The child quite literally cut off the scarecrow’s arms and legs.

He swung the sword at the same spot a few times, and after he’d successfully made the scarecrow’s left arm fall off, he felt that the asymmetry was dissatisfying, so he cut the right arm of next, and then the legs for the heck off it.

The scarecrow was now much more interested in the kid’s actions, as the next logical step would be severing its head. Something which would prove quite problematic as it would be hard to function without the five senses.

A voice screamed out from behind. It was none other than the boy's father, who was about forty years old, grey hair showing more beneath his mouth than on top of his head. He had rough eyes, and waved around a stick as he was screaming.

“Damn boy! That scared the crows away,” he said and it was a complete lie. If anything the scarecrow was so scary that it attracted crows as a popular shitting spot. “Won’t do us any good without the arms will it?”

The kid's face went white in the manner any child who thought an innocent action was actually wrong would. He dropped his sword, and ran away into the forest as the old man continued screaming at him to stop and come back here for a good whacking.

“Jack!” The old screamed.

The scarecrow saw it’s limbs on the floor, all four of them, and it also saw the sword on the ground. Since it had no other actions it could take except continuing its mathematics it did so.

When it had reached the number 32768, a number which felt heavy to even hold in the mind, it received the window it had been waiting for, but also another one, which made it think it was progressing.

The skill, Mathematics, has levelled up

Math lvl 3/100

The perk, Memorization, has been learnt

Memorization lvl 1/40

It didn’t start over but instead continued where it had left off. It was faced with two challenges now, keeping the number in its head, whilst simultaneously calculating the next one.

Each second that passed made the task seem that much more difficult. Its mind felt much more dull, as if it was growing rusty. The numbers felt heavier, and the mind tapped out after about two minutes.

Once again the scarecrow passed out, and woke up thirty minutes later. As it had no eyelids, it didn’t know that it had fallen asleep, except for the fact that the sun had moved from where it stood, and that the old man was now right in front of it with a sewing nail and some sewing cotton.

The scarecrow stared at the man, who didn’t know about it, as he picked up a limb and began sewing them back onto the scarecrow. Once the man finished, he took a few steps back, and he realized that he’d sewn the legs where the arms were supposed to go, and the arms where the legs were supposed to go.

Panic flashed on his face; and then, when he realized fixing this mistake would require suitable effort on his part, he convinced himself that it was okay, and walked away.

“The birds won’t notice a difference,” he said.

But the scarecrow did. Having legs where the arms were supposed to be was going to be a serious hindrance. If it wanted to walk now, it would have to do so upside down, with its head touching the floor, and its arms would be pointing upwards which would make it difficult to touch anything.

If the old man would continue sewing the scarecrows' limbs into the wrong spot, it would prove quite problematic. With that thought, the scarecrow resolved to also slaughter him alongside the boy.

But for now, it continued its counting.

It managed to reach 65536, and afterwards it felt impossible to go any further. Each time it tried to figure out what came next, the number would fade out of its head, making it have to start over from the very beginning but with a tired mind.

To really understand what the scarecrow was doing to itself imagine being stuck in a hole. Your shoulders are being pressed together uncomfortably so, and breathing is becoming difficult, and in front of you is a wall with a venomous snake crawling across it, occasionally looking at you, and you resolve yourself to tap your fingers against the wall in a hope to slowly deteriorate it and make it break.

Such an act would drive any creature insane quite quickly. But not the scarecrow, as it had an immunity against insanity in the same way a computer might. So when it woke up, it began tapping once again.

It reached 65536 once again, and found itself having the same problem. Instead of trying to find some manner of shortcut to solve this problem, the scarecrow continued to attempt to brute force its way through it.

It failed.

On the thirty first attempt, when the sun was almost down and the winds carried a tinge of coldness in them, it managed to make the windows appear again, but not at all with the text it expected.

The perk, Mental Strength, has been learnt

Mental Strength lvl 1/200

This revelation did not change its strategy in any way whatsoever. Instead, it passed out, and upon waking up, it realized that it could move.

The sun was gone, and the moon was on the horizon, slowly rising, and giving the area a tinge of white. The scarecrow tried taking a step forward, but realized that it was stuck to a stick that held it up, this was something it could have figured out earlier when its legs were chopped off and it did not fall.

If you think that the scarecrow might be a bit lacking intelligence wise you would not be wrong. Having a mind that is completely spiritual has its benefits, but it also comes with the downside of being less functional than an ordinary brain.

It began struggling against the rope tying it to the stick. And it found that it was completely stuck.

Perhaps Jack and his father would live to another day.