The Perfect Specimen

Alistair recovers from the shock of what happened and looks down at the student who he just used the over the shoulder throw on.

He did feel that the fuzzy figure was acting strangely, but he didn't think the situation was happening in real life. He wanted to try using the shadow boxing that he had seen before and see if he could better understand the fundamentals of the move.

He tosses the situation into the back of his mind as he takes a rest over with the other students in line. One by one, each student goes up to do sparring. Alistair decides to try and pay close attention to each students fights in an attempt to learn something.

To his dismay however, he finds that watching from the sidelines causes him to be unable to see the moves as anything other than basic grappling and throwing moves. He figures that the only real way for him to learn from this is to experience their combat styles first hand.

As the drill instructor stated before, each student will face off against everyone else in the class. Winning only provided a brief rest and he would have to fight again soon.

The rotation came back around and Alistair went up to fight once more. Hoping to learn more moves to add to his repertoire, he excitedly struts his way to the middle of the room. He realizes that the moves he thought to be nothing special from the side, turned out to be just that.

Most students run up to their opponents and try to land the first blow. They initially keep to their training but eventually devolve into pushing, pulling and punching to knock each other down.

He learns very little from this. He is not able to use the over the shoulder throw move he learned. It seems the children have decided that the best way to secure victory is a pushing or tackling match.

Alistair is still very scrawny so although he is able to win a few matches due to better placement, he is unable to win everything against the children who are bigger than him and can push him back with ease.

However, what truly causes shock to spread through the class is not Alistair's win record or dominating performance. He causes each child to realize that when it comes to endurance and resilience, Alistair stands at the top of the class.

The drill instructor figured this much when he felt Alistair's body and recognized the hardness of his skin and attributed it to the tough training he must of endured for years. While [Living Iron] is a factor to Alistair's endurance, his biggest asset is being undead. He can not feel his bodies fatigue or pain so he is able to push through the limits of many of his peers.

Alistair has been thrown, tackled, slammed, punched, kicked, and even choked but kept pushing through without aid from the nursing staff. Almost every student needed the nursing staff and the ones that didn't show obvious signs of fatigue.

At the end of class, Alistair is standing in line along with the rest of his classmates. The only difference being that he looks completely relaxed and rested while everyone else is haggard. To make matters worse, the teacher never called anyone out on their outstanding performance so a lot of children felt it to be a wasted effort.

The drill instructor begins instructing them on the homework routine they must do each night. A workout designed around their fighting styles. As he gets to Alistair, he comes across a slight dilemma that he has been mulling over all class.

"Alistair, why don't you go to the library and sort through the fighting styles available? Pick one and I will begin instructing you on the basics." The drill instructor explained.

Alistair is taken aback by this, as he figured that he will just need to focus on improving his zombie style as everyone else is doing their own styles.

"Sure, but I'm not sure what I should be training in..." Alistair wears a puzzled expression.

"Well, I can tell that you definitely know how to take a hit. How about..." The drill instructor takes out a note from his pocket and writes down a few different styles and hands it to Alistair.

"I'll take a look, thank you teacher!" Alistair smiles and looks over the list while getting ready to leave class.

The few fights that he had been in made him realize that fighting styles can be of some use when fighting other people. What he didn't tell his teacher is that he is not entirely sold on the idea of practicing a fighting style though, since what he wants is to fight monsters with his b.a.r.e hands.

The teacher dismisses the class and they all begin to head towards their next class.

General Education did not leave much of an impact on Alistair the last time he went. It mainly involved class introductions and structuring of the course. He felt that the influx of information could be great but also burdensome at the same time.

He needs to plan out what information he needs to retain as the spiral in his mind speeds up his hunger. The more information he retains the hungrier and more sluggish he becomes. Added on top of that, whenever he does any critical thinking it speeds it up further.

Right now, he does have the insects crushed up exoskeleton to eat but that does not abate his hunger. It only aids in his body cultivation.

The insanity of the hunger is slightly gnawing at the back of his mind due to the physical excursion of the previous class. Only a little though, he has been feeling that the hunger is becoming easier to manage after each feast so he decides to put off going to the slaughterhouse until after this class.

As they are walking, he sees Michelle appear out of nowhere right beside him and keep pace. He feels a spike of bloodl.u.s.t appear from behind him and he turns to see the two boys from before.

Michelle leans in and whispers, "You're going to need to hold your end of the bargain. They will be following me after class, so I need you to figure out a way to shake them off my trail. I already switched living quarters so they don't know where I sleep. I don't want them finding out after all the work to make that happen."

Alistair's sighs to himself and decides that he will have to put off eating for a bit longer until he helps her. He begins thinking that doing this everyday may not have been worth just two body training techniques.

"Okay, but how do you suppose I do that? During the sparring matches, they mopped the floor with me."

He remembers during their fight, they treated him as their own personal punching bag and stopped him from falling so they could keep going. Luckily he dove to the ground pretty early on or he really would have come away from that with some damage.

"Well, you're surprisingly sturdy. I'm sure you'll figure something out, even if you have to sacrifice your body to rescue the princess!" Michelle smiles coyly at him.

He begins to feel a slight sense of dread at the thought of her calling herself a princess. He is about to reply until he hears an ear-piercing scream come from the classroom right in front him.

He sees the crowd of students split and a girl running out of the door towards them. At the other end of the split, he sees his teacher for general education standing over a still body covered in blood.