After five minutes of running at full speed, Angel had shrunk to about the height he had been at seven or eight years old. But shrinking here did not mean that his "age had also become younger." His build still resembled that of an adult, and from a distance, he looked less like a child than a halfling—or rather, a slender dwarf.
As Angel's body shrank, the shrill cries around him grew even more frenzied than before, rising and falling like a funeral dirge before a burial.
The ravens that had previously only been heard but never seen also flew out. They seemed to understand that Angel could no longer pose a threat to them.
They stood quietly upon the branches, their muddy yellow eyes reflecting Angel's figure. They watched him as though they were watching a dead man.
They were merely waiting for Angel to shrink further, until he was too small to resist the flock of ravens. That would be the day he died.
Angel had long known the malice of these ravens. Along the way, he had countless times wanted to pick up stones from the ground and hurl them at the birds, but he restrained himself every time. Missing would only alert the enemy; hitting one would not necessarily kill it in a single blow, and would merely make him seem impotently enraged.
Besides, he was already extremely close to the target location. He did not want complications to arise at this moment.
So, faced with the ravens' overflowing malice, he simply continued onward in silence, pretending he had not seen them.
If the target location brought only disappointment... Angel would consider dealing with these ravens. At the very least, before he completely became thumb-sized, he had to find a way to get rid of them