I opened my eyes, staring blankly at the ceiling.
I was completely, utterly awake. The adrenaline from waking Alex up and the lingering stress of my bizarre gladiator dream had completely severed my connection to sleep. I rolled over and looked at the red digital numbers on my nightstand.
4:00 AM.
I let out a heavy sigh. Morning football practice didn't start until 7:00 AM. I had over two hours of dead time, and my brain was running at full capacity.
What am I supposed to do now? I thought, staring into the dark room.
As I lay there, my hands naturally rested on my stomach. The soft, squishy texture under my t-shirt instantly reminded me of the harsh reality check I had received just a few hours prior.
"Kid, you need to lose weight. These fats are heavy to carry." Coach Miller's gruff words echoed clearly in my mind. He was absolutely right. My grand master plan was to secure the defender position so I could be as lazy as possible during actual games. But to get that position, I had to survive the brutal, daily conditioning drills without passing out in front of the entire middle school.
I needed to upgrade this physical vessel. And I needed to do it fast.
I can't just rely on running laps at practice, I thought deeply, my college-educated brain analyzing the problem like an RPG stat sheet. Running builds cardiovascular endurance and trims fat, but it doesn't build raw explosive power. If I want to kick a football fifty yards, or even just survive getting tackled by a lineman, I need upper body strength and core stability.
I threw the blanket off my legs, a sudden spark of determination igniting in my chest.
Alright. Let's start the grind.
I stood up from the bed. The floor of my room was cluttered with dirty laundry, comic books, and a rogue skateboard. I spent the next two minutes quietly pushing everything to the edges of the room, clearing a large, open space on the soft carpet right in the center.
I was going to start with the most fundamental, effective bodyweight exercise known to mankind: the push-up. It worked the chest, the triceps, the shoulders, and the core simultaneously. It was the perfect compound movement for a beginner.
"How hard can it be?" I muttered to myself. In my past life, I wasn't a bodybuilder, but I could casually knock out thirty push-ups without breaking a sweat.
I got down on the floor. I placed my hands flat against the carpet, positioning them slightly wider than shoulder-width apart. I extended my legs back, balancing on the balls of my feet, and tightened my core, ensuring my back was completely straight like a plank of wood. My nineteen-year-old brain knew the exact, perfect biomechanical form required.
Okay. Lower the body slowly. Inhale on the way down.
I bent my elbows, slowly lowering my chest toward the carpet.
Instantly, every single muscle fiber in my arms began to scream in pure, unadulterated agony. My triceps felt like they were vibrating. My core trembled violently. The thirteen-year-old arms supporting my body weight simply did not have the structural integrity to handle the load.
When I was halfway down, my arms completely buckled.
THUD.
I face-planted straight into the carpet, my nose squishing against the fibers. A cloud of microscopic dust puffed up into my face.
"Ugh," I groaned, spitting out a fuzzball. "Okay. Agility is zero. Strength is zero. I am literally a Level One Slime."
I rolled over onto my back, panting slightly just from that single, failed attempt. The disconnect between my mind and my body was incredibly frustrating. My brain was sending the signal to push, but my muscles were responding with error 404: strength not found.
But I wasn't a quitter. If I wanted to be a lazy king in the future, I had to suffer like a peasant today.
I rolled back over and got into position again. Hands flat. Back straight. Core tight.
Down...
My arms shook violently, vibrating like a washing machine on the spin cycle. I got an inch lower than last time before the muscles completely gave out again.
THUD.
"Damn it," I hissed, pushing myself up onto my knees.
I tried again. THUD. And again. THUD.
For the next twenty minutes, my bedroom turned into a silent theater of profound physical failure. Every time I lowered myself, gravity grabbed hold of me like a heavy magnet and slammed me into the floor. It happened five times. Seven times. Nine times.
By the tenth attempt, my arms were burning so badly it felt like battery acid was flowing through my veins. I lay on the floor, my chest heaving, staring at the carpet fibers.
Think, Luke, think, I motivated myself, channeling my inner Webnovel protagonist. You can't brute-force this. You need to build the neural pathways first. Drop the ego.
Instead of extending my legs fully, I adjusted my form. I dropped to my knees, taking a significant portion of my body weight off my arms. It was a regression—a 'knee push-up'.
I placed my hands down again. I took a deep, focused breath in through my nose.
Lower.
I went down. My arms shook, but they didn't buckle. My chest hovered exactly one inch above the carpet.
Now, push! Exhale!
I gritted my teeth, visualizing the muscle fibers contracting. I pushed against the floor with every ounce of willpower I possessed in my soul. It was agonizingly slow. My face turned bright red. The veins in my neck bulged. But centimeter by centimeter, my arms began to straighten.
I locked my elbows out at the top.
I had done it. I had completed exactly one, shallow, heavily modified push-up.
A massive, overwhelming rush of dopamine flooded my brain. It was the exact same feeling as defeating a ridiculously hard boss in a video game after wiping twenty times. It wasn't pretty, and it wasn't a full push-up, but it was progress.
"Yeah," I whispered into the dark room, a crazed, exhausted grin spreading across my sweaty face. "Level up."
That single success was all the motivation I needed. I spent the next eighty-five minutes locked in a grueling, silent war against my own body. I did sets of knee push-ups until I collapsed, rested for two minutes, and then forced myself to do it again. I focused entirely on my breathing, mastering the rhythm of my own physical exertion.
By the time the digital clock on my nightstand flashed 5:50 AM, I was completely and utterly destroyed.
I lay flat on my back in the center of the room, my arms and legs splayed out like a dead starfish. My t-shirt was completely drenched in sweat, sticking uncomfortably to my chest. My lungs were burning, pulling in deep, greedy gasps of air. I felt like a dead-beat dog that had just run a marathon.
But a victorious smile was plastered on my face.
Before I collapsed, I had managed to transition back to the standard form—legs fully extended. And I had successfully completed three, perfectly formed, continuous push-ups.
Three. It sounded like a pathetic number, but to me, it was a monumental triumph. I had established a baseline. The foundation was set.
I slowly turned my head toward the window. The sky outside was just beginning to shift from pitch black to a deep orange. The sun is slowly coming up.
In exactly one hour, I had to be at the school for Coach Miller's morning practice. My muscles were already completely fatigued, and I was about to subject them to an hour of grueling football drills. Today was going to be absolute hell on earth.
"Well," I mumbled tiredly to the ceiling, forcing my trembling arms to push myself off the floor. "Time to go for brush. The lazy king needs to get to work."