017

I left the union that afternoon along with Rachael, and together we headed directly towards the southern gates.

I had to wait a little for her as she had to finish up her shift before she could accompany me to the location.

When we left, she had changed her get up completely. She was wearing a leather apron when she worked in the union, but now, she was wearing brown leather armour, her hair that were tied up in a bun were now tied to the back in a ponytail.

She was also carrying a short sword and a bow with her. Her bow reminded me of Gina, I wonder how she’s doing.

On the way there, we chatted and I got to know a little about the request.

Rachael may seem too indifferent to some and she may seem unapproachable at first, but she is quite the opposite.

Once you get her to talk, she doesn’t stop.

“You see, my family runs a restaurant near the west gate. Since that is on the totally opposite side of the east gate, we usually don’t get many new visitors, but we have quite a huge crowd of regulars. We also specialize in a very rare dish, the Snow Rabbit Stew.”

“Snow Rabbit Stew?”

The moment she said rabbit, I had an impulse to gag. Looks like I won’t be visiting her restaurant anytime soon. Seeing my expression she was a little surprised and asked.

“You’ve never had Snow Rabbit Stew?”

“No, I haven’t.”

Hearing my answer, she looked at me like she was looking at someone pitiful. So in order to comfort me she added.

“Don’t worry, after the request is over, come to our restaurant for dinner, I’ll treat you. You’ll also become a regular in our restaurant in sn-no time. Hehe.”

She cracked half a smile when she said that.

“Y-yeah, sure.”

I don’t know what was more painful, the fact that she was going to treat me to that horrible rabbit or that pun.

The stew might be more painful though. Compared to that, I’ll take a thousand puns any day.

We continued chatting when we finally reached the southern gate. It was the second time that I had come to a gate, but somehow it was even more guarded than the previous one.

And it wasn’t even me that was the only one surprised. Looking over at Rachael, her reaction was the same.

We reached the gate, and showed our IDs. Apparently, a normal ID that is issued by the kingdom isn’t as flexible as this. You can’t just go in and out of any gate using it. Only a volunteer could do that.

I took out my green card and Rachael took out her brown one. A Rank D volunteer. That wasn’t the only thing that caught my eye, she also had the number 19 plastered on the back of the card.

I was surprised she was that high level. She saw me looking at her card and she had a proud expression on her face.

“The gate patrol is on high alert, there is a chance of a swarm incoming in a few days so we’ll be closing before it gets dark. Come back before then.” said the guard as we were going to leave.

“Sure.” She answered.

High alert? That sounded quite dangerous. I also didn’t understand what a swarm meant but Rachael was kind enough to answer.

“When the beast population gets over a certain limit, they’ll swarm up to the cities and try to get in. Multiple hunting parties then team up and fight back the swarm, it is also a free-for-all so anyone can come and join if they think that they have the ability to take on the swarm. The union doesn’t forbid anyone from taking part, it is their own choice after all. But because of the dangers, not many regular people show up.”

So, that was the reason.

…

We had to walk quite a while to reach the location of the request.

Along the way she told me a lot about the snow rabbits. Looks like these aren’t the rabbits that I was eating before.

“Snow rabbits like to hide themselves in the snow. So, you’ll find them very hard to spot normally. You might walk past them and not even notice.”

We entered the forest after walking a few kilometres down the main road. There was a trail there indicating that this was a frequently used path. She also navigated the place like she had been here multiple times. She must’ve, considering it is her restaurant’s specialty.

Maybe I’m thinking about the wrong rabbit, but can you blame me? Those stinking rabbits have ruined the image of rabbits for me forever.

It took us a long time to reach the hunting area, it was very deep into the forest. After walking about an hour or so more we finally reached the plains.

The area wasn’t huge as I could see the outline of trees on the other side. It was also covered with snow.

“We’re here.”

Said Rachael as she took out her bow and went a few steps back.

“Get ready, I’ll get them out, and all you have to do is catch them.”

That’s it? Are they really that fast?

Rachael first closed her eyes. Her forearm which was fine until now glowed a little and a symbol starting glowing on the back of her palm. It resembled a bow and with each breath she took, the tattoo became more prominent.

‘Is this what Battle Aura is…?’

I was wondering what this was when suddenly her eyes opened and the normal dark brown eyes contained an eerie glow to them. She took out an arrow and nocked it in.

I saw her muttering something under her breath, when she was done, the arrow released.

I knew it was my turn now, so I immediately activated [Sprint]. Since I didn’t know how fast the things were, I also got in a running position.

The arrow landed in the snow. I was surprised as nothing happened when suddenly the snow around that area started moving.

I knew it was the rabbit, so with all the power of a level 5 skill, I jumped forward, kicking the dirt back as far as possible. Rachael was a little surprised.

The rabbit had sensed me running towards it, so without minding for its disguise, it jumped out of the snow to make a run for it. I finally got a good look at it.

“This isn’t exactly what I was expecting…”

It was a normal looking white rabbit. Too normal for someone who had seen way worse things by now. I mean, where were its muscles? Does it really belong to this world?

I was immediately given an answer as the rabbit right after coming out dashed out like a rocket had been installed on its ass.

“Shit.”

I was left behind. I could’ve used [Quick Dash] but the distance wasn’t that much. The area also wasn’t that big, a kilometre wide at each direction, so I wasn’t particularly looking forwards to using my [Quick Dash] in a place where I was bound to crash into multiple trees.

I’m certain all the money that I earn from this quest would be used for a stretcher and medicine. Who knows, I might even go in debt this time. So no, I wasn’t going to use [Quick Dash] to catch a rabbit.

…

I was right, since it didn’t have much room to run towards and for some reason it didn’t want to go to the woods up front, I was able to catch it easily. It did make me run a lot though.

It was making quick and precise turns every few steps, I had a hard time keeping up at the start, but since I had locked my [Awareness] at it, I wasn’t going to lose it in this snow.

With a few failed turns, I figured out how to make a somewhat passable quick turn.

Overloading the leg with Qi opposite to the direction of which I wanted to go and then kicking the ground as hard as possible was enough for my body to change direction, but it was also very taxing. Chasing around one of the rabbits had given quite a good amount of cardio. Hopefully she doesn’t need that many.

After being caught, it kept struggling around a lot but a little bit of Qi concentrated in my fingers did the trick. It wasn’t running anywhere.

I carried it back to her but when I looked back, I was surprised to see her holding a small cage in her hand.

‘Where did she take that out from?’

I was really confused so I had to ask.

“It’s from the utility crystal here.” Saying that, she pointed towards a leather belt wrapped around her waist. I, at first thought that it was just some fashion thing, so I didn’t pay any attention to it. She pointed to a black crystal and said.

“This is a storage crystal. The ones on the sides are also useful, this one is a light crystal, this one is fire, and this one can even produce water from the atmosphere but it isn’t that useful here, but from what I’ve heard of the Shining Sun Kingdom of the East, they are a huge sell, even more than the heat crystals here.”

I looked at her belt and recognized one crystal.

“Hey that white one is the light crystal, right? How do you use it?”

She was perplexed looking at me, but she seemed to have recalled that I can’t use magic and rather than replying, she hovered her hand over the crystal and it glowed, and the soon the glow became as bright as a full blown bulb, she then hovered her hand around it again and it died down again.

“You activate it using magic. The magic circuit inside the crystal is very well made, as long as magic power is directly supplied, it can toggle between being on and off.”

So that’s why the lamp doesn’t work. Goddammit, I’ll have to hide it under the bed again, don’t I?

“Let’s catch a few more and then we’ll leave.”

…

Rachael had a wide grin plastered around her face as she looked at the cages filled with Snow Rabbits.

“Hehehe! I can’t believe we caught this many!”

Looking at the two cages each filled with roughly 5 rabbits, all I can say is this.

“Yeah, haaah, I can’t believe, haah, it either, haaah.”

I replied as I was having a hard time breathing.

HP: 130/167

I can’t believe I overused [Sprint] enough to lose my HP by that much. My legs also hurt very badly. Can someone carry me back? I thought as I laid on my back heaving heavily.

After hearing my half dead reply, she finally looked at me, prying her eyes away from the two cages.

“You know, we can rest a little. Although it’s getting dark, we can still catch our breath.”

She said, scratching her cheeks.

My ass “we”. Look at me, I am having trouble breathing and she still looks like she can still hunt for hours. Maybe it’s the level difference. I don’t know. She used her skill just as much as I did, but she doesn’t look tired at all. Granted, she also didn’t run around like me.

Speaking of level, my level didn’t increase even by one as none of the rabbits were killed. They were just caught.

What I was more surprised about was my [Sprint]. I was sure that at least it would increase in level, but no. I don’t know why, but the skill seemed a little odd to me today, I could almost feel why it’s wasn’t increasing in level, but I couldn’t put my finger on it. It seemed I have hit a bottleneck.

She lightened up her belt and our surroundings immediately became visible.

It was only a few hours before it got totally dark, we were already behind schedule but Rachael had to keep asking for one more. I mean, I don’t mind, I was getting paid for each one separately.

“You know, you should come to hunt with me pretty often, we can make good money selling the snow rabbits.”

“You mean everyday of what happened today? No thanks, I would rather not.”

I don’t know why but my reply made her chuckle.

“Come on don’t be like that, exclusive hunters make pretty good money you know. You can be our restaurant’s hunter!”

She said that with a smile on her face. Her face which still had the air of being indifferent and the smile that didn’t seem like it belonged on it somehow made it more charming.

I would’ve even accepted if it was any other day, but the pain in my legs kept my mind straight.

When I saw her yesterday, she seemed pretty unapproachable, but after talking to her now, I can happily say that she is a fun person to be around.

I opened my mouth to say something.

!

I jumped back up and pulled her by the arm. Using [Qi Manipulation] to power the jump, we quickly moved out of the way.

Crash!

A loud sound was heard as we looked on with horror as a human sized boulder was thrown from the back.

It came crashing down on a tree bringing it down with it. Thankfully my [Awareness] picked up on it and we avoided it in time.

I looked back towards the source of the attacker.

There, I saw it.

Huge.

It was almost as tall as the tallest tree and with one of its arms holding down one of the branches, it had its focus locked on here.

The silhouette from the distance looked similar to a bear. But twice the size. I recalled where I had seen it before.

“The beast that I saw on the first day.”

I looked over at Rachael and she too had a scared look on her face.

I got up and was going to help Rachael up when I heard the loud thumps. I looked over in horror as the truck sized beast came running over here.

“Looks like it’s our turn to run.”