Jung grunted as he tried to slip away from the massive 34-year-old training partner pinning him to the ground. Several months had passed, and despite growing his muscles a bit at 15, he was still severely at a disadvantage on almost every scale. The uncle is at least a foot taller than him, twice his weight, and a galaxy away in terms of experience.

The gym is teaching them grappling for the last week of November, and Jung Hee, who was developing an aptitude for the skill, received the most experienced ground pounder in the gym to help him not develop an ego. The dude was specifically told to make it hard on the young man and make him do extra work for every effort.

Jung's grunting and pained expression made the coaches congratulate themselves on a well-thought-out plan, and hopefully, even talented geniuses will think twice that learning scientific fighting is not that easy.

Unknown to them, however, is that Jung is delighted with this new situation. What the coaches didn't know is that Jung is seeing multiple bubbles floating away from him, with numbers like 20s and 30s XPs popping on top of his head. He'd never encountered this kind of experience gain before, and all this just because he was squaring off with someone twice his size.

Jung made another effort after getting his breath and placed his arm under his opponent's own arm before pushing. He failed to dislodge the bulky guy but successfully got himself in a half-guard position. The bastard gave no expression and patiently waited for himself to spend his energy before flipping him again on his back.

"Lock his arm! Lock his arm! Do not let him go around you by holding his knee or ankle. And cover your head for Christ’s sake. You are open for ear punches!"

Jung was already taught how to escape mounts like that, but the disorientation and the damn bulk of his opponent suffocating him made it really hard to think and not panic.

He knew he needed to lock one arm and the same leg on the side of the locked arm so that he could bridge him in the direction he wanted. But the occasional blows to his face forced him to push forward with his head deep into the man's chest in order to avoid or at least lessen the effect of the blows.

"You need to move, brat; you are wasting your energy!"

Well, that is easier said than done. Seonsaengnim is heavy, Jung Hee thought morosely.

Eventually, Jung was able to successfully brace his legs and then bridge his opponent to one side. Unfortunately, the older man was expecting that, and the moment Jung moved, his arm snaked under Jung's chin and started to choke him.

Jung struggled bravely, but the arm dug deeper, and eventually it was under his chin, and the lock was completed. He can do nothing but tap his surrender or let himself pass out due to the lack of oxygen.

He chooses the lack of oxygen.

Now that the ahjussi had his neck, he flipped over to his back with Jung facing the ceiling and waited for Jung to give up. To his surprise, the red-faced Jung tried to flip over backward one more time to escape his grip. He just had enough presence of mind to hook one of Jung's legs to stop him. Jung desperately tried to stomp on the other leg but to no avail.

"Tap, you idiot!" The ahjussi said in his growling voice. Years of smoking made his voice gravelly.

Jung continued to struggle until he weakened and then slowly blacked out. Immediately, the coach was there and the ahjussi released his grip when Jung went limp on top of him.

"Brat! Can you hear me?! Oi, Brat!" The coach said, slapping his cheeks in an ever-increasing manner.

"He didn't tap," the ahjussi explained as he moved away from the unconscious youngster. It was a needless explanation because everyone had seen it.

Jung suddenly inhaled a large gulp of air and then in the same motion grabbed the coach's balding head in a grappling manoeuvre. Everyone stopped him and extricated the coach.

"Easy there, tiger," said the coach in a lower voice. "The spar is over. You can relax."

"Did I win?" Jung asked, and even the Ahjussi opponent chuckled in one corner.

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A few trainees carried Jung behind the gym and to the waiting bed to recuperate. They placed a cold compress on his head and focused the battered fan in front of him, cooling him down and removing the sweat from his body.

30 minutes later, he was strong enough to sit up although he was still a bit groggy. His memory of the match returned to him, and he sighed. He placed the compress on the side of his neck, where his skin still felt warm, and he could relax his muscles.

Jung automatically analyzed the match and categorized everything he did wrong. He had to agree that he got his ass whooped. Even so, his mind immediately prepared possible counters and optional moves he would do in the future if he encountered the same situation again. The next thing he knew, he was already meditating and incorporating what he learned from that match. He gave himself exactly 30 minutes to learn what he could and then stopped for now. Not because he already learned what he can but because he has other things to do and other things have a priority hold on his precious time.

Even so, Jung had time to look at his status screen, and despite his loss, Jung was actually in a good mood since he upgraded several skills.

Congratulations! You have upgraded the general skill “Unarmed Combat” to level 3

Congratulations! You have upgraded the general skill “Acrobatics” to level 6.

Congratulations! You have upgraded the general skill "Breathing" to level 10.

Congratulations!

You have unlocked a hidden milestone!

You are the first awakened to have multiple Grade 1 upgraded skills reaching its maximum level (10)

Reward:

You received 1 Evolution Point.

You received 50 Skill Points.

Congratulations! You leveled up!

Current level: 14

-You received 5 Skill Points (SP)

Current XP: 141,002

Total XP needed for the next level up: 176,132

Jung wanted to do a pump fist, but his entire body still ached from his earlier effort. It has been a while since he leveled up and this was really a hard-fought effort on his part to get here. And then there is the unexpected bonus of a milestone. The system is demanding more and more skill points from him, and although he is getting some for completing personal quests, the number of skills available to him is like a skill point black hole that consumes them without fail.

So the sudden rainfall of 50 skill points is a blessing to him, although most of them are just going to be used to activate level 0 skills. He still fears what would happen to him if he somehow de-leveled a level-0 skill and the potential consequences of that to his overall health.

While the skill points are welcome, the evolution point is a bit more complicated. On one hand, it promised to help his body do certain more complicated things that are now bordering on superhuman. But then, he wasn’t sure he wanted to get that kind of... option for now since he is still overwhelmed with managing what skills he already has. Besides, new information from the help tab explained to him that every evolution point can hold up to five attribute points in every category. For now, his highest attribute point is only 2, since his main strategy right now is to balance out everything, both to explore what each attribute can do and because he has no idea where to specialize at the moment.

As he changed his sweat-soaked shirt with his spare one in the locker, Jung hee simultaneously added 1 skill point to the other skills that are still level 0. As he did so, Jung couldn’t help but resent some of the skills he is activating since many of them feels either useless or redundant. For example, his first max skill is called “Literacy,” which both help him retain and understand what he is reading as well as increase his reading speed. And yet, there is still another skill simply called “Reading.” As best he could understand, it helps him read even faster than what Literacy gives him. The bad news is that it does not stack with Literacy and so the added skill conflicts with certain other skills. Right now, literacy is still a level 10 skill and the bonus to reading speed is still stronger than the skill “reading” so the system uses that. But when he increases “Reading” to a higher level, it will eventually replace literacy in counting his reading speed. That would mean the literacy bonus for reading speed is rendered moot.

Then there is sewing, another one for patching, and then a completely different skill called stitching. It was all mind-boggling to Jung’s young mind. Why would he need all that skill when the magic that governs the system should overlap those skills? But they didn’t. And every one of those skills needed to be given a point

So with a heavy heart, he placed points on skills like "Public Speaking" to better articulate himself to a large crowd, backpacking to increase what he could stuff inside his bag and to carry it easier, and the skill "Marching" which apparently, is different from walking, jogging and running skills that he already has. There is a logging skill so he can grab more wood that is easy to burn and last longer, and then there is the stitching skill which is also different from sewing.

One of his favorites is the whole range of sculpting skills like wood sculpting, stone sculpting, clay sculpting, Sand sculpting, Ice sculpting, and then, to his annoyance, a skill called general sculpting. It is like the system is trying really hard to annoy him. There is a skill called exploring that increases his stamina when moving in areas he doesn’t know yet, and then there is another skill called traveling that also takes less stamina when he is going to a place he already explored. Lastly, since he is in the gym, he has also activated or upgraded skills like dodging, tumbling, blocking, deflecting, and combat grabbing.

Jung received 50 skill points for reaching a milestone, 5 points for leveling up to 17, and 3 points for completing various personal quests over the course of several weeks. This resulted in 58 skill points. Jung blew it all in less than 15 minutes. He spent 26 points to activate level 0 skills and 32 points to boost level 1 skills.

Jung reread his screen, and despite his misgivings in activating useless skills, Jung at least felt a certain relief that now there was no level 0 left in his skill set. After one final assurance to himself that he did the right thing, he closed both his character screen and his locker before walking out of the back room and returning to the practice mat of the gym.

Suddenly, he was ready for another round as he entered the mat with a dorky smile on his face.

"Ah, hell no!!" old man Dongyun, the gym owner, shouted at the boy.