The Perfect Specimen

Down inside of the sewers, underneath the Diamond In The Rough Orphanage.

At roughly the same time that Alistair left the sewer to head towards his dorm room. In a corner in the sewer that is pitch black due to a faulty light source. A shadow suddenly stirs as if it had been asleep this entire time.

It moves around in the darkness very leisurely for a brief moment before it becomes visibly agitated.

It jumps out of the corner of darkness and splashes its body against the solid ground, as if it were made entirely of liquid. It spills itself across the cement flooring of the sewer before almost instantly reforming into the shape of a shadowy a.d.u.l.t male.

It looks around for a couple of seconds as if it is looking for something before splashing back into the ground at a breakneck pace as it makes its way through the sewer tunnels.

These tunnels are wide enough that it could fit five people standing shoulder to shoulder and tall enough it could fit two standing on an others shoulders. The shadow glides through it, going down to a certain passage that has been blocked off because of condemned tunnels caving in.

It slips into the cracks between the rubble of a cave-in and sees an empty chair fallen over on the ground with blood dripping off of it and a trail of it leading to a hole in the rubble.

It reforms into a human shape upon entry of the cave-in and upon seeing the scene its arms grasps its head as it lets loose an inaudible scream.

Just before it can chase into the hole in the rubble, it hears the voices of multiple people and sees light sources being waved around on the other side of it. After a moment of deliberation, it splashes back into the ground and dives into the hole towards the people.

The last thing the group of three men see is a darkness expand from the hole they were looking into and engulf them. The shadow reforms into a human persona and checks every crevice of each person looking for something. It tosses their corpses aside into the sewage stream that runs in the center of each tunnel.

It roars inaudibly once again before diving back into the ground and making its way towards the nearest exit of the sewer, leading into the slaughterhouse.

...

Alistair and the other students return to their dorms and are ordered to stay there until provided guidance by a staff member. Older students who have been training for longer are allowed to go to certain areas but not all.

Murder is handled on a case by case basis in each territory of each city. This orphanage is the territory of the Headmaster Wallace, and disobeying his rule is a direct attack on him. The people who are able to get into his orphanage do have notable backgrounds but none worthy of challenging a headmaster.

Seeing this as an opportunity to focus on improving his ability, Alistair does not mind shutting himself inside for a period of time. His only constant worry is when his hunger will act up. Students are given a reprieve from the battle of the cafeteria during this time and are given small meals delivered to their dorms.

The downside is that none of the food is edible for Alistair. Luckily he had his fill from that night in the sewers and so his body should take longer to get hungry, but the longer they take to return the schedule to normal, the longer he would have to go without food.

"And the slaughterhouse is out of commission so I can't even request raw meat even if I want to..." He thinks to himself while in the middle of practicing [Knuckle Burst]

While he practices though, he realizes that he won't be able to continue this sort of trial and error practicing for long as the constant healing of his body from the backlash of his skill is consuming too much of the energy he got from eating.

He sighs in frustration, "I'm not even making any proper progress in it anymore! I understand the problems that come with the technique but to improve in it, I must have muscles that I can contract and expand at will for directional control of the burst.

The problem is that my muscles are actually all dead and I can't train my muscles to move how I want if they will just revert to their natural state after healing."

He looks at the shell fragments he got while cleaning the kitchen and shakes his head at the realization that training his body with those will just consume energy just as fast as his other skill.

He sits in his room thinking about solutions to the problem.

The tense atmosphere has permeated throughout the orphanage during the continued investigations taken place each day. One day, when the person bringing food to the students stopped at his door, Alistair asked him a question that has been on his mind.

"Are we still allowed to go on missions?"

"Oh yes, most of the students have been using this time to temper themselves on missions outside of the academy. Would you like to apply for one?"

Dumbstruck at the information that he was wasting his time indoors while everyone else was already getting stronger, he kicks himself with regret.

"Yeah, but we aren't allowed out on the campus. So why would they let us leave school grounds during an investigation? Wouldn't that offer the killers a chance to escape?"

"Oh! This must be your first time going outside of the campus since you have come here. I'm guessing you are fairly new then. The reasoning is quite simple. When you are outside of the wall on a mission from us, you are not allowed back in under any circ.u.mstances unless we give you permission.

This includes going to other cities as well. So unless the person wants try and survive out in the wastes for their entire life while being shunned by every society known to man, he will not leave the campus to go outside the walls."

"Surely there must be ways to work around that for people who are smart enough though?"

"Oh of course there is. The only way around this method though is to use the power of an ascended king. The only ones at that level though are so strong that they would only need to ask the principal to kill the students himself, instead of sneaking around to do it."

Alistair took a bit of important information away from that conversation, ascended king.

"So there are different levels to the ascended?"

"Oh yes, you will learn all about them in your classes and it's not my place to teach you about them. As for applying for a mission, we are required to carry interfaces to allow students to sign up for missions remotely."

The man who brings food to the children takes out a tablet shaped device and hands it to Alistair. After taking the tablet, Alistair peruses the missions listed for outside activity.

After seeing a few ridiculous requests that involve fighting hordes of beasts or really strong monsters that only the most advanced students are capable of taking on, he sees a lower ranked mission that catches his eye.

----------------------------

Mission: Waste removal

Difficulty Rating: D+

Description: Close to the outside of the wall, low ranked monsters attack and are killed on a daily basis. The corpses are to be collected for dissection and processing before they rot and turn into their zombie or skeletal counterparts.

Time Limit: None

Reward: Varies on amount of materials gathered for processing.

----------------------------

"I'll take this one." Alistair says while giving the tablet back to the man.

"Oh? Not many people would do such menial labor for uncertain rewards." The man says before going through the process of offering and accepting a mission.

After everything finished, Alistair was curious about how he would get to the mission site from the orphanage. As he was about to ask, he saw the man close Alistairs front door which led to the hallway of the dorm.

Immediately after closing it, he reopens it to show an office space and an woman sitting behind a desk.

"Hurry up and close the portal already! You are letting out all of the air conditioning!" She yells from her seated position.