Feast

'Flesh Eating Body Training, sounds interesting' Ray thought. He skimmed over the papyrus and got the gist of what it was saying.

It wasn't a technique, but a supplement to one. Supposedly, it would change your digestive system to be able to eat human flesh and extract the energy from within it. Regular humans wouldn't give all that much, but people who strengthened their bodies could give a lot because of the dense energy within their bodies.

'Interesting. So that's what they were trying to do here, they must have been experimenting with this, and it's somehow related to the Adwykith Kingdom. Well, my job is more than finished. I won't be staying here any longer.'

As he was walking out the mansion, he passed by the room where the fight took place. Dead bodies lay everywhere, it looked like a mess. But in Ray's eyes, it was a treasure waiting to be used.

He stared at the bodies while thinking, 'I do need dead strengthened bodies to get its energy, but there are way too many bodies to carry manually'.

After thinking about it for a bit, he rushed back to the main part of town and bought a carriage. He used new clothes to cover up his arm, although some citizens gave him funny looks from the smell coming off of him.

He rode the carriage back to the mansion and stripped all the bodies of their possessions. Nobody had anything valuable, even Zay. But that didn't matter to Ray, his most valuable gain was the supplement he found. If he understood it correctly, it could save him massive amounts of time.

Ray put the bodies into the carriage, nearly arranging them, then covering it with a tarp. There was a strong smell from it, but he would worry about that later.

Within an hour he finally left Harlington. Some of the guards looked at him a little suspiciously, but Ray insisted it was raw meat. Luckily they didn't seem to really care, so they let him go without any further trouble.

After leaving the city, he started doing the instructions on the papyrus to improve his digestive system. As he did so, he realized how complex it was. The body training technique was simply instructions on how to combine energy around you with your body to make it stronger. However, the Flesh Eating supplement had to change your organs to break down flesh and remove the energy from the tissue so it can be used.

To put it in comparison, when Ray learnt his body training technique, he understood how someone would come up with it. But when he learnt the Flesh Eating supplement, he still didn't get how someone could create it!

As he rode the carriage down the dirt road to Mythri, he continuously practiced the supplement. After a month went by, he gained the ability to digest the food.

Meanwhile, the bodies had barely any sign of rotting, as if they were just killed an hour ago. Ray suspected the energy was keeping the vitality of the body, although he wasn't 100% sure.

After 6 months since leaving Harlington he completed the second part of the papyrus, where he can now remove the energy from the flesh for his personal use.

Initially he had been slightly disgusted at the idea of eating raw human flesh, any normal person would have these internal doubts. But after training consistently for half a year, he stopped viewing these bodies as humans, but rather as his training materials. They died for him to become stronger, that was their purpose in life!

He double checked, then triple checked he followed every step on the papyrus. After making sure he had everything down, he cut off the finger of one of the weaker knights. His improved teeth easily crushed through the bones of the hand, and he swallowed the finger. He focused his aura onto himself as he watched his digestive system at work. The flesh passed through all his organs just fine, and at the end, all that remained was raw energy.

The supplement wasn't perfect, so he still had to filter out the light energy that he could use. But the amount of energy he received was very dense, just from the small finger.

A feeling of satisfaction arose within him after he finished. The process only took 30 seconds, but he immediately improved by what would normally take days!

After checking everything worked fine, he burnt the papyrus into ashes. He wanted nobody to know he had something like this on him, he knew there would be consequences.

Ray moved on to the rest of the body and ate every piece of it. After digesting the entire body, he felt he was around 0.25% closer to reaching the peak of his technique.

Ray kept eating the rest of the bodies in the carriage. Although he ate so much mass, he never felt full, he only had the desire to consume even more food! Of course, he satisfied these desires.

After he finished eating all the bodies, he felt he was one eighth of the way to reaching the limit. Each of the 40 knights gave roughly 0.25%, the mayor gave 0.5%, and Zay gave 2%. He didn't know what would happen after he reached the limit, but he suspected it had to do with becoming an official magus.

After his 6 month training period, his arm had already started its healing process. But after eating all the bodies, he could feel his arm healing at an explosive rate. He estimated it to be completely healed within a week.

Ray stepped outside the carriage for the first time since he left Harlington. He squeezed his palms, feeling the power coursing within him.

Ray looked around himself, trying to find ways to test his power. He spotted a boulder lying a few meters away from the dirt road. He walked over and punched the boulder as hard as he could. Multiple cracks formed around the boulder, but Ray wasn't satisfied with that. He punched it again, this time shattering the rock.

After seeing the rock shatter, he nodded his head in approvement. "Now, for the final test," he said to himself.

He hesitated for a moment, as if preparing himself, then shot a light ray directly through his arm. He used a finger so it wouldn't matter too much if he injured it.

The ray completely pierced his skin and flesh, but visibility struggled to go through his bones. It did end up going through his bones at the end, but it was a clear sign of the progress he made.

He grit his teeth, but had a satisfied expression on his face. 'Good enough. I'll have to get to around the 25% mark to be able to fully stop a light ray using only my bones' he thought to himself.

After doing his test, he sat down and focused on healing his arm. He had long since reached the forest, but he didn't enter yet because he wanted to consume the bodies first. He also burnt the carriage he bought, it served its purpose and now lost its use.

He calmly sat down and focused on training his soul while his injury healed.

A week passed by quickly, and Ray's arm fully healed. He stood up and started sprinting towards the forest. With his increased body strength, his speed easily reached 40 mph just by jogging.

A few hours later the forest came into his sight. The first time he came here, he was terrified of the beasts. If he saw one, he could almost count himself as dead. Now when he went through the forest, he wasn't that scared of coming across a beast, he was even looking forward to it a little.

The monsters here weren't very powerful, so he wanted to use them as a test dummy to fully get used to his powers. Although he didn't let out his aura, or anything overconfident like that.

A 9 days passed by as Ray traversed the forest. Just as he thought he wasn't going to find any beasts, a familiar loud roar woke him from his monotonous walking.

Ray smiled as he heard the sound. It was finally time! He had been waiting for 9 days to test out his power, his fists were itching for action.

He didn't even bother using a sword and charger straight at the wolf beast. The wolf saw this as a challenge, and roared even louder.

Ray's fist collided with the wolf's face, as the wolf's paw slammed on his chest. Ray was forced to take a step backwards, while the wolf was stopped in his tracks by Ray's punch.

He fought another few rounds with just his fists to get a grip on his strength. The battle was in the wolf's favor, as it had claws and was slightly stronger than Ray. But it wasn't like last time where the beast could play with Ray like a rag doll!

After a few minutes of intense fighting, he was satisfied. "Let's finish this now." Ray said to the wolf, as if it could understand him. The wolf didn't respond and continued attacking in the same pattern from the beginning.

He readied a light ray and shot it towards the wolf's abdomen. Since he was similar in strength to the wolf, he understood its weakness.

The ray easily went through the wolf's abdomen and ruptured it's organs. A minute of struggling later, it fell to the ground, dead.