Zack arrived at the gym like usual, greeted by Bruce at the reception desk in all his grinning hippie cheer, his long blonde hair swaying in the overhead fan’s breeze and his hawaiian shirt barely able to contain his abundant chest hair and buff body–Bruce’s signature look.

“Hey man, I heard that Grace is gonna hire you for yoga,” he said. “Welcome to the Tiki Shack family bro.” His voice had that typical overly friendly surfer drawl. “We should have some drinks to celebrate this fiiiine occasion.”

“That sounds good,” Zack replied.

“How about next weekend? You doin’ anything then?”

“I’m free on Saturday and Sunday,” he answered. If I survive the next dungeon run…

“Oh, hey Zack!” said a familiar voice from behind. It was Grace, back to her usual Tiki Shack staple of a sports bra and yoga pants, with a body shapely enough to generate 1.3 million followers on LIVETUBE…

She tapped Zack on the shoulder. “Are you ready for your first yoga class?”

He nodded, although he still felt a bit apprehensive about his adequacy in this whole affair. “I’m not really that flexible to be honest.” Even my status window thinks so. Zack remembered that out of all of his stats, his base dexterity sat at the lowest value at 4. Well, besides luck, but even the system didn’t count luck as a normal stat.

“That’s alright,” Grace laughed. “The key to yoga is to have an open mind, and the body will follow! And plus, instructors don’t have to be that flexible, you just have to know how to guide your students.”

“It’s all about the zen, dude,” Bruce said, drawing an imaginary rainbow with his hands. “You gotta get in the zone, and then you’ll nail it man.”

Zack chatted a bit longer with Bruce and Grace, having a good time. Meanwhile, students for the yoga class were walking in here and there, and Zack quickly noticed a pattern. All the students were female, to the point that he wondered if this even was a co-ed class, and all of them arrived at Tiki Shack by car, either their own personal chauffeur if they were mega rich or a Chootaxi if they were just well-off. Nobody walked like he did to get here.

He felt Grace’s elbow nudge him on the back as a freckled girl walked in.

“Psst. That’s the one that asked for your number,” Grace whispered. “Although… em… I’m not sure if she’s your type.”

Zack had to admit, Grace was right–she wasn’t his type. There wasn’t anything particularly offensive about her appearance, from her small frame to her rosy freckled cheeks and frizzy red hair, but he simply didn’t feel all too enthusiastic about her.

Then the door opened again.

The girl that walked in had an elegant air like a model, with a slender figure and dramatic long blonde hair. She wore the same workout clothing as everyone else, but something about the way she carried herself was different. Her face was obscured by a large pair of designer sunglasses, but even then he could tell that her features were like an advertising model’s, with a combination of soft lips and a well shaped face.

She looked good even compared to Grace, who Zack now knew was a bona fide internet celebrity.

But didn’t she look familiar? Zack thought about it for a moment, unsure, until the girl took off her sunglasses revealing her cat-like green eyes. He instantly recognized her. This was the same blonde girl that appeared in his stellar memory fragment speaking to his alternate self, the one who he saw around Vermillion Academy’s campus.

“Hi, how can we help you?” Grace asked the blonde girl. This was the first time anyone had seen her around here.

“I’d like to sign up for the kickboxing class,” she said. “Are there still spots available for that?”

Zack couldn’t help but stare at her, captivated not only by her model-like appearance but also the fact that he saw her in the dungeon. Just what the hell did the stellar fragment mean? It felt like an incredibly convoluted warning system, but a warning for what exactly?

“Yep, I just need your name.”

“Alexandrea von Hausen,” she replied coolly.

Zack’s ears nearly fell off when he heard that. The Von Hausen family were one of the seven founding families of Vermillion University, which meant that she was a direct lineage from one of the families currently attending school there.

She was practically royalty on campus, and that status would carry over after graduation as many of the descendants of the seven founding families entered the most prestigious lines in civil service, business, and aristocracy.

Enjoying the story? Show your support by reading it on the official site.

The current prime minister of the Federal States was a head of one of the seven families, and the current head of the National Auctionhouse, which hosted sales of priceless historical artefacts such as the Scepter of Nebuchadnezzar, was another head of one of the seven families.

Thankfully, Bruce and Grace appeared to not know this and treated her like normal. Then again, not many people knew about the existence of the seven families unless they were informed of it one way or another. Like, for example, the Vermillion Academy orientation speech that Zack sat through earlier in the school year.

Alexandrea finished the signup process with Grace, handing over a few documents, then departed from the gym. Zack thought about talking to her, but she had an air of unapproachability that prevented him from doing so until she had already turned her back to leave.

“Alright, it’s time for our class!” Grace said cheerfully, tugging Zack by the sleeve until he followed her around the corner to the yoga room, which was a dark room lit with tiki mask torches in a way that reminded him of the dungeon. He could see into the room without even entering it because it had been fitted with floor to ceiling glass, creating a rather unique ambience with the dancing torchlight and the shadows of the Wakiki gods.

There were already about two dozen people waiting inside, stretching on the matts despite the fact that it was actually quite dark.

“Hi everyone, this is Zack,” Grace said happily. “I thought it’d be nice to have a man attend our classes, so he’ll be joining us today, and will become a co-instructor with me in the future! He’ll serve as a source of extra motivation for all of us.”

The girls in the class looked at him with interest. Zack had thought that they wouldn’t be so receptive to the idea of having a guy in the class with them, but judging by the looks on their faces it was quite the opposite.

“Nice to meet you all,” he said, glancing around the room at all the aspiring female yogi.

They were all young, and almost every single one of them was attractive, which gave his current spotlight a degree of intimidation that he hadn’t felt even when he was up for bat in the eleventh inning of scrapball against little Timmy with the whole game and a potential ass whooping with a rusty bat on the line.

He was normally not shy around girls, especially now that he looked quite good himself after months of dedication and effort, but nothing in his life could prepare him for his current 1v24 predicament. This kind of situation called for an entirely different kind of skill set.

“Well I guess I have to work harder now,” one of the students said, laughing.

“I think this is a fantastic idea, teacher,” another said.

Feeling a bit self-conscious, Zack went and got a mat and then settled himself in at the back of the classroom. His rationale for setting up his mat in the back was that this way, he could blend in better and have his lack of flexibility be less distracting. But as he got down onto his mat and looked up, he realized the grave mistake that he made.

He accidentally parked himself in a spot with a back view of every single girl’s ass in the class doing various types of stretches. And unless his instinct was wrong, he was sure that some of them were actively flaunting themselves for him.

Thankfully, he didn’t need to dwell on that any further as Grace Kim got to the front of the classroom and stood by an intimidating looking Wakiki totem pole, resting her hand on it as she stretched her legs for a few seconds. Then, she smiled and gently tapped the top of the Wakiki totem pole which immediately lit up with a yellow glow, signaling the beginning of class.

“Today we will start with the downward facing dog pose,” she said, standing on her yoga mat.

And so the lesson began.

Less than twenty seconds into the downward facing dog pose, any thoughts about girls’ asses were gone from his mind. The pose was quite simple to get into, just forming a triangle with the ground by planting his hands in front and his feet in the back.

But holding the pose was an entirely different beast. Zack felt his calve and shoulder muscles stretched in ways that they had never been stretched before.

“Now, the warrior pose,” Grace dictated, transitioning seamlessly from the previous pose by raising both hands into the air and holding them together palm to palm. It was a powerful pose.

All the other students followed along with varying degrees of success, but Zack felt his hamstrings pulled to their limits as he attempted to replicate Grace.

They repeated the poses a few times, and then Grace introduced a new one. “Now let us do the upward facing dog.”

She laid flat on the mat, placing her arms as if she was going to do a push up, and then arched her back in an impossible curve, her head pointed up.

Zack tried to do the same, only to hear a loud crack in his back as he attempted it. He rolled over involuntarily, massaging his back before trying again.

“Do it slowly,” Grace said, calling out to him. “There is no rush. Feel the peace through your body, and the pose will open itself up to you.”

Easy for her to say when she was a skinny flexible girl. That’s definitely not me…

He tried the pose again, this time the crack less audible. He went slowly, and settled into the pose although it wasn’t nearly as arched as Grace’s was. A sense of satisfaction filled him.

Suddenly, a runic text box appeared in front of him, causing him to lurch back, startled. He wasn’t expecting one of these in the middle of a yoga class. Luckily, nobody noticed since he was in the back.

He was curious what it contained, so he opened the notification.

You have gained +1 dexterity.

Oh my god, you’ve got to be kidding me.

This had to be a joke. He’d sort of just assumed that his stats would only go up in the dungeon, so he hadn’t paid much attention to them ever since coming back to the surface. But now the system was telling him that he could actually train his stats on the surface, by doing… yoga??

It was time to take this yoga class a bit more seriously.