He wanted to choose intelligence. He really, really did, but he knew that he shouldn't. He chose to ascend his strength, and immediately, pain engulfed him. It was worse than his broken wing, and he could distantly feel himself thrashing on the forest floor. He forced himself to still so as to not attract predators, and he managed it… for a few moments. He was almost glad as he blacked out.
He jerked awake and glanced at the sun. It hadn't moved much at all, so it had at least been a quick process. His assessment, which was at the forefront of his mind, told him that his strength was above-average, but he didn't put much stock in it. The speed of his thoughts while he was in danger simply didn't fit in the confines of merely 'abnormal'.
The first thing he noticed was that he was healed. The second was that he was larger, and by quite a bit. He was almost the size of a raven, and was noticeably larger than the falcon had been. The third was how strong he felt. His bones felt more rigid and durable, but thankfully remained hollow. He took flight, and managed to fly above the trees with relative ease. He wouldn't be able to fly for too long, but it was good enough.
He landed on a branch and thought about what to do next. He would have gone to his flock from the beginning, but he had wanted to farm the insects, and it had almost resulted in his death. The insects weren't even worth much. Their cores were so miniscule that it'd take days before he could ascend another aspect of himself.
The safe move was to go back to the flock. He would have to split any gains with them, but at least it was safer.
The dangerous move would be to stay independent. He would grow stronger faster, and he felt oddly confident in his odds of survival now that he could fly properly.
After a moment of indecision, he decided to stay in the park. He wanted to be bigger and stronger, and to be able to fly for days, but more than anything, he wanted to be the smartest crow on Earth.
As he waited in the branch for a while longer, he tried to think back on what he was doing when the falcon ambushed him, and he quickly remembered. He needed a proper name.
'Animal' was technically his name right now, and it wasn't good enough. It had been his choice only because he knew only four words. He went through his dictionary, and found one that spoke to him.
'Ascension'. He hadn't chosen it originally because he didn't want the god-creature to kill him for his arrogance in the face of a being far greater than himself, but now, he wanted it. He wanted to be smarter, and to do that, he would need to ascend. However, 'Ascension' sounded odd to him. He twisted the word around until he came to something that he liked.
'Ascenturi', he thought. It was a mix of two different words; ascension and his crow species. He was Ascenturi, the Ascension Crow. The only problem was that it was a bit long, and he decided to use 'Turi' for short.
The same feeling of identity as before, when he had named himself ‘animal’, was burned into his mind, and he felt incredible.
A feeling of pride made him puff his chest out, and he glided back down to the forest floor and started searching for prey. When he had grown, so had his stomach, and he had more room for cores.
This time, though, he chose not to kill and eat the insects in a single bite. It was too space-inefficient. He could fit a hundred times more cores in his stomach if he ate only them rather than the entire insect.
Turi pecked at one, his sharp beak piercing its exoskeleton and killing it in a single blow. He found its core, which was in its abdomen, and ate it. For the next ten minutes, he did this to every bug he came across. He kept away from the ant nests, but had even killed a few of the weaker beetles. Turi had seen a few squirrels, but they were practically impossible to catch. He had seen a few birds, too, but he felt like it was wrong to kill them.
The humans had different types of humans, too, but they didn't kill one another. Turi decided that he would try to treat all birds equally, but it was hard to resist the temptation. Cracking a single falcon's core had made him significantly stronger. If he were to properly digest one, he would probably make even more gains.
Turi flew over to a disturbingly large bug that was munching on at least six other bugs at once. It looked sort of like an ordinary beetle- aside from the fact that it was the size of a pre-ascension squirrel-, but had a strange tentacle thing on its back that creeped him out. It was munching on a beetle, but was having a hard time cracking its carapace. He debated trying to fight it, but decided to keep his distance. The tentacle on its back was just too weird.
It was getting darker, and the noise had dropped by quite a lot. The city was abnormally quiet compared to how it usually was, although there was no shortage of shrieks and screams, as well as gunfire and, every once in a while, a building falling over.
Turi decided to meet with his flock and return in the morning. He didn't like the idea of being all on his own in the night, and started making his way to the part of the city where his flock usually hung out. There were a couple other crows there, but the majority of the flock was either dead or elsewhere.
He chose to stay here regardless, and landed on a red octagon inscribed with words he couldn't understand right next to another crow.
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As the minutes trickled by, more and more crows showed up. Not nearly as many as there had been before the world had started ascending, but quite a few. It seemed that he wasn't the only one that thought to be independent during the day and return during the night.
Turi looked to his side, to the other crow sitting on the red octagonal sign. He recalled that it had looked like a completely ordinary crow, but as it got darker, the crow got harder and harder to see.
Turi wondered how. He was only able to ascend his durability, strength, intelligence, and senses. Did this one know something he didn't, or was it different for everyone? He wished that he could speak more complex words, like the ones that the god-creature spoke, but, while he could think in them, he couldn't make them. He had tried, but they didn't sound anything like the ones in his head or the ones that the god-creature spoke. The crows had also looked at him like he was insane.
***
When Turi woke up, he was met with a question. What aspect of himself did he want to ascend? After a few seconds, he chose durability. He wanted to be smarter, but to do that, he would need to survive. Besides, wasn't it the smartest choice to increase his survivability, making him smarter?
He didn't feel much different. His bones were stronger, although still hollow, thankfully, and his flesh was more durable, but there wasn't much change overall. The biggest was that his feathers had gained a metallic sheen in the morning light, and it looked quite nice, and he assumed they were pretty durable.
The night had passed, and the flock slowly dispersed. He noticed that the night-crow hadn't been there when he woke up and presumed that it hunted at night. Turi wondered if it had thought to kill the rest of the flock while they slept.
Turi looked at the sky, noting the dark grey clouds overhead. It was awfully windy, and the air pressure was low. A storm was likely, so Turi would have to get something to eat and head back quickly. He estimated that he had about three hours until it started raining.
Turi returned to the park, and it had changed massively overnight. There were even more bugs, and there was a lot more competition. Honestly, this was a good thing. He hadn't gained much from the weaker bugs, and while he would still passively hunt them, he wanted to find something better.
Except, there weren't any weaker bugs anymore; he supposed it made sense that all of the weak bugs would be dead by now, leaving only the stronger bugs, but it had still surprised him. There had been a lot of bugs. Now, most of them were ants, the occasional strong-for-a-bug bug, and the actually dangerous bugs, like that huge tentacle beetle.
He realized that the tentacle beetle and the night crow had both changed significantly from their baseline species. Was there something more to this that he was missing? He looked at his assessment, but found nothing new, except that his senses had dropped to subpar and that his strength had dropped to average.
Turi hunted the few weaker bugs that he could find before he stumbled upon the lottery; a tiny little mouse digging up worms. He took to the air and dove down on the mouse, snatching it up in his talons and squeezing its head, intending to kill it, but it suddenly doubled in size, forcing his talons to let it go. The mouse dropped twenty feet and struck the ground head-first, but after a moment of dazedness, it started to flee.
Turi dove, and as he did, his thoughts sped up once more. He was becoming increasingly certain that something was going on there. Regardless, he timed it perfectly, and pinned the much-larger mouse into the dirt, ending its life with a quick peck to the skull. He found the core in its chest, and it was quite large. Turi hesitated on what to do with it for a moment. Digesting the core would take a long while, whereas, if he shattered it in his beak now, it would make him stronger now and allow him to obtain more cores faster.
He snapped the core in his mouth, and an increasingly familiar question was posed to him. What aspect of himself did he wish to Ascend?
He briefly considered his senses, as they were falling quite a bit behind, but he chose to try to experiment with it instead. He tried to make his talons sharper, but that didn't work. He tried to make it harder to see him in the dark, but it didn't work. Turi eventually gave up and chose to increase his strength, bringing it up to 'above-average' once again. He got a bit bigger in size, now firmly the size of a raven, and also got much stronger. He felt like he could probably fly around for hours before needing to rest.
Turi hopped around a bit in excitement before taking to the air once more, faster even than he had been before Earth's ascension despite the increased gravity and increasingly worse weather. He was impatient to increase his intelligence, and didn't even bother to hunt bugs. He simply flew around, searching for something big to consume.
Turi found a lot of super-bugs, but most of them were beetles. Luckily, he hadn't come across any others with tentacles, but he wasn't confident in breaking their tough exoskeletons. He did find a huge ant, though. It was half the size of a super-beetle, but it was followed by an army of ants, all the size of a large, scary leaf. He briefly thought about picking the big guy up and fleeing, but dismissed this thought and searched for more ideal prey.
Turi came across his second lottery ticket at midday; a human. He had seen quite a few in the city, but this was the first time he had seen one in the park. He grew quite excited. Humans were the smartest animals he knew of. While the human wouldn't help him to ascend, he was still very interested in observing or trying to befriend it.
Turi flew over, and landed on a nearby branch, but was shocked when it snapped. He had forgotten how much larger he got; he needed to land on larger branches, now. He recovered quickly, but the human looked at him strangely. 'So subpar', Turi thought, not having learned any better-fitting words yet.
Turi swung back around and landed in front of the human. He needed to show that he wasn't afraid of it, now that he had embarrassed himself. The human, a thin young man, looked at him oddly. In his hands was a piece of string with a rock in it. When he cawed at him, the human shouted at him and raised his fist- the one with the string and stone-, and he flapped his wings and took off. He landed on a branch, cautiously staring at the human. It had lost interest in him and slung a rock at a squirrel, missing by quite a bit. The squirrel darted away, and the human said something angrily.
Turi had to try with a not-insignificant amount of will to not hop around in excitement. Humans were truly smart; he would have never thought of such a thing, although that may be because he didn't have the appendages required to use it. Still, he was entranced. He tried to figure out how it worked, and it took a while before he figured it out, and that was only because the human had continued slinging rocks at squirrels, giving him more examples.
'Intelligent,' Turi thought happily.
He was hungry for the knowledge that the human carried around, but he knew he couldn't have it. Not yet.
It pained him, but he took off again and continued looking for prey. He would need to learn a way to properly converse before trying again.