Chapter 4 – I Took the Aptitude Test

“Uwaaaaaah!”

Se-min sat up and looked around in surprise.

An absolute silence met him.

However, it was not a dream.

The scratches on his skin, which had been made while resisting Dokgo Cheonma yesterday, stung. The room was also as messy as if a typhoon had swept through.

He had definitely met the Greatest Demon of All Time, Dokgo Cheonma.

His power was so overwhelming that he had never even imagined it before.

‘You are not a coward.’

Those words remained in his chest.

Was it because of that? His body felt refreshed. It felt as if the helplessness that kept pushing him back under the covers because he did not want to move had vanished. An unknown optimism filled his heart, which had been devoid of any motivation.

He felt as though he had been reborn.

He began to clean up the dirty room.

He sorted the trash and put it outside. After sweeping and throwing away useless things, it looked like a place where humans lived.

He opened the refrigerator.

It was packed with numerous instant foods and frozen items. They were things whose expiration dates were impossible to even guess.

He disposed of all of them too.

Now, there was only one piece of trash left in this room.

Himself.

Looking down at his chubby belly, Se-min resolved to completely eliminate the very last piece of trash.

“Let’s remember today.”

Se-min checked today’s date.

An ambiguous period when autumn was departing and winter was beginning to arrive.

When winter passed and spring arrived, he would also welcome the season with a smile, just like new sprouts budding.

Se-min picked up the laminated single petal he had placed beside his computer desk.

A deep, dark blue.

He had kept the petal that had flown in when Iana visited him.

This was proof that she, the network inside this computer, and the transcendents actually existed.

Now, he added the memory of Dokgo Cheonma onto this token.

Se-min checked the Transcendent Network board.

Title: I want to change… [35]

Author: Unemployed Jobless Lee Se-min

The comments had increased further. Although there were some who criticized him sharply, most supported his future.

“Thank you.”

If he had not met them, he would have remained a piece of trash in this room forever, barely clinging to life.

However, through this community he had miraculously discovered, he also came to look back on himself.

Not a single one of them had lived an easier life than him. They were beings who clenched their teeth and crawled up from the absolute bottom to reach the top.

He had merely failed to become a Raider; it was not as if he had enemies trying to kill him, nor was he starving because he couldn’t afford meals. Nor had he been forced to take poison long-term by the person he trusted most.

Se-min looked back.

The tightly closed front door blocked him.

Se-min put on a tracksuit he had bought but never worn once. It was the largest size, but it was tight. His frame had grown even larger in the meantime.

For a moment, a wave of negative emotions surged. It was that old depression and helplessness that had pushed him into inertia.

But he shook his head.

“I am not a coward.”

Muttering that, Se-min stood up from his seat.

He opened the front door and stepped out of the studio apartment.

The midday sun was glaring down at him.

Se-min thought as he proudly took a step forward.

Although this step was nothing to other people.

For the human Lee Se-min, it was a great step that would change his life.

***

Chomp, chomp.

Se-min finished eating the chicken.

He practically gorged himself.

It was his first jog in a long time. Running, which had been nothing during his prime, was now too grueling. He had only run a short distance, but sweat poured down like rain, his legs trembled, and his knees began to ache.

So, as a reward, he ordered chicken and finished it off in an instant.

Ordering only a single chicken was his shred of conscience.

“Haaa…”

Feeling a sense of skepticism toward himself for immediately devouring chicken after declaring he would change, Se-min lowered his head and silently apologized to all the members of the Transcendent Network.

“Dammit…”

Se-min glanced to the side.

There was a gym flyer. He had spotted it on the street while passing by and picked it up.

It didn’t contain anything special. There wasn’t even a common before-and-after picture. It simply read like this.

D o y o u w a n t t o c h a n g e

Five large characters.

On the back, along with the phrase ‘If so, come find us,’ were the gym’s name, a map, and a phone number.

That was all.

Although it was nothing special, the moment Se-min saw the flyer, he picked it up as if possessed.

At that time, he had already anticipated that he would return home to order chicken, devour it along with a 1.5-liter cola, and drown in regret.

Se-min was a man who had once rolled around in a Raider training facility.

Therefore, he knew deep down.

That humans.

Could only be diligent when someone forced them to.

Recognizing his own subconscious contemplating whether to order one more chicken, Se-min was startled. He slapped his own cheek and stood up.

A burp rose, which he suppressed once.

And he took another step toward the front door.

Thinking that he would change the first step for his future autobiography from the previous one to this one.

***

Self-Strengthening Gym.

Se-min stood before the gym with a solemn expression.

A Man Should Strengthen Himself.

The OST of the classic movie Once Upon a Time in China II, which had set a man’s chest boiling. A masterpiece containing the message that a man must naturally strengthen himself.

He felt as though he could hear those grand drums beating.

It was surely no ordinary place.

Se-min took a deep breath and stepped inside the gym.

“…!”

He froze immediately.

In front of a squat rack, a middle-aged man could be seen squatting with enough weight to bend the barbell.

Steam was rising from his swollen muscles.

An exquisite posture without a single tremble.

An enormous power condensed within an incredibly slow speed.

Se-min instinctively realized that the man was an experienced trainee who had built up internal strength over a long time—a so-called gym ahjussi.

“Is anyone here?”

Se-min mustered the courage to call out for the owner of the place.

The middle-aged man merely glanced at him and continued squatting at a slow tempo.

Se-min looked around the gym, spotted a place assumed to be an office, and went inside.

“Is anyone here?”

There was no one.

There was only a dusty computer; even a common InBody machine was nowhere to be seen. An analog scale caught his foot.

For a moment, Se-min started to think he had come to the wrong place. Just as he turned around to leave in a hurry.

“…!”

A giant shadow blocked the office door.

“Are you new?”

A prominent brow ridge, rarely seen in East Asians, cast a shadow over his eyes. His build was grand, but rather than bulky, it was elegant.

A middle-aged handsome man with neatly swept-back hair streaked with gray.

“I’m Director Kim Deok-bae.”

He was the director of the Self-Strengthening Gym, Kim Deok-bae.

Se-min was not short himself, but Kim Deok-bae looked down at him easily.

“Sit down.”

“Ah, yes.”

“Well, looking at you, I have a clear idea of why you came.”

Se-min nodded awkwardly. Contrary to his handsome middle-aged appearance, he spoke in a heavy dialect.

“I smell something.”

“Pardon?”

“You ate chicken before coming.”

“Uh…”

“Thinking you’ll start exercising a little bit starting today, huh? Granting yourself an indulgence and ordering chicken, huh? We absolutely despise that kind of thing here.”

“I-I’m sorry…”

“Step up here.”

Kim Deok-bae pointed to the scale.

Se-min took off his shoes and stood awkwardly on it.

The spinning scale quickly hit its maximum, stopping without being able to display anything higher.

A deeper shadow cast over Kim Deok-bae’s face.

“I won’t say much.”

“Yes…”

“Change your clothes immediately.”

“Pardon?”

“Thinking you signed up for the gym today, so you’ll exercise starting tomorrow, huh? If you have such complacent thoughts, you can never change. Got it!”

“Y-yes!”

“This way.”

Kim Deok-bae guided him to the locker room. There was simple sportswear, lockers, and shower facilities for the members.

Although there was no size that fit Se-min, Kim Deok-bae found some plus-sized sportswear from somewhere and handed it to him.

“This sportswear was originally worn by a member of our gym.”

“Then where is that person?”

“That person…”

Kim Deok-bae continued with a cold expression.

“Became someone who can never wear this clothing again.”

“Pardon?”

Se-min was confused whether this meant the person had successfully lost weight and wore smaller clothes, or if they had become a lonely ghost.

However, Kim Deok-bae merely smiled meaningfully without answering further.

“Looking at you, it seems you used to work out…”

Kim Deok-bae kneaded Se-min’s body, feeling the muscle fibers located beneath the abundant fat.

“A little bit in the past…”

Se-min was someone who had received practical training in a training facility as a Raider candidate. Although he had grown excessively fat over time, traces of the past remained underneath.

“You have a foundation. Let’s work hard and get back to where you were.”

“Yes.”

In this way, Lee Se-min’s rehabilitation began at the Self-Strengthening Gym.

Going hardcore right from the start was something he also wished for. Se-min was currently filled with motivation like never before.

Kim Deok-bae started him off with merciless running.

Placing him on a treadmill, he made him run without rest. He drove Se-min forward as if whipping beasts of burden.

“It’s hard, isn’t it?”

“Pant, pant, yes. Now, after resting a bit…”

“You won’t become human.”

“Pardon?”

“Giving up and compromising from the very first day is unacceptable. We call those people weaklings, sissies, and cowards. Got it?”

“If I get renal failure at this rate…”

“If you’re destined to collapse, you collapse, and if you’re destined to stand, you stand. A man doesn’t concern himself with such things. If you calculate and overthink like that, you can never change, huh? Do you understand or not!”

“Keu-heugh…”

What stood him back up every time he wanted to give up was that voice in his memory.

Dokgo Cheonma.

He had told Se-min that he was not a coward.

The one recognized by that terrifying man was himself. And he had definitely told him to reach out. He said he had prepared something for him on the Tip Board.

He could not collapse here.

Right, he was Lee Se-min.

He might lack aura, but he did not lack pride.

“Kiyoooooooot!”

“That’s it! Run! Even if you die, you die running!”

“Kweeeeeeeet!”

As closing time approached, the members of the Self-Strengthening Gym began to appear in earnest one by one.

They were shocked by the sight of a giant fat man struggling frantically, but as time passed, they gradually began to view him differently.

They recognized the grit of Lee Se-min, who was fighting a desperate battle alongside Kim Deok-bae.

After the hellish training ended, someone approached Lee Se-min, who was collapsed in exhaustion, barely gasping for breath.

“…?”

He was the gym ahjussi who had been squatting with an extraordinary aura when Se-min first walked in.

How much time had passed since Se-min arrived, yet he was still working out? He was an amazing ahjussi.

He stared at Se-min with the same earnest eyes as when he was squatting.

Soon, he spoke.

“See you again tomorrow, cool young man.”

“Pardon?”

He merely raised his thumb without a word.

Although Se-min had merely run on the treadmill, he emitted an enormous heat due to his obese frame. That heat warmed the entire gym.

Not all exercises are of equal difficulty for everyone. For a giant frame like Se-min’s, even running for a brief moment is as agonizing as hell.

However, Se-min did not give up until the end.

That grit was recognized by the gym ahjussi.

Kim Deok-bae watched that scene with a pleased face.

“Mr. Se-min.”

“Yes, Director.”

“Good work today. I also got excited and overdid it. If you happen to pass bloody stool, go to the hospital quickly. Rhabdomyolysis is something that can send you to the grave in a flash. You have to go to the emergency room.”

“That’s different from what you said earlier…”

“Words are naturally different then and different now. Hahaha.”

Kim Deok-bae also seemed in a good mood.

“The most rewarding thing for a person is rehabilitation. Making a human out of someone makes me feel good and fulfilled, which makes working worthwhile.”

“Rehabilitation?”

“Rehabilitation, yes. Mr. Se-min is not human yet. You can’t be human. You have a long way to go to become human.”

“What am I now?”

“A beast, a beast. Well, you know if you look in the mirror. To be honest, when I first saw you, I thought a wild boar cub had crawled in, not a human.”

Se-min couldn’t help but laugh as well.

Indeed, if his self from three years ago saw him now, he would have spewed even harsher vitriol.

***

After washing off the grime thoroughly in the shower, Se-min stumbled back to his studio apartment.

Hunger surged, making his hands tremble as he held his phone, but he closed his eyes tightly and deleted all delivery applications. He had to lose weight as soon as possible to regain his former appearance.

Frivolous pleasures would be postponed to a later date.

He immediately connected to the Transcendent Network.

The core of the Transcendent Network was its community function, and its true value was revealed in the graded boards.

“The Tip Board, is it.”

The Tip Board that Dokgo Cheonma had spoken of.

True discourse was taking place there.

It was the hall of true transcendents where the transcendents of each dimension discussed their respective insights.

The General Board was merely a prelude.

“Points.”

And points were required to enter it.

The Transcendent Network consumed points for most activities.

Points were consumed even when uploading things like photos on the General Board, and immense points were needed to visit other dimensions in person, as Iana and Dokgo Cheonma had done.

And there were two ways to collect those points.

Points earned through community activities. And points obtained by completing ‘quests’ demanded by the Transcendent Network.

Since the activity points he could earn were minuscule, the quests were important.

The current quest for member ‘Unemployed Jobless Lee Se-min’ is as follows.

Reduce your body weight to under 100kg.

Upon achieving this, a new quest will be provided in the future.

“…”

These quests were given in accordance with the level of each transcendent.

The level assigned to Se-min was weight loss.

As expected of the Transcendent Network. It was ultra-high difficulty from the start.

“Keuuu…”

He was hungry.

It felt as if the smell of the chicken he ate during the day was still lingering in his room. The sweet taste of seasoned chicken, the salty taste of soy sauce chicken, the fresh combination of green onion chicken—all kinds of chicken hovered over his head.

He missed pizza.

He craved Chinese food.

It was a time when late-night food deliveries were still in full swing.

“I…”

Se-min closed his eyes and struggled to shake off all distracting thoughts.

He would not give up like this.

The human Lee Se-min!

“Am neither a coward nor a sissy…!”