Ryu was just walking up to the front steps of his dilapidated apartment building when the phone in his pocket buzzed indicating a notification.
He pulled out his shoddy old flip phone and read the message through the cracked screen. The message appeared to be from Kenzo. "Yo, heard you're on medical leave for a week, I'm gonna miss you bud, rest up and take it easy."
As he finished the message, he continued to open the front door of the complex and proceeded up the stairs. As he did so there was a smile plastered across his face, and this was for two reasons. The first being that he realized Kenzo truly cared about him, and that he had at least one friend, or rather acquaintance at school. The other reason being, he had a week to get stronger before coming back to school and surely this newfound cheat code would allow him to go back to school with a little more confidence than before.
He made his way up to his apartment room and threw his dirty clothes that he had changed out of into his laundry hamper. After doing this he thought to himself "Quests".
When doing this the system window opened and he examined the screen looking for where he should start first on the quest, he wasn't going to rest and relax as Kenzo had advised, but instead he was resolved to improve himself.
"I should probably start with push-ups those shouldn't be too hard, right?" Ryu thought to himself, blind to the fact that all the tasks were going to be difficult because of his weak body.
Ryu checked his phone, "It's only 11 A.M. I have a lot of time to kill for this workout," he thought to himself.
Ryu made his way to his room where he cleared out a spot in the mess of his floor as a makeshift workout area.
He got down onto the ground in a push-up form, slowly letting his body descend until his nose was about to make contact with the floor, then he pushed up, shaking violently from his lack of muscle strength, and completed just one repetition out of the 100 push-ups.
He checked his quests window that he still had displayed and saw [Push-ups: 1/100] displayed on the menu.
"I have a long way to go," Ryu thought to himself.
Over the next few hours Ryu had completed his sit-ups, push-ups, and was now getting ready to complete his run.
He proceeded to get up from the floor, having finished his last sit-up, and his clothing was drenched in sweat, and his muscles felt completely weak. He struggled to take off his sweaty shirt because of how fatigued his upper body was, but he somehow managed to remove his dirty clothes and replace them with clean ones, as he didn't want to look like a mess outside.
He grabbed his only pair of sneakers, an off-brand pair which had its soles barely attached to the rest of the sneakers in a way that every time he walked it made a clopping sound because only half of the sole was connected.
"If only I was richer, I could have new sneakers and this wouldn't be as difficult as it's about to be," Ryu thought to himself as he started walking out of his apartment and towards the stairs.
As Ryu was walking out of the apartment complex he was met with a comfortable heat and a light breeze, the conditions were perfect for an afternoon run.
Strengthened by the resolve of getting stronger, suddenly Ryu's fatigue was replaced with the adrenaline of starting to run.
"I did the research, if I run around the block in a circle 20 times, I should be able to run 5 miles in total," Ryu mumbled to himself trying to strategically approach the workout.
After he was done mumbling, he sped up to a maintainable pace and ran around his block in a square 20 times in a row. Some of the pedestrians started to wonder what such a scrawny kid was doing working out, when he should be eating to get up to a healthy weight, but Ryu was too locked into the running to notice any of their stares.
As his final lap was coming to an end, Ryu heard a dinging sound, still having the quest window displayed he looked up from the ground analyzing it to see if he had successfully completed his quest.
[Quests]
[Physical Fitness]
[Pushups: 100/100]
[Sit-ups: 100/100]
[Run: 5/5 Miles]
[Reward: Stat Points and a Gym Membership Card]
[Time Limit: 1 Day]
[Claim Rewards]
A new text box was visible under the time limit, it said claim rewards.
Ryu had no idea how to claim the rewards because the system had such a shoddy tutorial, so he guessed and thought the phrase, "Claim rewards."
This seemed to have worked because suddenly the quests tab had changed and above it was a notification window.
[Quests]
[None]
[Notification: You have been awarded with 3 status points, use them wisely.]
[Notification: You have been awarded a gym membership to the MMA Gym, from now on a prerequisite to any daily quest is attending the gym that day, with one day a week as an exception for rest. This gym membership is permanent and never expires.]
"Ha! The exercise paid off, I got stat points and even a permanent gym membership, although it sucks that it seems I won't be getting rewards from exercising anymore. I wonder how much stat points will improve me," thought Ryu to himself feeling his heart rate start to slow down along with feeling joyful from the quest's completion.
"Status," Ryu thought to himself intending to spend his status points wisely.
[Host: Ryu]
[Strength: 1]
[Intelligence: 8]
[Appearance: 2]
[Agility: 1]
[Unassigned Stat Points: 3]
[Health Status: Very poor, without intervention soon death may occur.]
[A normal human's attributes range from 10-15 in each category.]
[Skills: N/A]
[Arts: N/A]
"Well, as of right now my appearance doesn't matter to me, agility seems like a good option, I shouldn't invest in intelligence because it's my highest stat. But I think I'm going to go all in on strength, after all it says that if I don't improve my body's strength, I might die soon."
Guessing on the method of how to use his stat points, he thought to himself, "Invest 3 stat points into strength."
With that his status menu suddenly changed and displayed the following.
[Host: Ryu]
[Strength: 1 -> 4]
[Intelligence: 8]
[Appearance: 2]
[Agility: 1]
[Health Status: Poor, you have the strength of the average 12-year-old boy, and the weight of one too.]
[A normal human's attributes range from 10-15 in each category.]
[Skills: N/A]
[Arts: N/A]
Reading over the status window, Ryu felt relieved that he was no longer dealing with impending demise. He also read the Health Status section and thought to himself in a bitter tone, "Well the system isn't trying to boost my ego at all, the strength and weight of a 12-year-old boy, it doesn't get much worse than that."
Shortly after this thought he felt his muscle pain subside slightly as the stat points in strength were starting to take effect, the loss of stamina from exercising and running was not affected at all, though, because he had not invested any points in agility.
After doing all this outside, he realized he probably looked slightly insane standing in one place mumbling to himself in the middle of the sidewalk. With that realization, he started to make his way back up the stairs into the apartment building.
When opening his door, he was immediately hit with the smell of a homecooked meal, this excited Ryu, normally he didn't care about food and only ate reluctantly, but after exercising so much he wanted nothing more than to devour a meal.