First Step

"So you want to lose weight?" another young man with red short, spiky hair, asked in a deep, cold voice. He was Rex— Axle's biggest rival… or rather, his idol in his twisted way.

Although Rex was Axle's bully and Axle hated Rex, Rex was also his model figure, so much so that Axle aspired to become like him and surpass him.

"Y-Yes…" Axle replied with a stutter.

Rex took a step towards Axle and stared into his eyes for a few moments before shrugging, "Whatever. I am not in the mood for bullying you today." 

Axle sighed in relief. He was in no mood to get bullied after hiding for a month in his room. All his vacations, he holed up in his room and played games, not even bothering to visit his parents once.

"Go buy us some beer. And you better be fast or I am itching to try out my new trick, elephant rolling ball." The blonde man, named Luke, threatened.

"Sounds interesting, brother." Luke's sister Linny, giggled softly.

'Fuck…' Axle cursed and faked a smile, "Of course," he walked away towards the door and then began to jog to the store, wanting to get this shit over with. There were only 3 more days remaining till their vacation ended and then Axle would have to deal with this shit every day… again.

Thus, he was motivated to quickly complete his tasks and upgrade himself to the new Axle his classmates had never seen before. 

***

15 minutes later,

Axle huffed for breaths as he bent his knees, holding a synthetic polybag that contained a pack of 6 beer cans.

He was tired and annoyed at his group of 'friends', but he didn't let it show on his average-looking chubby face. He was way too used to hiding his feelings behind a fake mask anyway.

"There…" Axle panted and handed the polybag to Luke, "Can I please go now? I need to play a ranking match… it is important…" He asked politely and Luke waved him off after slapping Axle's back a few times.

They seemed to be waiting for someone in the garden, they made him run for the beer just for fun. 

'Who are they waiting for?' Axle mused as he walked out of the garden when his eyes fell on a beautiful girl he had seen before but he couldn't remember where.

With raven black hair that was painted with streaks of blue, she walked like a queen. She had an aura of domination, if to put it in online cheesy terms, she looked like a complete mommy material. Her slender figure and slim waist were tantalizing, but not like Axle could do anything more than gawk at her.

'OH YES! SHE IS OUR SENIOR!' Axle's brain gear clicked in his mind. 'What is such a famous girl doing in a normal part of my neighborhood…?'

But looking at her direction, Axle understood that she was the one Rex and the group were waiting for.

'Of course, Rex gets all the bitches.' grumbling in annoyance, Axle soon reached back inside his desolate apartment, the stuffy smell of his closed-shut room assaulted his nose but Axle was too used to this smell to care about it. 

'Fuck them, I completed half of my tasks. I only need 8 more push-ups to go!' he gave himself a thumbs-up. 

[ You have received a task of difficulty- D. 

Do you accept? Y/N ]

Abruptly, a notification popped in front of Axle the moment he rested his lazy ass on the bed.

'Holy shit that scared me-' Axle's heart skipped a beat when the notification popped up so abruptly, but he still dropped his complaints and focused on it.

'D grade hm? So it is about 2 grades harder than my last task.' Axle stroked his chin, 'Does anything bad happen if I reject a task?' 

Axle was asking that question to himself, but unexpectedly, the system cleared the doubt concisely… a bit too concisely… 

[ No. ]

'Just No? Like say something… can I get back that task later again? Is there any time limit to finish a task?'

[Time-limited tasks are above C grade difficulty.]

'Phew! So I can accept the task and no need to have any stress about completing it fast.' Axle smiled to himself, proceeding to ask more questions to the system which went unanswered because of how pointless or unanswerable they were like… 

'Who is the 'unknown' god?'

'Do I get any starter package?' 

'Does half push-ups count?'

'Can I push up against the wall instead of the floor?'

...

Tired of being ignored by the system, Axle sighed and placed his exhausted body back on the floor.

He was determined to complete his 8 push-ups, and then finally, after 7 hours, he did it.

And also binged a whole web series of 6 episodes alongside… 

During those 7 hours, he had also accepted the D grade difficulty mission because he saw no reason not to.

The system had already told him that there was no limit to how many tasks he could accept at once because one must aspire to finish them fast if one wanted to grow better and stronger faster.

[ Good or Bad, Hero or Villain.

Difficulty: D

Host must choose a side, good/hero or bad/villain.

Complete any D-grade 'deed' of the chosen side to get the reward.

Reward: Performance dependent.

Examples of deeds one must do:

Good- Save the infant on the 23rd floor in a burning building. 

Bad- Perform a robbery or heist of at least 100,000 Styr without getting caught or leaving any tracks. 

Note: This is just an example.]

The task was quite handy and difficult, and at first glance, pretty impossible.

Saving an infant from a literal burning building? Axle wasn't that desperate to die yet.

And as for the robbery, who could he even rob? That too 100,000 Styr? He hasn't even seen more than 10,000 Styr in his whole life.

With everyone using hi-tech biometric locks and top-notch security, how can Axle even think of robbing anyone?

But on the bright side, Axle had finally completed his hardest task and received 100 MP.

[ Task 'Otaku's Bane' completed.

Congratulations on taking your first steps into the real world, host.]

'This fucker…' Axle sighed and rubbed his hands with a grin, 'Time to see how this mysterious MP works.'