Singer Sailor Merchant Mage

“If you chase two rabbits, you will not catch either one.”

Confucius

The first thing my senses picked up were the mana signature, and the presence of Nyx huddled within Namir’s robe as his chest rose and fell. He must have taken to carrying her while I was unconscious. My senseless body would have been unable to protect her as it bounced up and down on his back if she had been placed between us. She slept soundly through our conversation and continued to do so now that it was only me awake. She had to find it significantly colder than us due to her younger age and smaller stats compared to what Namir and I were working with, and I was still chilled to the bone.

I wondered how tired Namir actually was, I didn’t think that I had ever actually caught him asleep before, so he undoubtedly needed a lot less of it than I did. My hand rose to check the lump on my skull, and I once more felt grateful for my lucky escape from our brush with death. Had that been only down to Namir’s skills in fleeing or an actual intervention by the Goddess of Luck? It was impossible to say, especially as I couldn’t remember it.

I sat and meditated for a moment to raise my mana while I started to Heal myself. I worked better on others than myself but had plenty of practice with my cousins and our combat games to fix a few bumps and bruises. I carefully lowered the swelling and started to heal the inflamed flesh around it. I slowly sealed the wound and went deeper to find a hairline fracture in my skull, which I cautiously healed away. At least my stats had saved my skull from being caved in and cracked open.

Once healed, I spread my senses further and further out, I noticed that it was not only the snow that was white, but the mana, too, was far whiter than I was used to out on the open ocean. It seemed the freezing effects of the north somehow bleached the predominantly blue water-aspected mana. So that even using my mana sense, the world around me was devoid of much of the colour I normally saw.

Mana sense, Echolocation, and Seismic Sense all build up a layered picture of our surroundings. Echolocation created a detailed line map of my close surroundings that my mana sense then filled in, usually with a variety of colours. Then, Seismic sense continued the effect deep into the ice all around us. I soon discovered that the ice shelf was not quite as desolate as it looked on first inspection.

Nearby, I could sense a family of what appeared to be arctic hares burrowed a few feet beneath the surface of the snow. They looked like lunch, and a quick check with inspection proved they were low-levelled enough to prove no danger to me. But first, I had to check the larger area to ensure that we ourselves were not being targeted.

Channelling my senses in a single direction rather than the full 360 degrees allowed me to extend my senses tenfold. The image was not as immediate as my instant sense of my surroundings, but I soon found some larger creatures along with a few more hares. However, neither the winter wolves huddled up in their den to the west, nor the solitary polar bear on the far reaches of my senses to the north were making any move towards us. For now, at least, we seemed safe enough from the elements, terrain and its inhabitants.

Checking my sleeping companion and saviour once more, I opened up an exit before sealing it behind me as I stepped out into the bitter cold once more. We were not dressed for the weather, but magic made it bearable as my amulet continued to heat the air surrounding me. The importance of support skills and spells had been drilled into me often enough by my tutors. What I lacked in clothing and supplies, I should be able to make do through my skills, spells, and stats. Especially with Namir to back me up.

That being said, I had yet to warm up truly and with the whistling wind once more wrapped around me, I was still cold and hungry when I arrived above the sleeping Arctic hare family. The Solar had taken the edge off my hunger, but real meat would taste a thousand times better and provide some much-needed fur to begin dressing ourselves a little bit better for the Arctic weather. I did not have the luxury to leave a single one alive. All of them would be needed.

I triggered Insight to see that they were all happily sleeping, unaware of the death that was about to descend on them. I readied my knives but aimed to end them all with magic before my Knife Art skill, or they were needed. Seismic sensestruggled to work as well with frozen water, but it was enough to highlight the warren’s exits, and I had them covered. The entire time I stood there, I was careful not to actively target them with any aggressive skills or even thoughts lest an herbivore hare have had the luck to develop their own version of danger sense. Still, my Telepathy showed they were unaware of my presence and blissfully sleeping.

I aimed to use misdirection, deception and intimidation to force them to flee from one exit and out the other. That was if my initial burst did not kill them on the spot.

Plan made it was time to begin.

Shock and awe or rather shock to death.

I remembered reading that it was possible to shock a rabbit to death. I saw no reason, with their low levels, that I couldn’t do the same to the family of Artic Hares below me. The benefit to this method of hunting hares, at least, was that I was still not targeting them directly. Without that directed intent, hopefully, any danger sense they might have would have nothing to work off. Besides, the fewer holes I put into their pelts, the better clothing they would make!

“Bala Skouzou” I whispered, the spellcraft forming instantly with the words and whipping its way into warren.

A quiet shriek filled the air a second later, but I had already collapsed the first exit and underneath the ground when that spell released. It would have been an ear-shattering screech.

From my mana sense, I could tell that it had done its work nearly perfectly. It was not a large family; four members dropped dead instantly: the mother and the three offspring. The father, though, was even larger than the already large hares, and despite him bleeding from his ruptured eardrums, he had enough sense to race for the exit I had left clear. A thrown knife nailed him to the hard ice below as he emerged, and I walked over to finish the job with a quick slice of his neck.

At just under a meter long, the male hare wasn’t much smaller than me, though considerably lighter. It would take me a little longer to dig out the rest of the family, but it was not a bad first hunt in the frozen wasteland they called the north—time to get to work.

Dinner wouldn't make itself.

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