guild Association is the Australian branch of the globalised Dungeon Clearance Association (DCA). They work with the government to prevent Australian Dungeons from Breaking. Being recruited by the AGA is like a company receiving a military contract. It's profitable and is free promotion for your guild to the public.
"You going to be part of it?" I asked. Penny was an A-tier Mage, like her father. Though, instead of following her father's footsteps and specialising in destructive abilities, Penny specialised in being a healer.
She nodded slowly as we both scanned our membership cards at the entrance of the guild gym.
"Good luck," I said, "Or whatever it is Players say to each other to wish them luck."
Penny chuckled softly, "Good luck is fine. It's not like we're a superstitious industry like theatre!"
I joined her and laughed softly.
"Hey," Penny suddenly said as we approached the locker bays, "Has anybody sparred with you or anything?"
I shook my head as I approached a random empty locker. Penny decided to place her belongings in an empty one next to mine.
"Well, that's perfect! I've finally got some free time right now, why don't we have a friendly spar?" Penny suggested brightly.
***
After getting our belongings settled and secured, Penny joined me with a series of warm-up stretches and showed me a couple of basic striking poses. From what I could tell, she based these poses mostly on fundamental techniques from boxing.
You know, how to throw a punch, how to keep my arms up to block, really basic things.
The guild gym has a standard boxing ring in one corner of the space. And I was glad that I usually went to the gym when there were only a few people around because I would have been too nervous to stand in the ring when the gym was more populated.
Penny had those padded punching gloves that trainers have and encouraged me as I went through some of the drills she showed me.
After going through the striking drills, she taught me the correct posture to weave and dodge punches and I worked through them.
It was only around twenty minutes later that I was feeling quite self-conscious at how much I was sweating. Penny didn't seem to mind. She had a great time teaching me the stances and the drills, but I couldn't ignore that nagging voice in my head that fuelled my anxieties.
We took a break after ten more minutes, and as I swapped repeatedly between gulping in air and gulping in some water off the boxing ring, I watched in awe as Penny continued to go through her personal physical drills off the boxing ring also.
Even though she was a healer, she had also trained in Mixed Martial Arts, with a specialisation in Dutch-Style Kickboxing. Even healers needed something to fall back on to protect themselves in case of emergencies.
She was working through a low-kick drill and you could tell she was extremely proficient at it by the reverberating snap sound that her kick produced against the sandbag when a chime dinged in my head all of a sudden.
I quickly brought the System up in front of my eyes when I was greeted by a message:
[CONGRATULATIONS!
The Player has unlocked the 'Low Kick' skill thanks to 'Critical Eye'!
Low Kick (LVL 1): A simple kick aimed at the lower region of a target.]
There was an odd sensation when I read the message. The muscles in my whole body started to quiver, not in a painful way. It just felt strange. Suddenly, it felt like my muscles had slightly changed.
I jumped up on my feet and approached Penny and the sandbag she was using.
She had just finished her current drill when she saw me walk over and stopped the bag from swinging.
"What's up?" she said, a little breathless.
"Hey, can you just watch me, and give me some feedback?" I said, "I want to do a low kick like you were just doing."
"Wait, you can't just jump into it. You gotta be taught the correct stance and everything—" Penny stressed.
I raised my hand to stop her, "I think I got it."
"Just from watching me?"
I nodded, "Trust me."
I could tell she struggled. Every sensible fibre of her body told her to stop me from doing something that could backfire on me badly, but she saw the confidence in my eyes and the calm in my voice and she stepped back.
I stood next to the bag and stepped back to be at the perfect distance away. I focussed on the sandbag and mentally pictured myself performing the low kick.
After a moment of introspective silence, it worked.
Almost as if my body had performed the action thousands and thousands of times, I swung my left leg around. My right standing leg was slightly bent as the upper part of my left shin slammed firmly against the leather sandbag at an almost-perfect 90-degree angle. The crack of the hit resounded fully and satisfyingly as I pulled my leg back and placed it back on the ground.
I was left with a warm sensation on my shin, and surprisingly, it wasn't painful at all. I glanced over to Penny excited and hopeful.
"How was that?" I asked as I reached out to stop the bag from swinging.
Penny's mouth was open wide in shock and after a moment to gather herself, she exclaimed, "That was perfect!"