Assassin Crow Evolution

Curiosity killed the cat.

It should have, but Jimmy was restless as much as he was curious. In his eyes, an enemy was an enemy, even if they didn’t inflict any harm per-se.

One wrong move from the enemy got all three of them wiped out.

Virena, a two-inch insect, brutally killed two opponents that were hundreds of times her size. She ended a battle that she did not even care for.

After the threats were neutralized, she flew from one wall-mounted torch to the other, and lit them up with the tip of her sickle. She had a feeling that Jimmy did not appreciate the darkness down here, and so she wanted to make him comfortable quickly.

The chambers lit up, perhaps better than it had been before, because she set ablaze a few torches that weren’t initially used.

"That’s better, isn’t it?" She said, once she landed in front of Jimmy.

"Yeah," He took a deep breath, "I’m having a hard time wrapping my head around what happened. What am I looking at, Virena?"

"I’ve never seen anything like it before," She said, "I mean the large, fat rat was weird enough, but these guys look almost human."

Out of the three creatures they recently killed, only the beheaded one had most of its body intact. Well, its head was separated from its body, but he could still work with this.

Jimmy circled around the body, observing every inch of it.

This creature had distinct features. It had feet that looked mostly human, five toes, and it didn’t have a tail either.

The rest of its body also looked more human than rat, with the key distinctions being its head, its thin coat of black fur, and its four-fingered hands.

Its head was the most bizarre, as it nearly looked entirely like that of a rat’s, with the main difference being that its snout was shorter than it was supposed to be.

"So it starts out as human from its feet, but everything goes to hell as we go up?" He said, "The system did say that I killed a rat, but I’d say these fuckers were close to turning into humans."

"The system?" Virena repeated.

"Nevermind," He sighed. "These rats tried to evolve to humans, and I can understand why, I wouldn’t want to be a rat either, but how the fuck did they do it? They evolved, sure, but how did they nit-pick what to evolve into? I mean you saw that cow of a rat? That big fucker looked more natural than these guys. I’m not surprised that they can evolve to be bigger over time, but... humanoid?"

"We killed them, but let’s not sell them short." She added, "They were smart. They were tactically preparing the room to tear us apart, kill us under their own terms. I’m not surprised that they figured out how to look more human."

Pointing her foreleg at the beheaded corpse, she then added, "Look at this one, he’s even covering his crotch with clothes."

"He’s wearing pants, yeah," He said, "But if they got this close to looking human, until we put an end to it, I’m tempted to think that other rats have already turned human. Maybe there’s a few of them living amongst the people?"

"What, you want to hunt them too?" She asked, "We let the crows fight their own battles, right? Let the humans do the same."

"I sure as hell am not fighting for the humans," He chuckled, "But there’s something about these rats that I can’t figure out. I don’t know what it is yet, but something is poking my brain."

"Maybe you’re thinking about their cores?" She added, "Should I cut them open?"

"That’s not it... but I did think about their cores as well." He nodded, "I don’t think it’s a good idea to mess with those, though. The cores might be too bizarre for us, they could kill us."

"Cores can kill us?" She asked.

"Well, that mage’s Flesh Core almost killed me." He said. "But if these things do have cores, it would be wasteful to leave them here. Let’s cut them out, carefully put them in a bag, and get out of here. We can probably convince someone to absorb one of the cores on our behalf. If they’re safe, we’ll absorb the rest."

"That seems a bit cruel..." She lowered her head, "But then again, I’ve seen a lot of crows who’d be better off as rats."

Jimmy chuckled. He loved how unintentionally unhinged Virena was.

Anyway, since Virena was the only one with a blade, she began cutting through one of the corpses.

The chambers were cleared out. There were no other rats, no threats that she was aware of, so she could cut through the body in peace.

Everything else about this chamber remained a mystery. They didn’t know who it belonged to, as it was obviously human-made, but Jimmy could not figure out if whoever owned this basement knew what was going on down here.

He was tempted to think that the owner knew. This place looked like a basement, and the only door that led down here was sealed off.

The owner either knew that there were massive rats down here, and had sealed the place away from the rest of the world in response, or the owner sealed it off decades ago, marking it as unimportant, allowing these rodents to prosper in peace.

Either possibility was nerve-wracking. Every inkling of Jimmy’s human consciousness saw this as extremely irresponsible, and he felt that whoever the owner of this chamber was, had to be punished. But then again, all the rats here were wiped out already, and he didn’t want to confront any humans right now.

What he felt was a paradox, but in the end, it all boiled down to what benefited him.

While Virena gutted one of the bodies, Jimmy emptied out a sack of wheat grains, and walked back to his friend.

"We’ll put the cores here," He said, "Be careful not to touch them, because I don’t know if it’s a Flesh Core, a Gem Core, or something else altogether. We wouldn’t want to absorb them unintentionally."