Herhail was all giddy to see a massacre, while silently gnawing on a piece of hard tack. Which was a pleasure for him, since you usually get moldy shit, it even wasn't infested by weevils or weevil-likes!
Totally balanced, and very cheap and long lasting food source often used by pirates and less rich sea-faring merchants.
[Rat 5 has killed human (Tier 3, lvl 7); 575 exp.]
And so the death starts to toll.
[Rat 1 has killed human (Tier 5, lvl 4); 860 exp.]
And it kept getting worse,
[Rat 2 has killed human (lvl 0); 10 exp.]
And worse,
[Rat 5 has killed human (Tier 4, lvl 8); 640 exp]
Like a snow ball rolling down a snowy hill.
[Rat 5 has leveled up! please distribute new stat points!]
[Rat 1 has leveled up! please distribute new stat points!]
[Rat 2 has leveled up! please distribute new stat points!]
[Rat 4 has leveled up! please distribute new stat points!]
...
Just a few kills quickly made most rats get to lvl 9/10, remember that 9 to 10 was 300 exp.
Then rat 1 got the 3000 exp needed to get to the next evolution, noticing this, Herhail told rat 1 to help the other rats get kills.
Slowly gnawing on his hard tack, Herhail walked with the crowd, away from his rats.
After a few more kills, rat 5 got it's chance at evolution, then rat 3, then 2, then 4, then just as 6 was about to get his 2nd to last kill. rat 3 returned into Herhail's deck.
If we break away from Herhail's perspective and then look with the eyes of god at the situation, you would see the fake gang boss with a mask and cloak being annoyed as he squashed rat 3 when it dared to rush at him "A common assassin without endurance or stealth."
Then without even the slightest amount of caution, he walked up to rat 1 and kicked it into flight as a red mist "So it's a glass canon?"
Next he picked up a large stone and threw it at rat 6, whose head caved in immeadiately, without resistance "More of a leader than a combatant."
Next he ran to rat 2, which tried to run away, but couldn't. He picked it up by the butt. Then tore it in half, amazingly, it didn't die right away, and kept on crawling for a few seconds, as if it's lower half was still attached "A wannabe immortal, quite a unique choice for a tamer or summoner."
Then he stepped out of the way of a blast of mana, coming from rat 5. He lazily pointed finger guns at the creature and made a mock gunshot "Bang!" As a small ball of light blue mana was launched at the creature with glowing light-blue pulsing veins overall on it's body.
The moment the ball which was too fast for the rat to evade touched rat 5, it exploded with some light-blue radience "A tier 1 with magic? That's... Rare."
Suddenly a rat with great weight charged over, it was slow though, it's weight causing problems with it's speed. This was the easiest one of the 6, the fake gang leader walked up, picked it up. Then squized it's head with his two fingers till it died, remember that it was a rat, a rat is small enough to squize the head with the fingers.
With little effort, the rat kept on living for 10 seconds! That was impressive "An endurance focused tier 1, without much dex to support the weight too... What kind of summoner would summon such imbalanced monsters?"
The gang leader walked out without any warning saying "The threats gone, get it cleaned up!" Not noticing all the blood and gore to dissapate into light blue lights.
He slowly walked back up to his house, where another gang leader stood, also a puppet to the baronette's daughter, but without the strength of the double fake gang leader. He mocked him "The high and mighty magic swordsman, you seem a lot weaker after you got cursed."
The double stripped himself of the mask, the face behind was of the old man that was teaching Herhail reading and writing. Showing extreme anger being surpressed.
"Yea! That's the face I want to see!" The puppet gang leader said "But let me ask you something, did you really think I didn't know about your little excursions?"
The old man calmly said without even the slightest panic "Not really, what's it matter to you? You want me to stay in this trashy shack at all times? That's not happening."
A few veins quickly appeared on the puppet gang leader "Just tell me what you were doing! I command you on the slave mark!"
"I was getting some air from the disgusting stench of that noble that comes through here sometimes." The old man saying a thought-out line.
The puppet gang leader, expecting some answer about how he was going to kill the baronette's daughter in some convoluted plan that by-passed the slave mark, paused.
In the pause of the puppet gang leader, the old man put on his his mask again and walked away quickly. He kept on walking, then entered an alley way.
One that had Rat 6 looking into from above since he was waiting for someone to be caught unawares and get this over with.
The old man walked into the middle of the alley, and looked around, but made the key mistake of not looking up. He slowly took off his cloak and mask, which told rat 6 that it was time to strike.
And strike it did, it jumped down, and went for the old man's nape. You may be wondering; 'Wouldn't it hurt to fall from the shack?' If you didn't know, the smaller you are, the less gravity matters.
But that didn't matter, as the old man sub-conciously slapped behind him, again bringing about a red mist of rat flesh.
Herhail was un-affected and for an entire day while gnawing on hardtack, three times the old man killed it, and then another few times the rat got unlucky and was discovered, then died.
'Why does it die every time!' Herhail was losing his mind, he gave up, and choose to get this over with, in a week.
Though he did pick up a stone and had thrown it at the fake fake gang leader out of frustration, who was tired and just grabbed it out of the air with the swipe of his hand. Unintentionally causing Herhail's confidence to drop by a few levels, making him hide in his house with his stock-pile of food.
He made new spears and bows, over and over again, with only better tools for his use, it's best to just lay low for a bit... It's not that he was afraid, it was just... Smart to lay low for a bit.
This then rolled out of control, until Herhail stopped himself from saying 'Just another week', after seeing his food stockpile empty. He steeled himself and had rat 6 get him more food.
After a few hours, as Herhail re-instated his rats.
Finally the rat had attained what was needed, and Herhail felt a breath of fresh air.
[Evolve rat into;
....
Tier 1; Patient rat
A rat with patience for the future, increasing the future tier 2 evolution's free stat points to increase by 1 per level.
Tier 1; Gray rat
A rat with a higher bloodline, both attuned to physical and mental stats, gaining a +1 to both cattegories per level.
Tier 1; High white rat
A rat with an even higher bloodline, increasing by +2 for mag and +2 for intelligence per level.
Tier 1; High black rat
A rat with ane even higher bloodline, increasing all physical stats by 2 per level.
Tier 2; Greater rat
A rat that somehow turned into a tier 2 without distorting it's origin, less limited by some of the world's laws.]
To Herhail's surprise, there weren't continuations of the 6 'main attribute focused tier 2's'. And 'greater rat'? Herhail had never heard of it before, actually he had personally heard of none of the tier 2's from before, but there was a clear rule apparent in this world, which he didn't know.
That almost anyone knew, that was; Tier 2's and above were twisted origins of tier 1's, in simpler terms, they were distortions and such. No evolution tree was there for tier 1's, unlike tier 2's or above.
And most importantly; 'Not limited by some of the world's laws.', it probably meant something like; 'You don't have to keep all of your momentum from time to time' or 'you don't have to breath as much as you should'. But this put a precident to the future that may come, like maybe; 'You don't listen to the calls of the world' or 'You don't 'Fall' if you don't want to.'
Just think about that! The potential would be magical! To just say no to physics! Maybe even saying 'No' to death itself!
Herhail didn't realize this though, he had no clue was 'Rules of the world' meant, and didn't care enough. He picked what he always choose, this time 'patient rat', he got them to go kill some little creatures. But... There wasn't any increase in their experience! Also, their exp bar had changed with a timer, which he didn't see before.
His mind was filling with machinations, ending up with a white flag after a few minutes of walking in the metaphorical dark.
The timer just said; '9 days;23 hours;42 minutes.'
"What's that supposed to mean!?" Herhail felt a bit irritated, but he threw the rat's into the wild and let them make babies or something, he didn't know if they were male or female, the big thing he wanted was that they survived so that he could use them later.
He had ended up with 43630 exp in the end, that was enough for the land cards which costed 32000 exp, he was left with 11630 exp.
He quickly picked up the cheapest land, worth 1000 exp. It was called 'Plane of null', here's the details for this card.
[Plane of null, tier 1.
1 attributeless mana at a maximum of 1 attributeless mana, for any creature that is defined as 'alive' at a maximum of 1
The attributeless mana is distributed at 1 mana/30 minutes.
-To upgrade rate, please put in attributeless mana, 0/10.
-The maximum amount of mana that can be stored from this land is 1 mana, please generate and use 50 mana from this land on non-land-card based spending to upgrade, 0/50
-To gain new effects, please have monsters that used this land's mana to summon kill 100 beings, 0/100.]
"Finally..." Herhail said "I can summon a wolf!" Wolves costed 2 attributeless mana to summon, though he couldn't afford them right now.
As such he bought a new rat, remembering that a rat could become a wolf-cub for some reason.
"Go my child!" He told it.
The next day after continuously re-summoning it, it finally got it's wolf-cub resurgence.
Then there was also a timer this time! "Why does my happiness always get stopped by a timer?!"
At least it just said this time he would need to stifle his creativity, jk! He used the exp gained in the last day to just straight-up buy a card he took an interest in.
[Rusty axe, lvl 0
-conditions for lvl-up; be used to spill the blood of a tier 2.
Rust level; 10 (=-10 sharpness and durability)
-To decrease rust level; chop 10 logs into firewood, 0/10
Sharpness level; 11(-10)
-To increase sharpness level; be used by someone with the
Durability level; 1/11 (-10 active durability)
-To increase durability; Be tested against 2 other axes in a battle of durability.
Duration; 1 minute
To increase duration; be equiped 10 times, 0/10]
Though the card costed 1 attributeless mana to enter his hands for 1 minute, Herhail needed something to do. And chopping firewood was good enough for that.