Right now Herhail had 50 exp, and the [Rat] had gotten 3 extra 'exp' for helping in the killing of a big boy snake, so now it needed only 6 exp.
'Go kill small critters outside and learn and improve through battle.' The rat obeyed, and quickly left.
Herhail pondered on his next steps 'Should I give the rat more intellegence, or strength? What should I do with the other rat?' The answer he came up with was; 'Who cares? I'm going to replace them anyways, so let's just focus on pure stats for now!'
He came to this conclusion after remembering the 'abandoned wolf' card, though it was bad for the pack's standard, it was good in the wild. Most importantly, it was inherently a pack animal, if a few worked together they could do stratagems or something, and they're much cheaper than the normal wolf.
[[Rat] killed lizard (lvl 0), gained 1 exp.]
'That was quick, maybe the hunting spots with a good amount of game are already in it's head?' These thoughts came to Herhail.
Though it didn't matter, all that mattered was the exp. That could be used for buying more cards, and that could be used to get more exp!
Now, Herhail started to get back to business and started to try and make twine from plants again.
An hour later after making twine, he saw finally succeeded. And he re-sent out the rat after it died after the 4th kill.
After which he started to slam a sharp rock into a long stick, making a split on the long and straight stick forfront, and forcing the sharp rock into it. Then he used the make-shift twine to make the hold of the stick on the stone even stronger.
Looking at his stick with a sharp stone at the top, he realized that the grip was of bark, and that it was litterally a stick. As such he started to pry of the bark, and then realized that the left overs from the branches he had snapped off were annoying.
As such he created another sharp rock and took those annoying little parts off the 'spear', after seeing his creation after being 'improved', he was happy enough with it to stop trying to improve it.
Finally the [Rat] card returned to the deck, having leveled-up and with Herhail having 63 exp and the rat having 7/30 'exp'. While wondering why it took so long for it to come back after getting only 13 exp, the [Rat] was put into the material plane.
After gaining another point of strength, the rat had gone beyond the normal and had become uncanny in it's muscled form. It went beyond what a rat should be, and would commonly seen as slightly disgusting.
"learn and improve from your death." Herhail said, and the rat stood still for a while, along while, about 10 minutes, doing nothing but existing. Then came back alive, and Herhail realized that he has a lot of control over the rat, and it's mind takes a long while to finangle out improvements to instict, since there's no concious thought there it needs it's instincts corrected.
The improvements per 'ponder' are also small if Herhail's conjectures were correct, but then he remembered that he didn't really care and gave the same order as before, but this time a clause to stop 'pondering' if it's in danger.
Then he started to think of what he could do now, the sun wasn't over the horizen and doing something would let his mind drift away from the bad smell and all the bad slums that he noticed after coming back from the church.
"Fire! Fire! It's annoying to make fire!" Herhail had just recently made fire for the first time due to his newly 'good' stats, he had sat for 10 minutes trying to use the fire drill method although he didn't know what it was called.
"I need to make a tool to do that easier!" This was his answer, he wouldn't work hard keeping an ember alive. First he needed to know what he could use, those were; stones, sticks, and twine. Secondly, he needed to know what he needed to make those things do; which was rotate a stick, it didn't have to keep going in the same direction, but how did his hands make it turn?
'When I walk, my feet push against the earth, and it get's pushed back, but why do I get pushed forward? When I push against a wall, I get pushed back and I need to use the push back from the floor to push forward constantly, why is that? When I touch something and try to move it, I feel it fighting back on my hands.'
'It's most annoying since I can't hold the stick properly, otherwise it would be so much easier. The movements I make have to be done through something else...'
He stopped thinking about it and chose to get everything that he could and then see what he could do, like making twine.
Twine is made of animal hair, including human, sinews and plant material, as long as it is long and thin, it can be used to make twine. He only knew this since it was really common to make twine, and pretty intuitive to make, if you just spend some time trying to make it, it'll work. most people use hair here, not like they have a barber to keep it short.
Herhail does his best to keep it short enough in the spring and summer for it to not get in the way, but most people are already 'broken' since young and don't care if it's short or not.
As such it's pretty common to make make-shift tools with twine made of their hair, right now he had short hair, recently it was winter and it had just become spring. It was literally his lucky break for it not to rain today.
He kept a set of rags cleaner than usual for today too as to increase his chances of being picked up by the church, though that was thrown out the window, and the new plan was to intergrate with the outside and be a free man with a, maybe, forbidden path.
He took some time to get everything he could, about an hour was what it took to get it all ready.
He tested all three methods, and came to the conclusion that it would all not work, the sticks didn't have a grip on it, the stones were stones, and the twine couldn't hook.
As such, Herhail started to throw the equivilent of a tantrum and quietly started to finangle with sticks and twine until something worked.
In the end the twine was rapped around the stick once, and he saw that he could turn the stick like that, but he needed to keep it stable with his feet if he wanted it to work, so he made a stick keep the twine together, then he made a bow on accident.
Then he needed something with less grip to stabilize the stick, so he took a stone and grinded at it with another stone for a long time, and made an indent in it.
"Fire! It worked!" Seeing the embers be created, Herhail felt great pride as he put out the flame, no need to bring extra attention to yourself.
The card flew back into my deck and he summoned it again, and Herhail realized that he had lost track of time, and that night had arrived, also that the rat had leveled-up twice. Again Herhail gifted to rat with strength.
Herhail now had a 148 exp, and the rat had 22/50, the rat was... Disgusting, fully in uncanny valley, it looked like one of those creepy-pasta, horror, genetically modified for meat things. But it was perfectly alive somehow, no problems in it's breathing, as if it was normal, as if it was nothing special, as if the freakish thing that was it, was 'Natural'.
It was a blob of muscle, almost being the correct phrase, it was still able to move naturally, somehow.
This is what happens when you don't raise you vitality while only persueing strength, you become a blob of flesh that would die on it's own if it's stat growth wasn't supported by the system.
"Go away! Shew, shew! Go! Go annoy that girl, maybe kill some creatures! I don't care, get the fuck away from me!" The blob ran away in anguish that it's 'creator(?)' hated it's hidious form.
Some time later Herhail heard the signature 'Kyaaaaaa!' of the betrayer, and he changed his evaluation of the monsterous blob to 'disgusting creature', to 'loyal, but unnerving follower'. The disgusting blob became an endearing monster that understood him.
Then he went back to sleep.