Mountain Rabbits are cute creatures... until they are not.
In the next instant, the large black eyes of the two rabbits changed into an aggressive glowing red, and they immediately lunged at us. Their open mouths revealed rows upon rows of razor-sharp teeth and a sickening, wet snarl escaped their throats.
However, before they could reach us, we all collectively summoned our bonds to their weapon forms.
Evelyn was the first to attack. She lunged with speed and brought down one of the blades of her Kama, slicing one of the rabbits that had hopped up clean in half. She immediately spun and was about to do the same to the second, when the creature swiftly dodged the blade, landed behind her, and jumped again, aiming to bite off her leg in one savage snap.
However, right before it could reach her, Dion roared and brought his spear down, driving the creature’s head deep into the compacted snow.
But even after killing both rabbits, none of us dared to relax as the two creatures who were supposed to be dead suddenly shuddered, fractured, and violently split, their bodies becoming four screeching rabbits.
...At this point, both Celeste and I joined in the fight.
Even though Celeste couldn’t use her powers until she met her conditions, she was not entirely helpless in a fight. As a noble, she received basic combat training and was surprisingly effective with her Bond’s weapon form.
One of the rabbits lunged at her, but before it could snap its jaws shut, she executed a perfect arch over backwards and the creature hopped over her. Without slowing, she spun and drove the weapon into its skull, pinning its twitching body to the snow.
Meanwhile, I spun my katana in a tight, whistling arc and blocked the razor-toothed assault of the fourth rabbit, simultaneously slicing its mouth and head off.
I then quickly braced myself as the four rabbits we killed instantly multiplied into eight screeching, blood-eyed rabbits.
"Aisshh!" I cursed as I took out my wakizashi from my shadow and lunged at two rabbits.
Mountain Rabbits were a pain to deal with, not only due to their speed and ferocious nature but also because, in order to kill one, you needed to kill it sixty three times. It multiplied by two each time you eliminated an individual rabbit, a process that repeated six times until the final, true death.
Because we began by killing two rabbits, we faced the task of eliminating a total of one hundred and twenty-six clones just to finish the job.
While the good thing about this hunt was that we would have a lot of meat afterward, the truly, unfortunate thing was that only two people would gain about a hundred and something EXP each, as there were only two rabbits in the beginning.
One could say that this was the real definition of high risk, really low reward.
As if this was not bad enough, on my map, I could see over a hundred more of this rabbits approaching us from far away. Which meant that by the time we were done with these ones, we would have over a hundred more multiplying rabbits to deal with.
Luckily for us, we only needed to struggle with the first hundred clones we were currently already engaging, after which things would become a bit easier as I would then begin using my exclusive skill: flames of decay.
I didn’t use my skill until now because unlike normal flames which would just kill these creatures, my flames would cause them to decay and completely disintegrate.
Of course this meant that they would not be able to multiply as they would simply vanish out of existence, but that would also mean we wouldn’t have any meat to salvage. And so, I held off using my skill for now.
It didn’t take long for the snow around us to become a tapestry of churned white and scattered red.
We all continued to hack and slash through the multiplying horde, grimly fighting for every inch of ground.
While we fought, I noticed something extremely disturbing. Evelyn was fighting like a total bloodthirsty maniac. Her entire body was covered in blood, her eyes were wide and wild, glowing with an unnatural crimson intensity, and there was a wide, unnatural grin on her face. She looked like one who truly reveled in the ongoing slaughter. She butchered the rabbits in the most brutal manner. But that was not all: I could see her flick her tongue out to lick the blood right off her blades. And when she did, a notification popped up to my side.
[The character Evelyn Marcus has activated the bonded ability: True Vampire.]
Suddenly, her speed increased even more. I saw her weaving through the horde in a dizzying, reckless dance. In a matter of seconds, her entire demeanor shifted, and she began fighting in a manner that completely abandoned even basic defense.
Some of the rabbits jumped onto her, biting large chunks of her skin, but she didn’t seem to care about the bleeding wounds.
Instead, she threw her Kama, and both blades linked by the chain spun through the air, cutting off the heads of two attacking rabbits after which the blades buried themselves into the snow some meters away.
In the same fluid motion, Evelyn violently tore two bunnies off her. She raised one bunny and bit down into its neck before tearing out the throat, sending a geyser of steaming, crimson blood across herself and the pristine snow. As for the other, she smashed its head with her fist, after which she snatched up the limp, bloody corpse and used it as a club, slamming it against the body of a third rabbit, driving the impact into the snow.
I could see the spots which she had been bitten slowly close themselves. Then in the next instant, she lunged in a blur of black towards the next attacking rabbits, now using only her hands and mouth to rend and tear them apart with sheer, monstrous strength.