Chapter 70

I woke up in the morning and headed out to the forest, I needed a creature to experiment with. It only took me about five minutes before I came across a den of horned rabbits, a rather weak beast. I flushed them out of the den by instilling an immense sense of fear in them. As they came running out I captured them using a net, most of them got away, but that’s fine, the twenty I successfully captured will do.

I put the rabbits to sleep and put them in a bag, unfortunately most are so weak that they would die within five minutes in my inventory so I have to carry them in another way. The bag I’m carrying attracts a few eyes on my way back, but no one says anything.

I move to the privacy of the room I was provided and pull a rabbit out of the bag. I keep it asleep while I try to feel the core of his soul, it doesn’t take too long to find as I know what I am looking for. When I start to move it around, which surprisingly causes the rabbit to stir. I pause and put the rabbit to sleep again. This time I try to remove the core from the rest of the soul, this time the rabbit immediately wakes up and starts to struggle, violently, to the point of self harm. I have to break it’s neck before I can finish.

It takes me three full minutes in order to successfully remove the core from the soul, with the rabbit fighting me every step of the way, which is surprising, I’m not used to creatures this weak being able to struggle against me. When the core leaves the soul the rabbit stops resisting, and finishes dying. At that point I can no longer sense the core, like it has completely disappeared. In all likelihood it has already entered the cycle of reincarnation, leaving the rest of the soul behind.

I try to sense the rest of the soul, and to my joy I find it, crystallized into a soul stone. The soul stone is tiny, smaller than the smallest soul stone that I had purchased from the treasury, but that is not important, what is important is that I now know how to make soul stones without relying on random chance.

I decide to experiment with the rest of the rabbits before they die, which is only around 3 hours. The majority of the experiments are a failure, but one produces some interesting results. I took two of the rabbits and tried to force their souls together, it worked, at first. They reacted violently too each other. Both of them woke up and started attacking each other, I did nothing to stop them, while they clash their souls are also attacking each other. I feel no anger coming from either of them; I feel fear, and desperation. Eventually one dies, and its souls core is expelled from the soul, leave only the victors.

The rabbit looks at me with a level of intelligence that one wouldn’t expect of such a weak beast. Too my surprise I can feel it touch my soul, and then pull away. Smiling, I pull out one of the last five rabbits and wake it up before placing it in front of the other rabbit.

The rabbit from before glances at me for a moment before looking at the rabbit I just put down. After a moment I can feel its soul attack the rabbit. This time the fight doesn’t even last a minute, the weaker rabbit dies and has its souls absorbed. I get an expectant look from the rabbit, and I get a sense of hunger from him. I put down the last four rabbits and wake them up. The fighting starts almost immediately, and the stronger rabbit struggles against the other four, until it impales one of the four with it’s horn, after that the other three die very quickly.

The last remaining rabbit lays down and goes to sleep, It slowly begins to change, it grows larger and it’s fur slowly gets darker. I watch it for a couple minutes before pulling out a soul stone, I try to absorb it and succeed after a couple minutes. The experience is painful, I can feel my soul being expanded slightly.

I smile as I pull out another soul stone and absorb it. I continually absorb soul stones for several hours, stopping briefly to send a maid away when she calls me too lunch, stating that I was busy and did not want to be disturbed. I stopped absorbing soul stones after six hours because the rabbit had woken up, by this time I had absorbed roughly twenty percent of my soul stones. The rabbit stood up and looked at me with a cool intelligence, as if he was appraising me.

When his soul reaches out to touch mine he is shocked, my soul has grown stronger since he went to sleep. As he does not understand language he speaks to me telepathically using a stream of ideas. He wants me to help him become stronger, in exchange for his service. I agree and have him follow me.

On our way out Mathew stops to talk with me for a moment and I have to tell the rabbit not too attack anyone until I say so.

“I heard what sounded like a rabbit fight coming from your room, a sport I personally enjoyed playing with my brother when we were younger.” Mathew

“I was testing out a couple theories of mine, and this was the result.” Jack

I gesture to the rabbit

“I’ve never seen a rabbit quite like it, maybe you’ll enter it into the competition this afternoon?” Mathew

“What competition?” jack

“you don’t know? I thought for sure that Cath would have told you.” Mathew

“I had asked not to be disturbed today.” Jack

“ah, that explains it, anyway people are capturing low ranking creatures from the dungeons and the forests around here and having them fight, it has become a particularly popular event around here recently. Anyway, the entry fee is three hundred jaers and the first place prize is eighty percent of the total entries ten percent for second, with the last ten percent going towards the treasury.” Mathew

I ask the rabbit if he wants to participate, after a moment of explanation he agrees. I take out three hundred jaers and hand them over.

“Sign me up.” Jack

“I will see too it” Mathew

After we say our goodbyes I take the rabbit back out to the forest, to the same burrow where I got him from, after a brief explanation I let him loose, he enters the burrow and proceeds to absorb the soul’s of every rabbit he can. In less than an hour he has killed almost all of the rabbits in the burrow, a few managed to escape, but not many.

I praise the rabbit and we go out to find other creatures for him to hunt, in the end he hunts a couple deer, a slime, a small party of goblins, a boar, a monkey, and even a couple wolves. He showed some basic skill in stalking and ambush hunting, able to use his soul to mask his own presence, something I didn’t even consider.

On our way back I tame him and ask if he has a name, he thinks for a moment before referring to himself as a hunter, so I’m just going to call him hunter. It turns out he is a species known as horned soul eater rabbit.

All in all we spent three hours hunting before returning, we have roughly an hour before the fight tonight and tomorrow is a busy day, so I decide to get some rest.

End chapter 70