I liked to think of myself as a single minded, hard working guy. Put me up against just about anybody out there- in the real world, obviously, there wasn’t anyone else actually here- and I’d wipe the floor with them in any fair competition. If given enough time, I could put in the work and effort to make myself a mountain in just about any skill I needed to. By god’s fluffy beard, I’d done it before!

But everyone has their limits.

“I’m so fucking bored!”

Time had no meaning in a world like this. Maybe I’d been here for a week, doing nothing but training. Possibly a month.

“Would it kill you to give me a watch? Or some clothes? Please?”

I lay on the grass, heedless of the sensations that gave me. There was a time and place to whine about discomfort, and I was well beyond it. In fact, it was probably about a few broken bones ago.

“Ok then! I’m just gonna start my rebellious phase until I get what I want! Oh, and a chat log function! That way I don’t have to awkwardly run around to find where my pop up was. Those are my demands, so prepare for carnage.”

That being said, I really had no idea how strong I was. After getting my unarmed skill or whatever, I just went back to grinding my stats. Agility and strength were the same as usual, but making myself bulkier was really unpleasant. Punching trees looked way more fun in movies, and I quickly had to stop. The downside of my relentless exercise, as it turned out, was I became too strong. Hard to believe, I know, but my punches were becoming dangerous way faster than I was becoming tankier.

I learned this lesson the hard way when a punch broke my arm while cracking the tree trunk. In a couple hours, I’d probably be overwhelmed with pride and manly feelings of greatness when staring at the fruit of my labor, but for now…

“Fuck it hurts!”

So I was forced to do nothing but sprints until my arm recovered. It took an unknown amount of time, as all things did in this topsy turvy world.

Regardless, I was probably pretty strong if I could do that much damage, both to myself and the tree. So that really just meant that my bones needed to get stronger than a tree, or I needed to get way better at punching. Probably both. Sadly, the skill was improving way slower than my strength, so that seemed to be out the window at least for now.

This left me with limited options for consistent growth, and that caused me to make a questionable choice.

“God that hurts!”

I began to inflict myself with smaller injuries while exercising. Specifically, I’d break my nose after every set I did. Perhaps the isolation was getting me a little. Perhaps I was becoming a little bit more insane with every passing minute. Or maybe I just really needed some spice in my life.

“I’m adding something to my list of demands !” I screamed towards the sky. “I want an Eve to my Adam, damn it! If I’m gonna be naked in this paradise, then at least give me something more interesting to do!”

As usual, god was silent. The fucking coward. He was going to catch these hands the next time I saw him.

I kept pushing myself as hard as I could until it became difficult to break my nose, at which point I tried punching the tree again. With a deafening crack, the wood split clean down the center of the trunk as I continued to ignore the stupid pop ups. Maybe I should get an ad blocker as well.

Out of curiosity, I decided to see how my numbers were looking.

Lawrence Schlager

Classes

None

Ability Scores

Health: 379/390

Strength: 57

Agility: 63

Resilience: 39

???: ???

Passive Skills

Infinite Scaling

Unarmed Combat: 7

Active Skills

None

I didn’t even know skills could have numbers. That was good to know. Aside from that, I liked having an idea of what numbers would correspond to what kind of damage. Specifically, being able to correlate the number fifty seven to equal ‘bare handed tree trunk splitting’ would certainly help in the future. For instance, if a god was as tough as say ten trees, then I’d need over five hundred strength to crack them like a walnut.

The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

That feels like a lot.

Regardless, I finally had the numbers necessary to do some serious damage to god’s little paradise without crippling myself in the process. A toothy grin sprang to my face as I got to work. These trees had been good to me, but I needed to do something to get that old fuck’s attention. There was no way in hell that I could spend the rest of my life doing nothing but exercises and tree punching, and if the old bat wouldn’t take my threats seriously, well, we’d just have to make good on them.

My strikes would make a martial artist weep, but they did the job nonetheless. With ease, well not exactly, but with only a relatively small amount of sweat and effort, I was able to chop down my first tree with nothing but some well placed punches and, finally, a roundhouse kick. The last blow had been so powerful that it launched the tree a couple feet backwards after separating it. No wonder the Texas ranger was so feared.

I set my sights on the next target, one of very few left in the clearing, and began with a flurry of strikes. Once the groundwork was laid, a swift spin of my body brought my heel home on the damaged wood. It never stood a chance.

“Just a couple more to go.”

My last foes were no more a challenge than the first, falling swiftly to my powerful combo attack. I dispassionately ignored the annoying pop up windows, no doubt trying to distract me with single women in my area or secret techniques to make me larger. The fools, didn’t they know that anything could be trained with enough dedication? I had unlocked such powers years ago.

“Alright, god. I’m going a little crazy here and chopped down all your trees. Either make this place more interesting or let me out. Otherwise I’m going to get really desperate.”

I wasn’t sure how long I was supposed to wait after delivering yet another ultimatum to a divine being, but he didn’t give me a way to measure time in the first place. That being the case, it seemed fair to just immediately cause more chaos.

First I kicked up a crap ton of grass, and that was somewhat satisfying. At the very least, I had a nice dirt patch that I’d be able to do exercises on without worrying about the incessant tickling and prodding of the little green blades. With that done, I tried to swing the tree trunks into the invisible walls, but sadly I wasn’t quite strong enough yet. Trees, as it turned out, were heavy. It wasn’t clear just how much time I’d spent on each tree to knock them over, but I obviously hadn’t reached that much strength yet. But, as I’d previously discovered, my body made a pretty good substitute for thick wood.

I charged up to one of the walls and unleashed a flying kick, falling to the ground hard as I was rewarded with a dull thud and at least a sprain. Obviously it wasn’t going to be that easy.

After rolling around on the ground dramatically for a short while, I got back to my feet and prepared for my next onslaught. This wall couldn’t be indestructible, so I’d break it down eventually. Probably. But even with all of my strength, it wasn’t showing any signs of budging after dozens of strikes. I needed to punch harder, strike faster if I hoped to break my way out of this nightmare. Fortunately, I just gained access to some new exercises.

Trees were the optimal shape for a barbell, and so benching them came easy. Just kidding, it was an absolute bitch and went horribly. However, holding a tree over my head while doing squats was something else entirely. It went poorly at first and took a lot of preparation, but I eventually got the positioning and form correct.

For the first time in forever, I was actually able to feel myself get sore. The incredible feeling didn’t last long, my impressive stats and the lack of a survival mode made sure of that, but I enjoyed it while it lasted before grinding out some more sets. My agility had surpassed strength recently, something I never thought possible, but that was mainly due to how frequently I broke bones while punching. Those days were behind me, hopefully, so some intense strength training was back on the menu.

Of course, I still broke my nose in between sets. I really didn’t want to tear my arms off on accident or something.

It wasn’t until I could keep doing my squats endlessly that I stopped and moved onto something else. Had I been given a rope, or clothes, or anything, then I’d have tied a tree trunk around my waist and used that for resistance running, but no! God couldn’t be fucked to actually give me the things I’d need or want. Instead I had to settle for holding the tree in my arms while running around in circles.

That went about as well as could be expected. In other words, it was a disaster. I was strong enough to carry the log at this point with no problems, but the weight was too lopsided in the first place. Since the strength stat automatically balanced out my muscles, I wouldn’t end up with one scarily large arm while the other looked like a noodle. That was incredibly convenient and made it so it really didn’t matter how lopsided my workouts were so long as I was pushing for mass.

But speed was different. You couldn’t do sprints or even a jog if one side of your body weighed considerably more than the other. Hypothetically, if you were inclined to try, you’d just end up toppling over onto the ground. Repeatedly. Or tripping over the uneven terrain from when you destroyed a bunch of grass and knocked down trees. Or you might just clip the tree trunk on an invisible wall while trying to turn around, spinning out from under it and ending up in a one car pile up.

Hypothetically speaking of course. This left me with very few options for more efficient speed training and, eventually, I just decided to use my punching for the job.

With the force of a million squats, I swung my fist at the invisible wall. Skin parted easily beneath the force of the blow, and soon the muscles and bones followed suit. With my right arm compromised, I switched immediately to my left. The results were the same, forcing me to use my leg to follow up. In moments, I was left on the ground in agony, bones broken from my once again lopsided stats. Fortunately, my constantly rising resilience and growing comfort with pain seemed to temper the flood of protests from my body. As I blinked through the tears, I noticed yet another notice for me.

Skill unlocked: pain tolerance

Skill unlocked: masochist

Excuse me?

Pain tolerance: you have suffered tremendous pain and grown resistant to its effects. Your sensitivity to pain is reduced.

Masochist: for some reason, you just can’t seem to stop inflicting pain on yourself. Damage dealt to you by yourself is reduced.

“Oh I’m going to kill that fucker for this one.”

Red faced and full of fury, I got up ready for more.