16. My Buff is a Drug
16. My Buff is a Drug
Almost on reflex, my hips pulled back into a half-crouch.
What the hell? I've managed to hold it in just fine until now. The second I saw Choi Ah-young's face...
Was this the magic of "knowing"?
Everyone I'd glanced at so far was a stranger.
But I'd seen Choi Ah-young nearly every single day since being dragged into this other world.
I'd always seen her in the facility uniform. Today was the first time I'd seen her in an outfit that would naturally pull an appreciative gasp from any man.
My brain constantly flickering between the outside-Choi-Ah-young and the image right in front of me — that must've been why I couldn't keep my excitement under control.
"Y-yeah, it really is loud."
I avoided Choi Ah-young's eyes like a guilty man.
"Let's head somewhere quieter to talk. Follow me."
"Uh, yeah."
If she noticed how stiff I was, things would get unbearable fast, so I had to will it down somehow.
In Korean rom-coms and slightly racy novels, whenever the male lead needed to kill a raging boner, he always sang the national anthem in his head.
Hye-yong used to curse that cliché — don't these guys have any other song? But just like the first time he'd pinched his cheek, he'd realized that when you're actually in the situation, your brain doesn't exactly offer up a lot of options.
'Who even wrote that trope first? Was that from personal experience?'
In the end, Hye-yong desperately tuned out every visual stimulus and sang the national anthem internally.
The spot Choi Ah-young led him to was the break room.
A place where you could rest, grabbing an ion drink or a protein shake if the workout tired you out.
Plenty of people were chatting here too, but it wasn't nearly as loud as the room full of treadmills we'd just left.
Hye-yong and Ah-young sat facing each other at a table.
"So you've been doing absolutely no exercise until now?"
"Pretty much."
"What about everything they taught us in class?"
I answered with an awkward grin.
"Didn't pay attention. Forgot all of it."
"You've really lived life on autopilot. Not that I'm one to talk."
"Nah. You worked your ass off. You just had shit luck. I know."
"You... know?"
Ah. Did I oversell that?
Hye-yong scrambled for an escape route.
"A guy who never actually tries gets a real clear view of how hard everyone around him is working."
"Working hard? I'm just doing what everyone else does."
"Hearing that makes me feel like I've triple-fucked my whole life."
"That so? Sorry."
Choi Ah-young laughed along.
Looked like I'd managed a clean getaway.
"Anyway, that's why I asked for your help starting today. To work out, build up my body, and start living seriously."
"Yeah, I'm just not sure I can actually teach you properly. There are differences between men and women."
"It'll be a hell of a lot better than me flailing around on my own. And you're diligent about everything, so I figure you'll crack the whip pretty hard."
"Crack the whip?"
"You know, the feeling that once you start teaching me, even if I whine about not wanting to exercise, you'll drag me by the hair and make me do it anyway."
"Oh, you want that? Just say the word. I'll drag you all the way to hell. You do know I'm way stronger than you, right?"
Choi Ah-young made a clawing gesture with her right hand, her voice edged with mischief.
Watching that, Hye-yong wept inwardly.
'Getting to joke around and trade banter like this, zero distance at all, with a girl like Choi Ah-young... This is life.'
It felt like he was finally experiencing everything he'd missed out on during his school days.
"Okay, so where should we start..."
Choi Ah-young propped her chin on her hand, thinking.
"What's the actual goal here? With the exercise."
"The actual goal, huh."
Hye-yong thought about how to phrase it concretely.
"First, stamina. I'm way too frail. I don't think I could even run for all that long. And I want to put on some muscle. Right now I just look too scrawny."
"How to build stamina... I do know exercises for raising stats. But muscle... I'm not so sure about building muscle mass. They didn't teach that in class, and I've never wanted to bulk up."
Right. Of course.
Choi Ah-young was a girl.
"But if you do exercises meant to raise stats, won't muscle just develop naturally?"
"Hmm... I think that's how it works out. Stats influence the ideal body shape you envision, after all."
Wait, what? There's a setting like that?
Now I was curious.
"Stats influence your body shape. What do you mean by that?"
"You really didn't pay attention in class, did you? I thought you were half-joking... Alright, I'll explain."
Once you become an Awakened, you begin handling mana.
Actually, it's not so much "handling mana" as it is every element of the body coming under mana's control.
Hair growth, nail growth, physiological phenomena, waste excretion — everything falls under mana's influence.
So it was only natural for your body shape to be altered by mana.
"Stats are the result of mana settling into our bodies. They're numerical representations of increased strength, durability, and flexibility."
Mana also reaches into the mental realm.
That's why, upon becoming an Awakened, even as mana dwells inside your body and grants you new power, there's no sense of dissonance.
Choi Ah-young tapped her own head lightly with a finger.
"Since the mana settling in our bodies touches the mind, if you train hard and stabilize your stats, you can change your body the way you envision it. Into the form you desire."
Wow, so if you train hard, you can reshape your body into whatever you want.
No wonder everyone here trained so obsessively.
"That doesn't mean you transform exactly as you imagine, though. Even if you keep thinking you want to grow taller, there are genetic limits. And even if you desperately want to pack on insane amounts of muscle, the growth stops at a certain point. How to put it... hmm, it's more like your genes get supplemented and refined?"
No wonder everyone had such unreal figures.
Choi Ah-young's body was quite beautiful as well, probably shaped by all her training.
It had a smooth, sculpted look, like finely molded clay.
'To be fair, getting a body like that without some fantasy-type element would take a serious genetic blessing.'
Hye-yong thought.
Maybe the reason this world's mana had developed this particular mechanic was to accommodate the fact that nearly every female character in the modpack was designed to be beautiful.
No matter how he looked at it, it was eerie and surreal.
To the point where he still sometimes doubted whether what had happened to him was actually real.
'A miracle... wasn't that the word?'
Frankly, he didn't fully understand it, but it was clearly a power on the level of a miracle.
"Then let's stick to exercises focused purely on raising stats. If you work hard, your muscles will grow too. In the direction you want them to."
"Here's hoping."
"So what kind of build are you aiming for? Not a musclehead, I hope?"
Hye-yong didn't think a macho physique was bad, but his personal taste ran toward the compressed, lean muscle that showed up in comics and novels — not overtly visible at a glance, but a back that looked unexpectedly broad, and undressing would reveal quiet proof of training.
"Something too bulky is a bit much. Just a decent, aesthetically pleasing amount would be nice."
"I think that's better too. It doesn't look great, and I've also heard that if your muscles get too big, it starts interfering with daily life. Awakened get their strength from their stats anyway, not from visible muscle mass."
So in this world, outward appearance wasn't an indicator of status — it was purely for show?
Everyone was above average in looks, but in a sense, this felt like lookism taken to its absolute extreme.
'If someone here spat out a line like, "How can that tiny frame produce that kind of strength?!" they'd get some seriously weird looks. It's taken for granted.'
Meant you couldn't underestimate anyone just because a low kick looked like it would snap their leg in two — if they were an Awakened, anyway.
'Grrk. I shouldn't have made my character's face nearly identical to mine. If I was going to do it, I should've at least made him look cool.'
A sudden pang of regret.
It wasn't like he had a complex about his looks, but living as an average guy in a world teeming with beauties was a little rough.
'Reverse thinking: since all the girls here are gorgeous, maybe they don't actually care all that much about a guy's looks?'
A thought that popped into his head.
Hadn't he heard something like that before?
In Ukraine, every woman walking down the street looks like a model.
He remembered reading a joke about a Ukrainian bride who'd married into Korea — she'd always thought her looks were below average, until she lived in Korea and realized she was actually pretty.
'Seems plausible. Seems plausible.'
Choi Ah-young, Seo Ha-yoon, Chae Hwa-ra — to Hye-yong, coming from another world, each of them was a charming, upper-tier beauty by the standards of his province. But apparently they weren't eye-catching enough to draw major attention here.
The more he dug into the setting, the more it felt perfectly engineered to satisfy some deeply buried, sleazy cravings.
'So me designing the modpack that way was god-tier from the perspective of the guy who got possessed into it? I couldn't have imagined this outcome in my wildest dreams.'
Once again, he was struck by how uncanny and mysterious the whole thing was.
"Shall we stop jawing and go work out?"
"Let's."
"Let me hear your stats."
"Strength Level 2, Stamina Level 3, Agility Level 3. Magic Power is Level 2."
I left out Divine Power. Didn't seem necessary to bring up.
"Level 2, Level 3, Level 3... you really are just Awakened and nothing else, huh. Completely untrained."
"Ha ha, it's embarrassing."
"But starting now's better than doing nothing forever. Good on you for deciding."
Choi Ah-young rose from her chair, grinning with a face that radiated sadistic glee.
"Didn't you tell me earlier you wanted me to crack the whip? Better brace yourself."
Heh-heh.
Did I really have to say that?
Exactly 25 minutes later, Hye-yong regretted every word.
'Wow... fuck. This is brutal.'
Running on the treadmill, it didn't even feel like he was going that fast, but his breath was practically clawing at his throat.
He didn't think he could keep this pace up any longer.
Hye-yong stole a furtive glance at Ah-young running hard beside him and quietly pressed the speed-down button.
Beep-beep-beep!
"Ah! Hye-yong, you just lowered the speed!"
Choi Ah-young zeroed in on it with the precision of a ghost.
'Ah, fuck me. Why the hell does it have to beep so goddamn loud?'
Choi Ah-young kept pecking at him from the side.
"Crank it back up! How can you be wiped out after running at that speed for this long? And that was me taking it as easy on you as I possibly could."
Just how out of shape was he? It really hit home.
'Ah, man, I really didn't want to do this...'
Hye-yong opened the Buff Custom window.
If he crammed a bunch of Stamina into a buff and cast it, he could breeze through this moment, no problem.
But he felt conflicted.
If he did that, this time with Choi Ah-young right now would become meaningless.
'Ah, for real.'
[ Allure ]
Charm stat Level 7 increase
Only effective when the viewer is Choi Ah-young
Choi Hye-yong exclusive
In the end, the buff Hye-yong chose was Allure.
He cast it purely to feel like he'd buffed something — anything.
Beep-beep-beep!
He cranked the speed back up and ran desperately.
"Hang in there!"
Choi Ah-young kept running alongside him too.
"Huff, huff! I'm gonna die! Can't run anymore...!"
Run 20 minutes, rest a little.
Run 20 minutes, rest a little.
He repeated that for three sets.
The world really did seem to lurch around him.
He felt something sour rising from his gut, a wave of nausea washing over him.
He stood half-crouched, hands on his knees, staring at the floor and heaving ragged breaths, when Choi Ah-young came over and patted his back.
"Good work. Let's stop here for today and ramp up gradually."
"Ugh. How do you do this every day? Seriously, you're amazing."
"It'll get a little easier once your stats go up."
"Are we running again tomorrow?"
"There's an efficient routine for this. For now it's just running. Until you hit Stamina Level 5."
"Ah... so tomorrow too..."
Honestly, he'd only done this one day and he already wanted to quit.
"See you tomorrow."
"Yeah, tomorrow..."
"If you don't show up at this time tomorrow, I'm raiding your room."
The face Choi Ah-young made as she smiled and said that was somehow terrifying.
Looked like he'd gotten himself well and truly caught.
"But you're not leaving?"
"I'm going to work out a little more. The more you push, the harder you go, the faster your stats rise."
"S-so, it's strength training you're off to do, not more running, right?"
"Yeah. Why?"
He suddenly got curious about how Choi Ah-young trained.
Part of him also wanted a preview of the hell he'd be experiencing soon enough.
"Can I watch you work out?"
Hye-yong waited for Ah-young's answer.