The bunny was coming straight at him, but Alyx wasn’t worried. It unleashed two crescent slashes of silver, one at him and the other straight at Jasmine. Jasmine didn’t flinch and quickly sidestepped the attack. Her eyes were focused on Alyx, and a shield popped into existence right as the other silver blade was about to hit him. The blade struck, and the shield popped, but it was enough to change its trajectory. The problem was that the bunny was still heading toward Alyx, and it was pumping more mana into its speed which might cause her to be unable to follow it around.

“Jasmine, bind it for a second,” Alyx said through their link.

She wanted to question why but decided it was best to follow their strategist's orders and she quietly murmured, “Binding Light.”

Chains of light appeared around the bunny, and it took a second longer than normal for the chains to tighten, but the bunny came to a stop a few feet from Alyx, who was pointing his staff straight at it, a smile on his face. Then, the orb at the top of the staff began to glow as it crackled with electricity.

Back with Tesilim, the elf had just stabbed his two daggers into the pissed-off bunny. Tesilim was somewhat facing toward Jasmine and Alyx, and seeing the shield block the attack coming for his gnome teacher, he relaxed a bit. Then he was slammed from behind and sent tumbling forward over the bunny he had stabbed, his daggers being left behind in its body.

Confused and on his back, he looked and saw that another bunny had smacked him. Quickly looking around, he understood it was the other bunny that Rose had been fighting. He was getting teamed up by three bunnies, and six crescent shapes of light were coming for him. Unworried, he unleashed six waves of water to counter each light blade while teleporting forward, seeing that Rose was moving to flank the bunnies.

Lili met the bunny she had previously slammed into the tree and decided not to spend more mana on abilities, considering the fight was going fine. Instead, she began to slowly pummel it around.

Rose was coming behind the bunnies that were heading straight towards Tesilim, so she saw when Alyx’s staff discharged a bolt of lightning that completely fried the bunny in front of the gnome. Then, right afterward, she felt the wind blow through the forest again and visibly saw the bunnies slow even further. The fight was over. They just didn't know it.

Receiving another boost of speed from Jasmine, Rose arrived by the one with the daggers sticking out of it and, quickly took it apart with her glowing sword. Meanwhile, Tesilim was using his boots to teleport out of the way of more blades of light as the two other bunnies tried to slam into him. However, with Alyx's drain spell reducing their speed and Jasmine giving him and Rose speed boosts, they didn't take long to dispatch the bunnies. A shield bash here, some water slashes there, and a few teleportation’s later, all the bunnies were dead.

It appeared that the bunnies traveled together. Not in one large group; otherwise, the party would have had a different fight on their hands. So, it wasn’t long after their battle with the second group of bunnies ended that they were assaulted by another group, though much smaller.

The party dispatched the group rather easily, only to find yet another group upon them a mere minute later. Needless to say, that group was quickly killed, and their bunny kill count came to 22. Of course, just like clockwork, it wasn’t, but another minute later, that the last group came, consisting of eight bunnies. Things went differently with that group, however.

First, one of the bunnies had glowing silver eyes, unlike the rest of the bunnies they had seen. At first, the party thought it was just an empowered version with slightly different abilities. However, things got weird when the silver-eyed bunny stayed back as his fellows charged towards the party. Knowing that their mission was at an end, the party went full throttle, eliminating half of the bunnies before they even got close, which was when things changed. Instead of continuing the fight, the remaining bunnies retreated with the silver-eyed one in the lead.

“Are they retreating?” Tesilim asked as he saw them go, his body burning from the use of pure mana.

“It seems so,” Rose responded, her sword red with blood.

“That's not normal, right?” Tesilim questioned.

“No, no at all. It means that this whole bunny thing might get a lot harder.”

“Yeah, now we have to chase them, this is sucks.”

Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.

“I don’t think Alyx is referring to that,” Jasmine added helpfully.

Tesilim, hearing this, threw Alyx a questioning look.

“All right, Tesilim, here's a quick lesson as we follow the bunnies. Everyone stay alert,” Alyx said before the group began moving forward at a slight jug.

“Okay, what’s the lesson,” Tesilim asked, switching back to telepathy.

“So, I already told you about there being two different Realm creatures, one that is stronger but requires refilling their mana, while the other is weaker but can turn ambient mana into fey mana.”

“Sure. By the way, can the weaker monster feed a stronger one mana?”

“It is possible, but the universe seems to like to balance certain things between the Realms and our reality. So, though a monster can accomplish such a task, it can only perform that task. Making them extremely weak in everything else.”

“Gotcha, so we don’t have to worry about the bunnies heading back to some cave empowering their mom or something.”

“No, we don’t. Instead, we will probably have to deal with something much worse. You see, there are a few different types of Realm incursions. Sometimes, a Realm pokes our Ethereal Barrier a certain way, and a temporary portal of a certain rank opens up, allowing Realm creatures through. This is usually the best scenario because due to its randomness, its threat level is low since Monarchs can’t plan for it.”

“So, I am guessing we thought the bunnies came from such an incursion, but now it turns out they belong to a different type?”

“Exactly. There is a high chance that either a permanent portal to the fey is active and still weak so only D Rank and below creatures can use it. On the other hand, something from the fey made its way through, which can consume ambient mana and spread fey mana. It's much like the feeder monster you mentioned earlier. Of course, it means whatever it is, it is defenseless, but it also means that fey mana is constantly being pumped out.”

“So what? Wouldn’t it just dissolve like our magic residue does?”

“To some extent, yes, but Realm mana of any type is resilient, which lets it pool and slowly corrupt areas.”

“Ah, shit. So that's what we are dealing with.”

“Wait, you figured it out?” Lili threw out, telepathically shocked.

“Well, yeah. Remember, back on Earth, we had plenty of imagination. Usually, when something is able to corrupt areas, it also has some dumb ability to corrupt creatures. Meaning if we let it be, it's going to start turning bears into stronger fey bears, all the while making the environment great for the bear and bad for the adventurers.”

The silence that followed made Tesilim think something had happened to the telepathy ring.

“Uh, hello, guys, you there?”

“Yeah.” Came a united response.

“Okay. So what? Did I get it right?”

“Yeah, you did. Do you know how the corruption happens, by the way?” Alyx answered.

“Everyone stop,” Lili said suddenly, cutting off Tesilim from replying.

Not needing a reason to listen to the C Ranker with better senses, they did. They had stopped right before the forest's edge, where a clearing opened up. They had been traveling to a rather hilly area of the island that eventually broke off into seaside cliffs. In front of them, tucked nicely into the ground, was a cave. Usually, such a cave would be completely dark, but now the plants hanging on its walls glowed with faint silver and snow-white light. In fact, now that Tesilim was paying attention, the temperature of the relatively temperate forest had gone down a few degrees in the nearby area.

Of course, he didn’t need prompting, and his presence and will were fully extended. Oddly enough, he could feel everyone else except for Lili. It was an interesting experience. Alyx’s felt powerful and deep. It was odd, and Tesilim felt like the mana around him was rushing a little bit faster in the gnome's direction. Meanwhile, Rose felt powerful, undaunting, yet warm and helpful. Jasmine’s presence felt cold but brilliant and powerful, while her will was happy and cheerful. The odd thing was that unlike the other two, whose presences and will easily mix to be almost unnoticeable, Jasmine’s were like a puzzle piece that was slightly off. Sure, it completed the image, but you could tell there was something off about it.

Not wanting to intrude since they had just met not long ago, Tesilim focused on his surroundings and sighed. Fey mana was pouring from the cave, spreading outwards in the surrounding area. It was a thin layer, at least out in the open, but it was clearly noticeable, unlike the bunny's magical residue. Like the bunny's residue, however, the mana itself carried the very concepts that Tesilim had felt. The mana was silver-white and felt cold and bestial.

“Well, so much for an easy mission.” The party heard Tesilim say in their minds.

“Yeah, this is going to bring a whole new set of troubles,” Rose said.

“You guys think it's just the bunnies in there? Maybe they're still growing their settlement, and we just wiped out half of the population.”

“Doubt it. It's not like we can go in there anyway. The first thing that we need to do is inform the guild and the city.” Lili stated, shutting down Tesilim’s idea.

“Alight. Back to the city then?” Tesilim asked.

“Yup,” Lili answered, turning around and being joined by the rest.