Free Web NovelChapter 39: "The humans are training birds?"
Evolution wise, Jimmy felt readier than ever to face whatever dangers lied ahead. He felt strong, skillful, and it helped that he had exploded in size.
The thousands of system points he spent within a day were a stamp of his progress. He may have spent most of his points, with less than a couple of thousand of them left after the initial ordeal of upgrades, but he didn’t feel longing over the points he spent. He was absolutely certain that they were invested properly, and right now, he didn’t need any more points either.
That aside, mid-night approached, and he had to rest. This had been a busy, painful day, and exhaustion caught up with him.
Jimmy grabbed his hammer, crawled out of the rat hole, and flew on top of a roof nearby. The ninety-nine hammers below him were mostly scattered in the alleyway, right in front of the rat hole he crawled out of.
"I’ll put those hammers back in the hole tomorrow." He yawned.
The encompassing darkness of the night had taken over the city. Candle-light from within the buildings barely shone all the way into the streets. Jimmy could barely see what was ahead of him. The moonlight wasn’t enough to illuminate his path, he couldn’t do anything else tonight even if he tried to, not without risking crashing into a building, at least.
"I can’t see shit in the dark," He said, "Let’s hope the ravens can’t see in the dark either. I don’t feel like fighting right now."
Either way, Virena was his second pair of eyes. Like always, she sat on Jimmy’s back, and spent most of her time scouting the perimeter. Her sickle would swing left and right far before a threat approached her friend.
Virena was the only one he could rely on. He couldn’t rely on family. He was still banished, and as for the rest of the crows, the same crows he sacrificed so much today in order to protect, could not care less if Jimmy lived or died. He remained alone, mostly alone, and he tried not to think of that fact too much.
He knew that if he weighed the good and the bad of his staying here, he’d leave the city before the morning sun rose.
...
Jimmy woke up at the crack of dawn. It was hardly his choice.
He caught up with a bit of his sleep, yes, but his gurgling stomach woke him up. Other than that, the summer mornings were quite cold when one slept on top of hard, stone buildings, so the cold managed to force him awake as well.
It was as if the universe cooperated to wake him up before the roosters sung their song, stiff as a board.
"Guhh..." He grumbled as he stretched his wings, "At this point, homeless men probably sleep better than I do."
Jimmy started moving. He floated down from the rooftop, and towards the rat-hole that the hammers were initially stashed in.
The hammers didn’t attract him. The rats did. His meal had been waiting for him only a few meters away.
Several rats wiggled across the scattered hammers, and some of them were pulling on a couple of hammers as well.
For a moment, he thought they were trying to learn how to wield them, but as his brain caught up with what was going on, he realized that the rats simply wanted their homes back. The hammers bothered them.
Jimmy didn’t care. He swooped in, crushed four rats to death, and swallowed them whole.
[22 + 24 + 21 + 29 system points]
[Total points: 2013]
Three other rats got away from him, and he was too lazy to chase after them. They had crawled away from the alleyway, and he didn’t see it safe to chase them across the city’s main roads, where the humans commonly commuted.
"The first time I messed with humans, my father got beat up." He sighed.
The four rats he ate, although decent in size, weren’t enough. His body demanded more proteins. He was a lot bigger now than he used to be, and had a lot more muscles to support. The rats he ate could barely be considered breakfast, and there was so little fat in his body right now, that his body began to consume his muscles for energy.
"Maybe I should go out in the meadow, and hunt?" He said, "Hell, I’d even eat a raven at this point. I’m desperate."
Jimmy was about to take off, but then he heard a pair of big wings hustling through the sky, heading towards him.
Within a blink, he turned his head towards whomever approached, and his mind cleared up in an instant, as he expected a threat.
He expected a raven, but as hundreds of bright white feathers approached, he calmed down. He spotted White Blade.
White Blade landed, looked at the scattered hammers across the ground, and then looked at Jimmy in silence, as if he demanded him to answer for this mess.
"I’ll put them back in that disgusting rat hole later," Jimmy said, "It took me a while to find a good hammer."
"So you picked one?" White Blade’s face curled in contemplation, "I don’t recommend that you wield it for long, but let me ask you, friend, are you any good at wielding that hammer?"
"Yes I am," He nodded, "I practiced with it all night, and evolved once."
White Blade was intrigued. Jimmy’s white lie went a long way. He didn’t care to tell anyone that he didn’t actually have to practice with his weapons in order to master them.
After half a minute of silence, White Blade added, "Your skills may come in handy soon. Our scouts picked up on some trouble last night. We confirmed who sent that eagle after us."
"Let me guess, it was that Fire Mage?" He asked, "I was there yesterday, when Hammer Beak shouted about honor and destiny. He was looking for a reason to blame the mage."
"He was right after all. It was the Fire Mage who sent the eagle, but from what the scouts picked up, it wasn’t a senseless attack." White Blade said, "The humans are taking in various predators, birds mostly, as their pets. I believe they want to use those birds to hunt us crows, but, as for yesterday’s attack, our scouts saw the Fire Mage, along with another human, burying a Cockatrice bird."
At last, he pressured, "Two crows have come forward and confirmed that you killed that Cockatrice bird, but I wanted to ask you personally as well. Did you, either intentionally or in self defense, essentially trigger a war with the humans?"
