13 Grinding

Irade

March 1, 4:30 pm, Beijing, China

The bell rang, signaling the end of class. Most students got up to head to their cram school, or stayed back to study more. Others slacked off, going to Internet Cafes, or smoking behind the building.

Normally, Irade was with the slackers, heading to the Internet Cafe and getting dinner before getting in a good session of gaming. Today, however, she had other things to do.

During class, she had looked over her stats. Her MP was completely gone, but it looked like it was coming back at a rate of 1 MP per minute. She also took the time to look over her Daily Task.

[Daily Tasks:]

[Run 10 km]

[100 Push Ups]

[1 hour dancing]

[1 hour homework/chess (non-cumulative)]

[???]

She had been baffled by this when she first opened it. What was this, the One P*nch Man training regime? Was this supposed to make her the strongest girl in the world or something? What kind of joke was this?

But then she realized that this HUD was basically a System. That meant that it would probably would actually help her become the strongest girl in the world, if she so desired.

'System name?' she thought at one point in during class, trying to see if that would give her a clue as to what her ultimate objective would be.

No response. Great. Why couldn't her system be more like the ones in webnovels, where they told her everything all at once. It'd make things so much easier.

That said, it wasn't like Irade was completey in the dark. Using deductive reasoning, she surmised that each activity probably had to do with one stat (except HP and MP). So maybe completing the Daily Task for that one stat would give her stat points in that category?

Only one way to find out.

Irade made her way to the track at the back of the school. Normally, one of the clubs would be running around the field at this time. Today, however, there was no one. Why? Irade didn't know, she didn't pay attention to any of these things. She slung her bag off and threw it in the corner, and began to run laps.

One lap was 400 metres, so 10 km would be...25 laps. Irade was already out of breath at the end of the first lap. She collapsed halfway through the third, breathing hard.

She lay there on the hard, weirdly elastic ground, looking up at the sky. Her vision was blurry with sweat and she could feel her heart beat drumming out of her ears. Maybe she should've done a bit more exercise in her everyday life before this. She spent most of her time behind a monitor, and so her physical health wasn't the greatest. Not that people would say anything; Irade was skinny enough for people to think she was healthy.

The fact of the matter was that she was not. She ate enough only to stay awake, and did not exercise unless it was in PE. As such, 10km would be a little beyond her right now.

She opened up her Daily Tasks once more, still laying down, just to see if there was anything else she could try. Maybe something easier would magically appear. However, as she looked at her options, she realized something.

[Run 10km: 1.2/10]

Huh. The number wasn't going down or disappearing. Which, now that Irade thought about it, made sense.

It was a 'Daily' Task. As long as she collectively ran 10km in one day, she should be fine. She didn't have to do it all at once like she had thought.

Feeling a little stupid, she got up, and started doing push ups.

She got to 10 before she realized that the counter wasn't moving up from 3. After a little more experimentation, she realized it was because she needed to do push ups until her chest touched the ground, while keeping her back straight the entire time.

"This is impossible," she moaned, going for one more push up before giving up. Maybe she just wasn't supposed to be a Strength based character. Then again, she was only assuming the tasks were in relation to stats. She could be making connections where there weren't any.

Again, only one way to find out.

With a groan, she got up, took a deep breath, and started running.

***

Irade

March 1, 6:33 pm, Beijing, China

Two hours later, Irade heard a light chime in her head.

DING!

Immediately, she collapsed, panting. She lay there, sweating and panting, face down on the floor for three full minutes before finding the strength to turn herself over and open her Menu.

[Daily Tasks:]

[Run 10km: 10/10 COMPLETE!]

[Rewards: 1 Speed stat point, 1 HP stat point, 500 Exp]

One point in Speed, and one in HP. On the one hand, Irade was pleased that her theory seemed to be correct: the Tasks all correlated with a Stat. However...all of that running...for one point in Speed and HP. Well, at least it would make doing this Daily Task go by faster. Hopefully

Irade checked her stats once more:

[HP: 10/11 (+1)]

[Strength: 4]

[Speed: 10 (+1)]

[Intelligence: 10 ]

[Agility: 5]

[MP: 20/20]

It looked like this was one of those grindy games that had a slow growth. If she wanted to get anywhere, she would need to complete her Daily Tasks every day. She slowly got up onto her knees, thinking all the while.

Push ups might take a while to get going, but as long as she did 100 per day, no matter when, she should be fine. She was too tired to start again now, so maybe she should try something else. That left homework and dancing.

Eugh. The thought of more physical activity, especially one that would need more leg movements made Irade feel physically sick. She slowly stood up, picking up her bag, legs shaky.

Right now, her legs were too tired to do anything, let alone dance. That said, she did have an idea on how to level that up without making a fool of herself. For now, maybe she should just go to the Internet Cafe and get a start on her homework. It was a Daily Task, after all.

From what it looked like, this Task would probably increase her Intelligence stat. But what would that mean? Would it make her smarter? Or did it have something to do with Mana? Would her MP increase, like HP did with Speed?

And what was with that final task?

[???]

Irade had a hunch that this final task would only reveal itself once she managed to complete all the Daily Tasks to unlock it. Though, there could be other ways...

Too many questions. The best way to find out was just to do and find out.

With that, she headed off to the Internet Cafe.

****

March 1, 10:35 am, London, England

I watched as Irade experimented with her Daily Tasks, doing homework and gaining one point in Int, then heading over to the arcade to play on the DDR machine for one hour. I was surprised and delighted that she had found a way to fulfill that vague request; I had put it in as a challenge for her. I wanted to see how far she would go to work the system. So far, she had been much more proactive than I expected, which was very good entertainment for me.

If I were to be completely honest for a moment, I don't think I have ever enjoyed being alive as much as I am enjoying it right now. Every day seems to be bursting with possibilities, and I just need to see them happen. As such, I have set up a permanent viewing station both in my office, and at home. Every day, I wake up, watch some of what is going on, teleport to work, watch more of that is going on for the whole day, then teleport back home. Oh, and occasionally talk on the phone to people about stuff, but that's not important. Just maintaining the company, that's all.

Ms. Kang had left a few hours ago, just as Irade was starting on her little training montage. She said that she would catch up on the viewing after she was done with work. She still had to monitor the other storylines after all, and check on the superhero storyline too. I let her know that I added an app on her phone and tablet that would allow her to watch live or any recordings any time she wished.

Still, things were going quite nicely for a first day for Irade. She had raised Speed, HP, Intelligence, and Agility. The only one left was Strength.

I had not expected her to struggle so much with what I considered such a simple task. It was only 100 push ups. I could do that in my sleep. Then I remembered that I was not a non-exercising teenage girl, and I should have probably considered that when coming up with these tasks.

Oh well.

I considered lowering the number, just to make it easier, but then I remembered she was one of the top PVP players in her game. A gamer like that would probably be insulted if the devs suddenly made something easier. From what I was seeing now, she seemed to be the type to grind out anything as long as she found it interesting. For now at least, she seemed to find this new gamer cheat interesting, so let's see how far she would take this.