The other three had started hopping closer to me, one of them stopping and pointing its horn in my direction. The back one that I’d grazed, started moving to the other two that were still moving. Ah, a pattern and a bit of tactics. From bunnies. I might've said this before, and I’ll probably say it again… But this is what my life is now. Running from murderous bunnies.
A lot of what happened over the next few minutes was a bit of a blur. The rabbits took turns shooting at me as they moved. One furthest away would shoot, the other three would get closer. I did my best to copy what they were doing by casting my own spell while trying to keep distance from the ones moving. It might have been a little comical under other circumstances, a grown man running from rabbits.
There’d been a couple hits on both sides. I’d had to skip casting my moonray more than once to heal myself. It was during one of those ‘heal me’ times, that I realized I’d made a tactical error. The entrance to my little cave was now behind the bunnies.
That in of itself, was a situational mistake. The error was that I stopped moving and stopped casting when I had noticed the positioning we’d ended up in. I guess you could say I learned a rule of combat: Never take your eyes off of your enemies. Oh, and don’t underestimate your opponents due to their size.
These were rabbits, yes. Small, cuddly, furry and cute things that made you want to just grab one up and bury your face in their soft fur and squee. But, they were horned rabbits. Yeah, I think you see where this is going.
Now, I don’t know if horned rabbits are a dungeon thing or if they exist in the wild of whatever place I was going to be in once I left the dungeon. That’s why you have to understand the level of skill that was demonstrated by these rabbits and maybe a little why I felt that everything was happening at lightning speeds.
One of the rabbits had gotten close enough it could jump at me. By close enough, I’d say it was at least three meters away. Maybe three and half. That by itself, not outside of belief. Rabbits can jump up to that kind of distance. No it was that after looking back at it, that distance didn’t seem like it was a challenge for the rabbit.
It didn’t jump at me with the positioning that it was going to hit with its feet. It jumped head down, horn ready to jab into me. Not going to lie, some of my lack of reaction at this point was the disbelief that this was happening. A rabbit was jump-charging me and using its horn like a lance.
I took a hit between my hip and stomach. Two things happened next. One, it hurt and I yelled. Two, a flash of bluish energy radiated from where the horn had punctured me. The Minor Warding I’d cast earlier was working. In that kind of moment where danger seems to slow things down, my thoughts that the spell hadn’t been working since I was taking damage from the light beams were dispelled… And I remembered that the spell had said physical damage.
The third thing that happened was a combination of events. The rabbit's legs pushed itself off me and it landed close. I felt a bit of adrenaline fueled anger spike, a quote from a movie entered my head and roared out of my mouth. “Ninja kick the damned rabbit!”
Which, I did. Kick it, at least. No idea how to do any kind of ninja kicking. I punted the rabbit and it went flying back to the one that was shooting a beam at me. Didn’t have a chance to dodge, wasn’t that good at fighting yet for the brain and body to keep in sync like that. I started to lunge to the side, and took a hit to my shoulder.
I landed on the ground and slid a bit. I think my primal instincts were starting to kick in at this point. Or you know, fear of dying an embarrassing death to bunnies.
I cast my Moonray at the closest rabbit, knocking it back a bit as it dropped and didn’t move. My eyes found the other two, one moving and the other starting to cast. I scrambled to stand and jump out of the way again. Numbers flashed in front of my eyes, distracting me from doing anything but trying to run.
{Health: 6/16
Action: 2/4
Mana: 9/17}
Not good. I’d learned that casting spells couldn’t be done while trying to move. At least, I couldn’t cast my healing spell while trying to move around. My Moonray didn’t seem to have that restriction. I needed some health back, I needed to stop moving to cast the spell, I needed to keep moving to not get hit again.
You know when you’re doing some mindless, repetitive activities and you have those sometimes strange or deep idle thoughts? Mine were questioning how people enjoyed doing this. Maybe it’d be different if I wasn’t alone, but right now? I so wanted to just sit down and nope out. Idle thoughts aside, I figured I had to do something extreme. Which is just the different side of the coin of stupid.
I changed the trajectory of my running, pretty much charging the closest rabbit to me. I’d kicked one, and lost track of it, and Moonray had dropped another. More experienced fighters probably would’ve kicked the rabbit I’d targeted, or cast another Moonray. I launched myself in a poor example of an ‘off the ropes’ maneuver. Belly flop for the win. Poor thing was smooshed.
Which left one. One, that hit me with its version of my Moonray across my back, dropping my health beyond dangerously low. I scraped and scrambled to stand, starting to feel all of the pain and damage I’d taken. I was exhausted. I stumbled, which was a lucky break. A light beam went over my head.
Stolen novel; please report.
More scrambling to stand, stumbling forward in as fast of a shuffle as I could manage. I forced myself to not look behind me. My eyes darted around, looking for anywhere I could hide. I just needed a moment, a bit of time to get a healing spell or two cast.
The trees the rabbits had come from. It wasn’t all that fast, there was a lot of stumbling and falling down, but I was able to get behind one of them. I didn’t know where the rabbit was, and I knew I shouldn’t be wasting time. I couldn’t… I pressed back against the tree to keep myself standing, gasping for breath and trying to get my mind calmed enough to get the spell off.
Thinking about the numbers that represented my ‘life’, I realized I probably didn’t have enough time to cast more than one healing spell.
{Minor Healing - Regenerate a minor amount of damage to one target. Additional mana increases healing by a minor amount per point spent.
- Mana Cost - 1 (+1 mana/per 1 bonus healing)
- Casting Time - Instant}
When I’d first read the spell, I couldn’t understand why you would want to push more mana into it to get more healing when you could just cast the spell again. It was instant cast, right? But there was a delay in recasting it, which wasn’t shown. Or maybe it was one of those ‘understood’ things? Either way, casting the spell a second time took more than a few seconds.
I had nine mana. I needed to keep a point or two available for after the fight, if I survived it at least. That said, I cast Minor Healing on myself, pushing extra mana into it. I felt that pressure behind my eyes, then a cool and soothing energy swept through my body. My health rose by ten points, putting me up at twelve, while my mana dropped from nine to two. I had enough to be able to heal myself after this was all over. I was being optimistic.
A rustle of leaves beside me announced the arrival of the last rabbit. I dropped and rolled to the side, lifting my hand to cast Moonray. Which, apparently happened at the same time as the rabbit used its version of the spell.
I had curled a little when I did my move, so I took a light beam to the knee. The rabbit took my Moonray to the body. As quick as I could, I cast again, screaming in both pain and adrenaline fueled anger. The rabbit had tried to jump out of the way, but my spell caught it in the hindquarters. It dropped to the ground and didn’t move.
I lay there, eyes wide and breathing hard. I shifted to sit up, wondering if there would be more coming at me. I wasn’t too sure of my count.
{You have killed 5 Horned Rabbits and gained experience (40 exp)!
Would you like to loot the corpses?}
A sobbing gasp of relief escaped me. I’d won, survived. I rolled to my hands and knees, and looked around. The trees were spaced oddly, more like the area was a cultivated park than a natural grove. Using the tree that I’d hid behind to help myself stand, I took a few moments to look over some pertinent points of my status sheet. I was definitely not just standing there trying to get a grip on my sanity or ignore the pain that I was in. Nope, not at all.
{Class: Celestial Sage (Level 1)
Experience: 45/100
Health: 8/16
Action: 1/4
Mana: 2/17}
The line for Experience was new. It’d be helpful to know where I stood for leveling. It’d be helpful to be able to know what level things were I ended up fighting, but I wasn’t going to hold out on that. Maybe I’d be able to discover something. Eventually.
With half my health and almost empty on both action and mana, I needed to get back to my cave before anything else appeared. Pushing away from the tree I had let hold me up, I shuffled back towards the cave. Once I was about half the distance, I pulled the notification back up and selected yes.
{4 Horned Rabbit Skins, 3 Horned Rabbit Horns and 5 Monster Core (E) have been looted. Consuming looted items to create: Horned Rabbit Hide Travel Satchel!}
Eh? I reread that as a soft thump sounded beside me. The System had ‘consumed’ all the loot to create an item? That… Well. That was kind of cool, actually. I looked over to the bag that had dropped out of nowhere. It was a white bag, two small covered pouches sat on the front, with a strip from the cover for the satchel strapped between them and an adjustable strap to sling it over a shoulder. The buckles and studs on the bag looked like they had been carved from the horns of the rabbits.
The bag itself reminded me of one of those bags from a movie I had a few vague recollections of. Something about a college professor named after his dog that went around raiding tombs and old ruins for treasure.
{Horned Rabbit Hide Travel Satchel: This item has an internal storage of one cubic meter. The pouches on the front will safely hold two potion bottles each. Living organisms may not be placed within this storage item. Organic items will decay at a decreased rate.}
A cubic meter… I blinked a bit, picking the bag up and sliding the strap over my head. I continued my shuffling to my cave as I thought about the measurements being used by the system. Was it using them because that was what was used wherever I was, or was it using something I was familiar with?
Well, I thought, I’m not exactly an expert with the metric system. Can’t rule that out, but imperial would have been better.
My knowledge of metric was vague. Though perfectly honest, I felt like my comprehension when it came to distance in general, was flimsy. One of those things you knew the numbers, but making the numbers match an idea or reality didn’t always line up.
I was shaking my head as I got to the entrance of my cave. The Horned Rabbit Skin and Monster Core (E) that I’d gotten from the first Rabbit were there laying on the ground. I stared at them a bit. I’d completely forgotten about these.
Picking them up, I opened the satchel to put them inside and hesitated a moment. That was a really dark and deep looking hole at the top of this bag. I dropped the skin and then the core into the bag, watching as they disappeared.
I stood there a few more moments, just staring at the bag. Giving a shrug and shaking my head, I made my way into the cave and through the curving hall. I’d figure out what would happen to my hand later. I was starting to feel the soreness of muscles and bruising of skin. I needed to sleep this off.
If one could look at Garenas from a great distance in the sky, one might take note of two separate but equally important travelers. Both were but a day away from the dungeon and the village. One traveled to, the other traveled from.
South of the dungeon village a young woman rode an aging steed, leading another along as she made the best time she could to the city of Acantid, where Baron Cedris Berav ruled over a third of the island. The wide eyes of fear had been replaced with those of determination as she made her way to report a possible danger to the Barony. Kendra Trapsmith, newly minted member of the Adventurer's Guild, simply prayed that the people she called friends and family would still be alive when she returned.
A wagon train of a dozen men and women traveled from the east of the village. The travelers wore raiments of the Goddess of the Sun, Anderis. One in particular would be of interest to any observers or note. She was the only one surrounded by an air of resignation. She was also the one that had been called to service by her goddess.
Both would reach their destinations within a day or so.