“Javelin Throw, huh…”
Seo Minjun dragged the screen and read the character description.
[The Fallen Heavy Infantry]
▶Your skill and strength were surely respected, at least up to a certain point. However, unable to keep up with the progress of the era, you have been left behind.
‘Fuck, is this about me?’
A bitter, self-deprecating smile crossed his face.
Originally, Olympic athletics events had been the sportingification of the war-making abilities demanded of ancient Greek warriors. Running, javelin throwing, discus throwing—which had originated from throwing shields to the opposite bank in advance when crossing rivers—things like that.
This game, where warriors wielding spear and shield got beaten black and blue by mages. The reality where the Olympics, sports-ified from such things, were defeated by virtual reality games and collapsed. The context was similar. It was nothing more than a background image in a game, yet somehow, he felt a tearful sense of kinship.
Seo Minjun finished reading the character card.
[The Fallen Heavy Infantry]
······
▶However, seeking a new opportunity, you have set foot upon the continent of Stunning Life. Do not doubt your potential. The tip of your spear remains sharp.
Coincidentally, that heavy infantryman also came here after being left behind by the flow of the times.
Just like Seo Minjun, whose athletics club had been disbanded, leaving him to look for odd jobs.
‘Should I pick this…’
Seo Minjun was torn. Seo Jeong-in had told him not to choose a warrior-type class, but he felt strongly drawn to it. And it wasn’t purely for sentimental reasons.
‘It gives me a skill called Javelin Throw.’
Honestly, Seo Minjun wasn’t confident he could do well even if he chose a mage. He had never played a game before. But javelin was one of his main events. Perhaps he could put his real-world experience to use inside the game.
‘Fuck it.’
Click.
Seo Minjun chose the Fallen Heavy Infantry.
***
Suddenly, all the cards vanished, and he was dropped right in the middle of a grassland.
The first thing to meet his eyes was the endlessly stretching blue fields in every direction.
Seo Minjun examined himself.
198cm, 100kg, exactly that body with 3.7% body fat.
That was because Stunning Life optimized the brain’s avatar control by constructing the avatar identical to the real body.
He was wearing a short-sleeved t-shirt, shorts, and sneakers.
“I thought they’d give me heavy infantry items, but I guess not.”
The moment he felt slightly disappointed.
A message appeared before his eyes.
[The tutorial will now begin.]
[In the tutorial, the player’s physical control ability will be assessed.]
“Tutorial?”
This was something he hadn’t heard from Seo Jeong-in.
Somehow, the feeling was ominous. He had good instincts.
‘My bad premonitions have never been wrong.’
[This test is unrelated to background. Overcome the test using only your real body’s physical ability and concentration.]
In that instant, a chilling sound came from behind. The squeaking of rats.
And the tutorial guide’s final message appeared.
[Escape from the man-eating rat swarm!]
“Fucking hell…”
One thing Seo Minjun still didn’t know.
The difficulty of Stunning Life’s tutorial was utterly brutal.
-Squeeeeak!
-Squeak! Squeak! Squeak!
Behind him, a truly catastrophic sight was unfolding. A black swarm of rats poured forth like waves.
A scene straight out of medieval European art depicting the Black Death.
“What kind of insane game is this!”
Seo Minjun sprinted forward like mad.
***
The flower of athletics, the 100-meter dash.
When an ordinary man in his twenties runs 100 meters, his record falls between 14 and 18 seconds. With professional training, reaching the 13-second range is possible.
However, from the 12-second range onward, talent is required. One must be born with genes that shape fast-twitch muscles well.
During the golden age of classical sports, soccer players ran 100 meters in the 12-second range. The 11-second range is the speed of American NFL wide receivers.
And the domain of track athletes.
‘The 10-second range.’
These athletes, who specialized in running itself—the foundation of countless sports—were faster than soccer players or wide receivers, running 100 meters in the 10-second range.
But there exists an even higher level above that. The so-called ‘realm of the superhuman,’ the 9-second range. The pinnacle referred to as medal contention even among short-distance sprinters. Seeing it in person, one might wonder if they were martial artists; it was a stage where words like otherworldly swiftness or transcendent speed seemed fitting. Among non-black athletes, those who reached this level were few and far between, and Usain Bolt’s 9.58 had been the previous world record.
And…
‘Fuck.’
The speed of the rat swarm chasing Seo Minjun now looked to be about that level.
‘What the hell kind of rats are that fast!’
-Squeak squeak squeak!
-Squeeeeak!
Truly insane speed. It was as intense as running an Olympic 100-meter final.
‘Isn’t this tutorial fucking crazy?’
Sweat formed in his palms. He automatically gritted his teeth. Shouldn’t a game tutorial be a bit relaxed and kind? To think he’d have to go all out like at the Olympics!
The key to the 100-meter dash is ‘stride length.’
Due to the structural limits of the human neuromuscular system, the number of steps per unit time cannot be increased beyond a certain level, so one targets stride length instead.
Top-class 100-meter dashes are usually run with a 2.20-meter stride length, taking 43 steps. Usain Bolt took 41 steps with a 2.43-meter stride.
‘What about me?’
Seo Minjun’s body—about which his coach had once jokingly called the reincarnation of Usain Bolt—broke through 100 meters in 40 steps, breaking Usain Bolt’s record for the first time in 80 years.
His record was 8.91 seconds.
The first and only sub-9-second record in human history.
It was something old folks in their nineties would children about during holidays, spitting as they raved that humanity had finally reached the ‘realm of the gods.’ Then their grandkids would let it go in one ear and out the other, exclaiming “Wow! Amazing!” before receiving pocket money in return and heading to capsule rooms.
Seo Minjun’s running had played exactly that kind of role in society, but it was helping him now. The distance between him and the rat swarm—which should have caught him immediately—was instead gradually widening.
“Huff…! Huff…!”
But he couldn’t let his guard down.
Why?
Because this race wasn’t a 100-meter dash.
He had already run over 300 meters. The rats weren’t losing any stamina, but Seo Minjun was starting to run out of breath.
‘No, is this really what the tutorial is supposed to be?’
Cold sweat broke out.
But at the same time, fighting spirit and obstinacy surged within him. He absolutely could not lose. Somehow, he felt he mustn’t. He had a strange feeling that the moment he was caught, the pride of classical sports would collapse with him.
Boom! Boom! Boom! Boom!
The soles of his feet kicking the ground with all their strength were sore.
Boom! Boom! Boom! Boom!
His mind went blank and dizzy.
Boom! Boom! Boom!
At the point he broke through 450 meters, his breath rose to the tip of his chin, and strength began to drain from his legs.
-Squeeeeak!
He felt several rats being crushed under the soles of his feet as they kicked back against the ground.
He was almost caught.
“No!”
Seo Minjun ran with every ounce of strength he had, and at that moment—
[500 meters broken through.]
[Proceeding to Tutorial Stage 2.]
—a message appeared.
“Huff…”
Suddenly, Seo Minjun’s body teleported to a new space.
“Huff… huff…”
He gasped for breath.
[Tutorial Stage 2 begins!]
-Escape from the great flood.
“Ah, fuck…”
This time it wasn’t a metaphor. A real wave was flying toward him.
‘Something is wrong with this.’
Outrunning that rat swarm wasn’t what a normal person was supposed to do. He couldn’t imagine an ordinary person pulling this off.
‘There must have been another route, right?’
Like fleeing to high ground to shake off the rats.
‘I’m the only one suffering because I don’t know this game!’
I should have asked Seo Jeong-in about this!
***
While he was suffering through hell, outside the tutorial, billions of players were in an uproar.
[Global Server Announcement]
『A player has started Tutorial Stage 2 for the first time in the world.』
Because such a ridiculous message had appeared.
“There’s a Stage 2 in the tutorial?”
“Isn’t the tutorial just running from the rat swarm until you get caught?”
“Wasn’t it giving rewards based on survival time before getting caught?”
Fifty years ago, the developers had designed the tutorial rats based on Usain Bolt’s speed.
And they had entrusted the Super AI with designing Stage 2 and beyond of the tutorial. Hoping that someday a superhuman surpassing Usain Bolt would discover the AI’s Stage 2 in Stunning Life—a stage even the developers didn’t know about.
But contrary to their wishes, for the past 50 years, no superhuman who broke Usain Bolt’s record had appeared in Stunning Life.
Until this morning.
[Server Announcement]
『A player has started Tutorial Stage 3 for the first time in the world.』
But now he had cleared Stage 2 as well.
***
Fortunately, Stage 2 didn’t require running for long.
Because after running about 50 meters, a 9-meter-wide gorge appeared.
Kwaang!
Seo Minjun kicked the ground at the exact point and launched his body to the opposite side.
Sshhhhhh!
The waves all fell into the dizzying cliff below the gorge, and Seo Minjun finally caught his breath.
“First running. Now a long jump?”
Typical track and field long jumpers’ records are in the 8-meter range. Seo Minjun had jumped 9.39 meters. That too was a world record.
Long jump and short-distance sprinting share many similarities in muscles and technique, so short-distance champions often reach medal contention in long jump as well. Thanks to that, he crossed with a perilous margin of about 10 centimeters, but the tutorial wasn’t over yet.
[Proceeding to Tutorial Stage 3.]
His body teleported again.
The terrain of Stage 3 was a dense forest. Bamboo, wild roses, and sumac trees sprouted everywhere, and shade-loving plants thrived in the shadows of the bamboo grove. Fallen logs and rocks littered the ground, the terrain was bumpy, and the grass was overgrown.
“What is it this time?”
When he looked back—
Hwarrrrk!
—fire was spreading. At tremendous speed. A jungle overgrown with bushes was defenseless against fire.
[Escape from the great fire!]
“Yeah, sure, keep it coming.”
Now he wasn’t even surprised. Only stubbornness remained.
Boom! Boom! Boom!
The superhuman newbie began sprinting forward.
***
Among athletics events, there is something called cross country. Running through forests, fields, and hills instead of asphalt tracks.
But even so, they don’t run through dense jungles like Tutorial Stage 3.
Then which event is this jungle run most similar to?
He didn’t know.
From the start, this tutorial wasn’t something forced to fit into ‘athletics.’ The tutorial merely used physical measurement as its objective.
However, Seo Minjun did have one athletic technique he could use here.
‘110-meter hurdles.’
To escape the flames, he had no time to weave around obstacles. He had to jump over them while maintaining a straight line.
The height of track hurdles is a whopping 1.067 meters. Compared to that, weren’t these fallen logs and rocks paltry?
What is required of a hurdler isn’t speed alone. Rhythm is more important than anything. The key is how one arranges the step count to the hurdle point.
Seo Minjun analyzed the positions of obstacles in real-time while running, calculating his stride length and step count.
Ta-ang!
He leaped over a fallen log.
Ta-ang!
He leaped over a mud pit.
Ta-ang!
He leaped over a rock.
The moment the rhythm breaks, it’s over. The best hurdlers hardly lose speed while clearing obstacles.
Seo Minjun’s personal best in the 110-meter hurdles was 11.46 seconds. It was one of his eight world records as well.
But flames don’t need to hurdle. They just burn through.
“Huff… huff!”
His already exhausted chest burned for air.
The sweltering heat from behind was on the verge of snatching him.
Seo Minjun steadied his dizzying mind. He squeezed out his last dregs of concentration.
Kwaang!
He plunged through the bamboo that was beginning to catch fire.
Kudangtang!
At the same time, he tumbled forward onto a hard stone floor. A place where fire could no longer spread.
He dragged himself a few more meters and collapsed onto the ground.
“Huff… huff… This is fucking exhausting, seriously.”
In athletics, there is something called the ‘One-Hour Decathlon.’ An insane event where you finish all ten events in one hour, and that’s exactly what this felt like.
“I was the only one doing it in modern times.”
It was true. After classical sports collapsed, insane events like the ‘One-Hour Decathlon’ had completely disappeared from history. Perhaps it was thanks to the stamina forged through that which allowed him to break through Stage 3.
Seo Minjun was thinking so.
But it wasn’t time to rest yet.
[Proceeding to Tutorial Boss Battle.]
[Equipment for the Fallen Heavy Infantry has been prepared! Grab your weapon and prepare for battle!]
There lay a single spear, a shield, and a helmet.
Seo Minjun instinctively realized it. This was the end of the tutorial.
He put on the helmet adorned with a crest shaped like a cockscomb, with a red tassel. And when he fixed the shield to his left arm and held the spear, he looked just like a hoplite.
[You may now use skills attached to your background.]
Tutorial Stages 1-3 had been physical tests unrelated to background, so background skills couldn’t be used either. But now the lock on background skills had been released.
[The Fallen Heavy Infantry possesses the skill 『Javelin Throw』. Master its usage!]