The Perfect Specimen

Alistair makes it back to the checkpoint gate that he and his group left out of. Upon going entering the front door, he is greeted with loud yelling and cursing. He sees that everyone who was in his group made it back to the base somehow.

The people are all yelling and cursing at each other about the missions outcome. "How the hell did I get sent back to the city?!"

A man covered in leaves and scratches scoffs and says,"You're luck! I got sent right into a tree and got smacked by every branch on the way down."

A man who is standing alone in the corner of a room speaks up. "Yeah? Well I got sent to the gas swamps."

The rest of the people went silent in admittance to the unfair treatment that man went through.

After a few seconds, one of the boys spoke up to the veterans and asked, "So does this count as us finishing the mission? I mean we managed to slay the beasts."

The veterans all wore bitter expressions as one of them spoke up, "Kid, you really don't get the point to us going out there. No one is truly scared of those scralebits. They are generally peaceful. The main purpose of the mission was to secure their bodies for provisions. Without bringing that back, the missions a failure."

It was at this moment that someone suddenly notices Alistair and excitedly says, "Wait a minute! All hope may not be lost! This kid was in charge of collecting and processing the bodies!"

"Yeah but his backpack is way to thin to amount to anything. Don't get your hopes up for no reason. Sometimes stupid things like what happened to us just happens in the wilds. One time a young man walked through a doorway in a building and came out as a feeble old man on the other side before turning to dust. Just count yourself lucky that all that happened is us getting teleported."

The young man suddenly lost all color in his face at the thought of losing his youth from just walking through a door. Another veteran chuckled bitterly and chided the veteran who spoke,

"Come on, don't scare the boy. Time magic is just a myth, no one has ever even seen it."

"You mean, no one has ever seen it and lived to tell about it."

The topic in the room changed from failure to urban legends, with everyone chipping in a story they have heard from time to time. Alistair is a little downtrodden at the failure of his mission but decides that it's best for him to get back to his dorm as fast as possible to train and prepare for the reawakening of the scralebit.

He turns to the man next to him who just so happened to be the boy who warned Alistair about speaking to the leader of the mission. He taps on his shoulder to get his attention and asks,

"Hey, when are we allowed to return to the dorms?"

"Oh! That's right you still are confined to the campus dorms. Well don't worry, someone most likely is already here from the mission hall. After the leader reported the missions failure it was already marked and sent to the academy. Tough luck on the bad mark so early into your stay here."

As if he heard the man talking. A man comes up to Alistair and signals him to follow him away from the crowd of people. After following him, they arrive at the doorway to the entrance of building again. They enter through the doorway as per the usual proceeding and they are safely back at Alistairs dorm now.

"The mission hall is already informed of your failure. There is no need to report it, but you are required to return any materials provided to you. The investigations are over, you are allowed to return to your classes beginning tomorrow." The attendant states.

Alistair turns to thank the attendant but notices the cold expression on his face as he turns to leave.

"Wow... I guess bad marks on your record really do affect your status here." Alistair mumbles to himself. After realizing the serious treatment differences that come with failure, he makes a mental note to find out how to erase bad marks.

For now though, his top priority is to wash up and rest. After that, he needs to find a location with a lot of information on monsters so he can prepare for the scralebits reawakening. Then figure out a way to properly assess the situation going on with his body, attend classes and missions to get his status up and much more.

Feeling exhausted just thinking about all that needs to be done, he washes up and sits down on his bed with his backpack. He flips open the top of it and sees the scralebit statue looking up at him. With a slight pang in his heart, he takes it out to study the small monster.

He tries to find anything that could explain that horrifying blast earlier or anything that would set him apart from normal young scralebits. After a good hour of analyzing it though, he comes up with no results. It looks just like every picture that he has seen of scralebit children.

If he had to pick anything out, it would be that this one is a bit fatter than the others he had seen in the pictures but he didn't pay any attention to that.

He puts it away and decides to try and sleep. Not for his body, but because he is spiritually exhausted.

The night passes by while Alistair sleeps, he would wake up every now and then in a fright by a nightmare of him being engulfed in darkness. The night finally passes and it is time for Alistair to head to class.

Looking rather haggard from the rough night of sleep, he makes his way to his first class and performs the routine workouts instructed for him. As the class is ending, the teacher makes an announcement about the next sparring session coming up.

Looking around at the students, Alistair can see that many of them are looking invigorated at the chance to show their improvement. While looking he notices that Michelle is still not in class. After class ends, he goes up to his teacher and asks out of concern,

"Teacher, Michelle has been missing the last couple of classes, is she okay?"

"Hm? Yeah, she is fine. She will be back next class, her family is a special case. They are sometimes called on for special reasons. Don't mind her and focus on your own studies."

After being shrugged off by his coach, he figures that it will be better to ask Michelle tomorrow personally. He feels a slight bit of relief in knowing that she is coming back at least. Otherwise, he would not be able to cash in for his selfless sacrifice while she ran away.

He has been thinking of what he should ask for when she returns, the entire way to his other class. Upon hearing about the material for the class today though, his mind completely forgets about Michelle.

On the whiteboard behind the teacher, "Magical structure overview" are written in big letters.

"I'll finally be able to figure out what to be on guard for!"