Altair looked at the time and it was around 11 p.m., just about 3 hours had passed since he returned home from Hzat.
'According to the receptionist, the club should close around 9 p.m., so even in case they were held up by something, 1 hour after closing time should be enough time for everyone to have left right?'
He had been wanting to know, what each of his physical attributes represented. Unfortunately, things always came up and he ended up forgetting or postponing the matter.
Since he was free right now, and he already had a location in mind with all the necessary equipment, he decided it was time to get it done.
He changed his clothes, putting on a simple sports outfit. Following which, he checked the club's website, and it showed that they already closed. Still, to be safe, he teleported about a street away from the gym, in an alley he had spotted in the morning.
Looking around him and seeing that there was no one around, he started jogging in the direction of the club.
The roads looked empty, with barely anyone moving around and just one or two cars occasionally passing by. The air was cold at this time, and he felt a little chilly.
However, he ignored the chill, being just a little bothered before continuing his jogging towards the club.
He soon got to his destination, in front of the gym and looked towards its doors. He saw the doors closed and even spotted the orange-light [Closed] sign above the locked glass doors, behind which he could see nothing, due to the unknown dark material behind the glass doors.
Without stopping, he went past the club, continuing in his jogging until he was far enough from the club. He entered an empty alley and continued jogging while looking around and when he made his next turn, his body vanished.
He reappeared inside the club, and he stayed still as he glanced around with just his eyes, not moving his body.
Seeing that the place was completely dark and no lights turned on when he appeared, Altair let out a low sigh of relief. His vision took no time to accommodate to the darkness, doing so instantly as he appeared inside the place.
He opted to test his strength first.
'Let's see what having my Strength stat at 10 really means…'
With this in mind, Altair walked towards the bench press equipment, ready to evaluate his strength.
He took his time to adjust the bench according to his height as he had seen online before coming here. After doing so, he added weights to the bar.
Feeling confident about his strength, he started with the 10 kg disks, putting one on each side of the bar. He then laid on the bench, ready to test for 20 kg of benching.
The result was that, he was able to carry the 20 kg effortlessly. It was not so light that he felt like he was not carrying anything, but it was not heavy enough that he would be bothered even after doing several sets of bench press.
It did not feel challenging at all.
He sat the bar back in its rack and added the 20 kg plates to the bar, putting a 20 kg plate on each side of the bar.
He laid back down on the bench and tried lifting the now 60 kg bar. This time, he felt some resistance but he still felt it was not enough and thus opted to add more plates.
He added another 20 kg plate on each side of the bar, making the bar now 100 kg. He laid on the bench, tried lifting again, and only now felt that it was at the adequate weight.
He started doing a few reps and after about 30 reps, he racked the bar in its place. Then he started removing the weight plates intending to move towards the next equipment.
He went towards various strength training equipment in the gym to assess his strength.
'It seems I can carry about 100 kg with medium effort, my limit however seems to be around 200 kg.'
He tried to carry 200 kg and realized that he could not carry it more than once, it was extremely difficult, and he had to store the bar with its plates in the inventory to avoid it falling over his neck.
'That could have ended really bad. I guess there's a reason why there are people watching when lifting this thing.'
'Time to check my speed.' He thought, as he started moving towards the treadmill section of the gym.
He turned on the treadmill and steadily started adding the speed to see his limit.
He started in increments of 5 km/h and around 30 km/h, he felt himself getting to his limit, he felt like he was giving everything he had but still believed he could increase his speed. In this spirit, he started adding in increments of 1 km/h and reached a speed of 35 km/h.
When he reached this speed, Altair found himself sprinting just to avoid the rolling treadmill dragging him backwards.
With a digital stopwatch in his hand, he pressed the start button at this speed. He ran with everything he had and after some time, which was a long time for him, he felt himself getting more and more tired.
Since it became increasingly difficult to keep up with the treadmill's speed, he started reducing its speed and finally stepped down from it.
He was panting heavily, breathing in big heaves with his vision darkening and even his hearing fading for a short moment of a few seconds.
These few seconds of darkness in addition to the slight ring sound he heard while 'deaf' scared him greatly. He was very relieved when everything returned to normal.
He sat on the floor with his legs sprawled as he rested backwards on his palms; allowing himself to breathe to his body's satisfaction.
After some time, when his breathing calmed down a little, he had some leisure to let his thoughts wander.
'According to the various classifications I checked online, I fall into the advanced category for both my speed and strength… the only thing I'm not sure about is in what category my endurance falls into…'
'Well, at least I know what my Strength and Agility stats represent.'
'As far as senses go, the only change I noticed is in my sight. Not like I have a way of assessing my hearing or my touch anyway…'
'However, I wonder what the intelligence stat is supposed to represent.'
He could only assume that it represented magic, going by all the novels he'd read so far.
*Sigh*
Altair let out a low sigh and remained on the floor for some time more.
After he felt that he had rested enough, Altair stood up from his sitting position, and looked around the gym, checking to see if there was anything out of place.
'Plates, check; bars, check; treadmill, off; what else is there…? …nothing, time to go.'
He teleported out of the place and reappeared in his house.
'Why did I want to quantify my stats so much anyway? I can't remember…'
While he went to shower, he tried to remember the reason why he wanted to evaluate his stats.
Since in the end he could not remember why, he just decided to go to sleep.
.
When he woke up after some time, feeling completely rested, he looked at the time and it was just around 2 a.m. in the morning.
He immediately tried to access the System and seeing that it was still there, he showed subtle signs of relief, with his shoulders relaxing ever so slightly and his breathing calming down
He then looked at the Daily Quest tab, and sure enough, it was still there and had reset.
Although he was relieved to see the System was still there, the presence of the Daily Quest somewhat dampened his mood. Even though it was in his interest that it was there, he was certain that even with the rewards it granted, he would already have stopped doing it, if not for the penalty he feared.
Altair left the bed and started doing his Daily Quest, although it had not been long, he was slowly getting used to doing the exercises in the correct form. Because of this, it took him less time to complete the basic tasks of push-ups, sit-ups and squats.
As soon as he finished doing the exercises, he switched his clothes to put on his jogging outfit and teleported to the location of his running.
He also finished the run earlier than usual, thanks to doing runs of close to five minutes each time and taking less time, about six minutes, to recover his stamina than usual.
Altair then teleported back into his house and cleaned himself before moving towards the living room to watch the TV. Before turning the TV however, he suddenly thought about the first place he went to after obtaining his teleportation ability, Kyrnac.
. . .
. .
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10