After eating the crystal, Turi waited around for a while, but nothing happened. Eventually, he fell asleep… but not really.

Turi dreamt of a crow. It was small, only a bit larger than Turi himself, but that was about all that he registered, because his attention was locked on the crow’s eyes. Its eyes were so, so much larger than the crow itself. As he gazed at them, they seemed to be as large as the sun and as deep as the oceans.

Turi’s thoughts accelerated. He distantly felt alarm bells ringing in his head, but they didn’t matter to him. The crow’s eyes bore knowledge; so, so much knowledge. He could almost see the incomprehensible knowledge that those eyes bore.

His thoughts accelerated further and further, but Turi could not tear his gaze away from the crow’s eyes. Finally, something clicked, just like in the battle against the stone-clad squirrel, and Turi felt like he was able to look away from the crow’s eyes.

Turi felt like his mind was about to collapse; not from the thought acceleration, but from the crow’s eyes. It wasn’t even looking at him; he could tell that it had no clue that he was watching it. Turi tore his gaze away from the crow’s eyes, and once he did, he felt like he had just flown across the world. His mind, not his body, was exhausted.

Suddenly, he was staring at the sun. The dream was over, and he could hardly remember the crow’s eyes; just that they bore an incomprehensible amount of knowledge.

A question was at the forefront of his mind, and it was one he hadn’t seen before. It didn’t ask what aspect of himself he wanted to ascend; it wasn’t even asking if he wanted to ascend. It was asking if he was ready to ascend.

He wasn’t. Turi didn’t know enough about what was happening. Once he came to this decision, the question left, but he could still feel it at the back of his mind, just like the god-creature’s assessment of him.

Turi averted his gaze from the sun, his vision covered in dots. Once they cleared, Turi fell into thought.

‘This must be how Four-wings, the dark crow, the tentacle beetle and stone-clad squirrel came to be,’ Turi thought. ‘Do I have any control over it, though? I don’t want to grow tentacles, and my feathers turning to stone would eliminate my advantage as a bird.’

Turi shuffled nervously, ‘Do I even have a choice? The question is posed like it’s inevitable, and just wants me to prepare. How am I supposed to prepare for something I don’t know about?’

‘Four-wings gave it to me, so… it’s probably not dangerous or a negative, right?’

The question floated its way to the forefront of his mind once more, and this time, it felt more insistent that he accept. It still allowed him to push it away, but he felt a slight bit of resistance.

‘I’m hungry. I’ll eat first, and then I’ll accept,’ Turi decided.

Turi looked at the sun and determined that it was still early morning. Only a few other crows were here right now, one of which was the dark crow, but most of which were simply injured crows.

Turi took to the air and started flying north-west, where he had fought the stone-clad squirrel and kidnapped a rat. It took a while to find suitable prey, but soon enough, he did. It was the same rat pack as last time, and Turi went through the same steps as he did last time in preparation for the kidnapping.

When the time was right, Turi swept down and grasped a rat in his talons. He had timed it perfectly, and didn’t even slow down slightly. One moment, the rat was at the edge of his pack, and the next, he was gone. This time, he had a better grip on the rat, and it didn’t manage to wriggle from his grasp. Turi landed on one of the few remaining human nests and killed the rat. Soon after, his stomach was full and a new core was being digested in his stomach.

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The question had appeared at the forefront of his mind many times now, and each time, he had pushed it away, but it was becoming increasingly difficult. Turi brought the question forth, and, the moment he was confident that he was ready, the question vanished.

Turi found himself floating in an endless void. A thin, leather-bound book hovered just a few inches from his face. Turi looked around for a while, but there was nothing here aside from him and the book. Turi flapped his wings, but he couldn’t move. With a bit of reluctance, Turi reached out with his beak and grabbed hold of the book, pulling it closer.

It was very awkward to try to open the book, as it was as large as he was and not built for birds. He eventually managed to undo the strap of leather holding the book closed, and pulled the book open.

Turi slowly read the words, many of which were new to him and pieced together what was supposed to happen next. The first page explained to him what he was supposed to do, and it was pretty hard for him to wrap his head around.

He had always wondered what the god-creature meant when he said that the Earth was ascending, and the book provided some answers. Apparently, Earth had, previously, been a planet of the first realm, and the process of ascending to the second realm had just begun, and would take somewhere between a year and a decade; the faster it was, the more potential the planet had.

The crystal he had eaten was something formed by the Earth as it ascended, and it was crystallized, condensed essence, just like the essence core of an animal. The difference was that the essence was of the second-realm, and had made Turi ascend significantly earlier than he ordinarily would have.

The most important thing he learned on the first page, at least for Turi’s immediate situation, was what the hell was happening right now. Apparently, the book, which called itself a tome, was something that all creatures gained when they ascended to the second realm, although it was a different manifestation for everyone. It was, effectively, a more convenient version of the thoughts that the god-creature had implanted into him.

The second page reflected this, and was merely the god-creature’s assessment of him. Nothing about his assessment had changed since the last time he saw it, so he moved onto the third soon after.

It was, effectively, the ascension page. It was where he would decide what aspect of himself he wanted to ascend, and, right now, how he wanted to ascend his species.

Just like Four-wings, the stone-clad squirrel and the tentacle beetle had done, his species was going to ascend. Turi crow was, apparently, just a baseline, and, from now on, he would build a variant of the species from it. All it required was for him to know what he wanted from his variant species; within limits, of course.

The page had two pre-made variants already there, and they were ‘Four-winged Crow’ and ‘Crow of Darkness’. He didn’t want either of them, though, and instead focused on what he wanted from his variant species.

Turi wanted to be able to talk, of course, but he wasn’t quite sure what else he wanted. There were a few suggestions on the third page, though, and they all seemed decent, albeit uninteresting. None of them helped him to further his desire for knowledge. Some of them were necessities, though, such as the ability to consciously manipulate the essence within his essence core.

Apparently, he hadn’t been utilizing it well whatsoever. For the most part, it remained dormant and simply amplified his strength, but it was capable of so much more. In fact, it was already doing so much more.

His ability to accelerate his thoughts had, apparently, come from being a Turi Crow, and expended essence. When he learned this, he had been quite worried; he didn’t want to waste his essence, after all; it was supposed to be making him ascend.

Apparently, he had been operating under a misunderstanding; one that was caused due to a lack of information. When he digested or crushed the essence core of another creature, it did not fill his core with essence, but simply made it stronger. His essence core regenerated essence all on its own, and a lack of essence had been what caused his mind to feel like it was melting after his fight with the stone-clad squirrel.

Turi wasn’t sure how long he spent in the endless void, deciding on what changes to his baseline species he wanted to make, but what he was sure of was that it would be incredible.

Turi gazed at the third page; specifically, at the question that asked if he was finished. His entire body trembled with excitement as he confirmed that he was ready to ascend to the second realm.