Free Web NovelChapter 30: The spoils of war
Hammers, in the right hands, were weapons of immense, offensive power. Warhammers were especially effective.
The ravens didn’t wield warhammers, they wielded random hammers stolen from humans who practiced various crafts. Other than that, ravens didn’t have hands either.
Nevertheless, the damage this conspiracy of ravens delivered against one another was quite sizable. Their comrades fell one by one!
Exclamations of war projected through their beaks as they fought. They sounded like rabid, virally infected animals!
Hammer swings rained on White Blade as well! Oftentimes in a bundle. The ravens didn’t discriminate against anyone along their warpath.
If it wasn’t for the help White Blade got, he would’ve died twenty-three times already. One would say that the universe aligned on his behalf.
Jimmy fought off the barbaric swings of the ravens. The dagger in his claw was enough to at least misdirect the swings, and on occasions where the ravens got their hammer stuck in the mud, he swooped in with a swing across the throat! Much like an assassin, he was preying on their moments of weakness.
Virena, amongst the chaos, knocked hammers away with elegant precision! Her sickle whistled across the air, delivering one precise blow after the other!
Chaos did not scare her. She did not fear the ravens whatsoever, and if she wished to, she could’ve suffocated a lot of them. She chose to stay close to Jimmy instead.
With the two of them protecting him, it was nearly impossible for White Blade to get hurt by the ravens. Although not in peace, he was free to only care about the burdens of his current evolution. He hollered to the top of his lungs as the ravens fought themselves to death.
One by one, the ravens fell. They could not understand what was going on, they just knew that they had to kill everything in their line of sight.
What was twenty-five ravens became ten, and what was ten ravens became three.
The three remaining ravens had so many broken bones that they could no longer fight. They rustled across the ground, until their forced movement tampered with their spines, and got the best out of them.
They faded away. The entire conspiracy of ravens who had attacked White Blade, faded away.
[+198 system points]
[+174 system points]
[+203 system points]
The biggest ravens had remained in the battle the longest. Jimmy managed to cut three of them down himself before the battle ended.
[+22 kills assisted by the Feathered Rage skill. Reward halved, as you did not kill the ravens directly.]
[+1,650 system points]
[Total points: 8,612]
"Oh," He lowered his head, "I forgot that the spoils of war would be digitized for me. It’s crazy to think that thirty ravens can be worth as little as one human in points."
With a bit over three-thousand points won in this battle, Jimmy was satisfied.
However, his satisfaction could seep only so deep within his consciousness, because the stench of blood around him reminded him of where this great addition of points came from.
The grass around him was painted in blood. White Blade, even though currently paralyzed, was soaked in the blood of the enemies to the point where his pristine, white feathers had adapted a shade of red.
This was the harsh reality of war. Death came hand to hand with it, even if death couldn’t twirl its fingers around Jimmy’s body this time.
"Why don’t I feel bad about this?" He shook his head, "So many deaths, and I can’t even feel bad about them... Crows can’t be flying around living guilt-free."
The harrowing topic of guilt aside, he could never have predicted that birds were armed to the teeth. Be it crows or ravens, birds were far more armed than he expected them to be. This world was brutal.
As he spoke to himself, his attention was quickly drawn not by White Blade’s pain-addled screams, but the sudden lack of them. He stopped screaming.
Jimmy quickly looked at White Blade, and saw him knocked out. His body was still jerking around. His flesh, and what he assumed to be his bones, were moving around in White Blade’s body as well.
It was a horrific sight, but at least the pain of evolution no longer woke him up.
"He deserves a nap more than anyone I know," Jimmy said. "I have to move him. If the rest of those ravens fly back here, I don’t think we’ll get as lucky."
Virena watched him squawk on and on, but she did not understand him. Just when she was about to ask what the plan was, she saw Jimmy grabbing White Blade by the wings.
He prompted the dagger on the bird’s back, holding on to it with a couple of his claws. This was hardly comfortable, but he figured that it was going to be a short flight. The city wasn’t too far away, and White Blade was smaller than him in comparison, so carrying him was hardly a task at all.
"I hope we don’t run into the ravens along the way." He said, "I wonder if the crows started fighting back already. If they did, I hope to fuck my family didn’t get mixed up in the fight."
Jimmy took off, and he stalked the perimeter ahead so as to avoid trouble. He didn’t think to look back, and he especially didn’t think to look down.
Much to his disadvantage, he was being hunted from below this time. A scurry of rodents chased after him, but they were not rats.
Some of the rodents leaped from the ground, beamed above thirty feet upwards, and as a result, they rained upon Jimmy and his friends!
Cling!
Virena’s sickle struck against something metallic.
The sharp cling pierced through his ears instantly, and so he frantically looked around to see what was going on.
"What the fuck?" He blurted.
Before he knew it, he was forced to do a front flip!
Quickly losing his balance, he plummeted towards the grassy fields!
As he plummeted, he saw a bunch of figures raining down to the ground around him. Including the one who had landed on his head, and had forced him to do a front flip!
One peek at the figures was enough to help him understand what attacked him and his friends!
"Squirrels?" He squinted.
