Assassin Crow Evolution

Hisses and high-pitched squeals echoed across the chambers. A sea of pink tails whipped across the air, and much like a hive mind, the rats had the same goal in mind.

One of their biggest members in the community was dead, and burning into a crisp. They were smart enough to know who must pay for this blatant murder.

They swarmed the intruding crow, and mantis. Their plan was to kill the crow, and then band on the mantis, all for the sake of what they believed to be justice!

Jimmy did not care about their justice system. He wasn’t aware of it, and he didn’t care to indulge their sour feelings either.

First, he backed away from the battle scene as fast as he could.

The rats caught up with him quickly. He was almost nervous by how fast they crawled across the stone ground.

Right after, he flapped his wings once, with every bit of strength he had, and forced the rats to topple over each other. His plan was to draw them away from Virena, to destroy the chance of her feeling overwhelmed.

Shy of thirty rats squealed, and scratched one another frantically, forming a tiny stream of blood which trickled on the ground. All thanks to his single wing-flap.

Some slipped on the blood, some sprained their limbs. This combination slowed them down quite a bit.

Nevertheless, some of them were either smart, or strong enough to fight through this barricade. One by one, they continued chasing after Jimmy.

Two of them leaped as high as they could, going for Jimmy’s head. Their never-before-washed jaws blaring!

Thud!

Jimmy head-budded one of them into oblivion, an eternal slumber. He hit the rat so hard that he crushed its skull.

[Stone Head skill: Level 2 >>> Level 3]

[+39 system points]

"Damn..." He shook his head.

Undoubtedly, he felt that hit as well. Even though the rat he just killed was significantly smaller compared to him, it was still bigger than the other rats amongst the swarm.

It had to weigh at least a pound, a quarter of his weight. To a human, it would be the equivalent of head-budding an adolescent baboon. It hurt.

The other rat landed, and latched on to his right wing. It scratched at him, but that did nothing, so as desperation crept under its fur like the vicious bite of a flea, it began to bite Jimmy.

Poof!

A dark mist surrounded the both of them.

[-24 mana points]

[Remaining pool: 526 points]

A second before the dark mist disappeared, Jimmy felt the rat panicking even more.

Tilting his head to the right, he was horrified to see that the rat’s four longest teeth, its frontal incisors, had lodged deep into his wing!

"Fuck!" He winced.

The rat’s teeth were stuck in him. The Help Yourself skill had automatically sealed his fresh wound, as it always did, and therefore it had trapped the rat on his wing!

In the meantime, six more rats got close enough to Jimmy to start nibbling on his legs.

When a sharp pain hit his legs, he reacted like a spooked horse. He kicked a rat away in an instant!

Another rat got its head crushed under his claw. He stomped it to death.

[+29 system points]

Jimmy swung his body around in circles, trying to shake away the rat that was lodged on his wing. At the same time, he mostly avoided the rats that were chasing after him.

Kicking some, and crushing the bones of others, he was in a dance that was hardly romantic. The rat that was inches away from his face, was not his lover, it was like a giant parasite that he couldn’t shake away.

"Oh, fuck it," He grunted.

Jimmy grabbed the lodged rat by the neck. He got a good grip of it with his beak, and then, he tugged on the rat with all his might!

Blood shot out of his wing like a fountain! He pulled the rat out by force, and then tossed it away with so much hatred that it hit the wall on the other side of the room, breaking its spine upon impact!

[+38 system points]

Poof!

The Help Yourself skill erupted again, engulfing him, tending to his wound.

Before the skill did its thing, Jimmy felt his right, injured wing get several times heavier than usual. He almost felt like he was being stepped on.

"Jesus Christ!" He yelled out in agony.

The pain that engulfed him was like nothing he had ever felt before! It was unique. At that moment, his right wing was useless, as if it was paralyzed.

The dark mist gave him relief three seconds later. Its shade was so dark that for a moment he thought he went blind. This hinted how much damage the Help Yourself skill was healing.

[-174 mana points]

[Remaining pool: 352 points]

As the mist dissipated, Jimmy could move his wing again. Every bit of burden he felt during what he considered the filthiest battle of his life, went away.

"I must’ve torn a muscle," He groaned, and gently flapped his wing. "Filthy rats!"

Pissed off beyond bounds, he poked a leaping rat right through its eye! The tip of his five-inch beak ended up absolutely obliterating its skull.

[Iron Beak skill: Level 3 >>> Level 4]

[+24 system points]

Virena had managed to kill half of the swarm of rats. Now, she was closing in on the remaining half that had escaped her blade, boxing them in from behind.

Distracted rats were easier to kill. She tore through them one by one, and therefore helped her friend who had been otherwise occupied until now.

Jimmy did not stand idly by. He activated his Retractable Razor Armor, and charged towards the rats without a worry in the world.

As clueless as they were of his armor, a bundle of rats leaped towards Jimmy when they got the chance.

Five of them were stuck on his armor, and slowly died. Try as they might, they couldn’t escape the tens of two-inch spikes across his body. Every movement opened up their stab wounds wider.

Along with Virena’s help, he tore through what remained of the rats in less than a minute!

There was so much blood on the ground that it had started dripping across the staircase close by.

Jimmy retracted his armor, and several rats fell. They were already dead. His feathers once more adopted a red shade.

The system had been blaring his ears with notifications about the system points he gained. He tried, and ignored most of them, and only cared for the final result.

[Total system points: 5,956]

Jimmy guessed that he had gained less than five hundred points out of this fight. It was not worth the effort, and it definitely wasn’t worth the mana he lost during the exchange.

Stressed, he sighed, and said, "Why are we even here? That fucking cow of a rat was interesting, but this damn place is too gross and risky! We should dip."

"Maybe we should grab a few rats and get out of here?" Virena said, "I’m hoping they’re edible. This place is more disgusting now than how it was when we found it."

"Oh, right," He shook his head, "Cooked food is safer to eat. Let’s go chop a leg off of that big motherfucker, and then go."

With that decided, they went back to the huge rat that he had killed earlier. The fire had chewed through its fur, and with little else to burn, it had died down. Its shade shifted from blue, to yellow, and then to red before it disappeared.

The chambers weren’t as well illuminated anymore.

When Jimmy noticed some movement at the corner of his eye, he was reminded of how important light sources were.

Quick as a whip, he turned his head towards what he spotted, and noticed yet another head.

The only problem was that this head was six feet above the ground, and it floated in the middle of the room. He feared that he saw a human, a potential eye-witness to his massacre of the rats, but his very own logic fought him on the matter.

Humans weren’t supposed to be covered in fur. Not a lot of it, at least, so for a brief moment, he felt that his heart sunk down to his foot.

"What the fuck is that?!" He exclaimed.