The Extra becomes the Villain's Bodyguard-Chapter 44: Research part 2.
The training yard echoed with the sounds of groans from pain and labored breath as Sergeant Sam paced between rows of soldiers, his voice a whip-crack over the din.
"Again! Until your System pings or your bones break!"
Private Rivas staggered under the weight of his pack, his vision blurring as he forced himself into another sprint. The digital progress bar hovering at the edge of his perception taunted him:
[Stamina: 87%]
So close. He then proceeded to vomit from nausea.
A medic stood ready with smelling salts as another recruit collapsed mid-lift, his [Strength: 91%] still not enough to satisfy command.
Behind reinforced glass, Dr. Velmar adjusted her headset.
"Subject Gamma-12 responding to adrenal compound. Progress uptick in Strength... but his Agility bar just dropped five points. He’s shaking too."
On the other side of the observation window, a twitching soldier vomited black bile between convulsions. His [Strength: 103%] glowed an ominous red.
"Interesting," murmured the doctor. "Adjust the dosage for the next group."
No one noticed the warehouse supervisor. Not until the day he was having a conversation with a private who was complaining about the straining and how they were suffering to fill up progress bars.
" Progress what?" asked the warehouse supervisor.
" It’s something that we who have slain monsters have. It’s supposed to be the requirement for us to awaken our path skill that will eventually lead us to our profession." 𝗳𝐫𝚎𝗲𝚠𝚎𝗯𝕟𝐨𝘃𝚎𝗹.𝗰𝗼𝗺
"Hmmm... then can I ask what this is?" What the private saw made him run to report the warehouse supervisor.
His [Strength: 100%] was fully filled, Stamina was at 39%. He was asked what he had been doing cause they never saw the man do the training that the cadets were forced to.
"I just... kept doing my job," He stammered when interrogated.
Dr. Velmar’s notes that night contained a single underlined phrase:
"The System rewards devotion too, not just desperation. It seems that people who are used to their daily activities can progress bars too. They don’t even know that they were progressing. How amusing. It can be progressed accidentally too. So maybe there are others who woke up one day and found out it was filled... Does hard work and talent have a part in this too?"
A day later, those who had used artificial enhancements to progress had their progress revert to pre-enhancement.
What followed was that the enhancements stopped working even on people who had not enhanced themselves before.
"It was patched? Does that mean the system has a capacity for error? Is it not omnipotent?" How curious...fufufu." Smiled Dr.Velmar.
********************************************************
The strategy room stank of hot coffee.
Colonel Voss slammed his fist on the table, making the glowing tactical maps flicker.
"The number of awakeners was increasing. And it’s not just us... criminals and civilians too... Higher ups are on my ass t control the situation. FUCK!"
He also read about the skill his soldiers had awakened.
[ Awakening: Environmental Calibration - Support-Class].
"What the hell does that even mean?" Voss growled. "Can he shoot better? No. Can he take a bullet? No. So what goddamn use is—"
"Sir," interrupted Dr. Lien, her voice carefully neutral. "It means he can sense changes in air pressure. Predict storms. Possibly even—"
" What does support class category mean?"
"We categorized those whose requirements had the intelligence and mana bars. "
" How do they progress?"
" We don’t know yet?"
"Find out!" The general yelled.
In Lab 6, Private Cho sat strapped to a monitoring chair, electrodes glued to his temples.
"Focus," ordered the technician. "The System says your Intelligence quota is at 0.1%. Think harder."
"I don’t think it works like that. I don’t know how to progress it. Cause what does it want? Me to get smarter?"
"Maybe that’s it!"
*********
Cho squeezed his eyes shut. He’d been at this for days—reading manuals, solving logic puzzles, even playing chess against an AI. His progress bar hadn’t budged past a miserable [Intelligence: 20.1%].
"As expected, I was right..." Dr. Velmar said nonchalantly.
"As for mana... from what I know from Web novels and Mangas, it is a type of energy. But we have no way to perceive it." Maybe we should capture the mage type goblins and study them. Cause the wolves have shown no signs of it, so did the slimes. But does their anatomy show this energy... How can we progress this? Or maybe we study the stones they produce?"
No one noticed the old man who cleaned the labs at night.
Private Cho did.
"You’re awake," the janitor observed, mopping around Cho’s chair.
"They won’t let me sleep," Cho admitted. "Not until I ’unlock my potential.’"
The janitor chuckled, tapping his temple. A faint glow pulsed beneath his wrinkled skin. [Memory Archive: Active].
"I was a librarian," he murmured. "For 13 years. I came to love books... I just read what I liked and what was easy. I started with 10 pages, 20, and by the time I knew I could read 400 pages without breaks. Don’t force yourself to read hard topics... maybe that will help."
"What do you know old ma—?"
But the janitor was already shuffling away, humming.
******************************************
The number of awakeners was rising rapidly...
The pattern was recognized soon enough...
They were...
1. Rapid Progress in Danger
A scout dodging fire suddenly, his progress bar spiking from 42% to 89% in three heartbeats.
the progress bars were filling up quickly in life-or-death situations.
2. The Post-Danger Boost
After surviving an ambush by generously setting up a counterattack after analyzing his enemies, His [Intelligence: 69.3%] rocketed to [84.1%] overnight.
Because of the progress bars filling up quickly, more were awakening.
The war had become a perverse training ground:
Frontline soldiers evolved faster than rear-echelon troops.
Civilians in contested zones progressed their bars faster than those in "safe" territories.
************************
Meanwhile, Dr. Velmar heard of this and worked on some solutions for people to progress.
Send troops into meat grinders to force awakenings?
Put a bomb and let them diffuse it to improve their intelligence stat. She had discovered that in dangerous situations, the way you use your brain to solve problems actually progresses the bar quickly and in leaps, depending on the solution and the danger situation they were placed in. She then had a theory that if the person knew that they were not in real danger, it wouldn’t progress as much. This wasn’t proven, but it was decided to be done anyway.
So they had to simulate dangerous situations for the soldiers and not tell them it was a test, and they were not in real danger.
The next morning, Battalion 9 was ordered into "high-stimulus training"—a suicide charge against a fortified ’rebel nest’.
They saw how their comrades died, and because they were in ’danger’, their stats progressed.
" Thought the system would inhibit this... " smiled Dr. Velmar, looking at the progress.
All of them awakened.
But she noticed that depending on their methods and actions to increase the progress bars, they awakened a specific skill.
This was, of course was noticed by the rebels and civilians too
Rebel medics began documenting the phenomenon:
"Stress + Survival = Evolution"
They started engineering near-death experiences:
Running from danger [Sprint]
Strength training to trigger [Strengthening]
Poison microdosing to build [Toxin Resistance]
It worked.
And it excited them.
As the death toll climbed and danger increased, so did the frequency of:
Dual Awakenings (Two skills unlocking simultaneously)
Path Mergers (Combat/Support hybrids appearing)
Unknown Categories (Abilities with no clear classification)
Surviving from danger and gaining skills or progress was addictive...
So, the rumors spread like wildfire, it reached the civilians and sometimes specific skill gaining methods traded:
"Danger makes you stronger."
"Want a strengthening skill? Or maybe a sprint? Come with something valuable and I’ll tell you"
"The System loves the desperate."
This information gave birth to many types of people.
Suicidal Volunteers: Starving civilians began deliberately wandering into monster-infested zones, praying for an awakening before being torn apart. Some got [Enhanced Reflexes]. Most got graves.
Brutal Training Rituals: Rebel factions instituted "trial by fire" initiations, forcing recruits to duel awakened beasts barehanded. The survivors walked out changed.
A graffiti tag appeared across the battlefield ruins:
"FASTER TO BLEED THAN TO TRAIN"
The Government’s Descent into Madness
High Command’s response backfired spectacularly:
***********************************
A pulse. A vibration in the bones. Then—words etched across every mind, System-touched or not:
[Goblin Population Subjugated to 90%]
Most didn’t care.
"Another damn counter," muttered a rebel, crushing a Goblin Scout’s skull under his boot. The creatures had been thinning for weeks—fewer portals, fewer swarms. But the ones that did emerge were different. Smarter. Deadlier. A pack of Goblin Stalkers had wiped out an entire militia squad just yesterday, using ambush tactics.
No one cared about percentages. Only survival.
Then—
[A Royal Guard Has Been Killed!]
The world stuttered.
The Reactions varied.
The Opportunists
"Someone actually did it?" A black-market dealer dropped his rifle mid-sale. If one had fallen... are there rewards?
His fingers twitched toward a hidden stash of portal-charged grenades.
The Enraged
"FUCK!" A military captain smashed his fist into a command table. The Royal Guard’s death meant the System’s final barriers were collapsing. Expediting the real danger.
The Jealous
"How?" A rogue assassin stared at her knife, still sticky with Goblin blood. She’d spent weeks grinding through lesser monsters, and some nobody had taken down a Guard before her?
People abandoned trenches, hideouts, and supply runs—converging on the nearest glowing portals with different purposes..
The same portals that had once repelled them now hummed, their energy signatures altered.
A soldier reached out—and this time, his hand passed through.
But only if you were Path-Awakened.
The unmarked? The ordinary? Their fingers still met an invisible wall.
"Guess the System’s got standards now," someone sneered.
