The next morning Dave woke up in his own bed without Jackie once again. He sighed. At first he couldn't be happier just getting to sleep with her, but it didn't take long for him to become greedy for more. He really wanted to be able to wake up with her in his arms now. He could only persevere, soon enough he would grow more and his father would continue to decline.
What was his father going to do about their relationship once he couldn't use his physical prowess to abuse them anymore? He would be paying him back tenfold for the many years upon years of abuse the two of them suffered at his hands.
His morning workout went so easily he actually added another set to his routine while he managed to keep down the time spent. Things were really coming together. He would soon have to find ways to up the intensity as just increasing the sets and reps would have rapidly diminishing returns. You could only do the reps so fast after all. At a certain point he would have to increase the intensity to get a better workout without wasting more time on his workouts. He didn't mind though as seeing progress for the first time in his life had left him with a completely new level of motivation.
For once the breakfast table was deserted. He found Jackie working on breakfast in the kitchen.
"Is he already off to the gym again?" he asked her.
"Yeah, he left just 20 minutes ago," she told him.
He smirked enjoying the show, her curvy ass was emphasised when she bent over the kitchen counter working on their breakfast.
He walked up behind her wrapping his arms around her waist and pulling her against him, his already hard dick pressing against her back. "Breakfast is looking rather delicious today," he whispered in her ear.
"Mmm..." she moaned, but continued to work on breakfast.
"Oh? Is that how it is?" he asked teasingly. He ran one of his hands up the inside of her thigh ending up brushing against her already moist panties.
"It feels like someone isn't being honest..." he accused.
They ended up having a quickie with him bending her over the kitchen counter giving her the pounding she so clearly desired. They weren't able to spend more time though, even with him needing less time for his workout and jog to school it only gave him an extra 20-30 minutes during the morning.
Packing his backpack he had an idea. He might not be able to afford weights at the moment to improve his jog, but did he need to buy weights to add resistance? He ended up grabbing some of his heavier school books that he didn't actually need that day and stuffing his backpack to the brim adding quite a bit of weight that way. It would do the trick for now.
He was happy to find it work and had a good jog that managed to exhaust his muscles by the time he got to school. At least for now this was an effective way to improve his workout without expensive gym memberships or equipment.
The day was relatively uneventful though he was happy to find out Kate actually had a boyfriend though they hadn't actually done too much yet. Although she didn't say it outright it seemed the relationship was fairly new and she was moving slow. He suspected she might even still be a virgin, but being too direct wouldn't make him look good.
He went out of his way to find her boyfriend during lunch and use his inspect on him.
[Inspect]
[Name: Brad Jones]
[Age: 18]
[Abilities:]
[Enhanced Neuroplasticity]
[The person's brain is quicker to adapt and restructure. This leads to enhanced learning speed and recovery from damage to the brain. Not limited to academics as all neural pathways form faster helping with learning physical skills just as well as mental ones.]
It was actually a mid-grade ability in his opinion. It didn't make someone smarter, but did help them learning and even helped with recovery though just limited to the brain. He made up his mind to add Kate to his small, but growing list of targets. Not only did they get along, she was kind of cute and the ability he could steal was very tempting to him.
Her boyfriend wasn't too intimidating. Though he did ok, he didn't stand out in any particular field simply being pretty good at everything he did do. His ability by itself had made it easy for him to pick up new things, but it didn't do much to raise the actual cap of his performance any so he just capped out faster than other people did. He also looked quite average in every way. Dave actually towered over the boy by almost half a foot(15 cm).
Also since the relationship between Kate and her boyfriend hadn't developed too much yet Dave felt he at least still had a decent shot at stealing her away before it did develop any further.
After checking up on Kate's boyfriend and scarfing down his lunch he still had some time left which he used to find an isolated spot on campus to squeeze in another little workout session getting him up to three sessions a day now. Along with the enhanced muscle growth his father's ability also seemed to grant him enhanced recovery at least as far as muscle damage and fatigue went.
The rest of the day flew by in no time, unfortunately his father was actually home for the evening and in preparation for his match wasn't getting dead drunk for the few days leading up to it ruining any chance he had at some fun with Jackie that night. Instead he just channelled the excess energy into his workout.
Besides making the most of his first abilities he now had some goals. His main goal was still to gain more abilities and improve his life. That was more of an overarching goal though as it would take quite some time to gain multiple abilities and take advantage of them. Given that he was now served the world on a platter he wasn't going to accept anything less than everything. After 17 years of suffering he wanted to be greedy. He wanted to excel in school, he wanted to be the strongest physically, he wanted to be handsome, he wanted to be popular, and he wanted to become wealthy. He was technically wealthy if his father's wealth was counted, but none of that trickled down to him and he was living the life of a poor person just in a slightly fancier home.
He would also need to find some targets with abilities to enhance his looks. Although becoming smarter and more physically impressive were great the thing that would make him more capable of stealing more abilities was definitely going to be his looks. He was already tall and would be in great physical shape soon, but there were still plenty of things that could be improved. He wasn't particularly attractive. His hair was dull, his skin dry with some acne. Plenty improvements he could make there if he managed to get the right abilities. He just needed to keep an eye out for the right targets with them.
As for his more immediate goals. First was to NTR Kate's boyfriend. Second he needed to find out if coach Brown had a partner of some sort and if he did whether he had any shot with her. If he had one, she was attractive and he stood a chance he would gladly steal the asshole coach's ability. Lastly he still needed to improve his social status in school and see about getting revenge on Jeffrey and possibly Mara. The last one was more of a long-term goal as currently there was no way he could achieve any significant revenge on either of them. He didn't have the social nor financial status to touch either of them.
His ability by itself had made it easy for him to pick up new things, but it didn't do much to raise the actual cap of his performance any so he just capped out faster than other people did
This strikes me as an assumption on Dave's part. The description didn't mention anything about the cap not being raised. In general if you had such an ability you should be able to continue to push that cap little by little. Nothing was mentioned that the skill would stop working after you reached your natural cap, other than Dave thinking so. Perhaps Brad is just a bit lazy thus Dave has made an incorrect assumption on the true value of the ability.
Depends on how we think about the "cap" I guess, even if we say he can learn 50% faster it doesn't mean he can learn more complex things than he'd be able to do without the skill.
However the skill implies that he should also possibly be more flexible in this thinking, more easily able to drop his internal dogma for a more pragmatic approach when things don't work out so well. With the tendancy to not think about how new ideas/discoveries interact with existing knowledge base being a minor theme in the tale of human history who knows how much better this skill could make someone mentally...
I'd say the best way to think about this skill is that it doesn't upgrade his brain-power, but improves howefficient the existing brain-power is instead.
@Golanth I think that many barriers are perception only and with the ability to push past the mental restrictions keeping you constrained to what is considered normal many seemingly supernormal abilities will arise. It's something that happens normally in sports, over the decades due to training and constantly pushing the limit, records are broken and the basic level of competency is elevated. You really just need the will to do so and put in the effort. If Dave isn't too special at the moment I put it down to him being less motivated to be so.
REVENGE!!!!!