“Good night Chocolate”

It had been seven days since he had become a pet, and his gains were about what he had expected. His Mage Hand was now (LV.8), Mana Magic had leveled, and he was able to pick up a bit of the local language that, for now, he was going to refer to as ‘human’.

Other than the language, he had also learned about the family he was staying with. The only occupants of the house are the father and daughter pair. While he doesn’t know the father’s name, the daughter’s name is Sophia and that she was learning magic, doing about average for her age. On the other hand, the father was an ex-adventurer, more specifically he is an ex C ranked adventurer, As he was an A+ ranked adventurer once, he knew that that was a formidable achievement. He also knows that the father would patrol the forest at night.

But while his stay with this family of two was nice, being able to sleep indoors was great, he was now fully healed so it’s now time to go. But seriously, can he take a moment to comment on how strange this is? In the span of a month, he was going to have to sneak away from two families? What were the chances!?

So casting Mage Hand, he opened the door as lightly as he could. Closing it behind him, he walked down the path towards the nearby village. As for why he didn’t head back into the forest, he now knew was simply called the “greater forest”? Because it isn’t suited for someone of his level. Other than the Tunnel Snakes, ambush predators that could go days without food, he had met only two monsters he could kill. Instead, it was better to make his way further into the lands of man, where the stronger monsters would be culled.

The village was quiet at night with the houses were dark, the occupants waking and sleeping with the sun. As no one was around to stop him he quickly made his way through the village, heading down the only road that left it. He said road but it was more a dirt path, just large enough for a carriage, the dirt had been pounded down by the occasional merchant who would come to the village.

One of the best things he had found about being an animal was that he didn’t have anything to do, or anywhere to be. He could just leisurely walk down this road, eating plants off of the side of the road when he got hungry, Not that he was slacking off. During the night he decided to train up the magic he had mostly ignored, Fire magic. Fire magic was going to be his biggest damage source when it came to magic, not to mention with his title ‘Spell Prodigy(Scorching Ray)’, Fire magic has a wide variety of attack magic for him to use. But he wasn’t training his ‘FireBolt’ spell, no that was too… violent, instead what he was training was the Cantrip ‘Control Fire’.

I feel it’s self-explanatory, but just in case… it lets you control fire not a lot of fire, nor is it even possible to make it move fast. All in all, FireBolt is better in almost every way for a fight, but he was grinding. From an outsider’s perspective though it must have been odd. A dark brown bunny with a spiraling horn atop his head, and floating just above said horn, a flickering flame was dancing. Causing one’s mind to speculate, Is that really a flame?

Or is it the legendary “Will O’ Wisp”? Of course, that would be in his original world. In this one, Will O’ Wisps are a LV.0 undead. Hanging around graveyards, they seem to form from the large amounts of Death Mana that gather where the dead rest, imbuing the remnants of souls clinging to corpses even after the majority of the soul has moved on, giving them temporary form. They quickly burn out, usually by the time night ends. It’s said that due to the memories contained in the soul fragments, that if you lean in close you can hear the final thoughts of the dead.

But can he control two flames!? Trying really hard, the flame split into two smaller ones, and he was able to keep it up for about half a minute. The levels of his Fire Magic, Mana Manipulation, and Control Flame being too low for him to keep it up any more than that. Thinking about Will O’ Wisps made him feel, not sad but… melancholy?

There was something somber and mesmerizing about watching the fire dance in the air. Such an impossible sight for his old world, now nearly effortless for this one. But Magic wasn’t perfect either. With the exception of something on the level of teleportation magic, traveling took long periods of time. And traveling on foot wasn’t the safest thing either, while in larger groups you would probably be fine, most monsters knowing that it would be hard to kill a large group of humans. If you were traveling alone, then all sorts of nasties might try their hand at taking you on-

*rustle*

-and if it weren’t for his Enhanced Hearing, he might have been caught unaware of such a threat. The thing about fire was, at night, it would make you a literal light in the dark. Daron’s experience quickly kicked in, casting Bubble just in time for a crude stone spear to slam into it, breaking in half as it rebounded.

“EH?”

He heard an exclamation of surprise before five small green creatures emerged from the foliage, goblins. Goblins were similar to Horned Rabbits if you think about it, they were extremely adaptable and could be found pretty much anywhere.

While Goblins are dumb, it wouldn’t be fair to call them oblivious. Seeing a small Horned Rabbit block a spear with magic, they were now much more cautious. Or rather the goblin equivalent, which was charging all at once. Daron could only sigh, this was why he wished his Fire magic was a higher level, it had plenty of AoE spells. Burning Hands would have been the perfect spell for this situation. Not that he couldn’t deal with the situation without it.

‘Pond of Shadows!’

Casting the more advanced version of Puddle of Shadows, an area of darkness consumed the ground below three of the goblins, leaving only two to charge at him. Now that was manageable, or rather it was too simple, all he did was throw a few FireBolts and down they go! The closest thing to ‘danger’ was when they threw their weapons, all of which missed or bounced off of the Shield spell he had casted.

Soon they were all dead. Looking at the corpses scattered on the road he felt the least he could do was shove them off the road, so he dragged them using Mage Hand. Now looking at his handiwork he decided to look over his notifications, and bring up the window for goblins while he was at it.

You have gained the spell ‘Pond of Shadows’

Your spell 'FireBolt’ has leveled up to level 3

Your spell 'FireBolt’ has leveled up to level 4

Your ‘Fire’ School of Magic has leveled up to level 3

Your spell ‘Scorching Ray’ has been unsealed

Monster

Race: Goblin

Grade: E+

LV. 6-10

One of the weakest species of the ‘green skin’ family, goblins survive through their high adaptability. They make up for their weak bodies, by forming tribes and using simple tools and traps. These are the most standard variant of goblin known as forest goblins.

Strongest Stat: Agi

Lowest Stat: Vit

Strengths: Use of tools and simple traps and fighting in groups

Weakness: weak individual strength

Skills: Weapon mastery (LV.3) Stealth (LV.5) Crude Tool Creation (LV.4)

Great! His Fire magic now being at (LV.3) meant he could now cast Scorching Ray once more. Just having this one spell would increase his combat capability by a large margin, but now he could also cast other Fire spells, such as the previously mentioned Burning Hands, a cone type AoE!

Now back to the goblins. Where there are goblins, there are goblin villages and a village would probably be the best place for him to grind right now, so he started to look for tracks.

____________________

Sophia started her morning as she had for the past week. Waking up she went to the living room to get Chocolate some breakfast.

“Good morning... Chocolate?”

When she got to the living room, instead of a cute brown rabbit, there was nothing. She looked around the living room, thinking that he was hiding somewhere. He rarely moved before, but that might have been because he was injured. Who knows, maybe he’s actually a rambunctious bunny?

She couldn’t find him, she even looked in the other rooms, calling his name out. The only room she hadn’t looked through was her father’s because she didn’t want to wake him for no reason but Chocolate was a reason!

Opening the door…

*ZZZZZZZ*

Her father was spread out, arms splayed across the bed, the blanket being hooked on his foot, the rest laying on the floor, but no Chocolate.

“Dad?”

“Huh? What is it?”

Bolting upright, the man looked around with half-closed eyes, using his palms to rub the sleep out of them.

“C-Chocolate is missing”

“I’ll look for him”

Her usually silly father was serious hearing the slight shaking in her voice. He quickly got up and left the room. When he returned to Sophia, he had a frown, and nothing else.

“He’s not in the house, I’ll look outside”

Saying only that he left the house, but the same as before returned empty-handed. It was strange, her father wasn’t the best tracker but if he couldn’t find him that meant this wasn’t a case of a wandering rabbit, had he been stolen?

They searched for a few hours, asking around town, looking for tracks near the forest, but nothing, it was if he had just disappeared. The only news was that some goblins had been found dead on the road, most likely killed by Fire magic. But that didn’t have anything to do with a missing bunny. In the end, her father had to work and left leaving a downtrodden Sophia alone, something she wasn’t used to anymore.

Chocolate might not have been in her life for long, nor had he been very receptive to her cuddling, but with her father working most of the time and with few kids in the village around her age, a void had been born and Chocolate had filled that space in her heart, a vital one. Clasping her hands together in front of her chest, Sophia declared.

“If you're alive, I will find you”