# Chapter 2: Ten Push-Ups!
"Pfft. Too easy."
Lee scoffed, readily accepting his first assignment from the system. He dropped into position for what should have been a perfectly ordinary set of floor push-ups.
Ten push-ups? No problem.
In his past life he'd cranked out far more than that, and judging by the original Rock's memories, the kid was no physical weakling either — he'd been training at his limit constantly. The boy had shown all the hallmarks of a genuine masochist: whenever he found himself unable to do one thing, the shinobi academy student would immediately throw himself into something else, regularly collapsing from exhaustion by the end of the day.
But he never quit. That was genuinely admirable.
It was just a shame that…
In this brutal reality, something had clearly gone very wrong with Lee's fate.
*Alright, enough of that.*
He shut down the thought by deliberately knocking his forehead against the wooden floor. He simply didn't want to keep dragging himself down with pointless grief. The past was the past — nothing was going to change it.
He pressed his lips together, and a confident grin spread across his face — the grin of someone who had no intention of abandoning his dream of becoming a master of the martial arts. A master of Taijutsu, to be precise.
He lowered himself into the push-up position, exhaled —
— and in the very next instant, he felt a pressure land on his back like a mountain dropping onto him, with a glacier thrown in for good measure. His trembling arms couldn't even fully extend. His round eyes went wide, and his thick black brows crashed into a furious scowl.
*What the — does the system really throw this kind of insane difficulty right at the start? Have I been hit with some kind of… gravity-attribute jutsu or something?*
He was in genuine shock. He managed exactly one push-up, and only barely — grinding it out through clenched teeth.
By the third rep, he couldn't feel his arms. His body went numb fast, refusing to cooperate, as if it were whispering at him to give up and stop wringing out every last drop beneath the groaning creak of the wooden floorboards. But was that really an option?
*I don't know… what's waiting for me if I fail… but if there's a penalty, I definitely don't want to find out what it is…*
The thoughts came in slow, fragmented bursts while the only sound escaping his lips was a raw, guttural snarl.
It might have been easier if the chakra in his body were circulating more actively — if it could have carried some vitality into his limbs — but with gravity multiplied several times over, could he really tap into something like that? Especially when he was, in practice, a shinobi academy student with no real experience, a transmigrator with nothing but theory?
By the count of eight, Lee couldn't see. Sweat had blotted out everything, and his lungs were drowning in thin, insufficient air. His muscles threatened to seize up in full cramping spasms — the pressure was that impossible. It felt like the muscle tissue itself was on the verge of tearing open and spraying blood in every direction. But fear of the unknown made for excellent motivation not to fold at the finish line.
And right there, right at that precious tenth rep, a question cut through his mind like a blade.
If the exercises only got more hellish from here, was destroying himself really the answer? Wouldn't he end up exactly like the original Rock Lee — burning out, collapsing alone, done in by his own overexertion? What was the point? To feel like he'd accomplished something, and then die in some corner from pushing too hard?
Maybe it would be better to just give up.
But—
*No.*
The word detonated inside him. Lee's round eyes snapped wide open, immediately reddening from the sweat that dripped and stung from his forehead. He wrenched his body upright into the plank position one final time with a ragged, guttural cry ripped straight from some deep, furious place:
"**AAAARRRGH!**"
And then the notification arrived — cold and mechanical, as always:
*[Hell's Training exercise complete!]*
*[Congratulations, User.]*
*[You may claim the Bronze Chest from your inventory.]*
"I didn't even get any bonus stats…"
Lee immediately collapsed face-first into a puddle of his own sweat, his voice hollow and spent. He couldn't stand up. He couldn't sit up. He couldn't so much as lift his head — there was simply nothing left in the tank. He had been wrung completely dry.
All he could do was lie there in the quiet warmth of the sunlight and breathe. Though at least the pressure had vanished, and for now, Lee could rest.
---
*[Name: Rock Lee]*
*[Shinobi Rank: Academy Student]*
*[Health: 90%]*
*[Stamina: 5%]*
*[Chakra: 100%]*
*[Taijutsu Rank: C]*
*[Ninjutsu Rank: —]*
*[Genjutsu Rank: —]*
*[Inventory: Bronze Chest]*
*[Hell's Training List: 3]*
---
"Hey! How's my boy doing?"
The quiet was shattered by a loud, boisterous voice. A man came climbing through the open window — long black hair falling to his shoulders, round eyes with that same distinctive fringe of lashes, clearly a hereditary trait. He wore the standard green flak vest of a shinobi, with the forehead protector of the Village Hidden in the Leaves gleaming above his brow. A wide, beaming, slightly goofy smile was plastered across his face.
Or rather, it was plastered there — right up until the man who apparently passed for a father noticed his son lying half-dead from exhaustion on the floor.
"Rock!"
He cried out in a panic, flipping the boy over and pulling him into a tight embrace, his face twisted into an expression of theatrical, boneheaded anguish, nearly in tears as he babbled:
"Rock! I knew your insane training was going to lead somewhere bad, but — this bad? Rock! Can you hear me? Say something, son!"
The smothering, tactless shaking continued until Lee finally scraped together enough strength to whisper, dry and flat:
"Get off me…"
"Oh! So you're alright! That's a relief!" The man nodded rapidly and set his son back on his feet, releasing him to fend for himself. Lee swayed, but he stayed upright.
*Rock Lee's father… named Son Lee… He was never actually shown in the anime, though they left a lot of parents off-screen…*
Lee noted this quietly, wiping the remnants of sweat from his face with the soaked sleeve of his kimono shirt. He still felt dizzy, and a powerful pull toward sleep was dragging at the edges of his mind. The system's readout told the rest of the story — the twelve-year-old academy student had burned through a full 85% of his stamina just completing a single exercise.
One exercise. One *hellish* exercise.
"Look… Rock, I understand you want to follow in your father's footsteps, but…" His father finally broke the silence, getting around to it with a sigh. "Without Ninjutsu or Genjutsu, even Chunin rank is going to be brutally hard for you. Jonin isn't even worth talking about. So maybe don't overdo it, alright?"
Lee said nothing. Not just because he was exhausted — but because he genuinely didn't know how to talk to someone who was supposed to be close to him, yet wasn't, not really. The man surfaced only in scattered flashes of someone else's memories, passing through like a stranger who happened to share a roof.
So Lee just nodded. He didn't take the words of his so-called perpetually-absent "father" seriously.
*Nobody believes in me. But I've got the Bronze Chest — my reward for finishing the first exercise. No idea what's inside, but… with it, I'll probably be able to rise far above some shinobi academy student. At least, I hope so.*
He let out a quiet, private laugh.
*Another world. Reincarnation. What an absurd, ridiculous thing…*
Those were the contradictory thoughts wandering through Lee's head.