Alec entered a quickly repeating cycle of sleeping, eating, stopping time, and researching his magic, spell formations, and the Poem. He also looked into the monsters and used his fading sense of disgust and squeamishness to go through their insides and look for clues.
If he had been that easy, though, the secret to monsterification would have long since been unraveled.
Alec also used Scan on the dead monsters. It was a little hard to tell what he was looking at, but he didn't know if it was because the monsters were dead or if it was due to their different physiques.
But he confirmed that Scan was the right direction. The basic spell just wasn't good enough. He needed to learn more runes to figure out how to improve it.
Fortunately, he had success in another area that helped with that, albeit indirectly. There was a limit to how much he could use the Poem of Neverlasting Wisdom. It was once a day.
