Nash stared at the glowing screen, jaw slightly open, lips dry.
He didn't move. Didn't blink.
The numbers. The stats. The categories. All of it.
It was like reading a report card for his entire existence, not just his game, but his body, his presence, his… dick.
His eyes tracked the line again.
Length: 10.9 cm (Below average)
Appeal Rating: ★☆☆☆☆
He winced. Physically winced. His shoulders tensed, his mouth curled like the taste of it had hit his tongue.
"Oh my God," he muttered under his breath.
It wasn't just humiliating. It was accurate. Disturbingly accurate. The late-game burnout, the clumsy footwork, the early finishes in bed... or the almosts in bed, when he "trained", to be more honest. And the way people forgot him in a room even when he spoke? That too.
He rubbed his hands through his hair, staring at the title.
[Shrimp Tier]
"Okay," he whispered. "Okay… this is either the cruelest dream I've ever had, or…"
He looked around the room again. Nothing else had changed. The walls were the same. The old fan clicked overhead.
But the interface still hovered in front of him, real and responsive, reacting to his thoughts and gaze.
Where did this even come from?
The last thing he remembered clearly was blacking out after that hellish locker room breakdown. Then… the voice. That cosmic voice. The system. The...
His thoughts were cut off by a new message blinking in the corner of his vision:
[NEW FEATURE UNLOCKED: SPECIAL QUESTS]
Then another blinked under it:
[NEW FEATURE UNLOCKED: DAILY QUESTS]
His brow furrowed. "Wait, quests?"
He instinctively focused on the second one, daily quests, and the system reacted instantly.
[DAILY QUESTS – ACTIVE]
Complete all quests before 00:00 to earn Daily Stat Points. Skipped days result in stagnation.
→ BASKETBALL CATEGORY: Ball Control & Precision
(Reward: +2 PP upon completion)
• 150 wall passes (alternating left/right hand, at game speed)
• 50 dribble cone-weaves (stationary or moving)
• 30 fake-and-pass drills (must simulate real movement)
Optional Bonus (+1 PP): Record and review your performance for self-analysis.
→ SEDUCTION CATEGORY: Social Edge & Arousal Control
(Reward: +2 SP upon completion)
• Initiate 3 flirtatious interactions (eye contact, smile, confident openers)
• Successfully tease or compliment 2 individuals and receive a positive reaction
• Make at least 1 person blush, become flustered, or flirty (genuine reaction required)
Optional Bonus (+1 SP): Physical contact during teasing (touch hand, shoulder, waist)
→ BODY CATEGORY: Strength & Discipline Grind
(Reward: +2 BP upon completion)
• 100 push-ups (can be split into sets)
• 100 squats (bodyweight)
• 3 minutes total plank time (in sets if needed)
• 1 minute cold water face rinse or cold shower exposure
Optional Bonus (+1 BP): Perform all sets with no rest longer than 1 minute between exercises.
[NOTE:] Quests reset every 24 hours. Progress is tracked automatically. Skipping quests will slow evolution speed. No shortcuts.
SCALING RULE:
1x Completion = Base reward (+2 points)
2x Completion (same day) = +4 total points
3x Completion = +5 total points (diminished gain)
4x or more = +5 max total points (hard cap)
Nash leaned in, eyes darting over each line of text like they might vanish if he blinked too fast.
His mouth moved silently as he read. Then re-read. And again.
Three quests. Each tied to something real. Tangible.
His finger hovered in the air as if he could touch the words.
"Basketball… sex… body," he whispered, voice dry.
He sat back slowly, like he didn't trust the chair to hold the weight of what this meant.
His heart was pounding. Not from fear. From something closer to awe.
This can't be real.
He rubbed his eyes once. Twice. The glowing interface remained.
He looked at the breakdown again.
+2 PP
+2 SP
+2 BP
His lips parted slightly.
"...Points. Actual points. So... I can just use them to get better? Just for doing drills... Basketball... It was what Breakball was called before. I could really become better like this? Just for working out."
He let out a breath he didn't know he'd been holding. It shook on the way out.
"This is..." He trailed off. Shook his head. Laughed once under his breath, but it wasn't humor. It was a mix of disbelief, spiraling into the edge of hope.
He pressed his palms into his thighs, grounding himself.
What the hell... Something is giving me a way out.No more waiting for luck. No more hoping someone sees me. No more crawling...
He swallowed hard.
"If this is real…"
But it was so good that it felt just too good to be true.
"What if it's not?" he said, louder now. "What if I finally snapped?"
He stood up, pacing a few steps, hands running through his dark hair.
"What if Zayela walks in and sees me talking to glowing bullshit? She's working double shifts while I'm hallucinating a magic Breakball-sex system in my bedroom."
His hands trembled.
But then he looked back at the quest list. Still floating. Still pulsing softly like a heart monitor.
Flirt with three girls. Run dribble drills. Do pushups.
Earn points. Change your life.
He stared at it.
It was insane.
It was absurd.
And yet... it made sense.
Everything he'd lacked. Everything he needed to grow. Codified and structured, given to him with rules and rewards.
He looked at his hands again.
They still felt strange. Charged. Like they didn't belong to the same failure that got kicked off his team yesterday.
"…It's too perfect," he said quietly.
But the system didn't blink. Didn't lie. It just waited.
"...I have to try," he muttered. "Just once. One quest."
His jaw set. His eyes narrowed.
"If this is real… If this is real, I need to see it."
Nash stood up from his bed and stepped out of the bedroom.
The rest of the apartment wasn't any better. Just one tight room that doubled as a kitchen, dining space, and Zayela's workstation when she wasn't on shift.
The walls were exposed concrete, patched with thermal tape. A broken fan ticked overhead.
He moved to the counter, two crates stacked under a cracked slab of synthstone, and grabbed a dented tin from the shelf.
Inside was the usual: dry bars, hard rolls, and off-brand nutri-paste in foil packs.
He peeled open a protein bar, took a bite, and chewed without tasting. It was gritty, chemical, borderline inedible.
On the table, two chairs sat unevenly on the crooked floor, one of them propped up with a book.
Their whole home could fit in one locker room shower stall.
He swallowed hard, washed it down with a sip of old water from a jug, and let out a slow breath.
No comfort. No excuses.
Today, he had a system to test.
The slums of the Underground stretched endlessly above his head, metal beams like ribs of a buried god.
No sunlight ever reached this deep. The only sky was concrete and rusted pipes, laced with steam vents and dim industrial lights flickering in a dirty orange haze.
But this wasn't just some rotted hellhole.
Down here, life moved. Crowds flowed through wide pedestrian belts, neon signs buzzed over food carts and repair booths, kids laughed as they raced to cramped schools wedged between steel pillars, and freight trains roared across suspended rails overhead.
The air smelled like oil, fried protein, and ambition.
It wasn't beautiful, but it lived.
And in a patch of Sector 9A, wedged between a busted vending depot and an old training dome, Nash found his place for the day: an underground park.
Rusty benches, cracked pavement, a few warped trees barely hanging on under synthetic lights. It was quiet, and more importantly, empty.
The perfect place for the Body Quest.
• 100 pushups
• 100 squats
• 3-minute total plank
+2 BP upon completion
Bonus: +1 BP if all completed with less than 1 min rest between sets
He took off his jacket, cracked his knuckles, and dropped to the ground.
First Set: Pushups.
The first twenty weren't bad. He was light, decently built.
But by the time he hit thirty, his triceps were screaming. His breath came ragged. Forty-five and his arms trembled under him. Fifty... and he collapsed, face hitting the ground with a grunt.
He spit onto the pavement.
"Fuck…"
He rolled over, breathing hard, shirt sticking to his back.
Ten minutes later, he pushed again. Second set. Slower. Every push like lifting a steel slab off his chest. His lungs clawed for air in the thick, recycled atmosphere. No breeze, no comfort.
Squats were worse.
His legs burned by thirty. By seventy, they buckled. His thighs felt like fire. He leaned against a bench to keep from vomiting.
He couldn't rest for less than a minute between sets; he needed more. He failed the bonus early. That dream of +1 BP vanished with the acid in his throat.
Still, he kept going. One set. Another. Then planks.
He thought three minutes would be easy.
It wasn't.
By the second set, his core quivered, back aching. Sweat dripped onto the cracked cement. He clenched his teeth so hard it felt like his jaw would snap.
But after hours, with several breaks, wheezing, shaking, on the edge of puking his guts out... he finished.
He crawled to the edge of the park where a runoff stream, half-filtered river water, trickled through a cement channel.
He dipped both hands in, then splashed the cold water onto his face.
He rose slowly, shoulders slumped, face drenched, breathing like he'd just clawed out of a grave.
His voice rasped.
"This… is fucking stupid."
His chest rose and fell, sweat still running down the lines of his neck. His clothes clung to him like a second skin.
"Every day? I have to do this every goddamn day?"
He sat on the ground with a grunt, legs stretched out in front of him, letting the soreness settle like poison in his joints.
The adrenaline was gone. All that remained was ache, doubt, and grime.
"And what if this is bullshit?" he thought. "No guarantee, no shortcut… Just sweat and pain."
Then... chime.
A soft, clear sound rang in his ears like a bell in a dream.
[DAILY QUEST COMPLETED — BODY CATEGORY]
+2 BP earned
Progress logged
"Discipline is the beginning of transformation."
For a few seconds, Nash didn't breathe. Didn't blink. He stared, wide-eyed, sweat still dripping from his jaw onto the concrete.
His vision shifted, just slightly, and the system's main interface floated back into view.
He blinked once. Slowly.
BP: 2
There it was. No trick. No lag. No delay. Two real, earned points.
He felt his skin go cold.
This wasn't a hallucination. Not some stress-induced fantasy.
It was real.
He tilted his head back and let out a long, trembling breath, as if everything inside him was being exhaled at once, fear, doubt, all of it.
It works.
The words bounced through his brain like bullets.
It fucking works.
He started laughing. Quiet at first. A rasp from his raw throat. But it grew. Louder. Shakier. Desperate and alive and raw.
Not joy, something deeper. Like a man seeing a door open where there was once just concrete.
He had a way out. A path up.
No more begging. No more licking crumbs off the floor while Roam and his lapdogs laughed from their thrones.
No more pretending strategy made up for being small, quiet, and forgettable.
He would grow. He would dominate.
He would evolve.
And this time?
The world would remember his name.
Fame, power, women, legend.
All of it, his for the taking.