Leaking

"See? Your mom is alright. She's having fun!" Gorou said reassuringly.

Aimi continued staring at her cup.

'She's too smart for her age.' Gorou thought.

She then took a bigger gulp before setting her cup down and looked up at Gorou. She then gave a cute smile with a milk moustache.

Gorou looked at her in awe.

She ran up the stairs and went to bed.

'I want to marry a girl like that one day.'

Gorou felt bad about banging her mum earlier.

***

"Hmph. How shameless." Hikaru said after viewing Gorou's memory of the incident.

Hikaru had just discovered that Gorou's father let him have the first turn with Aimi's mother to "teach" him before doing it himself.

He didn't genuinely care about Aimi's past as he didn't know her, but he killed Gorou on the spot because of an upsetting feeling he got after recognising his face.

As expected, it felt good to watch Gorou die.

'Hehehe.'

Hikaru scanned the surroundings when he heard a girl's giggle. It sounded familiar.

When he found nothing, he figured it was just his imagination.

Perhaps memories of his victims were "leaking out".

Hikaru felt good. Compared to when he felt nothing when he killed his mother, this was an improvement.

It took longer than twenty minutes to absorb Gorou's body since he was bigger than the average person.

Hikaru dispersed the biomass across his body. He looked even bigger than Gorou was before and even grew taller to 2.5 metres tall.

Hikaru turned 360 in the mirror, inspecting himself.

Hikaru's base strength is the total muscle mass of his original proportions with the body limiter off. As a result, he could lift 200 kg bench press and achieve more or less with other muscle groups.

Aimi's muscle mass that he had absorbed was nearly as much as his base strength.

Several hours ago when he became infected, it sped his cellular activities up to extraordinary levels. One of those applications is fast regeneration. Another is faster metabolism which includes both catabolic (breaking things down) and anabolic (building things up) reactions.

In that time frame, Hikaru had used most of the components for building a muscular body from his biomass stock. He had to save a little for homeostasis (maintenance of steady vitals).

Besides Aimi's muscle mass, was an extra 50% of Hikaru's muscle mass that he produced from his biomass stock. This meant he could roughly bench press 450 kg of weight before. Now after consuming Gorou's muscle mass which was worth around 5 people.

Another 500% increase is added to the 150% increase. Theoretically, he could now lift 1450 kg. This meant that he could toss a 1-tonne car.

Theory meant nothing if it couldn't be tested.

Hikaru stacked weights onto the barbell.

30, 30, 30, 30, 25, 25, 25, 25, 25, 25, 25, 20, 20, 20…

When he ran out of weight plates, he grabbed them from other places around the gym.

He finally had a barbell weighing 1105 kg but couldn't find any more weight plates.

He laid down on the bench and gripped the bar. He lifted them as if it was paper.

Just like that.

It was much too light for him, but that gave moderate evidence his estimations were right.

The bar creaked and a loud snap happened followed by loud thuds.

The barbell broke as it couldn't handle the weight.

From Gorou's memories, he had bought an expensive powerlifting barbell that was stronger than the ones they used in contests for setting world records. Slightly higher in PSI tensile strength ratings.

The best barbells could hold well over 500 kg. One of the world records had a bench press of 501 kg (with a bench shirt).

If Hikaru concentrated much of the biomass to his bench press muscles, he could get a further 33% increase of the 1450 kg. Roughly 1930 kg.

He couldn't move all his biomass in one place because all the muscles in the body serve a purpose.

Muscle groups work in antagonistic pairs to perform a movement. One muscle contracts when carrying out a movement and the other lengthens to allow it all to happen.

The other lengthens and weaken by training just one of a pair of opposing muscles repeatedly in isolation. Any type of imbalance may cause injury.

If he didn't have enough leg strength, for example, his legs would snap under heavyweights. If there wasn't enough strength in his lower body, just a flex of the upper body strength would create enough force to pop a bone or tear weaker muscles connecting to the stronger muscles.

That's why it's important to know not to over-train a muscle group and strengthen the opposing muscles as well.

The bench press uses chest and tricep muscle groups to push but requires the opposing muscle groups such as the back and biceps.

Hikaru found Gorou's knowledge of weight training and physical fitness to be useful.

***

Hikaru walked home, going through the same road he used to get to the gym and had just passed 24-seven.

Before leaving the gym, he made sure to delete the surveillance footage of him and Gorou in the gym.

While absorbing Gorou, he searched through his pockets and got his cell phone and an electronic key tag that looked like a button. He went to Gorou's locker and opened it then retrieved his wallet.

He then went into the gym office to login to the computer with Gorou's account then accessed the security cameras from there.

Hikaru's head was full of thoughts as he was strategizing.

Suddenly someone grabbed his right arm and threw him several metres high into the air. Amazingly, Hikaru orientated himself easily in the air and landed on all fours like a cat.

It was a feline instinct that kicked in. Courtesy of his dead cat.

Hikaru decided to think about those things later as he looked up to his attacker in the distance. It was a familiar silhouette.

"Eyyy~ little boy! Remember me?" The man spoke.

The environment was also familiar. Hikaru found himself in the same alley as the one he rescued Emiko in.

He spotted a dead body of an office worker behind him. His abdomen was gorged out and much of the contents were missing.

Hikaru faced the rejuvenated Asahi who was grinning at him with yellow and blood-stained teeth.