Chapter 49
Ryker
Once everyone saw my reaction to the beverage, they cheerfully finished theirs, and we strolled over to the gym area. I engaged in some small talk with Luke regarding his daily mustache hair care routine to help keep my mind off the pain and suffering I was sure to encounter in our second round of gym time. Then the notification forced its way into my vision.
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*NOTIFICATION*
1530-2000 Gym
Proceed to the gym area for training.
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Red appeared and gave Amy and the guys their marching orders, then turned to me with a big smile and said, “Alright pops, for this session, we will be seeing how your unique situation handles running.”
I blinked twice with a dumbfounded look on my face and said, “Really? You're not going to roast me again?”
Red rolled her eyes, let out a put-out sigh, and then said, “No. I can just set you on fire and hope you will become tough enough to survive your way to the top of the Pyramid. We have to run more tests and find the optimal way of giving you the tools you need to overcome anything thrown your way. So for this gym session, I will set a running pace for you, and you have to maintain it for the duration, or I'll burn you.”
I glanced up at my clock and wept inwardly. She was saying I had to run at her pace for 4 hours. I tried not to look as grim as I felt and started stretching to prepare myself for the run when I heard Red say, “Get ready! Get Set! GO!” and her tiny form took off into a sprint towards the perimeter of the simulation. I just stood there staring when I felt a hot sensation start licking at the back of my calves. I jumped into the air like I had been bitten by something and turned around to find a gout of flame bellowing out of the ground, aimed directly at me.
I took the hint and set off into a sprint. I had never been a big runner in my old life. Being as large as I was always made it tough for me to keep up with the skinny guys, and I could never maintain a pace for long. I pumped my arms and legs as I pushed myself and finally started to gain on the diminutive demonic form. As I got settled into the pace Red was setting, I was nearly running as fast as I could and knew I only had a minute longer at most before I would be totally gassed.
Red lifted her feet and crossed her legs, then proceeded to float parallel to me and snapped her fingers. Next thing I knew, a fist-sized metallic orb floated down from above me and disappeared from my sight. I glanced around trying to find the orb and inadvertently slowed slightly and was rewarded with a blast of fire right to the poop shoot. I frantically flailed my arms and legs to escape the fire. Once I had regained my pace, I glanced over at Red and huffed, “Red, I know I am stronger now, but I can't keep this pace. My body won't hold up.”
She grinned and responded, “I wouldn't be so sure about that. My mother and I have hypothesized that her nanobots can handle your metabolic fatigue by removing the lactic acid from your muscles as you exercise and facilitate faster energy allocation and cellular waste disposal. Meanwhile, your vitality and healing ability will work to counteract your body's mechanical strain and heal any damage you sustain. If we are correct in our calculations, you can maintain this pace until you hit a resource bottleneck.”
As I continued to run, I really let Red's words sink in and concentrated on how my body really felt. I had been so wrapped up in the panic of not getting burned I hadn't even thought about how I was actually doing at this pace. I felt the strain of pumping my legs, but after each stride, I felt a subtle cooling sensation run down the length of my leg. I wasn't getting any more tired than I was! I jumped over a bush and landed gracefully and peeked up at my stamina and mana, and could see them both slowly inching down, but nowhere near as fast as I had assumed they would.
The feeling of running without tiring was a weird feeling. I was constantly bouncing between disbelief and awe of what I now was capable of. After convincing myself I wasn't dreaming, I decided to throw caution to the wind and see just what my body's limitations were. I lowered my head and pushed off as hard as I could. The wind on my face intensified, and my surroundings began to fly by. I was putting every ounce of strength I could into pumping my arms and legs harder and harder. I felt sharp pains as my muscles strained and ultimately tore under the unreasonable stress I thrust upon them. I ignored the pain and pushed harder. As the muscles broke, I could feel a slight weakness in the affected body part, but with a small expenditure of my mana pool, I felt the pain fade and strength rush back into the area even stronger than before.
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I ran like that for what felt like a lifetime. After a while, I became consumed by the act. The only thing that mattered was where my next footfall would land. I started experimenting to see where my strength and agility could take me. Any obstacle I could find I would attempt to leap over it at a full gallop. I had approached the corner of the compound wall, and instead of cutting the corner, I decided to widen out the left turn. Just as I was making my left, I hopped into the air leading with my feet towards the wall and kept running along its surface for a couple of steps before jumping off and continuing my laps. From that day on, if I was going somewhere, I was running!
I should have known that it wouldn't last forever, but the running high from hell just had too strong a hold over me, and when I ran out of gas, I was brought hurtling back to earth face first. I was running full tilt towards a 6-foot tall wooden wall I had cleared several times, and just as I coiled my legs under me to jump, I felt what I can only describe as a full-body cramp hit me from the neck down. Instead of leaping over the wall, I found myself crashing through it head first, then skidding to a painful stop several feet behind it covered by what was left of the structure.
Red floated up to my prone form, holding a flamethrower against her shoulder, and said, “Hey! What do you think you're doing laying around like that?”
I groaned and tried to spit out the debris that I had collected on my way to the ground but found that no matter how much I spit, I couldn't clear my mouth. I turned and looked up at Red and mumbled, “Wed. I doe know hut happened. Muh boby wone moo.”
Red cocked her head to the side, and when I turned around completely, she leaned back and took in a sharp sympathetic breath through gritted teeth and said, “Damnnnn that's gnarly Dad. You should really pull that out before it gets infected.”
I flopped over on my back and explored my mouth with my tongue and found something sharp. Red, still recoiling, made a flicking hand gesture, and a mirror floated above my face, and I saw the problem. I had a 9-inch long splinter of wood the width of my thumb impaled through my right cheek and coming out the left side. I jerked my head towards the gym area and said, “Hit he yus ew ewlp.” Thankfully Ruby’s head materialized next to Red and leaned in and whispered what I had meant to say. “Get the guys to help.” Then kissed Red on the forehead and turned to blow me a kiss and blanched at my appearance then sheepishly faded away.
I lay there waiting for the others to arrive, and Red reappeared and said, “The others are on their way. I am sure you are wondering what happened to you. The answer is simple. Like I told you earlier, we hypothesized that as long as you had the resources you could ignore your limitations and run indefinitely. Well, turns out we were right. You ran as fast as you possibly could for 95 minutes straight without touching the brakes once. You burned a massive amount of calories, but a big guy like you had plenty packed away. The real issue was you used all of your body's stamina. Without it, you were 100% dependent on your mana to prop you up through your exercises and when it dried up, you had to pay the price of bottoming out your stamina pool all at once. Once we fill you back up with calories, proteins, electrolytes, vitamins, and minerals again, you should be able to recover your stamina and get back to the old grindstone.”
I decided to use this time of inactivity wisely and closed my eyes to meditate on the inner workings of my body's energy ecosystem when I heard three sets of feet come running. I turned towards the noise and was able to catch one last glimpse of the trio anxiously approaching my body before they noticed my injury and stopped. Luke took one more halting step in my direction then his eyes rolled into the back of his head, and he face-planted two feet from where I laid. Jeremiah looked over at Amy and gave her a proud look then said, “Good job Amy. I thought you were going to…” Jeremiah was interrupted by Amy pushing off of the man and retreated to a set of bushes while she was desperately cupping her mouth in a vein attempt to hold in the contents of her stomach.
Jeremiah sighed and with a resigned look walked over and grabbed a hold of the splinter poking out of the left side of my face then braced his knee against my temple and counted down. “5, 4…” Then he pushed down with his knee as he yanked on the shard of wood. With a bit more prying, he was finally able to retrieve the broken piece and just barely fracture my skull in the process.
I lay there with the feeling of a breeze on my tongue and a brand new headache for my trouble, when Red showed up with a floating disk in tow. The disk had a strange looking big gulp balanced on top of it, and Red gave Jeremiah a thumbs up then said, “Great work! Now if you would be so kind as to give this to Ryker since he currently is unable to use his arms I would really appreciate it.”
Jeremiah looked over at the cup and smiled wryly. He used a sickeningly sweet baby voice and said, “Does wittle Wyker want his baba?” And reached up and grabbed the cup with a rubber nipple affixed to its top.
Staring daggers at Red and Jeremiah I growled out, “Next time just let me die! You sick bastards are getting way too much joy out of my misfortune. Now gimme that bottle before I keel over already!”