Ren woke with the taste of dry earth and copper in his mouth.
For a moment, his disoriented mind tried to summon a healing potion from his inventory. He mentally reached for the familiar grid of items, expecting the cool glass vial to materialize in his palm.
Nothing happened.
The harsh reality of the Realm of Peace crashed back down on him. There was no inventory. There was no magic. There was only the dull, throbbing ache radiating from his chest and arms, a pain so profound it made his teeth chatter.
He slowly turned his head, peeling his cheek off the grass. The sun had moved, glaring down at him from its peak. It was early afternoon. He had been unconscious for hours after his sixtieth pushup.
A translucent counter hovered stubbornly in the corner of his vision.
[Task 1: Pushups (60 / 200)]
"A hundred and forty," Ren rasped, his voice cracking. His throat was parched.
He didn't waste energy feeling sorry for himself. He rolled onto his stomach, planted his palms flat against the dirt, and braced his core. He pushed.
Sixty-one.
His elbows popped loudly. The lactic acid from his earlier attempt had settled deep into his unconditioned muscle fibers. Every microscopic tear in his triceps and pectorals screamed in fiery protest.
Sixty-two. Sixty-three.
He couldn't do them in a continuous rhythm. His biological vessel simply wouldn't allow it. He managed eight reps before his arms gave out, dropping him back into the dirt. He lay there, gasping for breath, waiting for his heart rate to slow down. Five minutes later, he pushed back up.
Seventy-one. Seventy-two.
The hours dragged on in a grueling, agonizing loop. Push, collapse, breathe, repeat. By the time he crossed the one-hundred mark, he was doing sets of three. By one hundred and fifty, he was doing them one at a time.
His form, initially perfect due to the lingering muscle memory of his locked Martial Arts skill, began to deteriorate. He was shaking violently. Sweat poured from his forehead, stinging his eyes and dripping onto the grass below, creating a small, dark mud puddle beneath his face.
One hundred and eighty.
Ren's vision was tunneling. The edges of the bright blue sky turned a fuzzy, static grey. His arms no longer felt like a part of his body; they felt like two pillars of burning lead that refused to obey his brain's commands.
One hundred and eighty-five.
"Don't... stop..." Ren hissed through clenched teeth, blood seeping from his bitten lip.
One hundred and eighty-eight.
He lowered himself slowly, his chest brushing the grass. He inhaled a ragged, desperate breath. He commanded his arms to extend for the one hundred and eighty-ninth rep.
He pushed. He got halfway up.
And then, his biology simply vetoed his willpower.
The muscle fibers in his triceps seized completely. His elbows buckled outward. Ren's face smashed into the dirt with a heavy, lifeless thud. He tried to twitch his fingers, to drag his hands back into position, but the connection between his brain and his limbs was severed by sheer exhaustion.
The world spun wildly, the green grass rushing up to swallow him. His eyes rolled back, and the darkness took him once more.
When Ren opened his eyes again, the blinding daylight was gone.
The sky above the valley had transformed into a canvas of deep violet and bruised orange. The air had grown significantly cooler, carrying the crisp chill of approaching night.
Ren lay still, listening to the wind rustling through the tall grass. He estimated the time based on the shadows stretching across the valley. It had to be around 6:30 PM.
He tried to push himself up, but his arms were completely paralyzed. They hung limply at his sides, heavy and useless. He couldn't even bend his elbows. The remaining eleven pushups might as well have been a million. He physically could not do them right now.
Ren slowly rolled onto his back, using the momentum of his torso, and then awkwardly kicked his legs to sit up.
He looked at the glowing text in his peripheral vision.
[Task 1: Pushups (189 / 200)]
[Task 2: 15-Mile Mountain Run (0 / 15 Miles)]
[Task 3: Hunt and kill one wild rabbit (0 / 1)]
"My arms are dead," Ren muttered to the empty valley. "But my legs aren't."
It was the cold, pragmatic logic of a survivor. If one tool was broken, you used another. He couldn't finish Task 1 until his upper body recovered, but sitting around waiting was a waste of the time dilation.
He looked toward the jagged mountain in the distance. Fifteen miles.
Ren stood up. His legs felt shaky, but they held his weight. He kicked off his heavy leather boots, leaving them in the grass. If he was going to build a true physical foundation, he needed to condition every part of his body, starting with the soles of his feet.
He took a deep breath of the cool evening air, set his sights on the mountain peak, and began to jog.
The first mile across the flat valley floor was deceptively easy. The grass was soft, and the cool wind kept him from overheating. But as he crossed into the second mile, the reality of his missing stats hit him like a physical blow.
Without his Stamina (40), his cardiovascular system was woefully inadequate. His heart began to hammer against his ribs like a trapped bird. His lungs, unaccustomed to processing oxygen at this rate without magical assistance, began to burn. Every breath felt like inhaling shards of glass.
'Pace yourself,' Ren thought, forcing his mind to override his panic. 'Two steps, breathe in. Two steps, breathe out.'
He fell into a slow, grueling rhythm.
By the third mile, the terrain began to change. The soft grass gave way to uneven, rocky soil. Small stones and sharp twigs dug into his bare feet. He winced with every step, but he didn't stop. He couldn't afford to.
The sky darkened completely, the valley illuminated only by the pale, silver light of a massive moon. Ren's jog slowed to a heavy, dragging run. His calves were screaming, the muscles tightening dangerously. Sweat soaked his tunic, chilling him in the night air.
He approached the base of the mountain. He had covered roughly three and three-quarter miles—a quarter of the total distance.
This was where the incline began.
Ren looked up at the steep, rocky path winding up the mountainside. He took his first step onto the incline, pushing his weight upward.
His right calf cramped violently.
It wasn't a dull ache; it was a sharp, twisting spasm that locked the muscle into a knot of pure agony. Ren gasped, stumbling forward. He tried to catch himself, but his paralyzed arms couldn't break his fall.
He crashed hard onto the rocky path, scraping his shoulder and tearing the skin on his knee.
He lay there, panting heavily, his chest heaving in desperate, ragged gasps. He tried to force his legs to move, to stand back up, but his lower body was completely spent. The lack of oxygen, the sudden elevation change, and the sheer physical trauma of the day had drained his biological reserves to absolute zero.
He had barely completed a quarter of the run, and his body was already shutting down.
Ren pressed his forehead against the cold, jagged stones of the mountain path. He didn't have the strength to curse. He didn't have the energy to be angry.
He was a Level 10 Assassin, a Dragon Slayer, the Sixth Hero of Syrius. And he was currently lying in the dirt, defeated by a three-mile jog and a steep hill.
'I relied too much on the glitch,' Ren thought, his vision blurring as the edges of his consciousness began to fray. 'I bought the roof, but I never built the floor.'
The cold wind howled down the mountain pass, a harsh reminder of the brutal reality of flesh and bone. Ren's breathing slowed, his exhausted body demanding the rest his mind wanted to deny.
Unable to move a single inch further, Ren closed his eyes, and the darkness claimed him for the second time that day.