Alex fell back, trying to catch his breath as beads of sweat soaked every ounce of his body making his clothes cling to him.
He crinkled his nose as a foul odor wafted up his nostrils. Placing the book back inside his bag, he pulled his clothes off his body and freshened up.
When he was done, he dressed up in simple cotton clothes and brought the book back out. He sat on the floor and proceeded to the second chapter.
He read it and traced the diagram that spanned across the pages. It was a humanoid silhouette with red lines drawn across its body in a unique but distinctive pattern.
'There doesn't seem to be a particular description of what this will achieve… but who cares? It's obviously going to be the first step to me wielding powers.' Excitement bubbled in Alex, and he studied the image over and over again until it was ingrained in his mind.
He resumed his lotus position and closed his eyes, focusing on his core. The center of power had stabilized during his shower so he was sure it wouldn't collapse when he was trying to draw energy from it.
Alex soon met the first challenge—drawing energy from the core in the first place.
Unlike details on popular superhumans, any and all details on Beast Arts, particularly anything having to do with the practice, were pretty much non-existent.
The quite lengthy knowledge he had was only because he had accidentally stumbled across the information before it was taken down.
He tried and tried, all to no avail. Taking a deep breath, he started practicing the first step involved in forming his core but rather than trying to draw energy from outside, he focused on drawing it from his core.
A sharp jolt of pain shot through his body as he kept on trying to draw energy out. The jolts increased in intensity and frequency but Alex kept on pushing until a tiny, needlepoint void-black flicker of energy left the smooth surface of the core.
That little flicker sent waves of pain through Alex's body and he fell, having a seizure. His body spasmed and shook relentlessly.
During this, his muscles rippled and pulsed under his skin while his veins twisted and formed new connections, all at the same time. Anyone seeing him would have been traumatized for years to come.
Alex felt like his skin was burning while the rest of him had been thrown into a blender made of razors. After what felt like an eternity, he finally calmed down.
He turned around and threw up a thick, black, pungent substance that evaporated upon contact with the air, "I. Didn't. Deserve. This."
His breath was shallow and uneven. Closing his eyes to rest, he fainted.
Alex's eyes flew open as the first light of dayade contact with his eyelids through the hole in his wall he called a window.
The memory of what he had gone through the previous day flooded his mind and Alex immediately became alert. He jumped to his feet and immediately noticed that everything around him had become shorter. No… he had become taller.
He looked at his body and was surprised to see a faint, muscular build under his clothes.
Excitement filled Alex, "This is almost worth the pain. Haha, that book is invaluable. Wait, the book!" His eyes darted around the floor and he found it knocked aside, most likely during his near-death convulsion.
While he wasn't meditating, he could still vaguely feel the sliver of energy he had managed to pull out of his core but that wasn't the time to focus on that.
He quickly grabbed the book and hid it under his bed before preparing for school. After eating breakfast, he was off.
Alex walked as quickly as he could to school, even taking a rather quick jog around the familiar road where he had first gotten the Beast Art.
Before he realized, he had reached school and he was barely out of breath, "Hello, Alex." An all too familiar voice called out to him.
He turned and saw Tony staring at him with his mouth open, "What?" Alex asked as more and more students started to stare at him with slack jaws.
Opening his phone camera and turning it to selfie, he almost couldn't believe that it was himself he was staring at.
His black hair was the darkest shade of black, almost to the point of absorbing light itself. His blue eyes had become impossibly clear with faint, almost invisible red tints hidden in the back of his eyes.
And his skin. His skin had become a very pale white that complemented his hair and eyes in a near-mystical way.
'Shit! Is this what my Beast Art does? Make someone beautiful?' Alex wanted to cry. If the organizations after his beast art knew how it made someone look, finding him would make ABCs look like quantum physics.
"What? Do you like what you see?" Alex turned to teasing to break the silent tension that was starting to build and it worked with Tony scoffing.
"I still haven't forgotten what you said yesterday, Song. One of these days, I'll find you outside of school and we'll settle this man-to-man." He spat before walking away.
Alex walked into the nearest class and crashed into the chair, groaning.
With about twenty minutes to spare, he opened his phone and watched an interview that had been conducted the previous day with one of the greatest people on Earth. Blessing Of The Sky.
_______
On the hill where Alex had taken the Beast Art, the shadow of a bird flying overhead glided softly on the ground.
The ave flew out of sight but its shadow remained. It swelled and exploded into a large mass of shadows that turned into a dark wraith that hovered above the ground, looking at the empty suitcase.
"It's empty… we can't have that. We must find it before the others." Its voice sounded like a whisper in an abyss, with each word dropping the temperature in the air.
The figure vanished as fast as it had appeared, leaving no trace of its existence.