Chapter 4: Daily Quest
Jason rested his hands on his knees and panted heavily while his whole body trembled from exertion. His legs were shaking and his lungs burned as they desperately heaved in great gulps of air. He'd gone as far as he could and his Quest was finished, whether he liked it or not.
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[Daily Quest]
Push-Ups: 200/100
Sit-Ups: 200/100
Squats: 200/100
Run: 18/10km
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100% Reward: Status Recovery
150% Reward: 1,000s
200% Reward: N/A
[Accept] [Decline]
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Selecting [Accept] with his thoughts, Jason closed his eyes and visibly relaxed as he felt the soothing energy flow through his body while it washed away the exhaustion. He would've worked out far more in his previous life if he'd had this option, it was easy to grind yourself to the bone when you knew you wouldn't feel it the next morning.
While the first three workouts were quite simple and he'd achieved their maximum bonus quotas within the first week, the run had killed him since day one. He could break up the other exercises into two, 100 rep sets that he knocked out in both the morning and afternoon, but the run always left his body too tired to do the same.
He couldn't use magic or any other abilities to make the Quest easier either. Every one of those 200 reps and 18km were pure physical exertion. While the run was more lenient, each one of the squats, push-ups, and sit-ups, had to be perfectly up to the system's specifications as well. He couldn't get by with half measures.
Jason was getting better with every day though. Each Status Recovery received upon turning in the quest restored his body to peak health and was thus catapulting his rate of growth. Since he could run his body completely ragged and be perfectly fine the next day, that's exactly what he did.
In the past two months, while balancing both school and family, he'd nearly worked up to completing all the 200% objectives. He didn't always have the time to commit to extending the run however and thus, often failed to achieve the bonus reward.
Today though, was when his quantity of souls had finally reached 10,000. He now had a choice to make, go ahead and use the Travel Token, or put it off until after reaching the 200% completion reward. If he'd been given this choice a month ago, he would've jumped right into it without a second thought.
The Daily's were a real struggle in the beginning. They didn't increase his stats or level and even though he'd kept in shape knowing this time would come, they were still difficult for his 15 year old body. Thus, the promise of increasing his level just by killing a few mobs was incredibly tempting.
These days however, with his body rapidly catching up with the Quest requirements, Jason was much more relaxed and could see the wider picture from a different perspective. His gamer instincts from centuries ago had reawakened and all but demanded him to grab it before leaving.
They screamed in the back of his mind that no system made with Dark Souls at the core, would allow him to complete the Quest so easily. It was more likely that the reward would disappear the instant Jason started to spend souls on increasing his stats.
It was with this line of thinking that he put off buying the Token altogether because he knew that if he got it, he'd end up using the thing on impulse. Instead, he pushed the thought from his mind and discreetly worked on his Slayer Magic while he walked home from the school track.
Since his system unlocked at the start of the year, he'd been using the track after school to pump out his Daily Quests. He'd informed his parents of his plan to join the track & field team in high school and they'd happily allowed Jason to come home a few hours later than usual.
His Slayer Magic was, unfortunately, proving to be more difficult to get working how he wanted. What he was most proud of by this point was how he could flip between purple, blue, and silver lined shadows, that being god, devil, and dragon slaying respectively, with merely a thought. Achieving this had finally got his [Shadow Slayer Magic] to level 2 across the board.
Presently, due to his lack of a training area away from prying eyes, his primary focus had been on the subtle use of the magic such as integrating his Devil Fruit and the Shadow Form spell. He'd been mistaken when he'd first examined the [Shadow Devil] and thought that the system would merge the two on its own. While he'd been able to perform the Shadow Form magic that was shown in the Fairy Tail anime since he was 12, it wasn't until recently that he managed to merge it with the Devil Fruit seamlessly.
Sadly it wasn't enough of an achievement to push either [Shadow Human] or Devil into level four, but Jason assumed that he was already pushing the limits on what further integration could achieve. If he had to guess, he'd only gain a level once his magic and fruit were completely integrated in all aspects. That was only if the skills didn't somehow merge by that point.
So, as he walked down the street on his way home, Jason attempted to hone his finer control through various, discreet exercises.
Consume a shadow from an alleyway, pick up some garbage with his feet via stepping on it and then using gravity to propel it from his hand into a nearby trash can. Little things like this that would go unnoticed at a glance were what he'd gotten into the habit of doing on his daily commute.
On the evenings he came home late enough for the sun to have gone down, he'd try out the technique he'd recreated from numerous games and anime, Shadow Step. He'd step into an alley and sink into a shadow, only to appear from another a couple meters away. He could currently travel roughly a few dozen meters, but he hadn't really pushed the spell to its limits for fear of drawing attention to himself. He still didn't know how magic completely worked in this world and if they could sense or track his usage, so it was better to keep mana expenditures small just in case.
As he passed by a particular house, Jason grimaced with disgust at the conversation he overheard taking place on the front patio.
"…but what they didn't know was that the real treasure wasn't the gold they'd found, it was the breasts they'd fondled along the way," an old man spoke grandly while leaning back in a chair and stoking his beard sagely.
""Wawh!"" Came a chorus of cheers from the small crowd of children gathered around.
"Grandpa, grandpa!" Shouted a brown haired boy as he looked up at the old man with stars in his eyes, "are oppai really more valuable than gold?"
"Hoho," chuckled the geezer with a perverted grin that went missed by the children present, "but of course lad! If you had to spend gold to just see oppai, wouldn't that make them more valuable?"
Jason sneered in disdain as he passed by the house, he could appreciate a good pair of chest puppies as much as the next guy but, he was an ass man all the way. A girl could be flat as a board and would still beat out any pair of double D's if she could bounce a quarter off them cheeks. These poor souls in the 90's didn't know the golden era of yoga pants yet and the times were truly darker for it.
After walking a few more blocks, Jason arrived at his house but paused right as he made his way through the front door. The smell of his mother's homemade Kimchi-Jjigae assaulted his senses and slightly stung his eyes as it washed over him, forcing Jason to gulp down saliva that threatened to spill out his mouth.
Turning her head and smiling at Jason, his mother started to speak only to be interrupted by a screaming nine year old.
"Oppa!" Cried Jinah as she barreled into Jason's chest.
"Oof," he grunted, and patted his sister's head before peeling her off him like a leech. He looked down at her and smiled at remembering what she called him.
His parents had thought him strange when he'd been so adamant against being called 'Onii-Chan,' but he'd put his foot down on the issue almost immediately. Too many suggestive manga and anime back in his first life had made his mind unable to associate the words with anything even remotely familial. Luckily, being part Korean had provided an acceptable substitute.
"Jinah," his mother called, "come help set the table and let Jason come inside. Jason, close the door behind you and go get ready for dinner."
Jinah pouted as she ran off to help his mother while Jason did as he was told. His father looked up from the couch and threw him a wave that he returned as he headed up the stairs to his room.
After washing up and changing out of his school uniform into some shorts and a t-shirt, Jason returned downstairs just as food was being placed on the table. He flopped down in his chair and grinned at his still pouting sister as she filled everyone's cups with water.
She huffed and looked away, missing the light slap his father gave to the back of his head as he too sat down. Shortly after, both the girls took their seats and his mother removed the top from the Kimchi-Jjigae, causing all seated to nearly drool.
"Well…" his mother said as she looked around the table with a proud smile. "Dig in"
""Itadakimasu!"" Both Jason and Jinah shouted at the same time.
Jason grinned to himself as he filled his plate. Even after all these years, he still enjoyed saying that more than he believed most people did. Not everything he'd seen in anime and manga had been corrupted after all.
••••••••••••••••
1 Month Later
••••••••••••••••
Jason laid splayed out on his back panting while sporting a satisfied smile across his face. It had taken another four attempts to achieve it but he'd finally passed the 20km bonus goal, just in time for the weekend.
With excited anticipation, he selected [Accept] and his body relished the sensation of Status Recovery. He sat up, now feeling good as new, and dismissed the extra 1,000s before grinning at the third reward.
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[Sprint] Lvl.1: (Active Skill)
Upon activation, increase speed by 30% for a short time.
•Consumes SP while active.
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'So,' he thought to himself. 'It seems that you can earn the skills from the shop through different means.'
He rubbed his chin and quickly flitted over to the [Basic Shop] page, confirming that the Rune Stone was still up for sale.
'While not for certain, this could mean that it's possible for me to get other skills in different ways as well,' Jason mused. 'I don't think I'll ever buy the [Dagger Arts] skill, but if I could learn how to use a sword or something, maybe a skill could come from that? I don't remember how Sung Jin-Woo got all his skills and it's really hurting my planning right now.'
Dismissing that train of thought, Jason looked at the bottom of the shop page and grinned as he finally purchased the [World (1) Travel Token].
Looking down, he could the see the Token came in the form of a small glowing sphere of light, shrouded with roiling shadows. He briefly panicked at how bright it was and looked around frantically to see if anyone had noticed. Luckily, it appeared that like the system, no one could see the orb.
After calming his rapidly beating heart and berating himself over his impulsiveness that could've grown into a huge problem, Jason reached for the Token and crushed it in his grasp. As soon as he did so, his mind was flooded with new information about what it was and how it worked.
All he needed to do was will it's activation and a portal would appear in the nearest available doorway. On the other side would be the Undead Asylum and after returning, the location would change to match his departure location.
Time would pass by normally here based on however long he spent away, meaning that even if Jason returned to Earth from Oolacile, he wouldn't come back to an ancient Japan. While this was beneficial for the most part considering how messed up time was in Dark Souls, it presented its own share of problems.
Jason couldn't just leave whenever he wanted and needed to return before anything went amiss due to his absence. Another thing he learned from the Token was that it would only work for one round trip before needing 24 hours to recharge. If he left after school on Friday and came back in the evening, he'd miss out on using it all day Saturday, so he needed to plan accordingly.
'I could use it every other day during the school week after classes,' he thought. 'My real problem is the weekends. I'll have to find a way to convince Mom and Dad to let me leave the house, I'd never be able to leave if they have me watching over Jinah all day while their at work.'
Luckily, Jinah had a play date with one of her friends tomorrow and he'd get the house to himself. As long as Jason returned before his parents came home, he could spend almost the whole day in Lordran.
He got up off the grass and jogged over to the locker room with a bounce in his step. His anticipation for leveling tomorrow was so great that he almost used the Token right away. After fifteen long years, he'd finally start growing into someone formidable.
Jason didn't know how strong the other Rulers and Monarchs were by the standards of DxD, but considering they could travel to different worlds and turn back time on a universal scale, even if it was through an artifact, he'd have to put them around the top. He didn't know if they could face Great Red or Ophis in a one-on-one fight without their armies, but he was certain they could take out Odin, Indra, Sirzechs, and the like easily.
"And the Shadow Monarch was the strongest of them all…" Jason muttered to himself. He'd need to surpass both Ashborn and Sung Jin-Woo, for something to be so important that God found it necessary to send him here, Jason needed to stand at the top.
Jason looked down at his left hand. Thinking about the Token had a small glowing circle appear on the inside of his wrist, completely invisible to others outside the purview of his system. He clenched the first in anticipation, tomorrow, his rise would begin.
Weekly Power Status
-- Power
Ranking 
-- Power
stone