Chapter 210: Catching Dinner

Chapter 210: Catching Dinner

“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.

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.