We didn’t advance anymore towards the civilised realms. I reckoned my gut instinct to move in this direction had been right after all. Now we once again set out in the direction we believed the mountain dwelling of the Wahaki to be. I alerted the wives whenever a Sense Screen lay in our path and we would make our way around it and hence avoid detection from the sorcerer.

I imagined getting to the sorcerer and rescuing Rozy. The foul sorcerer wouldn’t have a clue how we happened to get to him undetected. That thought got the adrenaline rushing inside of me. I would be happy killing the surprised sorcerer.

After a while the three of us began to feel hungry. As if the Creator had heard our pangs of hunger, we saw a rabbit eating leaves nearby. Dani was quick to lodge an arrow into her bow. But as she pulled her bowstring, taking aim, an overpowering emotion of sympathy for the rabbit took over me. I felt almost like Dani was about to kill another human, and that too an innocent one who had not made the smallest attempt to hurt us in anyway.

A second before Dani released her arrow that I suddenly found myself giving her a push. The result was that the arrow flew off in a completely different direction to the rabbit.

“Why did you do that for?” Dani barked at me. Her voice alarmed the rabbit and the little creature dashed away. Normally Dani was better able to maintain her cool than Lia, however she got pissed off if anyone disturbed her when she was doing her thing with her bow.

“What will we eat now?” Lia asked, not quite getting my action either.

“Please, can we not stick to fruits and other plant food?” I said to them, looking at Dani’s eyes. “How… how can you think of eating a rabbit when your husband’s heart is a rabbit’s?”

A look of understanding came over Dani’s eyes and she made a small nod, though she still seemed unhappy that she had missed an aim that she had taken. However, just then a great cry came from the direction in which Dani’s arrow had flown away.

“What was that?” I said. That cry could have only belonged to some big animal, and it seemed like a cry of pain. Was there any possibility that Dani’s arrow had somehow made its way without hitting any tree or other plant and somehow hit the big animal?

“I think we would like to get away from this spot,” Lia said, alarm in her voice. I too pulled out my sword, even as a rumble took over the very ground as the animal that had let out a cry moved in our direction.

“Yeah, let’s get away from here,” I said, grabbing both Dani and Lia’s arms. We began to run, even as the sound of the animal’s approach got louder and louder. The only thing that I was thankful for was that there were fewer Sense Screens in this particular part of the forest.

“Look!” Dani let out a cry, pointing with a flailing arm. The animal was now visible. It was a great beast. A unicorn. One that wasn’t pretty by any standards. It had wild red eyes and there were feathers all about its body. Its pointy horn was at least a couple of metres long. Dani’s arrow was sticking from the side of its body.

“Run fast!” I yelled. But little human legs were no match against those of a unicorn. It leapt into the air, having seen us, crossed us overhead and then landed just in front of us. My rabbit heart beat fast, pumping blood and fear. I kept holding tight to Dani and Lia’s arms. Now the animal charged at us and even as we ran we knew that we were doomed. That I was holding onto Dani and Lia was only slowing us down further, so I let go of them, yelling at them to run in different directions to confuse the unicorn.

The unicorn was just about to hit me with its pointy horn, when I leapt away such that the horn of the unicorn instead pierced into a thick tree as though the tree was made of butter. The unicorn took a moment to pull its horn out of the tree trunk and I used this to my advantage and ran to the arrow that was sticking to its body and pulled it out. The unicorn cried out in pain, even as more blood oozed out of its wound.

After freeing its horn from the tree, the monster turned at me.

“Get away from it!” I heard Dani cry from a distance. The unicorn did not immediately charge me this time and instead seemed to take note of the situation, glancing at Dani in the distance who was taking aim.

“That arrow was a mistake,” I said to the unicorn, and for the briefest of moments the monster seemed to calm down. I was wrong. The animal snorted aggressively. This time it didn’t attack with its horn. Rather it threw kicks towards me. Its hooves were massive and even a single hit at the wrong spot could take the life away from me. I focused on avoiding the monster’s hooves and scrambled backwards as much as I could, only to find myself blocked by vegetation.

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Just then an arrow hit the stomach of the unicorn. For a split second pain took over the monster and it stopped throwing the kicks. I took the chance and hit the animal’s neck with my sword. The unicorn stumbled backwards and then I did something totally irrational. I leapt and grabbed its massive horn, dropping my sword in the process.

It wasn’t a good idea at all.

The unicorn began to throw its head this way and that, in an attempt to get rid of me, all the while trying to bite me with its teeth. Thankfully, I had been successful in putting my feet just above its nose, so the beast couldn’t bite me.

Dani kept shooting her arrows, and very soon she had hit the unicorn’s side with at least a dozen arrows. I was tiring of grabbing on the horn of the unicorn and knew that very soon I would fall off it. The monster meanwhile was bleeding profusely and it was evident that it too was tiring. Dani approached the beast, embedding an arrow into the beast every couple of seconds.

The beast staggered away from her, taking me with it. I did not let go of its horn because I feared I would come underneath its hooves and get crushed by them. Very unsteadily the beast moved towards a place where there was one of the Sense Screens. If the beast happened to pass through it, taking me with itself, then the sorcerer would once again be alerted about our location.

But the beast slowed down as it approached the Sense Screen, my temples throbbing all the while. A few metres before reaching the Sense Screen, the beast stopped completely and then it took a last step forward and fell to the ground. I rolled away from it because of the impact and came to a halt with my face mere inches from the Sense Screen. I let go of a breath I hadn’t realised I had been holding as I came to know that I wasn’t going to touch the sense screen.

I closed my eyes for a moment and kept breathing for a while. My body had gotten considerably hot and I was sweating a lot. It was funny that I had totally not realised that I was sweating when I had been holding onto the horn of the unicorn. I tried to rationalise why I had leapt and caught onto the horn in the first place. Was it fear? Was it idiocy? I couldn’t come up with any proper explanation.

Just then I received a notification as a sense of well-being took over me.

Congratulations!

You level up!

I opened my eyes and saw the dead unicorn lying some distance away, with Dani and Lia standing near it, examining the monster. The side of the unicorn’s body covered by Dani’s arrows had now turned crimson. Dani had a triumphant look in her eyes, pursing her lips. Heck, she had been the one completely responsible for bringing down the unicorn. I had received the new level with little effort of my own.

“Did you level up?” I said to Dani. She nodded.

“You?” she asked.

“I did as well.”

Lia shrugged.

“It’s strange,” she said as though she had come upon some morbid realisation, “trying to save a little rabbit we ended up killing a monster unicorn.”

“It was necessary,” Dani said, who didn’t at all looked guilty for killing the beast, “otherwise it would have killed us. We weren’t hunting it for sport.”

The unicorn had died a painful death and I almost felt sorry for it. It had not been very wise on the monster’s part to come charging at us though. Dani’s first arrow that had accidentally hit it had barely pierced into its skin and the wound would have healed.

Just then a hovering message appeared above the unicorn. It could be seen by all three of us.

This monster is a ‘Reward’ monster. As such you have the ability to make the choice whether you would like the monster’s corpse to be degraded away by natural factors or to receive a reward for having killed it.

Would you like to convert the monster into a reward?

I turned at Dani and Lia.

“You said you were hungry,” I said to them, “it would make a lot of food.”

Of course skinning the monster and actually preparing the meat for consumption would take a good while. Neither Dani nor Lia seemed to have any desire for eating the monster.

“I think we can do with plant food,” Lia said.

“Then we will go with the reward,” I told the dialog box.

A “Thank You” appeared above the monster. Next moment there was a flash of light and the giant carcass of the monster was gone and was replaced by a relatively tiny carrot, which oddly enough had a necklace tied to its top. A dialog box appeared over the carrot.

This is the Endless Carrot. You can eat it as much as you want, but it will never run out. It also contains healing abilities and other medicinal properties which can help safeguard you from a number of diseases common to the barbaric realms.

Lia picked up the carrot and looked at with some uncertainty. She then took a bite.

“Mmmm… it’s actually quite good,” she said, and even as she spoke, the part of the carrot that she had eaten off regenerated magically.

Dani and I also ate our full from the carrot. I easily consumed the equivalent of at least ten carrots. Dani suggested that I wear the carrot around my neck like a locket. It was the best way to carry the carrot, as chances of losing it would be slimmer that way.

Dani and Lia both laughed once I actually wore the carrot necklace. I shrugged.

“A king called Rabbi with a rabbit’s heart wearing a necklace with a carrot locket,” I said. “Maybe someday I will actually turn into a rabbit.”

***

General Information

Name: Rabbi

Class: King

Race: Human

Sex: Male

Level: One

Strength: 50

Health: 100

Spells: Nil

Weapons: Sword