Free Web NovelChapter 48: Test Drive(1)
[Skills added to Arsenal: Virgin’s Touch (Lvl. 1) | Dust Sense (Lvl. 1)]
The notification appeared almost the moment his eyes landed on the skill entry.
[Virgin’s Touch: Active.]
David felt it before he understood it — a loosening, like something that had been wound too tight across his shoulders and down his legs had simply decided to let go.
The deep ache that had been sitting in his thighs since the jog home, the familiar heaviness behind his knees, the dull throb in his lower back from the morning’s session — it didn’t fade gradually. It just quietly stopped being there.
He rolled his neck once. Stretched his fingers out, then his arms.
"...It works."
He said it softly, like he was confirming something to himself rather than announcing it.
He rolled his shoulder, then reached down and pressed two fingers into the muscle above his knee — the spot that usually protested loudest after ten kilometers.
Nothing. No ache. No resistance.
"That is actually insane."
He sat there for a moment just flexing his hand open and closed, taking quiet stock of a body that felt, genuinely, like it had not just spent the better part of a day being put through its paces.
’It’s passive,’ he thought. ’It just runs. Which means I can train, burn out, recover, and go again — and the only limit is how many times I’m willing to lace up.’
The shape of it landed cleanly. If he pushed his daily regimen — the runs, the weights, the martial arts drilling he’d been holding back on because his body had a ceiling — and Virgin’s Touch kept resetting that ceiling every time he hit it, then the path to the dungeon threshold wasn’t a distant thing anymore. Forty. He needed everything ranked up to forty before the dungeon became viable. With this, that timeline had just collapsed inward considerably.
’Three skills in the arsenal now,’ he thought. ’Virgin’s Touch. Dust Sense. And Oath-Bound Gaze.’ He turned them over in his head like tools laid out on a table.
’Time to actually test all of them.’
He pulled his phone out of his bag — and winced slightly at the screen. The crack cut across the lower third of it, the glass catching the light in a spiderweb of lines he’d been ignoring for longer than he wanted to admit.
He swiped up carefully. It still worked. Barely, but it worked.
Then he checked his balance.
A small breath left him — not quite a laugh, not quite a sigh. Something in between.
’I can fix that now,’ he thought.
’I could actually buy a new screen if I wanted to... or maybe get a new phone.’ The thought expanded before he could stop it.
New phone. Proper gym shoes that didn’t have a worn patch on the left sole. Maybe even a full body checkup — he’d never had one, not a real one since his death experience.
With that, he smiled at nothing in particular, and checked the time.
6:08 PM.
’I think...I’m gonna do it...I’m gonna work my ass off!’
He stood up and with that, he began his training.
***
What followed was not a normal evening. freewebnøvel.coɱ
He ran. And then he ran again. And when his lungs gave out and his legs threatened to fold on him somewhere around the fourth kilometer of his second loop, Virgin’s Touch came in like a quiet tide — not dramatic, not sudden, just a steady easing of the damage — and he found his breath, found his stride, and kept going.
By the time he finally turned back toward home, the city had gone fully dark around him.
He checked his phone on the doorstep.
10:58 PM.
He’d run for nearly five hours. Back to back loops, more kilometers in a single evening than he’d managed in any full week before today.
And he wasn’t tired.
That was the part that kept catching him — the absence of what should have been there. No lead in his legs. No burning in his chest. Just the clean, neutral feeling of a body that had worked hard and been quietly reset each time it reached its limit.
He unlocked the door and stepped inside, his eyes immediately meeting with the plain darkness of his room with the only illuminating source to the room which was the system notification reading aloud–
[Virgin’s Touch: Still Active.]
"Yeah," he said quietly. "I noticed."
He was smiling as he said it, whilst he took off and dropped his shoes by the door and moved through the dark house toward the bathroom, using the glowing interface of the system as an illuminator, stripping as he went.
As he moved, he caught himself about to drop his shirt on the armchair and stopped, looked at it for a moment, then kept it in his hand.
’Hmm... naa...I’m not rubbing sweat into the furniture,’ he thought.
’I live here. Have some standards, David. It’s time to actually start setting some.’ freewebnøvel.coɱ
He peeled off the rest of his clothes at the bathroom doorway, balled them up, and actually walked them back to the bedroom to drop into the laundry pile rather than leaving them wherever they landed. Small thing. He noticed he’d done it.
The bedroom was tidy. Not spotless, but arranged — the way it got when he’d been keeping on top of things rather than letting the days stack up into mess.
He stood in the doorway for a moment, taking it in without meaning to, then turned back toward the bathroom.
The jerrycan was sitting where he’d left it, maybe a third full. He tipped it over the basin and listened to the pour, watching the water level rise in the low light filtering in from the hallway.
With that, he began his bath, washing away his sweat slowly. No particular hurry. His hands moved on routine — soap, rinse, the mechanical rhythm of it — while the rest of him stayed elsewhere.
He wasn’t thinking about Mrs. Walbury, nor thinking about the money, but about the notification that had been sitting at the edge of his vision since he’d walked through the door. Patient. Waiting.
His stats were there whenever he wanted them, glowing quietly at the periphery like something that knew it had his attention and didn’t need to rush.
He let the basin water settle. Exhaled once.
Then he looked.
[Player Stats Updated:
Name: David Myers
Strength 43.
Agility 28-> 32.
Endurance: 36-> 40.
Stamina 42-> 46.
Penile Strength: 30
Total Exchange points: 50
LvL: 3/??? ]
[Congratulations! Player has leveled up!]
He stared at his stats for a long moment, water still dripping from his chin onto the bathroom floor.
Everything was climbing. Consistently climbing, the kind of upward trend that made the math feel real for the first time.
Virgin’s Touch had proven itself tonight beyond any reasonable doubt — back to back runs, recovery on demand, stats ticking upward with each session.
Everything except one.
[Penile Strength:30]
David stared at it.
He rolled his eyes so hard he nearly lost balance.
"I guess that makes sense..." he muttered. "... all I did was run, there was no actually gain to the strength of my length. Hey, that rhymed...hehe."
He poured the last of the basin water over his head, stood there dripping for a moment, and then — completely without warning — a thought entered his head.
He went very still.
’...Wait.’
The thought developed. Expanded. Arranged itself into something that could generously be called a plan, or atleast that’s what he’d have called it.
A slow, deeply questionable smile crept across his face. The kind of smile that, had anyone been present to witness it, would have prompted them to take a small step backward.
’That could actually work,’ he thought.
’Virgin’s Touch resets fatigue with no recovery time. And I’m alone.’
He stood there dripping on the bathroom floor, grinning at nothing, and on affirmation to what you would hope was not his plan, he grabbed his towel, ran it over himself approximately twice, and was already moving before he’d finished.
David plainly lied to himself, as he walked down the hall, that this was a calculated decision. A strategic one.
He was a system user with a mission — a Quest threshold to hit, stats to maximize, and a timeline that had just gotten considerably more aggressive. This was not self-indulgence. This was optimization.
"This is for the good of the system," he said, pushing open his bedroom door.
His cheeks were red, already affirming that his conscience was dirty.
"It’s for the mission," he continued, pulling open the drawer.
"I need the stats. The Quest timer doesn’t care about my dignity. It only cares about my numbers, and my numbers need...you."
He stopped as his eyes landed on Eva.
She was right there. Exactly as he remembered.
He looked at her for a moment, his hands moving as he picked her up. Held her with both hands, the way a man holds a woman he wishes to make sweet sweet love to.
"Hello darling...I have great news." he told her.
"We’re about to embark on an important journey tonight. "
