35 Chapter 35: Achievement
Eric took a couple deep breaths of the cool air in the training room and stood up calmly. He had stabilized his physical and mental state in these 10 minutes and resultantly, his body was pretty close to its peak state.
Now that he had completed the objective of his quest regarding the dumbbells, he moved on to bench pressing with the barbell.
He walked over to the bench and selected the barbell with the 60 kilogram weights. Even before he started, Eric had a feeling that this would be significantly harder than the dumbbells, but albeit the difficulty, his mind was determined and his will was resolute.
He lay down on the bench and positioned himself appropriately, after which he started lifting the barbell up and down at a rather steady pace, slightly slower than the previous exercise, but still not slow enough to be considered detrimental.
From the dumbbells, Eric realized that towards the end, the difficulty of the exercise will significantly increase; and in contrast, his speed of lifting the weights will decrease. In order to combat this slight setback which he would most likely face towards the end of this routine as well, he decided to slow down his speed a little so that he can save up energy to not significantly slow down later on.
Seemingly simple exercises such as lifting weights also required at least some sort of technique in order to make the most efficient use of them.
Eric continued lifting the barbell up and down to his chest without stopping or altering his pace for quite a while. After approximately ten minutes had passed, Eric had finished 50 presses and was one fifths done, but he was still going strong without much stress on his arms.
He was a bit slower compared to his initial speed in the previous exercise; but he was sure that towards the end, he would be able to maintain his current speed instead of slowing down significantly, like what happened while lifting the dumbbells.
Another ten minutes had passed and around the twenty minute mark, Eric was at the glorious number of 100 presses, still not feeling any signs of pain in his arms.
He was pleasantly surprised by his strength, as he compared himself right now to all the eleven year olds on Earth. This was a near impossible feat for anybody around his age group on Earth, so naturally it made sense for him to be proud.
This sense of pride, however, subsided after a couple seconds as Eric regained focus on his current goal: bench pressing 250 times. He could not afford to get distracted while doing something like this if he wanted to successfully complete the quest.
This momentary distraction was fortunately the only one of its kind that Eric encountered for the rest of the bench pressing session. At 30 minutes, he reached 150 presses and at the 40 minute mark he was at 200, with only 50 more presses remaining.
He did start to feel slight pain in his arms at the 40 minute mark, but since he was not going that fast, the amount of pain he felt was not that much and it was much more bearable than what he had initially expected, going into bench pressing.
The last 50 presses took quite a lot of effort, but that wasn't something Eric was lacking; and near the 50 minute mark, Eric had successfully finished two parts out of the three of his quest, as he lay on the bench, huffing and puffing with the barbell lying on the ground.
He wiped the sweat off his face with his hand and while still breathing in an irregular and uneven manner, smiled brightly, looking at the ceiling above him.
The training regime that he was going through was in no manner easy, but it was most definitely beneficial; which is what Eric cared about the most. He didn't shy away from or try to avoid the hardships in his path; instead, he faced them head on and came out of them gaining way more than the pain he had to endure and suffer.
Once again, since Eric had used up quite a lot of energy in his body, he decided to take another short rest break for ten minutes. Right after getting the quest, he had calculated that he required roughly an hour each for the first two objectives of this quest; and two hours for the third and final part.
He had enough time to take a rest break and get his body back to at least a near perfect state before commencing the final objective out of the three which his quest had.
After yet another session of meditation, Eric was again in pretty good shape. He was also a bit relieved, as the last part was easier than the other two. Even though he had to hit the sand bag a total of a thousand times, it would still be easier than lifting heavy weights.
Without wasting much time thinking about it, Eric started with punching the bag. He used a moderate amount of strength which he could use continuously for a long period of time in order to ensure that he didn't get tired early.
This was the same as what he did with his speed while bench pressing, but for hitting the sand bag, he implemented aspects from both the bench press and also the dumbbells.
While curling the dumbbells, he alternated between his hands so that he could constantly exercise both of them simultaneously without letting go of the momentum in either of them.
Similar to that, while hitting the sad bag, Eric alternated between punching with his right hand, punching with his left hand, kicking with his right leg and kicking with his left leg every 50 hits. By doing this, he would be able to keep all parts of his body active and working while also not losing much time.
While hitting the sand bag, Eric noticed that the indents left by his punches and kicks gradually grew larger. Even though he wasn't practicing any sort of martial art or fighting technique, just repeatedly hitting the sand bag increased his attack power little by little.
Eric started to think about when he would be able to get his hands on techniques to increase his strength even faster, but he knew that now was not the time for that. He was still too weak at the moment and for his current level of strength; this training routine that he was following was indeed the most beneficial for him.
Knowing this, he put in all his concentration and effort into beating up the sand bag as efficiently as possible.
***
The third part of the quest indeed took the longest amount of time, but was surprisingly the easiest for Eric. He started to feel slight pain in his limbs as time passed but at this point, he was almost numb to it. Such amounts of pain weren't enough to affect him as he kept striking the jute bag filled with sand until he was done with all 1000 strikes, which didn't take long.
Eric checked the Scam System and saw that he had about half an hour left until the time ran out when he completed the quest and was quite satisfied by his abilities.
Before starting this quest, Eric was very doubtful if he would even be able to finish it or not, let alone have half an hour left to spare afterwards.
Still beaming with joy and shining brightly with quite a bit of sweat, Eric opened the quest log to check if he had gotten his reward and to see what the next part of the quest would be.
[Quest: "Physical Training (1)" successfully completed.
Quest Reward: 3 Points in Charm, Progress of the Quest.]
Eric then proceeded to check his Communication Skills Menu to see if he had received the points in his Charm stat or not.
[Communication Skills Menu
Persuasion: 10
Intimidation: 10
Charm: 10]
After confirming this, the only thing left to see was the next part of the Physical Training quest, which Eric promptly did and started reading the details of the daily quest.
[New Quest: Physical Training (2)
Task: In order to make the most out of training one's body, one should constantly up their ante and challenge themselves to their very limits in order to break through them. The task for this part of the quest is to-
1) Curl the 15 kilogram dumbbells 300 times in each hand.
2) Bench press with the 60 kilogram barbell 300 times.
3) Punch the sandbag 300 times with each hand and kick it 300 times with each leg.
Time Limit: 4 hours (Currently frozen as the quest hasn't yet started)
Completion Reward: Progress of the Quest
Failure Penalty: None]
This time, seeing the buffed up numbers didn't scare Eric even a bit, instead, he was excited and wanted to test the limits of his body. The exercises he did in these three and a half hours were already starting to benefit Eric by gradually increasing his physical strength.
Increasing the level of training will also increase the benefits which he would receive, which was enough of a reason for Eric to look forward to the next day's training routine even more.
He also noticed the time limit of the quest being frozen and quickly understood that it was due to the quest type being a daily quest. He was able to infer that the time would unfreeze once he started training the next day.
After looking at all of this information in the Scam System, Eric noticed that there was still an unread notification and checked the notifications to see what he had missed.
[Achievement Unlocked!]
'Achievement? There are also achievements in the Scam System?' Eric thought as he continued reading the text on this new system window in front of him.
