Body Modification Plan

That evening, the dinner table was shrouded in an unusual silence.

The TV in the living room blared with comedians' raucous laughter.

But my family around the table, my mother and my younger sister Chika, three years my junior, had their eyes nailed to what was in my hands, not the TV.

"… Hey, big brother."

"What?"

"Is that some kind of punishment game?"

Chika paused her chopsticks and pointed with a strained smile.

Piled in front of me was a mountain of boiled chicken breast (unseasoned), a forest of broccoli, and chunks of liver.

No white rice. No miso soup.

Only raw materials for building muscle and blood.

"It's not a punishment game. I calculated the necessary nutrients and this is what I got."

"Calculated… Are you trying to become a bodybuilder or something?"

"You need stamina for entrance exams."

"Liar. No exam student eats liver by the kilogram."

Chika sighed in exasperation.

Mom was looking at me with worried brows.

"Jin, are you pushing yourself? There's hamburg steak too, you know, instead of all that dry stuff."

"No, I don't need the fat… Thanks for the food."

I mercilessly shoveled the mountain of chicken breast into my mouth.

Tasteless. Like chewing rubber.

But to me now, meals weren't entertainment. They were refueling.

(With my current physical specs, I can't handle the strain of Body Strengthening.)

Last night, opening my mana circuits meant I could theoretically use Body Strengthening now.

But it was a double-edged sword.

What happens when you pump mana into pathetic muscles and force them to contract beyond their limits?

The answer is simple. The muscle fibers tear, and in the worst case, bones shatter.

It's like putting an F1 engine in a compact car. The chassis falls apart.

So I needed to rebuild.

Not just making them thicker. Transforming them into mana-infused muscles with high conductivity that can withstand instantaneous impacts.

For that, I needed three times the normal protein intake, plus iron, plus…

"Thanks for the meal."

I finished the mountain in five minutes and chugged a full bowl of protein shake, a special blend with trace mineral powder mixed in to help maso settle properly.

I could feel my stomach's surprise at the thick, slimy sensation sliding down my throat.

"Wait, you're done already? Did you even chew?"

"I'm heading out for a bit."

"Going out? It's already nine at night."

"Jogging. Need to clear my head."

Leaving my dumbfounded family behind, I left the house in my tracksuit.

Behind me, I heard Chika whisper, "He's definitely joined some weird cult or something."

She might not be entirely wrong.

After all, the doctrine I'd devoted myself to was called "Power."

 

*

 

A riverbank park a short distance from home.

With sparse streetlights, this place was deserted at night.

The perfect training ground.

"… Phew…"

I hung from the horizontal bar, repeating a unique breathing technique.

This wasn't normal pull-ups.

Dislocating every joint in my body, twisting like a snake, pulling myself up slowly. Extremely slowly.

The Dance of the Serpent Dragon.

A training method adopted by the knight order in my previous life, building inner muscles and mana circuits simultaneously.

From the outside, I probably looked like some weirdo writhing in agony. If someone reported me, I might become an urban legend: "The Horizontal Bar Monster."

(This is brutal…!)

Every muscle in my body screamed.

The physical strain of defying gravity, plus the heat of maso circulating through my body.

Both were shredding my pathetic muscle fibers one by one.

Into those destroyed areas, the protein and maso I had just consumed would infiltrate and rebuild them as stronger fibers.

Destruction and regeneration.

High-speed scrap and build.

Sweat poured off me like a waterfall, staining the ground.

I held on to my fading consciousness by willpower alone.

"… Not yet, ten more sets."

I dropped to the ground and got on all fours.

I focused my nerves down to each fingertip.

I concentrated maso into my fingertips, imagining my nails digging into the asphalt.

Scrape.

A harsh sound rang out, and faint white scratches appeared on the hard asphalt surface.

My nails cracked and blood seeped out.

But I grinned.

(It went through.)

Proof that mana had flowed to my nails, temporarily increasing their hardness.

At this rate, even without a weapon, I could at least gouge out a goblin's eyeball.

For the next two hours, I continued to torture myself.

Push-ups, squats, sprints, and meditation.

From the perspective of modern sports science, it was extremely inefficient. But for anti-monster combat, this was the shortest route.

I didn't need showy muscles. I needed only the practical strength of spring steel.

 

*

 

Around midnight, I returned home with unsteady steps.

My family was already asleep.

I showered off the muddy sweat and stood before the bathroom mirror.

"…"

The man in the mirror had dark circles under his eyes and a face of utter exhaustion.

But his physique was decisively different from yesterday.

Fat had melted away, and a thin armor of muscle was forming beneath the skin.

Of course, nothing like a bodybuilder's bulk.

But the line from shoulder to arm had taken on the tense quality of a sharp blade.

I lightly clenched my fist.

Pop. My joints cracked.

The speed of my grip. The speed of force transmission.

By just a fraction of a second, the neural lag had disappeared.

"… Not bad."

The vessel was coming along well.

Still far from S-rank, but at least I was breaking out of the "ordinary person" category.

I stared into my own eyes.

The light dwelling in those pupils was stronger and colder than before.

It was the gaze of a beast honed to hunt its prey.

"Just you wait, dungeons."

I muttered at the mirror while toweling off my wet hair.

Tomorrow there was P.E. class.

It would make a perfect testing ground to check the performance of this remade body.