Reincarnated As The Heroes Guide

The pilots followed Kalli into the cafeteria, and then paused when they saw the buffet.

”Are you celebrating something?” The pilot asked.

”No, this is our usual spread. Soup, mashed tubers with herbs, pan-fried fish, and dinner buns. It’s not as fancy as you might imagine, and it’s all locally produced. Grab what you want.

But if you’re level zero, be aware that the tubers are really filling for regular folk. So, go for the smaller soup bowl.

You’ll understand soon.”

The pilots grabbed what looked like a reasonable dinner tray for them, after they were assured that they could go back for more if they particularly liked something.

But one spoonful of mashed tubers later, they could feel the energy flooding them, almost like a sugar rush.

”Yeah, that happens. Focus on the fish first, they’re ones from our world. The shark was on the lunch menu, and it’s from the other world, with the same higher energy level.”

Half an hour later, they were in the Academy’s gym, riding an energy high from dinner, with the leftover mashed tubers stealthily tucked into their backpack, as they didn’t know that the kitchen would have just given them a takeout box if they asked.

The kitchen had plenty, as all the locals used reusable ones.

But being on an overcrowded ship full of refugees, they had gotten used to food being scarce, so if you had extras, you hid them, or you lost them.

Unless it was nutrient paste.

”Remind me again why we’re doing this?”

”Because you can improve your strength by a massive amount if you do. Enough that if you maximize your time here, you might be counted as proper heroes.

Now, just pick the amount of extra weight that is appropriate for you, and we will start the routine. Just follow what I do, and do your best to keep up. You need to stress your body constantly for an hour and a half.”

Kalli picked up a barbell and began loading plates, which was causing intense concern for the pilots.

But then she slung it over her shoulder and walked to the treadmill.

”Uh, I’m not sure that’s safe.”

”There is no health and safety department here. Or, there is, but they don’t care. Just set the treadmill at a comfortable jog, and shoulder press the weights. Don’t overload yourself, you’ll be doing it for ninety minutes.

See, easy.”

Kalli’s ”Comfortable Jog” was something closer to a sprint by normal standards, and she was shoulder pressing ninety kilos with every step, the barbell flexing with the impacts.

”The warriors have to do this manually on the outdoor track, since the treadmill can’t support their weight requirement. Count yourselves lucky that you get to do it in air-conditioned comfort.”

The two men picked much more moderate amounts of weight, as well as far less incline and treadmill speed.

”So, that’s what it is to be a physically buffed hero. We’ve really been missing out.”

Kalli laughed, ”Your Heroes likely aren’t at this level either, we have a quest for bonus growth rate, like steroids for heroes. You can actually double your strength in a matter of weeks this way. Just keep up the workouts, and you’ll become properly superhuman.

The world is going to need more people like that, given the danger level of every species that we’ve seen so far.

Without some sort of advantage like a quest to build strength, humanity will just be left behind, and we will end up at the bottom of the totem pole, living like gophers, hiding from all sorts of predators just to keep ourselves alive.

That’s not what I want for us.”

Kalli didn’t stop running as she spoke, though she did rest the barbell on her shoulders to lower the strain level so she could speak properly.

For the next hour and a half, they ran in relative silence, if you ignored the pounding of shoes on treadmills, the laboured breathing, and the cursing by the pilots. However, when they finished and the system informed them that they had made gains in three different categories of physical abilities, it was all worth it.

At their level, which was basically still human base, as they were level zero, one more point of any stat was a huge gain.

They wouldn’t notice it right away, they were too tired. But when they woke up in the morning, it would be undeniable that they were making rapid gains.

Hopefully, so would the other heroes.

The Quest was up for all of them, with Kalli’s hope that they would all push toward becoming strong enough that the monsters they were finding ceased to be a major threat. Strong enough that humans would remain dominant on this world.

Even in her own mind, that sounded more than a little unrealistic. They weren’t even through the first two trials, and they were already this far behind? Expecting humanity to come out on top was more than a little farfetched.

Still, she couldn’t bring herself to consider the alternative.

The next morning, the sound of helicopter blades in the distance woke Kalli minutes before her alarm went off.

She got up with dawn every day, and apparently so did the Kalkan fleet.

A glance at the camera feed from the Academy’s security cameras, easily accessed on her laptop, as security here was terrible, informed her that there were landing craft headed for the shore while the helicopters were headed for the Academy.

That would pull some of the monsters away from the shore, while the automated turrets would keep them from building up around the perimeter wall.

As long as someone had been out to keep them charged.

[ I will have to add that to the duty roster so that someone goes and does it every day. That should likely count as skilled labour for the mages, right? It takes time to make the patrol around the wall, and to recharge the turrets. It should definitely earn someone an hour or two. ]

As it happened, she wasn’t the first to think of that. There was already a pair of mages walking the wall, checking for monster corpses, and topping off the sentry turrets as they made the loop.