Chapter 29. Peak Condition

I’m here again. Early morning, a private gym flooded with the cold light of fluorescent lamps. I stand in the center of the room, surrounded by machines, and once again start the familiar process.

I simply skip time, dropping into hyperfocus. To anyone else I would look like a blurred smear darting wildly between equipment, but for me it’s just a brief flash that instantly yields a finished result.

However, I began to notice oddities. Back when my Strength hit 10, the [Trainer] almost stopped pushing me through strength routines. The automation vanished. Now I approached the barbell only once a week, just for formality, without adding a single pound to my usual weight. I didn’t panic, I just observed, understanding that my body had run into some invisible ceiling. Besides, I suddenly had almost two extra hours of free time, which I gladly spent studying theory.

After Strength, Agility also reached ten. The very next morning I discovered that in hyperfocus mode I no longer spun across the mats or pushed my stretching until my joints cracked. Jumps, balance, running, all of it faded into the background. The system simply stopped considering it necessary. I held back and waited, focusing all remaining resources on the final bastion, Endurance. Without the ability to fast forward time, I would probably have gone insane from the monotony of endless cardio, but now I felt only a cold satisfaction as my lungs turned into bellows and my heart into a tireless pump.

And today, that marathon finally came to an end.

Bright blue lines flashed before my eyes, sending a shiver down my spine:

[Endurance +1]

[All physical parameters of the familiar have reached peak values for its race. Further development through training is impossible]

[To continue development, the familiar must undergo evolution]

I froze, breathing heavily in the cool air of the gym. A ringing silence filled the room, broken only by the hum of ventilation. I looked into the mirror, studying my reflection. My body looked perfect, every muscle fiber defined as if carved from marble by a sculptor. But the system messages faded, and no new ones appeared.

“Evolution?” The word tolled in my head like a heavy bell.

And how exactly am I supposed to go through that? Search for a radiation zone and hope for a useful mutation? Or maybe wait for a meteorite to fall and take a bite out of it? Everything I knew from science fiction suggested either absurd or outright suicidal options.

I was critically lacking information, and the System kept its mocking silence. What even stood behind that term? What if after this evolution I turned into some multi-eyed monstrosity fit only for a freak show? To hell with that. Even if my power increased tenfold, I wasn’t willing to sacrifice my human appearance.

Shaking my head in irritation, I decided to set those thoughts aside. After all, the draft was coming soon. Surely the Awakened Corps would know more about such things than I did. That’s where I would find answers.

Right now, something else mattered more, rationality. I had reached the peak. But did that mean I could abandon the gym? For ordinary people, muscles are fickle, stop training and slip on your diet, and an athletic physique melts away into shapeless jelly. I needed to know for sure whether that rule applied to me.

I walked up to a bench, grabbed a heavy dumbbell, and began methodically curling it, carefully watching the edge of my vision. The answer came immediately:

[Warning! Physical activity of the familiar detected]

[The familiar has reached its peak and can no longer increase muscle mass. Further training is pointless]

I put the dumbbell back. Looks like my bodybuilding career was officially over. And judging by everything, it was due to my hacked abilities. An old notification about enhanced metabolism surfaced in my memory. Plus Danny’s words about weak telepathy and biocontrol. It seemed my cells had simply locked into this state. My muscles would no longer degrade. That was damn good news.

People on forums whispered that you could get stuck in portals for a week or even longer. Going into battle knowing your stats might drop due to lack of proper food or the inability to train was not exactly comforting. Now that fear was off the list.

“Alright,” I thought, “since I’ve already paid for the day, let’s see what this peak can really do.”

I sat on a bench and opened a browser on my phone. World records. Today was July 5, 2020. The maximum deadlift was about 1100 pounds. A massive number. I began loading the bar, plate after plate, until it resembled a black metal caterpillar. Exactly 1100 pounds.

While I was looking up heavyweight lifters, I came across photos of failed record attempts. Hernias the size of a fist, torn abdominal muscles, ruptured internal organs. People doomed to spend the rest of their lives with colostomy bags because of a single mistake.

I am a cautious person. Becoming disabled out of idle curiosity was not part of my plans. So with a sigh, I removed a hundred pounds from the bar. Safety came first.

Stepping up to the bar, I gripped the cold steel. A deep breath. I felt the [Trainer] inside me instantly mobilize every fiber. A pull!

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The bar rose. The weight was colossal, it pressed my feet into the floor, but I didn’t feel agony. I pressed the metal overhead, holding it on outstretched arms for a few seconds. My muscles burned, my face flushed, blood roared in my ears, but it was controlled strain. I had no sense that the veins in my forehead were about to burst.

I lowered the bar. The crash against the floor seemed to shake the walls.

I could have added that hundred pounds back. Maybe another hundred on top of that. I felt my limit somewhere there, close to the world record, perhaps even beyond. But I didn’t. The risk of ending up in a hospital right before the draft was too high. The enlistment office would definitely see it as an attempt to dodge service, and my reputation, which I had built so carefully, would collapse before it even began.

I wiped the sweat from my forehead with a towel. The approximate result was clear. I was at the peak of human capability. Beyond that lay only the unknown. Beyond that lay evolution.

Testing Agility turned out to be a task with an asterisk. It is not strength that you can measure in clean plates on a barbell. Agility is a cocktail of reaction speed, balance, and flexibility. Sure, I could already do backflips and walk on my hands as well as professional circus performers, but that was more showmanship than an objective indicator of a peak.