After Constantine dropped Jonathan off, he finally arrived at the student dorm where he was staying at. The dorm consisted of two buildings, which shared a single entrance and their first floors were connected. Each of the buildings had eleven floors, and were in a good condition. Many of the other student dorms around the city were in a far worse state, especially their windows, which did not have great isolation.
Since it was already past midnight, the entrance was locked and Constantine had to ring. After two minutes, Gustav, the dorm receptionist, came to unlock the door.
The two exchanged greetings, cursed the weather outside and wished each other good night. They did not know each other well, but had a few small talks over the years, and knew some bits of information about the other person.
Constantine took the elevator, and arrived at the sixth floor. His door number was 603/604. After fishing out the key from his pocket, he unlocked the door and entered a very short corridor. On the right side of it was the door to his room, 604. At the other end of the corridor was room 603, and on the left side were toilet and bathroom, which the tenants of the two rooms shared. As for the kitchen, that was outside in the main corridor, shared by the whole floor.
He unlocked his room, and saw that his roommate was not there. Constantine was not surprised by it, as the first year guy was often in the city, visiting bars and enjoying his newfound freedom. Also, Constantine regularly forgot his name. Fortunately, he could find it on the dorm's site.
Looking around, Constantine grinned.
Finally, he could test his first Monfound. He closed the door to his room and locked it. He did not wish to be disturbed. Also, he wanted to keep his Monfound a secret for now. Nothing terrible would happen if other's found about it, but they could have questions. There were even unofficial rankings between the students about their monster forms. Constantine was happy to be outside of it.
Constantine used the Monfound, and after a few seconds, dark green scales appeared on his whole body. Using one or more Monfounds while remaining in human form was called partial transformation. With more complete monster form, the Monfounds would be summoned faster. A person who collected all the necessary Monfounds for their monster form, and used their monster form at least once, could partially transform nearly instantly. Like Jeff.
Although Constantine felt the scales appear on his whole body, he still visually checked. The Monfounds were also affected by the size of the Monfound species and the size of human who activated the Monfound. For example, E rank Rabbit fur Monfound could properly cover only the arms of an average adult human. The user could also will the fur to cover his whole body, at the expense of thinning the fur.
The Komodo Dragon was quite a large monster, and as such, the scales could cover Constantine's whole body without him needing to weaken them.
Constantine took out a needle and poked at the scales. Tough. Even when creating pressure, the scales would not budge. Next, he took out his knife from the jacket and slowly tried to pierce the scales on his left forearm, being careful to slowly build the pressure. After he was putting a considerable pressure on the knife, and the scales still held, he stopped, not willing to risk a serious injury.
If someone decided to stab him with a knife and had a momentum, the scales would be most probably pierced but would not allow the knife to plunge too deep.
Next, he took out a scale from under his bed, and stood on it. From his previous weight of 71 kg, with his scales fully activated, his actual weight was 80,5 kg, nearly 10 kg higher.
He returned the scale back and walked to the heater to test the heat absorption. His experiment failed, as the radiator was nearly cold.
If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it.
Constantine though for a while. He deactivated his scales and went to make a tea.
He put the freshly made tea on the table, summoned the scales again and put his hands around the cup. He nearly did not feel the heat.
After hesitating for a few seconds, he put his finger into the hot water. It was.. bearable. It was still too high to be comfortable, but it did not hurt him. He could feel the heat slowly traveling through the scales, getting stored.
Constantine took his hand out of the tea. He unsummoned the scales yet again and with a sigh, went to bathroom and tossed the contents of the cup into the basin.
Considering he might have been disturbing the people in the other room, he decided to go to sleep too.
------------------------------------------------------------------
Morning came, and although Constantine slept only around 4 hours, as it was 6 am, he felt good. He knew that the lack of sleep would catch up with him later.
He decided to start the day with a hot shower. After he washed himself, he summoned his scales and washed them too. He also slowly raised the temperature of the water until it was comfortably warm. He found out that he really enjoyed soaking up the heat. Constantine struggled a little, but finally managed to exit the shower. He unsummoned his scales, knowing that they would retain the heat until he summoned them again.
After he returned to his room, Constantine heard hurried footsteps of one of his neighbours, as the neighbour claimed the free bathroom for himself.
After getting ready for the day, he left his room with a pack on his back. Then, he came back, checked if he locked the door (he did), and left yet again.
In the elevator, two other people joined him, and it was a bit full.
As he passed by the reception, he nodded to the bored woman sitting there. On the stairs leading down from the dorm entrance, he nearly fell on the thin ice, but managed to keep his balance. With more careful but still swift steps, he reached his car. He needed to be at college at 8 am, and he still had a bit less than hour, but he liked to be early. Also, the traffic was sometimes terrific and it was easy to lose time in it.
The inside of the car was only a bit warmer than the outside. Constantine experimentally summoned only a part of his scales, covering his torso and lower part of his body. The scales were hidden under his clothes, and the bit of heat that was stored in them from the shower helped him against the cold.
The stored heat was halfway depleted by the time he arrived at the College. Constantine decided to spend more time absorbing some heat when an opportunity came.
The college building was large. Built from dark bricks and large windows, it had a modern look. It was situated a bit north from the centre of Initi. The building was split into three parts, A, B and C. The A section had the main entrance and faced the street, while the B and C sections were behind it, B on the left side and C on the right side. If one looked at the college from air, they would be reminded of a square, with one side missing.
Constantine entered the A section. The main entrance led into a large vestibule, with a couple of comfortable sofas near the walls. A bored security guard was sitting nearby. From what Constantine heard, the College had always at least a single B rank guard, meaning a guard with B rank monster form, watching the entrance.
Constantine moved past the vestibule and navigated before a small room in the C section. He knocked lightly on a wooden door, then entered.
An older man sat behind a table at the other end of the room. He looked up as Constantine entered.
"Morning, Constantine."
"Good morning Professor."
"You are a bit early. I already brought the tests, but we will distribute them after everyone is here and after they get their instructions."
"Alright," agreed Constantine, and took a chair for himself.
The two continued to sit in silence, as the Professor was leafing through the tests, checking for any printing mistakes.
A bit curious, Constantine took a copy of one of the tests for himself to read. He knew the main topics that would be in it, as he was one of the assistants for the subject and he led seminars with two groups of students. Still, he was curious about the specific questions for that day's test.
On the top of the paper was written in bold letters: 'HB005 Final Exam'. HB005 was code of the subject. H for hunter theme, B for Bachelor and 005 was the id of the subject, to differentiate it from other, hunter subjects for Bachelors.
Constantine hummed as he read the questions and answered them for himself.
List all the ranks of monster transformations according to the power rating. If the rank has any legal conditions for having it, give brief description of them.
'Yeah, SSS, SS, S, A, B, C, D, E, F. Someone might write the + and - there too, but that is just specification, not needed. D to F ranks do not need any legal permissions. C rank requires one to be adult, otherwise a heavy fine is paid. For B rank, one has to have some sort of official hunter license or equivalent of it. For A rank, you need to show that you have contributed to the society, be it from helping in catastrophes and saving lives, or preventing some monster outbreaks or similar. S rank and higher is judged on individual basis. Well. The SSS and SS ranks are more theoretical, I do not know if someone has reached them..'
List the general traits gained for our human form after completing and activating at least once the full monster transformation of a D rank Dolphin?
'Improved memory capacity. Swifter movement when in water. Hmmm. Damn. There was a third one, something with locating things I think. '
What does the BPC stand for, and what is it's purpose.
'Beast Preservation Community. They often clash with overeager hunters, trying to save different species from becoming overhunted. Sometimes, they make petitions for government officials, appealing for the ban for hunting certain beasts. The last petition that passed was about the rabbits. Again. The ban was not lifted even for two years and they had to put it again, heh.
As the students slowly arrived and took their seats, Constantine continued to read through the questions, sometimes smiling for himself. Unknowingly to him, some of the students did not take that as a good signal and stared the papers with increased worry.