The Perfect Specimen

Alistair tries biting down on the shell of the creature and realizes that his teeth will break before the exoskeleton will. Thinking this, he looks around for something to break the shell small enough to fit inside of his mouth.

He looks into the toolbox he brought with him and finds a nail hammer. He takes its and swings down on the back with as much force as he could muster. He doesn't know why, but something inside him is telling him to try and eat it.

After multiple blows with the hammer, the shell broke apart almost as cleanly as glass. Without much hesitation, Alistair throws the small piece he chipped off into his mouth and swallows it.

After it passes through his throat he feels his body start itching. He feels a gnawing itch throughout his entire body, a feeling he has never experienced before. Driven by how uncomfortable he is, he flails his arms about and slightly feels the pain subsiding.

He realizes that the more he moves the easier it becomes to endure. He starts jogging in place as he did in the combat training hoping to alleviate his dilemma.

Although it is slightly effective, he feels there could be something more he could be doing. Since running in place does not give any immediate results, he decides to try another method.

He thinks back to the movements he saw of [Living Iron], and decides to try practicing the body improvement technique. He starts to feel the substance that sat at the pit of his stomach slowly being dissolved, disintegrate immediately after practicing one movement of the technique.

He is shocked and excited that the itching feeling inside of his stomach stopped completely. What he is excited about even more is that he can feel the changes in his skin. Everything felt as if it were hardening and becoming tougher.

He keeps trying to finish the move set, but when the substance in his stomach dissolved, he no longer received any gains from practicing.

If his skin was notebook paper before, it now felt like construction paper. Even though the change is not that big of a leap, he realizes how beneficial it is to practice the move set.

He notices that the biggest component to strengthening his skin with this technique is the monsters shell. So after much deliberation, he puts a cleaning tarp down that was in the toolbox and starts whacking away at the shell.

Almost an hour later, medium and small pieces of the shell lay scattered all around on the tarp. Alistair grabs the edges and wraps it up into a bag. Happy that the cafeteria is fairly close to his dorm, he tries his best to pull it but notices he is barely able to budge it.

He keeps thinking of ways to move it but nothing is coming to mind. The only option he has left is to try and use as many of the big pieces as possible to lighten the load. Noticing how long he has been at the cafeteria though, it would not be a surprise if someone were to go looking for him since he has not shown at the dorms.

So without a thought, he takes a few of the biggest pieces he could find and shoves them in his mouth. Without waiting for the itch to start to take affect, he begins practicing his move set. As he is practicing, he feels the familiar itch rise up from within him and become stronger than before.

Alistair begins to speed up the routine he is doing in an attempt to catch up with the feeling and starts going faster and faster. Eventually his movements that became a blur, come to a stop. He feels his body caked in sweat but noticeably is tougher than before.

If his body was construction paper, it is now like soft leather. After making sure the bag is light enough to lift, Alistair finishes cleaning up the final parts of the kitchen, turns off the light and makes his way back to his dorm.

As Alistair is cleaning up, a shadowy figure the size of a normal a.d.u.l.t man appears at the doorway to the kitchen looking in at him. As he leaves, the shadowy figure vanishes from the doorway of the cafeteria before Alistair could see him.

After getting back to his dorm room with nothing eventful happening, Alistair realizes that the exhaustion felt from practicing the move set took more out of him than he thought. He hurriedly stuffs the bag underneath of his bed and is about to go to sleep as he realizes all of the sweat on his body.

He remembers from the assessment the cleaning spell they used to clean him. Unable to stand the filth on his body, he runs to the room he has never used before in his dorm. He goes into the bathroom and remembers vaguely how to use a shower.

After disrobing himself and a few failed attempts at keeping his footing in the wet bathtub connected to the shower, he struggles to make his way back to bed.

"Luckily there are self cleaning enhancements on the school uniforms so I do not need to figure out how to do laundry." He thinks to himself as he lays in bed and thinks back to the monster that attacked him in the kitchen. Since he decided to use the corpse himself, he can not tell the school the monster was the actual problem.

He will have to let them think it was only the machines. However, the monster itself could have killed Alistair if he had reacted a little slower or if the monster gave up on sneak attacks and just fought with him outright. It seems even at the school, his life is in danger.

He drifts to sleep from the exhaustion of the day and wakes up the next day feeling refreshed. He is surprised that he is not feeling even hungry in the slightest. He figures it must be from the meat he ate last night.

After happily accepting that he is finally able to curb his appetite more now, he puts his clothes on and heads to his Combat Training class. He makes a mental note to himself the he must use those monster pieces sparingly as they can improve his strength, but for the time being they are also his source of nourishment.

"Alright class listen up! We have to get each of you into pairs and start practicing your hand to hand combat. I know some you think that it's pointless to work on your body as you are striving to become ascended using magic. However, striving for magic on its own is foolishness!"

The students who are standing in line put on guarded expressions as they hear the drill instructor say that their choice of fully focusing on magic is foolish. Growing up in powerful families, they have been told all along that training the body is a waste of time and will max out eventually, but magic will continuously get stronger with a time.

"If you don't believe me then just look!" The drill instructor says as he points to Alistair.