8

Ippo sighed as he sat on the pier holding his fishing rod, he was enjoying some much needed time to himself after the mess his winning that competition brought. he just knew that R.O.B was involved cause there was no way ippo should've come to the attention of the people he did. he could understand maybe getting some recognition around the gym from the way he excelled but he was even now getting attention from random people.

* flashback*

>5 months<

ippo was steadily following his daily workout routine of running, going to the gym, and now he was even doing some swimming on the odd weekend to help strech and loosen his mucles. he had been setting this pace since he had won both the tournament and competition and it was proving just as beneficial as he had hoped.

ippo could feel the way his body was improving and shaving away the useless movement he would make, he could tell without even opening his system that his stamina was massively improving along with his speed as he could maintain about 75% of his previous lifes peak for a little over 2 hrs before he started to feel the strain become too much.

he thought that right now he could easily pass the boxing exam and get his liscense again, hell he thought he would have a 50% chance of winning the east Japan rookie kings again without smashing his fist like he did against mashiba the first time.

he definitely would win against miyata in the spar at the komogawa gym, there would be almost no way for miyata to train against someone like ippo, since both aoki and kimura were both higher classes and would have a good chance to still pull ahead of miyata since he had no professional fights unlike those 2 and there is no point in even comparing takamura to anyone in the gym. hell the fool had fought a bear bare handed at his peak that should tell anyone about his strength and power punches.

ippo also would attribute his massive improvment to those nutrient drinks. after he had drank that bottle the following morning ippo could feel no pain and could hardly see and brusing, and what was visible was faded to a light yellow seemingly looking like it happened weeks ago instead of the previous day. ippo also noticed that his cloths were stained black like they were filthy wich didnt make much sense until he smelled them and immideatly he wrenched his face away and took them off. they reeked like week old sweat socks and ippo threw them out since he didnt want to keep them stained as they had been. following that he had showered and went on his daily routine.

the following weeks ippo had seen the massive improvements

and he realized that the nutrient fluid had caused him to have this improment, ippo knew since he had a small supply he should stretch out the supply he was given. even though he had around 20 bottles of the fluid he couldnt waste them as they were extremely rare and precious so he had to ration them out so that he could still see benefits overtime instead of one massive Improvement.

*flashback end*

ippo could still remember when he finally figured out why he kept hearing whispers and see people pointing him out when ever he passed stores in town or at his school.

*flashback*

>school-2 months ago<

ippo had been walking out of class for lunch when he was confronted by some tough looking students and they started badgering him to come with them, as ippo didnt want to fight and get suspended from school he eventually went along and when they finally arrived behind one of the deserted areas of the school duildings ippo had learned that the competition he did had been video taped and put up on a social media site for weightlifting competitions. the reason he had been cornered was explained that they didnt believe he did this and wanted proof, since ippo wouldn't fight the tough decided to do a simple karate strength test. as everyone knew that was always a "legit" way to show case how strong you were, ippo having no choice went ahead with the test just wanting to eat lunch before the bell rang.

after gathering some lumber laying around they proceeded to stack it up, they set up several different piles so that it will be a "fair" test an Ippo couldn't just go up against the weakest of them and win and they would lose.

People agree to the conditions and the others went first so they would have a "better" chance and ippo also couldnt choose which pile of lumber to hit simce they all knew he would choose the weakest looking pile since he "naturally" was so weak but they wouldnt let him do it.

the group of school thugs all went first and of the 10 that went 6 of them broke all the lumber which was only 3 to 4 pieces and it didn't look all that strong. still ippo didnt complain since he knew doing so would get them to harrass him more and accuse him of wanting to cheat. naturally ippo just went up to his pile and even though it looked like brand new lumber he still set himself and punchdd down on the pile of wood hard instantly breaking all his pieces, afterward ippo looked around seeing gaping faces and booked it back inside not wanting anything more to do with them.

as he left though all the school thugs could do was watch and wonder how the shrimp of the school was so strong since they had made sure to use brand new lumber that was thicker than the ones they used which had been older and had been on the brink of breaking so they could show the shrimp they were still "tougher" even if he had won some fancy competition.

*end flashback*

after that ippo had been constantly hounded by all kinds of people wanting to see how strong they were in comparison. but each time ippo would beat them since his body was running at peak efficiency and theirs was only running on average. even when the clubs in school tried to challenge him they always lost when it came to a completion of using your body. though ippo did sheepishly admit he still sucked as regular sports, sure he could hit a baseball or kick a soccor ball but he just didn't have the "knack" to be any good at them.

even though he sucked at these regular sport activities, ippo still had a popularity among certain groups of people, mostly those who were interested in boxing, wrestling, weightlifting, karate, judo. those people still hounded ippo to have competitions in feats of strength since they didnt want to admit defeat they just kept coming back.

ippo knew that, that bastatd R.O.B was laughing and having a good time about what was happening to him. ippo knew this cause he would get little notifications and side quest as he saw them listed by the system telling him he would get rewards and exp for completing these tasks. it wasn't anything major, just little things like drinks, energy bars, small coins( basically change) stuff like that.

so ippo just learned to go along with it as the more he ignored it the worse it got, to where they would actively stalk him inside the school and before or after school. before long ippo noticed that he was getting more attention from shop owners and random people as the people he beat would rant and rave about how it was unfair he beat them everytime effortlessly.

there were some perks to it though, as with his notoriety increasing he would get asked to help by people and he would earn small rewards from the system for these small jobs* the system labeled them as, he would only get small things like small amounts of money-¥, or sometimes it would be goods they made or discounts at the stores he helped out at.

one of the bigger ones was he recieved that game guide he had looked at all those months ago from the clerk. he had been passing by and stopped at the game store to check if the guide book had been available still when the store clerk saw remembering ippo from before and not having money for the guide book, he asked if ippo would be interested in doing some work for him helping with inventory and moving a few items for him in exchange for the guide. ippo had immideatly agreed and went about helping with the inventory and moving some shelves in the stores back room.

upon finishing ippo found the clerk and reported he finished. on hearing him. the clerk had been pleased with what ippo accomplished.

"here kid, this is thanks for helping me. Included a more deluxe version of the book you wanted since you helped me more than you realize. this book has everything you need to know about both rpg and mmorpg it will explain the most common things and it will help you if you get stuck and can't figure out how to do something."the clerk told the boy, wanting to give ippo a appropriate gift for his help

"thank you so much, I really appreciate it. I would have just accepted the basic one for what you asked me to do but I will gladly take this one." ippo gushed and thanked the clerk.

after leaving the store ippo had rushed home in anticipation, hoping that this guide would help him figure out what to do with his system since It seemed to be emulating the rpg/mmorpg the clerk was telling him about.

as ippo entered his bedroom he sat at his desk looking threw the book and taking in the details. he sat there for over an hour and learned alot but he soon realized that alot of this information he would forget when he really had need of it.

Ippo then heard his system give a chime and watched at it asked him a shocking question he didnt think it could do. it seemed his system had the ability to absorb books and store the info for him or to directly input it into his mind.

ippo was ecstatic about the new feature, he had seen something like this in the guide. it had mentioned about certain games containing a quest log or even a journal that would record things for him like important letters or even recording quests he could recieve and how far along he was to completing them.

Ippo immideatly agreed to the systems question and saw the book dissipate into particles then it seemed to swarm into his body. he was confused as he didnt know if the book was in his mind or made into this journal thing he read about.

~Ding~

system announcement:

congratulations on activation of the Journal feature and the Quest Log.

~Journal: records books/Documents and saves them for easier lookup through this feature. Player can still retrieve the items saved in the Journal but must pay an according price to keep the information, otherwise the System will not save the item and the corresponding information will be lost until the item in question is uploaded to the Journal again.

*warning* if a book/doc is taken out and put back repeatedly there will be a penalty instated. including the destruction of said book if task is repeated too often.

~Quest Log: records all accepted quest by player and tracks progress of each quest. player can look up each quest to see their current completion rate for the individual quests they accept.

Ippo was exited about this and kept exploring the new features, looking back at all the minor *quest/jobs* he had recently been receiving. it turns out it had been alot more then he thought. as he closed out the quests and looked through the journal portion, he saw how it had the information stored from the Strategy guide and how easy it would be to just look up something he didnt understand and see the corresponding information.

after a few hrs doing this ippo noticed the time and got up as he still had to help his mom around the house and with the boat.

_____________________________________

Ippo sighed as he kept fishing, he couldnt believe how unprepared he had been when Rob sent him back. even thoigh he had gotten some help Ippo knew that the Being had done what he did on purpose just to enjoy watching ippo squirm and flounder around, how you ask he knew that? well it could be the package he had recieved out of the blue.

*flashback*

Ippo hadn't know who had sent it but when he had opened the thing in his room, he immideatly regretted doing it as a huge explosion of glitter and a massive bang had eccoed in the house causing his mom to ask if he was alright as she opened the door, just when ippo turned and went to answer her he immideatly turned red and looked down as he couldnt face her when the loud sound eccoed in the room.

*Bbbbbbbbuuuuuuuiuirrrrrrrrrrrrrrrtttt*

if that weren't bad enough, the smell that came next was worse. it was so bad his Mom immideatly shut the door and told Ippo to take a bath. he just knew his mom thought he did that. it was total humiliation that ippo couldnt keep the red from flushing to his ears. He just couldn't imagine who would do this to him, as ippo looked into the box he saw a innocent paper sitting at the bottom when he picked it up he knew just who it was by the glaring signature at the bottom;

HEY KID WAS JUST OUT FIR DRINKS WITH THE OTHER GODS AND THOUGHT I OUGHT TO SENT A GIFT TO MY FAVORITE TOY.....I MEAN TARGET...I MEAN....OH FORGET IT YOU KNOW YOUR HERE TO ENTERTAIN ME! IM NOT EXPLAINING MYSELF FURTHER. ANYWAY JUST WANTED TO SEND SOME LOVE AND TELL YOU WATCHOUT FOR THE CHILLIE AT CHILLIES...HAHAHA IT A JOKE GET IT KID? A REAL GAS!!!! HAHAHAH

WITH ALL MY LOVE R.O.B

*flashback end*

Ippo was so Red right now foot just from the humiliation, as he had to explain to his mom that it was a prank and after some fast talking about someone he met at the competition he had joined his mom finally believed him, but told him he had to clean his room spotless as she wouldn't be touching it till that smell went away.

*SNAP*

Ippo heard the sound as he came back to the present and noticed that he had snapped his fishing rod just thinking about that incident, sighing he collected his belongings and made his way home.

'hopefully this isn't going to be a trend, but knowing that asshat is anything like takamura. this is just the beginning' ippo thought as he sighed and walked home hoping to get some food and decent sleep, though how that would go is anybody guess as he still couldnt get rid of that damn smell from ROB's stupid drunk prank.

though ippo would swear the bastard kept sending more of that infernal chemical in his room when ever he slept.