Chapter 69: Volume 2
Peace and prosperity was what nearly every creature thrived for, even if it was at the expense of destroying another species.
The strongest, and relatively the smartest grasped prosperity and dragged it towards them, even if by force.
Jimmy enjoyed the overall peace he experienced over the past week, but day after day, hour after hour, he discovered that his brain worked differently.
With no one, and nothing to challenge him directly, he grew more and more bored.
In the past, even though he never willingly indulged the accusations, drama, and even direct threats of the other crows, he realized that he owed half of his progress to the fact that the community pushed him to become spiteful.
He wouldn’t have progressed as much as he did, if he hadn’t done it out of spite!
In his mind, desperation, curiosity, heartbreak, and even the concept of ego itself, all boiled down to his spite. It wasn’t merely a fight or flight response.
Nowadays, with no one to piss him off enough, he didn’t seek progress. He sought rabbits, and their delicious meat.
This was good in terms of raking up a few extra points, but it did not affect his evolution. He was yet to decide on how he wanted to spend his eleven-thousand points.
With no clear threat to influence his usually clever decision making, he started seeking out threats himself.
Most of the new tasks that the system gave him, even encouraged him to seek out danger.
[Task 11: Absorb 25 Beast Cores.
Reward: 5,000 system points.]
[Task 12: Forge a blade from a Porcupine Basilisk’s Scales.
Reward: 2,300 system points.]
[Task 13: Find and merge with a sentient feather.
Reward: 1,000 system points.]
[Task 14: Investigate the disturbance on God’s Spine Mountain.
Reward: 800 system points.]
[Task 15: Explore the Ravine of the Dead for 50 hours.
Reward: 15,000 system points.]
There was a reason Jimmy ignored these tasks for a little while. Although he found them infinitely interesting now, he also found them tiresome.
These tasks were not tied to the city in front of the meadows anymore. He wasn’t given that comfort, and he had to explore whatever else this world had to offer.
Initially he found this horrifying, but he realized that he had outgrown the city, and the meadows already. This place barely had anything else to offer him, and it was the catalyst behind his boredom.
It was a paradox. Every problem he has had so far, seemed infinitely small, and every new task he had, seemed infinitely difficult.
Jimmy felt that the system points he already had weren’t nearly enough to help him prepare for the challenges ahead. He had no idea what branch in the Evolution Tree he should start improving.
For all he knew, he could spend every point he had into what logically seemed useful, and still die below a random tree somewhere. There was no way to predict the upcoming challenges that were tied to the new tasks.
With that said, he decided to focus on what seemed like the least dangerous task for now, which was task thirteen. He aimed to find, and merge with a sentient feather.
...
There were very few friends, crow or otherwise who’d follow Jimmy if he proposed a crazy plan to them.
Virena was one of them. She knew that she could protect herself in any battle, and she knew she could protect Jimmy as well, and since she felt indebted to him, she was ready to follow him to the depths of hell if she had to.
As of recently, Vorin decided to indulge in his crazy ideas, and follow him in his travels as well.
Jimmy proposed that they left the comforts of the meadow, to seek out a unique feather. He wouldn’t elaborate on it further.
Every inkling of Vorin’s common sense told him that this was a bad idea, but he followed his brother anyway. Time and time again, he discovered that his senses were wrong, and that following Jimmy came with a heavy promise of risk and reward.
It was the reward he cared about.
The two of them let their family know that they were going to be gone for a while. To prevent drama, they avoided telling their family that they were leaving the meadows, and said that they were going to scout the meadows for potential remaining enemies.
Their plan was admired by the community.
The group of three flew for two days straight. They barely slept, and quite frankly, they were too excited to sleep.
They glided westward for tens of kilometers, up until the comforting flatlands, and low hills of the meadows shifted into a thick, mountainous forest.
Gliding didn’t require a lot of energy. They barely flapped their wings, and feasted on bugs who were unlucky enough to cross their trajectory.
"Are we closer to finding that feather?" Vorin raised his voice as they flew, because his brother wouldn’t hear him otherwise because of the flight velocity. "What are we supposed to look for? A weird bird?"
"I’m not sure, man," Jimmy answered, "But we’re overdue for a little break. Follow me."
Dusk was close by. They were losing sunlight, and had reached what they considered to be uncharted territory.
The fact was that they traveled so far westward that they could actually encounter ravens and razor squirrels out here. A fight could break out at any time, and Jimmy actually hoped that the potential was something he was used to.
They were in what could easily be considered uncharted territory for them. Anything could attack them.
They landed on top of a pine tree, and observed the area.
Their observation was a useless effort. It didn’t reap them any benefits.
They couldn’t see anything from up here except for more trees, and a continuously ascending elevation.
"Should we climb down?" Vorin asked.
"Yeah, but let’s be careful." He said, "We could run into a whole ass beast out here. We should avoid fights, because it’s likely that we can’t win them."
"No kidding," Vorin shook his head, "The trees here don’t look right."
"Huh?" He grunted. "What do you mean?"
Before his brother could respond, the two of them were slapped by a branch!
Apparently, Vorin wasn’t simply being discriminatory towards a tree that wasn’t oak or birch.
The pine tree had a mind of its own!
It slapped them down from its very top, and they ended up crash landing.
[-300 mana points]
[Remaining pool: 900 points]
On the way down, Jimmy healed both himself and his brother. The slap from the branch broke a couple of their bones.
Once they were on the ground, they were greeted with a horrific sight that did not make sense in any universe!
The trunk of the tree was sliding across the ground, a few inches at a time. It was leaving a trail behind. It was moving, traveling.
"That’s new." He said.
"New... and it almost tore my ass apart." Vorin grunted. "This magical feather better be worth it, brother!"