My Second Life is a Heroic Power Fantasy

After thinking it over a moment, he finally settled on a couple small changes that he'd always wished for back when he used to live in his last life.

Using the sliders, he increased his height by several inches, taking him from an unremarkable five-foot nine to a much more respectable six-foot three. He then adjusted the broadness of his shoulders, widening them slightly, while narrowing his waist a bit. Finally, he found the sliders that controlled his body fat and muscle mass percentages, and set about resculpting his body balance. Since the time he'd been in this new world, he'd lost a lot of his spare fat and put on a decent amount of muscle, but he was still a bit thick around the middle, and his arms, legs, and core were not well-defined. Seeing a once-in-a-lifetime chance to get all of the benefits of eight hours a day in the gym with none of the sweat, suffering, or calorie restrictions involved, he couldn't stop himself from improving what he saw, even if just a bit.

When he finally finished, he couldn't believe what he saw was actually him. He honestly kinda looked Photoshopped.

He had pecs now, and defined abs, and arms and legs that were each a few inches thicker than before. He has a distinct V taper from his shoulders to his h.i.p.s, and now that his body fat was a lot lower, he saw for the first time that he actually had a pretty decent jawline naturally, which made him feel pretty good about himself. The cosmetic program told him that while his appearance had changed, his underlying stats had not, which meant he probably actually looked a little stronger now than he actually was. But that didn't matter to him. He was going to keep getting stronger and stronger as things went, and once he got past the point he'd changed the settings to, he'd get even stronger looking, apparently.

Once he finally felt comfortable with the changes he'd made, he gave the confirm command to the console. When he did so, he heard a small chime, and then felt and immediate and deeply unpleasant stretching feeling throughout his body, like every single pat of it was being pulled directly away from the center. After a few seconds, the sensation faded, and another chime sounded. The Terminal then flicked back to life, showing him a direct mirror reflection of himself.

He looked identical to how he'd modified things, and inexplicably found himself getting a little weepy for no obvious reason. Apparently looking better mattered a lot more to him than he'd ever let himself be aware of previously.

Once he'd composed himself, he dismissed the screen, and opened the item store. He had some gold, and also a few new items to check out. Opening things up, he saw that in addition to the 100 or so gold he'd acquired from the battlefield, the Terminal had also awarded him an additional 250 gold for winning the battle. The first thing he attempted to do was buy more health and vigor potions, but to his disappointment and frustration the store had not restocked its supply of either yet. He spent 100 gold on the final available Minor Health Potion and tucked it into the belt pouch along with the other. He then opened the menu and inspected the dagger and the potion he'd found.

They were both unidentified in the Terminal, with their names and descriptions each blank save a single question mark. The Terminal offered a prompt to have each of them identified. When he selected it, it informed him there would be a 50 gold identification charge for each item identified. Lacking a better option, he spent the 100 gold to see what each of them was.