With his new class’s skills, it should be easy to take down some of the starter monsters. The issue was that his skill took a lot of mana to use. In order to optimize his hunting speed, he would have to try and use as little mana as possible during each fight. Another way to speed up his hunting was by doing some preparation work before he began.

To start Tide decided to make himself a weapon. While walking towards his first targets territory he found a suitably sized rock and channeled his mana into it. He brought it into the air and began to stretch it out into a long rod. Soon it stretched out to be a staff about four feet long and was about three inches thick. Tide injected a some more mana into the rock it began to compress to be about two and half inches in diameter.

To finish it off he rounded each end of the staff to a smooth point and grabbed one end of it. As his hand griped the stone, it began to engrave his grip into the top of the staff giving him a solid grip on his creation.

He gave the staff a test drive making it into a near by tree with a big bang ringing out form the impact. Tide looked down to see how the staff handled the blow. Impressively, it didn’t seem damaged at all by the full-strength swing. It was worth the two hundred mana used to create it. With its durability so high it would last him a decent number of fights.

Now armed Tide was a bit more confident and was soon approaching the territory of his first set of prey, the horned rabbit.

They preferred to roam more open areas with tall grass that they could hide in. Due to this its hunting grounds tended to be the closest to the town. Due to this people tended to try and hunt them at the very beginning. Its name and proximity to the town made people think that they were easy prey, despite this in the previous trials the rabbits were given the nickname “The Filter”.

This was due to the large amount of people killed by them before they could even get started as hunters. Tide was confident in his ability to hunt them. In the past run he found a strategy that reliably worked most of the time.

As Tide drew near the first creature, he saw wasn’t a horned rabbit. Instead, he spotted a couple of Humans. It was a group of people trying to hunt. Tide quickly dipped behind some nearby cover to avoid being seen.

As the group moved Tide kept his distance moving along behind them out of eyeshot.

It was a group of four people and were less geared than the group in tavern. Only two had real weapons a big guy who had a throwing axe and a woman with a dagger. The other two had sharpened sticks to make crude spears.

After following them for ten or so minutes, they stopped moving. Out in a field near the trees there were in a horned rabbit munching on some of the long grass. It was the size of a fully grown Beagle and had back legs as thick as Tide’s biceps. A blade a foot long made of a sharp bone grew out of the rabbit’s forehead.

Tide stared at the rabbit and opened its basic information which was very small window.

Horned Rabbit

Level 2

It wouldn’t tell him more until he killed one or observed it for a while.

Tide watched as the large man with an axe separated from the group making his way towards the rabbit.

Tide shook his head and sighed. Perhaps this was their first encounter with a horned rabbit, and he was trying to keep the others safe by testing the waters himself. Most likely, the man either wanted the exp for himself or was trying to show off. The man slowly crept up to the creature trying to get close enough to launch a surprise attack.

Perhaps this could have worked on a different monster but the horned rabbits ears were very sensitive.

Once the man left the tree line, only a couple of meters away, he heard by the rabbit. It quickly turned to facing him before giving out a high pitch squeak.

Seeing that he was caught, the man dashed towards the creature and swung the axe down aiming to split its skull.

The moment he began the swing, the large rabbit extended it powerful legs dashing to the right of the man. The man tried to slow down and turn but his momentum made doing so difficult. Before he could turn and follow the rabbit’s movements, the creature darted towards him.

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It swept past him in a blink of the eye. Its horn deftly punctured and ripped through the man’s heel. That in combination with the mans speed caused him to fall to the ground.

The man’s group began to respond and move towards the man to help but they were much to slow. Before they could get there the rabbit had wheeled around the front of the man sprawled on the ground.

With another push of its strong legs the rabbit propelled its horn into the large man’s throat. It hopped away as the man brought his hands up to his throat to stem the blood flowing out of his neck. It was useless in the end, and he soon died due to blood loss.

Seeing their strongest member bleeding out on the ground, the other three people who were running up to help quickly stopped. The woman pivoted and began to run away very while screaming. The other two just stopped and readied their makeshift spears. The rabbit began to approach them slowly.

Either scared or trying to regroup, the two men slowly backed away while keeping their eyes and spears on the rabbit. A weird balance was created as they back peddled slowly, and the rabbit hopped towards them looking for an opportunity to strike.

It didn’t have to wait long. After only a couple of meters one of the spearmen’s heels knocked into a tree root. This caused him to slip for moment and dropped his spear throwing it away, waving his arms to stay upright.

This accident caused the other man to turn and look at his ally. For a moment neither of them was looking at the rabbit. It didn’t let this opportunity slip past it and sprang into action. It darted at the one still armed, launching its bladed head into the man’s stomach. The impact pushed him to his back as the rabbit pulled its horn out of his flesh and hopped away out of reach. As the man sat up one hand on his stomach and the other on his spear, he saw the other turn and begin to run away.

Seeing the rabbit began to dart around him and that his ally deserted him the man readied his spear. Much to the man’s credit he kept his guard up for a couple of minutes preventing the rabbit from easily darting in to finish him. Each time the rabbit darted towards him to strike he would swing his spear around to force it way.

After while the blood loss from the stab wound slowed him enough and the rabbit stabbed him in the back. This time the wound looked fatal as the rabbit pierced one of the man’s kidneys.

The man impressed Tide in the end because while he couldn’t stop the rabbits attack, he at least managed to stab one of its legs after the fact. At least the man didn’t die without landing a blow.

In the end the rabbit managed to kill two members of the group while the other two managed to run away, and it only suffered a moderate wound to its left thigh. All this happened in less than minutes.

Overall, Tide was disappoints none of the people even tried to use a skill from their classes. They must have not practiced with them or were so panicked by the rabbits speed that they forgot about them.

At this point Tide shook his head, and began making his way towards the scene of the fight.

The rabbit let out a squeak of victory and began to tend to its wound by giving it a couple of licks. Near it the bodies of the two men slowly fragmented into bright lights. Most of it flowed up into the sky and faded away. A small portion of them flowed into the rabbit. Absorbing the strange lights, the rabbit’s wound heal a small amount and it got a bit bigger.

The only thing remaining from men was their equipment. It looked like the axe and a pair of leather boots were left behind.

As Tide exited the tree line, he let out a cough, purposely alerting the rabbit.

It eyes quickly darted over to him and it once again got ready to fight. On the other hand, Tide’s stance was quite relaxed as he made his way towards the rabbit.

Once he got with in the rabbits striking range he stopped moving and shifted into a fighting stance with his right foot slightly further a head of his left. He held his staff in front of him and held it across himself ready.

Then he did something unthinkable and closed his eyes for a full second. Seeing this a moment to strike the rabbit darted forwards past Tide. It turned and aimed its head towards Tides back foot. As it did, Tides eyes snapped open.

A small wall of dirt quickly rose behind his heel and blocked the rabbit’s advance. Unable to stop the rabbits horn stuck into the dirt and for a moment it was stuck. Without missing a beat Tide swung his stone staff behind him snapping it into the rabbit head. The rabbit’s horn which was still in the dirt wall anchored the rabbits head firmly in place causing the blow to hit at full force. With a loud crack the rabbit’s neck broke, and its body went limp.

Tide smiled and stretched a little.

“I still got it he thought to himself” as he stored away his staff and brought out his wood axe. He reached over and grabbed the rabbit’s body. It also began to disappear like the other men’s bodies, but Tide willed it to stay. If it shattered into glimmering lights, it would most likely give him some copper coins, and have a chance at dropping its horn. By stopping that process, he would be able to harvest the horn manually.

There was a stand at town that would pay coins for monster parts. Tide couldn't remember the number of coins each horn was worth, but it was worth much more than the coins you could possibly get when its body disappeared. Sure, it could drop the coins and a horn, but the horns drop rate was about twenty five percent.

To harvest the horn, he then held it’s face down with his foot, and swung the axe down chopping off the rabbit’s horn by breaking it at the base. After that was done, he checked his Exp which only rose another eighteen percent. After around three more kills he would level up.

Tide walked over to where the two other men died and picked up the boots and throwing axe. He stored both axes back in storage and put on the sturdy leather boots. Onyx was also getting his fair share of loot as he began to tear the rabbit happy to have fresh meat.

Tide let out a whistle to get Onyx moving again and ended up having to pull the cub off the corpse so they could keep going. Tide patted the grumpy pup and reassured him that there would be plenty of other rabbits from now on.