[Daily Mission!]
[Push-ups: 100/100]
[Abdominals: 100/100]
[Squats: 100/100]
[Run: 10/10 km]
"Ah… finally… it's over…" Seth gasped, resting his hands on his knees as sweat ran down his face in heavy drops.
It had only been a day since he had returned from Pandora, but his body felt like it was carrying the weight of weeks of combat.
The energy difference between the worlds was unforgiving.
When he first came back, he felt nothing. But now…
It was as if every cell screamed in agony, as if gravity was trying to crush him back to the ground.
"What the hell happened to my body…?" he grumbled, looking down at his own trembling hands. "I did basic exercises… and I'm as broken as if I had faced a blind dragon drunk with rage at everything."
'I need to get back in shape… Or I'll become a joke of a tired hero before I'm 30.'
As if answering his silent desperation, the System flashed in his vision.
[Condition recovery!]
[Skill Point: +1]
[Reward Box - (Rank: Low)]
Three options, floating in golden letters before his eyes.
Seth raised an eyebrow. "Yeah… nothing special again today, huh?"
His voice was tired, almost dry. Still, he smiled—one of those crooked smiles, of someone who wouldn't give up even if he were dead.
'A Skill Point would be useful… but if I can't get out of bed tomorrow, what's the point?'
Without thinking any further, he chose [Condition Recovery!]
A green light surrounded his body, and in the next moment, his fatigue vanished.
In the same instant, a pulsing green light enveloped his body. Warm, comforting—like a bath of liquid vitality that penetrated to the bones. Within seconds, the pain was gone. The tension was gone.
And for a moment, everything felt… light.
Seth rolled his shoulders. No stiffness. He flexed his fingers. No tingling. Even the weight on his chest that he'd been carrying since he'd come back seemed to have lessened.
"Okay… that was more than a cold shower after a dungeon."
He threw himself back on the floor of the hospital room, staring at the ceiling for a while, breathing deeply.
'If that alone left me dead… imagine what's coming next.'
The sound of the door sliding softly announced someone's presence.
"You back on the floor? Is this how you rest, model patient?"
The voice was sweet, with a touch of irony — but loaded with something else. A warmth disguised by professionalism.
Seth turned his head slightly and saw her.
Dr. Seo Ha-rin.
Tall, elegant and absurdly… provocative. The white lab coat open in the front revealed part of a blouse too tight to be purely functional, and the cleavage that followed the movement of her body defied any concept of medical neutrality. Her long legs highlighted by low heels, her hips swaying subtly as she walked to the bed.
She stopped, hands on her hips, looking at Seth's sweaty, muscular body stretched out on the floor, breathing calmly. His bare chest rose and fell slowly, and every line of his abdomen still glistened with freshly evaporated sweat.
Ha-rin swallowed without realizing it, feeling a dangerous tingling spread through less than academic places.
'Focus, Ha-rin. He's a patient. A patient with a body like a post-apocalyptic war model… but a patient nonetheless.'
"You know this floor isn't made for S-rank muscles, right?" she said, adjusting her glasses—or at least pretending to need to adjust them, just to keep her hands busy.
Seth laughed, still lying down. "So you confirm that I have S-rank muscles? Noted. I want that compliment in the report."
"The medical report is no place for flirting," she replied dryly, but the corner of her mouth threatened a smile. "Now get up, before I have to call the nurses just to drag you back to bed."
"You can come up with me if you want," he replied with that husky voice and lazy smile that always seemed to work better than it should.
Ha-rin huffed, but looked away too quickly—and for a moment, tension danced in the air.
"You seem recovered," she said, deliberately ignoring the teasing. "But you still need to go through the final exams. Blood count, stability check, manna saturation, that kind of boring stuff before I release you."
"What if I say I'm fine and want to run away from here right now?"
"Then I'll sedate you," she said without blinking. "And I'll warn you that the needle I use on runaways is bigger."
"You act scary but you get cuter and cuter acting like that," he murmured, slowly getting up from the floor, his muscles still tensing slightly.
Ha-rin gripped the clipboard tighter than she needed to. 'For God's sake, even standing up he looks like a forbidden perfume commercial…'
"Put your shirt on," she ordered. "Or at least try not to look like you're seducing the entire hospital. The nurses won't stop talking about you."
"Do you want me to get dressed because you're worried about the others… or about yourself?"
She paused for a second, staring at him.
"I want you to get dressed because if you keep this up, you'll delay your tests — and the only thing you'll get will be my stress report."
Seth smiled. "Fair enough."
He walked over to the chair where he had left his shirt, slowly pulling it off. Ha-rin watched for longer than she would admit, and then turned around.
"Five minutes in the next room. Don't be late, or I'll come get you myself."
And with that, she left—her hips swaying in farewell like a woman's exclamation point.
Seth put on the shirt slowly, chuckling to himself. "This world has its dangers… but at least it has its rewards, too."
Seth finished putting on the shirt, still chuckling silently. Each button he fastened was a struggle against the temptation to simply throw the shirt back in the corner and see if the doctor would really come get him "by force."
'System… is there a passive resistance to dangerous women? If not, it's time to unlock one.'
But there was no answer. Even the System seemed to understand that this type of combat had no defense bonus.
He walked down the white hospital corridor, his bare feet echoing softly on the cold floor. The environment was too clean, too sterile... a drastic change from the wild fields of Pandora, the smoke, the mud, the warm blood on his hands.