Free Web NovelChapter 15: +9,100 system points
Jimmy and Vorin barely landed on their feet. They were hurt, their clash may have been one-sided, but it was a canvas of both of their feelings, featuring every dark shade there was there.
The bruises they withstood did not stop them. The fight went on.
Jimmy slapped his brother away with his wings, but unlike the rats, he could not toss Vorin that far.
"What did I tell you today Vorin, huh?" He shouted, "Don’t pick a fight with me, or you will lose!"
"Lose, huh?" Vorin raised his head, and then charged forward, his claws delivering his disdain.
Backing away after tearing off a few of his brother’s feathers, he shouted, "Kill me if you can, brother. I’ll be the second family member you killed today!"
"Our father is not dead!" He shouted, "I hope..."
The two continued to fight. Jimmy kept tossing his brother away, but refused to rely on any other attack. He feared that if he as much as pecked Vorin, he’d die. As angry as he was, he did not want to kill his brother.
"Will you piss off, please?" he demanded, "You’re wasting my time. I’m trying to evolve here before sunset. I promise I’ll heal our father tonight!"
"You’re going to heal him, by killing bugs?" Vorin stopped attacking. "You’ve completely lost your mind, haven’t you? Fuck this, I’m going back home and look after father. If you’re still in one piece by tomorrow, I’ll come and look for you."
Vorin did not wait for an explanation. He had been pummeling his brother for one all this time, and yet, he did not care to hear it just when Jimmy was eager to talk about evolution. He simply flew away.
Either way, Jimmy was relieved that he was finally left alone. Almost immediately after, he thought about those humans who were in a fist fight.
Tiny taps sounded out across the stone ground as he ran towards them. He didn’t care to be subtle anymore, and since his knees, hidden in his feathers, supported such movement post his major evolution, he could run half as fast as a human could. He felt powerful.
"Will one of you motherfuckers drop already?" He cawed.
The two men kept beating each other black and blue, right in front of him. They ignored him completely, just as one would ignore a random crow.
Jimmy simply waited. He felt weird about being this close to humans, as the fear, the rules the elders had inflicted upon him were nailed in his brain, but he stood close either way. He did not have another choice.
There was no time to look for more than three-hundred points worth of prey. He was well aware.
Five minutes later, after countless punches and kicks, one of the humans fell to the ground. Knocked out cold.
Two pouches of gold, a couple of apples, and a small kitchen knife fell from the man’s pockets the moment he dropped, as if he was a character in a game who had just died and lost all of their items.
The other man, who indefinitely won the fist-fight, rushed forward, grabbed the gold, and fled.
This had been a robbery, and the man who was robbed was lying on his back, unconscious. A large bump throbbed on his forehead.
Jimmy walked forward, and although he was a little bit hungry, he avoided the apples completely.
"No one else around," he looked forward.
Quick breaths followed. He tried to calm himself down, but panic accelerated within him to the point where he started sweating. Crows were not supposed to sweat, but his body was overheating, and the quick breaths he took weren’t doing him much good.
"Come on... kill him already..." he spoke to himself.
Two minutes passed, and yet he couldn’t bring himself to do it. Killing a human being was mountains and valleys different from killing a cockroach. Both of them deserved the chance to live, yes, but apart from his guilt, he knew that if anyone saw him kill a human, the whole crow community could get in trouble. He was stuck.
He remained frozen in place for five whole minutes. The sun was close to setting. His father may be minutes away from death. There was no way to predict when his demise may come, and such unpredictability, finally managed to push Jimmy towards the deep end.
"This one kill will fix all my problems..." he finally managed to take a deep breath.
Clearing his mind, he gathered as much strength as he could, and bashed his beak right through the human’s eye.
It wasn’t enough, so he tried again, and again, as if he was in a psychotic rage. One would think he was trying to bash the man’s skull in, but the truth was, after the first peck, the following bloody pecks came a lot easier to him.
"I can always feel bad about this later," he mumbled.
Several pecks in, both eyes lost, the human devolved from being unconscious, to embracing an eternal slumber.
[Stone Head skill obtained - (1/13)]
[Neanderthal killed]
[+5,600 system points]
[Total points: 5,787]
"That was a neanderthal?" he pulled his head back in shock, "But he looked so normal... so human..."
[He was human, just a different species. Whoever the attacker was, he knew well enough to continuously punch the neanderthal’s most over-powered feature, its head. Their heads are like helmets, but if you beat on them enough, it’s their last line of defense.]
[By consuming its eyes, you attained its birth-given skill.]
Jimmy barely listened to the system. The points he won excited him, but mid-way through the system’s explanations, his heart dropped to his feet once he locked eyes with a human, right in front of the alleyway. A middle-aged woman, though she bore youthful features.
Judging from the utter shock on her face, there was no denying the fact that she saw Jimmy pecking at the corpse.
A second later, she turned around, and yelled, "Someone has been murdered!"
In a panic, he grabbed the small kitchen knife that the dead neanderthal dropped, and pounced towards the woman.
Jimmy jumped over three feet high without the use of his wings. He did not know if adrenaline helped him jump this high, and he didn’t care.
Once he landed on the woman’s back, he lodged the knife right at the back of her head.
Her voice, her screams were cut short at that instant, and her body got limp. She fell to the ground, blood gushing out of her head. Moving as much as a finger hurt her more than one could imagine!
Jimmy flew away before the woman hit the ground. He took the kitchen knife with him, and hoped that no one saw his second murder.
Half way home, the system brought him the news.
[Homosapien killed]
[+3,500 system points]
[Total points: 9,287]
"Give me the Helping Hand skill, system," he demanded as he landed on a roof.
