NOVEL SIMPLE 0047 – Benny As Goat
It was nearing dinnertime by the time Zoe returned from the gym. She parked her electric bike in the designated area outside her apartment building. She didn’t bother locking it; she never did. After all, she could monitor the area with her "Transparent World 2.0" ability, which allowed her to keep a vigilant eye on her bike. If anyone dared to steal it, they’d quickly learn their lesson when a massive war hammer seemingly dropped out of thin air right on their head.
Taking the elevator to the top floor, the sixth, she was just about to enter her apartment when her ever-active "Transparent World 2.0" picked up some interesting sounds coming from her neighbor Benny's apartment. Zoe focused more intently on Benny’s unit. Everything there became strikingly clear.
Benny was sitting in his living room, meticulously combing his thinning hair in front of a small mirror. On the table before him was a cup of rice wine and a phone on speaker mode in the middle of a call.
"I’m serious, I’m really not interested in weightlifting. It’s not like it’s made of gold," Benny said.
"Come on, stop lying. Do you think I don’t know I can’t throw 19.2 meters? You need to upgrade your sales tactics," he continued, exasperated. "I’m not Jenny, my name is Benny and definitely not a woman! Then who am I, your mother? My voice is masculine, are you deaf?! Alright, stop bothering me and also I'm not gay!"
After this annoyed retort, Benny hung up, blocking the number of the gym that persistently tried to recruit him for weightlifting training and for some reason, as Jenny, the strong woman they talking about. His face was full of resignation. Nonetheless, he went back to attending to his recently treated, sparsely populated hair with a high-end tonic.
Outside, Zoe shook her head with a hint of amusement. It was clear now. The shock she had caused at that weightlifting training center had finally subsided. She hadn’t meant to show off, but her casual, effortless throw had undoubtedly unsettled the coach who had trained diligently for years.
Zoe had tried to hold back, just enough to outperform the coach by a small margin and silence her. Now, that coach was likely desperate to find her, seeing her as a prodigious talent. However, Zoe had cleverly given them Benny’s contact information instead of her own. Consequently, Benny was now the one being harassed.
Zoe had no real interest in becoming a weightlifting athlete. If hhe truly wanted to be one, breaking world records would be a trivial task. She could easily hurl the shot out of the stadium. So, she opted to refuse the coach’s persistent attempts to recruit her.
Pondering these thoughts, she unlocked her front door and stepped inside. The air inside was familiar, with no trace of an intruder. Clearly, today wasn’t one of those rare unlucky days when a thief might have paid a visit.
Zoe quickly moved to her computer desk and checked the time. It was 8:30 PM. There was still some time left before her 9 PM training session with "Transparent World 2.0" as per her short-term schedule 3.0. However, she could start a bit earlier since she had lost quite a bit of planned time by going to the gym today.
With this in mind, Zoe activated "Transparent World 2.0" to its full capacity. The training involved enhancing her senses—sight, hearing, and smell—by intensively observing, listening, and smelling various stimuli.
In addition to the usual sensory training, she divided her mental focus into three parts for more specialized exercises. First was her mental perception ability. She spread her mental energy, covering every inch of the space within her "Transparent World," detecting the slightest changes in every corner.
Next, she practiced her telekinetic ability. She aimed to levitate a tissue with her mind and keep it perfectly steady, avoiding any unnecessary movement. This exercise demanded a high level of precision and control over her mental strength.
Thus, Zoe began her rigorous training session, fully immersed in honing her extraordinary abilities.
The final aspect of her training focused on the emotional perception of her mental power. Zoe needed to sense the emotional fluctuations of all the stray cats, dogs, and humans in her vicinity. This three-pronged approach to training would elevate her mental abilities from multiple angles.
After a prolonged period of this training, Zoe felt the need to jot down some ideas. The first two aspects of her mental training were relatively straightforward. One required constant activation of her sensory perception, ensuring it was sufficiently detailed. The other involved staring at a tissue, maintaining its stability in mid-air with telekinesis.
However, the emotional perception training was different. There weren’t enough living beings around for her to sense. Most of the insects had been eradicated over the past few days, and there were few stray cats and dogs near her apartment building. As for the numerous humans living in the same building, Zoe could only briefly sense their emotional fluctuations without attempting any deeper experiments.
She was curious about how various creatures’ emotions would fluctuate under different stimuli. This would be crucial for her to accurately judge others' states based on subtle emotional changes in the future. However, it wasn’t feasible to use humans for such experiments. Despite feeling increasingly inhuman, Zoe still valued innocent lives.
On the contrary, she considered herself a reasonable and kind-hearted person. She would always start with a rational discussion, but if that failed, she wouldn’t hesitate to resort to physical force.
"Maybe... I should get some lab mice?" Zoe mused aloud as she lay back in her chair after concluding her "Transparent World" training.
Lab mice are widely used in scientific experiments due to their extensive applications in testing the safety, toxicity, and efficacy of food, cosmetics, pharmaceuticals, and biological products. They are also popular small pets among children and the elderly. When live experiments are necessary, mice are often the preferred subjects.
Mice have unparalleled advantages as live test subjects. They are inexpensive to raise, breed, and handle, and there are no legal, psychological, or ethical constraints. Individual differences among them are minimal. Considering she wanted to conduct potentially stimulating experiments to explore emotional fluctuations in different scenarios, Zoe found lab mice to be quite suitable. They would allow her to proceed without any psychological burden and with minimal cost.
With this in mind, and noticing it was already 11:30 PM, Zoe took out her old phone, plugged it into the charger, and began recording her thoughts.
Record #15: February 4, 2024
- New Training Method: High-frequency, spontaneous muscle tremors for dual training of mental and physical strength. The effects are excellent. Current duration: 9.6 seconds.
- Plan: Visit the mouse breeding facility tomorrow to purchase lab mice for more mental power tests and experiments.
Compared to her previous records, Zoe no longer used the absolute standard of push-ups to measure her physical fitness. Instead, she referred to muscle tremors. This method was developed from her observations of various fitness routines and muscle exertion techniques at the gym, combined with her own mental power and imagination.
This training method exercised both her mental and physical strength simultaneously. Even with her incredible endurance, capable of running a half-marathon while carrying a war hammer, she couldn’t sustain it for ten seconds. Due to the slow recovery of mental power, she could only perform this exercise three times a day, perfectly spaced in the morning, afternoon, and evening.
It was quick, easy to record, highly efficient, and convenient for training.
