Condition Evolution 2: A LitRPG / Gamelit Adventure by Sinclair, Kevin (black female authors txt) 📗

thanks,” I said, and felt my cheeks begin to burn. No, not those cheeks, and not vindaloo related either. Though I’d have loved a curry right now.

“Hopefully, the next few weeks should be very uneventful, but you all need to be prepared for what will come next.” With that, he abruptly left the room.

We left the meeting with a much clearer picture. Which was that we really were just flying by the seat of our pants.

Shaun Sutherland, ex-obese roofer, hunted through space by god-like beings who have destroyed his home planet, wielding a living axe that speaks in his mind, I thought, in a movie narrator voice.

I had to laugh. Why I still wasn’t freaking the fuck out? I didn’t know. I assume the human mind must have had some kind of protective mechanism to defend itself against the absolute, batshit crazy.

Over the following days Ember and I trained religiously. She left the weights room on the third day, as she had developed a much more muscular body, and wanted to focus more on movement and agility. I didn’t care too much and stayed on in the gym.

By the end of the first week, I must have eaten a literal fucking farm’s worth of livestock. I was bigger than Ogun now. I would officially say He-Man physique status. Though he was still obviously a goddamn giant towering over me. Ember told me she didn’t fancy me anymore, but she’s a dick like that. So, yeah.

On day ten, I had headed back into the weights room, leaving Ember in the gymnasium area. There were often a couple of other people doing some training, but this day, a new face had come to enjoy the weights. New for the gym, anyway. I was, in fact, very familiar with this big bag of dicks. It was one of the assholes I’d met in the axe olympics who called himself Thor, but I found out later he was called Roger.

“Oh, if it isn’t the axe thief,” he said as I walked in. He came over to me and I noticed he was nearly my height, and stocky too.

“I see you’ve been using my axe to help you train. What a pussy! Can’t train like a man? Like the rest of us?”

“It was always my axe. It’s not my fault you're too thick to realize that, Roger.”

“You think because you’ve put some muscle on that you're suddenly the main man. Well, it takes a lot more than that. You’re still a skinny, weedy, noob in mine and everyone else’s eyes.”

“You’re still a stupid, clueless, knacker who isn’t called Thor and never will be. You’re a joke, dude. Now do your exercises and fuck off.”

He didn’t. Instead, the shithead swung at me. I heard the axe shout, “Let me have him!” But this was my fight. This guy was always going to be a problem, until I dealt with him. Man to man, fist to face.

His punch landed on my face cleanly because I was much slower than I thought I was. I’ll not lie. A small pang of ‘I overdid it on the muscles’ kicked in. They clearly hindered my freedom of movement, or at least I should have balanced it with movement based exercises. However, it did help me take the punch. I staggered back a few steps, but that was mainly because I wanted to create some space.

When he swung again, I ducked following up with a crunching right hook to his ribs. I jumped backwards onto the balls of my feet, ready to lunge forward with a roundhouse. I ended up having to pull it short because he was falling to the floor like a slow-motion mime artist, clutching at his ribs. Seems like I really did crunch something.

While Roger melted to the floor, I decided after that I should probably go and improve my agility and speed with Ember. I should probably check my stats too, since I hadn’t for a while, and it looked like strength had been boosted insanely by my training. That could wait for now, though, as I looked to the now deflated Roger on the floor. He was trying his hardest to get back to his feet. “You should probably get that looked at straight away,” I said, noticing he was wheezing in a worrying way.

“Fuck you! This isn’t over,” he gasped, as he staggered out of the gym door. I followed him out.

“Are you sure you don’t need any help, Roger?”

He ignored me and made his way across the gym floor, though the other people training there didn’t. That included Ember who was looking at me, questioningly.

“It’s just Roger, an old friend!” I shouted overly loudly enough, so he would hear as he left. “Think he picked too heavy a weight.”

“Is that right?” she asked. I couldn’t tell what emotion she was displaying.

“Yeah. One minute,” I said.

I quickly returned to the weight room to grab my axe, then walked over to where Ember was training. I resettled the axe against the wall. Ember looked at me questioningly, “What the fuck’s going on, Shaun?”

“I’ve decided it’s time to work on my agility, and stuff like that, with you.”

“Okay. Why now? And who was that limping away?”

“Oh. That was one of the axe olympian jerks I told you about. He decided to show me how real men do business. He caught me cleanly with his first punch, and he really shouldn’t have, so I’ve decided it’s definitely time for some movement based training.”

“And?”

“And what? I’m here to limber up a bit.”

“What did you do to Roger?”

“Right hook to the ribs. Judging by the wheezing it sounds like he may have punctured a lung.”

“No, Shaun. You may have punctured his lung. Typical! Come on, stiff ass. Let’s get to work.”

Before we got started, Ogun turned up. Of course he would!

“A word, Shaun, if you please?”

I went over to him, and he led me out the door and into one of the classrooms.

“I hear you had a fight?” he