Chương 23: Chapter 21 — The Hop Gang's Worst Night

[NOTIFICATION] ──────────────────────────── Current XP: 1687 / 5000 They were halfway home when something felt off. Fenwick felt it before he saw it, the quality of stillness that meant something was waiting rather than absent. He had been developing this sense for fifty-seven days, and it had not failed him yet. His paw went to the harness strap. His eyes went to the trees on either side.

"Max," he said quietly. The head turned. The rabbits moved. Five of them, from three directions simultaneously, the way Boss Clover had planned it and practiced it and walked through it three times in the clearing while Twitch clicked his switchblade and said nothing. Patch from the left with a blade already drawn. Mole and Biscuit from the right, moving in the low, fast way of creatures who had done this before.

Boss Clover strutted down the path, unhurried, flipping a copper in one hand, one ear flopping, the expression of a professional executing a plan he was confident in. Twitch dropped from a tree. He landed behind Max, where he was supposed to be, and was very fast and very precise; his blade found the harness strap with one clean cut. Fenwick grabbed the other strap. He held the harness all the way to the ground.

The wizard hit the path and rolled, which, since this was the third or fourth time it had happened, he was getting pretty good at. Enough so that when he popped up on his feet, he resisted the urge to say "ta-da." Both paws were up, and he was assessing the opponents. Surprisingly calm compared to the guinea pig of two months ago that had dropped pellets in the face of a zombie. Max had three rabbits on him simultaneously. He was not reacting to this the way the rabbits had planned.

Patch's blade had found the biker jacket twice, with no useful result. Mole had gone for the knee and was discovering that the knee's owner did not seem to feel it. Biscuit had the good professional instinct to step back and reassess. Boss Clover watched this from twenty feet back with the expression of someone confirming that yes, this was the reason he had sent for an associate. He signaled. BOOM BOOM. The trees shook with the sound of the footsteps.

Something moved above the trees, creating a shadow that darkened the path. Something very large. The trees parted, and a large, white, fluffy paw appeared. The Bunny Hill Giant had been waiting in the trees since sundown with the patient absence of agenda that characterized its slow intelligence. It had been told to hit the big grey thing. It understood this completely. It moved along the path with the slow momentum of a large thing, getting faster the farther it went. It raised its fist. It brought it down on Max.

The sound was significant. Max went into the path face-first, hitting the ground hard. As usual, he didn't attempt to stop the fall or soften the landing, and this time he stayed down for a moment longer. The giant raised its fist again. The second hit swept Max sideways into the tree line. Branches came down, covering him. The third hit was more of a stomp. The rabbits had stopped what they were doing to watch. Boss Clover straightened on the path. He smoothed his vest.

He looked at the large grey shape in the tree line and, for the first time in this operation, felt that he had correctly identified the appropriate tool for the job. Then Fenwick started to scream—the high-pitched scream of a guinea pig in stress. He had hunted daily with Max for almost two months.

He had watched the giant's foot come down a third time, and the smirking rabbits watching from a safe distance, and something in him had gone past careful and past professional and past the composure that the holy order required. It took him approximately one second to understand why he was this angry. His friend was on the ground. The fire erupted from both paws at once. It was not a targeted spell. It was not careful.

It was a level three fire working pushed through a wizard who had stopped thinking about the precise parameters and was thinking about something considerably more immediate. It spread across the path in a wide arc, found four of the five rabbits, the treeline, and part of the road behind them, and was, by any professional assessment of the casting, excessive. The rabbits scattered. Burning. Smoking.

Fast and committed in multiple directions away from the path, away from the large grey shape, away from the small thing that had just done that with both paws, and the expression it currently had on its face. Boss Clover was already moving. He had planned for contingencies. This fiery contingency had not appeared in his planning, but his general philosophy of contingencies served him adequately.

"We're done here, see," he said, to everybody and nobody at the same time.

"Ya ya." He went. Twitch was last. He stood at the tree line and watched the smoke clear. He watched the giant raise its foot again above the large grey shape in the crushed undergrowth. He watched the small thing on the path raise both paws again toward the giant with the expression of fury it still had. This story originates from a different website. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there. He pocketed the switchblade and ran.

Fenwick's holding spell was not designed for something the size of the Bunny Hill Giant. It was designed for a single humanoid, and the Bunny Hill Giant was humanoid in the general architectural sense but considerably exceeded the parameters in most relevant categories. What it produced was not a complete hold. It was more of a strongly worded suggestion delivered in magical terms, and the giant's relationship with strongly worded suggestions was similar to its relationship with most things: large and slow.

It slowed. It did not stop. But it slowed, and in the three seconds that the spell bought, Max moved. He pushed himself out of the undergrowth with the unhurried inevitability he brought to all vertical transitions, except this time, something was different. This time, something about the repeated impacts, the accumulation of damage that even END 9 was registering, had reached somewhere that the beetles and butterflies and slime mold had not. The sword caught fire. This wasn't the enchantment of the sword.

This came from somewhere else. This came from inside, white and clean and the same color as the glow that was in his eye sockets, whatever lived underneath the decay and the hunger and the fifty-seven days of being pointed at things and told to swing. Fenwick stared at it.

"Max," said Sindy, very quietly. The giant's slow had worn off. It raised its fist. Max hit it with the flaming sword. The giant had extensive experience with being hit by things and, over a long career, had developed the professional opinion that being hit was something you absorbed and then kept hitting back. It absorbed the first hit. It raised its fist again. It absorbed the second hit with somewhat more difficulty. The third hit produced a sound from the giant that was new in the giant's personal experience.

In desperation and with only one thought, the giant hit Max. Max hit the path. Rolled and before he had even stopped this time, Max got up. The giant looked at this. Max hit the giant again with the flaming sword. The giant hit Max again, lower this time, a sweeping blow that took Max's legs and sent him in the air and across the path. Max hit the tree canopy this time, falling to the ground through the leaves. More branches came down raining around him. Max got up a second time.

The giant stood in the path and looked at the large grey thing getting up for the second time from something that should have been the last time. The giant's processing arrived, slowly and thoroughly, at a conclusion it had never previously reached in its professional life. The thing was not going to stop. Max crossed the path. The sword was still burning.

What followed was neither elegant nor necessary and took longer than it should have, involving Max going down a third time, which was new, and getting up a third time, which apparently was not. By the end of it, the Bunny Hill Giant was on the ground, the path was somewhat on fire, and Fenwick was standing in the smoke with both paws still raised and a sour expression on his face. The giant did not get up. Fenwick lowered his paws. He looked at Max. Max was looking at the sword.

The fire on the sword faded slowly, like embers, leaving the plain iron looking exactly as it always had, except for the warmth it still held. Max watched it go. His head tilted slightly, the INT 3 version of consideration, something working through something.

"Max," said Fenwick. The head turned.

"Are you—" Fenwick stopped. Reconsidered the question.

"Good," he said instead. Max looked at the giant. Then at the sword. Then, at something on the path that turned out to be a beetle. The XP cascade arrived.

[NOTIFICATION] ──────────────────────────── PARTY XP — Rabbit Bandit x4 (Fenwick) Double XP for first defeat +25 XP +25 XP x4 Total rabbit XP: +125 XP [NOTIFICATION] ──────────────────────────── +1600 XP — Bunny Hill Giant NEW CREATURE TYPE: x2 BONUS APPLIED TOTAL: +3200 XP [NOTIFICATION] ──────────────────────────── TOTAL XP GAINED THIS ENCOUNTER: +3325 XP Current XP: 5012 / 5000 Then: [NOTIFICATION] ──────────────────────────── MANA: 3 / 3 ██████████ 3/3 The line had not been there before.

Then: ⚠️ LEVEL UP AVAILABLE — LEVEL 4 ⚠️ EVOLUTION AVAILABLE [SYSTEM PRIVATE LOG] ──────────────────────────── [System Private Log — Entry 57] Day 57 in the fantasy realm. The sword caught fire. I don't know what that means yet. The mana bar is there now. I don't know what that means either. ▌ Becca, if you're reading this: ▌ I think he's in there. ▌ I think he's been in there the whole time.