First Task
That night was the first since my previous parents died that I had not visited a bar and passed out after drinking. Instead, I spent it with my new siblings, watching TV, eating dinner, and catching up with them.
After Jinah passed out in the middle of the movie marathon and Jin-woo took her to her room, I too returned to my room and got ready to start training.
There is no way my twig-like body can support the full brunt of an energy being like the Rulers. That means that I need to make my physical form stronger before diving into the supernatural aspect of my powers.
Thankfully, The Brightest Fragment had an idea of what to do to quickly develop my body.
Instance Dungeons.
The concept was really simple. Just like Ashborn who gave Jin-woo dungeon keys, The brightest fragment would open Instance dungeons for me where he would put a set number of many monsters that his kind had imprisoned during the countless years they exited. Also, unlike Jin-woo, the brightest fragment will increase the gravity in the Instance dungeons to an appropriate level proportional to the tolerance of my body.
This will give me twice the rewards compared to a normal Instance dungeon that Jin-woo could enter.
Due to fighting enemies and training in increased gravity, my body will naturally become stronger while killing monsters will lead to Level up in my system, giving me status points that would also augment my growth. But here in lies the problem.
I was just released from the hospital today and despite awakening my ability to manipulate mana thanks to the brightest fragment, my body is still in an emancipated state. That means that I have literally zero chance of actually killing a monster. And since I have not yet completed the first task, I cannot ask the brightest fragment to give me a combat skill yet.
Fortunately, the brightest fragment already realized this problem and adjusted the first task accordingly.
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[First Task: Body strengthening]
[Perform the following workout routine in the Instance Dungeon located in your room]
[Push ups: 0/200]
[Sit-ups: 0/200]
[Squats: 0/200]
[Running: 0/20Km]
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Simply put, it was the same tasks that Jin-woo is doing daily right now. But I have to do twice as much as him since my body is in a worse state than his due to being in a coma for four years and I have to do it under increased gravity.
Normally, I would be dumbfounded at the difficulty and simply quit. But I also know just what kind of a death world this is, so I can only gather all my courage and will and got through this damned routine to become stronger.
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[Enter Instance Dungeon]
[Yes/No]
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With a deep breath, I clicked on Yes.
And immediately regretted my decision as my body hit the ground with force.
This is going to be a long night.
Just like I predicted, it was indeed a long night where I nearly died of overwork. Hooray for status recovery.
Another interesting thing I discovered yesterday was how mana worked.
I thought that the brightest fragment would leave me to work out alone, but instead, he was constantly communicating with me through the system window, guiding me in working out in the most efficient way possible. Then, halfway through the night and my workout task, I had the bright idea of using mana to augment my physical body like the reinforcement magecraft from the Fate series.
The result was a new skill, Reinforcement, and pain the likes of which I never thought possible.
Even the brightest fragment commented on how stupid my way of using reinforcement was. According to him, reinforcement with mana was the most basic skill that was used unconsciously by all human hunters. They use their mana to encase their bodies in a protective casing of mana that boosted all their stats by a few times depending on their proficiency in mana manipulation. But my method of Reinforcement was completely different from theirs.
Because I had used the Fate version of Reinforcement, where instead of encasing my body in mana, I used mana to enhance my body on a conceptual level by filling the conceptual 'holes' in my physical form, I ended up overdoing it and nearly tearing apart my body, hence the agony. Thankfully, Status recovery took care of repairing my body.
That did not mean I am going to abandon my version of Reinforcement. Especially since the brightest fragment commented that my version of Reinforcement is hundreds of times more efficient and powerful compared to the basic reinforcement used by other hunters.
But consequently, for the rest of the night, the brightest fragment increased the gravitation force in the Instance dungeon to put my reinforced body under even more pressure.
Simply put, my situation is similar to what Goku experienced during his travel to Namek. Crushing gravity that makes it impossible to move, only for me to power through it by reinforcing my body with my new skill.
This way of training is really good for me too, since this helped me level my new skill to a decent level while also gaining 5 points in all of my stats in a single night, an unprecedented gain.
Best of all, my body actually showed the increase of points in a physical way. I was no longer emancipated looking as before. In fact, I now looked like a slightly malnourished man.
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[Status]
[Player: Sung Changmin] [Level: 6]
[Job: None] [Fatigue:0]
[Title: None]
HP: 150
MP: 200
[Strenght: 10]
[Agility: 7]
[Sense: 15]
[Vitality: 10]
[Intelligence: 30]
[Remaining Points: 0]
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That said, it was still a pathetic status for a level 6. But it is understandable. Unlike Jin-woo who was an E-rank hunter before he received a system, thus being slightly stronger than a peak human, I had an emancipated body that was even weaker than a child. That was why, even with gaining five levels in a single night, leading to a five-point increase across the board, I was still only barely as strong as Jin-woo before he received the system.
If I continue training like this every night, then I will catch up with Jin-woo very quickly. Especially since continuously using Reinforcement during my training is having a multiplying effect on the Exp gain for my Hp and Mp.
According to the brightest fragment, because of how my reinforcement is breaking my body on a conceptual level, every time I regenerate it with status recovery, my mana is compensating for the conceptual damage by strengthening it permanently, this combined with the intricate manipulation of mana required to perform my Reinforcement skill is causing my mana capacity and my Hp to increase drastically. For example, before I started my task, my HP was 100, now it is 150 while my MP was 10 and now it is 200.
And that naturally high INT stat is not for show either, it was only thanks to that high level of INT that I managed to create Conceptual Reinforcement in the first place and managed to level it up to LVL 5 in a single night.
As I prepared to discard my sweaty night dress and wear normal clothes, the system window opened again with a new message.
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[First Task: Complete]
[Reward: one E-Rank Item of your choosing, One 'Ruler Skill' of your choosing, and one Knowledge Pack of your choosing]
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Clicking on the E-rank item, I saw a sprawling menu with thousands of items in it.
This might take a while.