Chương 29: Murder Rabbits

Day 10, Ebril 19 (Saturday) The next day it continued to rain until noon. I decided I was done having rain on my head so I brought out my ball cap the next morning. I really wished I had a nice waxed duster, or cowboy hat like Brendan's so I fit in. Colin commented on how cool he thought it was, but Emily only said that I shouldn't wear it to town. I was basically certain she knew I wasn't from this world.

Colin probably was too, but neither wanted to mess up a good thing right now, so they just ignored anything strange. She told me to buy a rancher hat when I went into town for militia training. That morning we fed the animals and then retreated to the cabin for breakfast. I brought my gun in and got it properly cleaned. I scoured away any signs of rust, and then oiled it with the gun oil that I hadn't immediately noticed had been delivered with the gun.

After that, I spent some time reading the almanac while Emily made Colin work on math problems while she oversaw him. I focused my reading on how people got classes in this world. The first class a person was given was through the "System Stone" in the temples that every town of any size was required to build. Touching the stone activated the System UI for most people. Once that was initialized, they'd be able to take any classes available to them.

For the masses there were usually only two general classes: Farmhand, or Laborer. But if your parents were Craftsmen, then you might get it as well, especially if you'd helped them as you grew up. In the Territories, Homesteader replaced those two classes for many people. If one had a noble title, or could buy a better class, like Scholar or something, then they replaced those generic classes right away.

Earning support or combat classes without buying a class was a long and tedious process that could take more than five years. The almanac didn't say why that was the case, just that it was so. It definitely made it harder for a poor family to move up in the world. No one took non-familial apprentices on for free. I was also unsure exactly how people saw the System religiously. I'd heard Emily thank the System for things, and there was a church hierarchy.

However, it didn't seem like people worshipped quite in the same way that they did at home for, say, Christianity or Islam. Emily and Colin had never talked about going to church, for example. The almanac didn't go into any detail there. I'd just have to look for context clues as time went by. When I heard the rain stop beating down on the roof, I got up and made my way to the door. It was still cloudy, but I could see rays of sunshine peeking through the clouds.

We'd had a fair amount of rain, and I wanted to see if it had visibly raised the river level, so I told Emily and Colin my plans and left the cabin. Buck and Spot followed me out. It looked like they wanted some fresh air and exercise too. As we were walking down the footpath, I spotted a coyote that was drinking from the river. It was a full-grown, healthy-looking animal. It had a full pelt with a beautiful reddish hue that contrasted beautifully with its otherwise grey fur.

The rabbits also spotted it and immediately split off from me and disappeared into the wet grasses. I figured I should stop so I didn't spook the coyote, so I sat back on my haunches to give myself a lower profile. I wanted to see how they worked. I could just barely see the grass moving as the rabbits carefully stalked through it. I could barely believe my eyes. This wasn't supposed to be the way it went!

When the two rabbits got to the edge of the grass, they held still for almost a minute while the coyote raised its head and sniffed the air. The rabbits were upwind of the coyote, so it was able to smell them. The coyote seemed interested in what it smelled. They must smell like a normal rabbit, and thus like prey. It turned towards where Buck was hiding and started slinking towards her, thinking it had a meal close at hand. I could almost see the wheels spinning in its brain.

The local rabbits weren't carnivorous after all. Buck and Spot had feasted on them over the last week. I found it slightly morbid but Emily had heaped praise on them. Native rabbits were a serious problem for gardens, after all. When the coyote was just about on top of Buck, the rabbit leapt out and latched onto the coyote's snout. Holding it shut and cutting off its air supply. The coyote began violently shaking its head, attempting to throw Buck off of its snout. Buck held fast, though.

A few seconds after Buck launched her surprise attack, Spot bounded out of her hiding spot and latched onto the thrashing coyote's throat. Between Buck holding its jaws closed, and disrupting its breathing, and Spot's grip on its throat, the coyote was dead within moments. I was shocked. What do you say when you witness something that your brain tells you just can't be happening? Coyotes killed rabbits, they didn't get killed in a coordinated ambush by a couple of murder bunnies. I'd read Watership Down.

It had been required reading in, like, 4th grade. I remembered them having a militant society where they kept everything under control. One of the bucks had even killed some cats who had attacked the colony. But killing a similarly sized cat is a lot different from basically assassinating a coyote in a coordinated hit. Once they were sure it was dead, the two rabbits bounded back towards me and began rubbing on my legs. No doubt wanting to be petted for being good guard bunnies.

Needless to say, they got their pets. Once they were satisfied, I spoke to them.

"Let me check the river, then I'll bring the coyote back to the cabin, I'll make Colin skin it. Then you can have the carcass. Deal?" They both looked up at me and made their barking, chuffing noises. I took that as an affirmative. They didn't go back and start eating the coyote after all. I spent a quick two minutes looking at the river. It was only a few inches above its normal level. The water was running faster, but it wasn't at the point it would start washing things out, so I took that as a good sign.

It had rained pretty hard overnight and with no flood control measures at all, the river could have risen a lot higher if there were any flow issues. After that, I picked up the dead coyote and headed back to the cabin. When I walked around to the front of the cabin, I saw Colin filling a water pail, no doubt for his mom. I threw the carcass on the ground next to him and told him to get to skinning.

"Oh man!" His excitement was written plain on his face.

"It's a good thing you were there to stop them from just eating it. The guild store pays a gold per full pelt. I'll skin it out and hang it. You can take it with you when you go to militia training to turn it in." This tale has been unlawfully obtained from Royal Road. If you discover it on Amazon, kindly report it. I had to ask him again about their sentience.

"Alright Colin, you're certain that the rabbits can't be super smart because there's no tag? I don't think the rabbits would have torn it up. I didn't have to tell them not to." He shook his head.

"They shouldn't be. There'd be a tag. They must just be really smart normal animals. You can train a dog to fetch a bird you kill without eating it right?" I had to admit that was true. But I wasn't convinced. I turned to my two little murder bunnies.

"Good work you two. Colin will get you your meat soon enough!" They chuffed at me without taking their attention away from Colin and the coyote. I decided it was time to go look at the potato field while Colin did his grisly work. I'd never skinned anything before. Learning how might be wise, but I wasn't that interested in it, and Colin would hopefully earn XP. He knew that skinning and preserving pelts was a recurring quest for the Woodsman subclass so it was a good head start for him.

I made my way over to the field. The grass was so saturated that I wished I had boots that were taller. My favorite work boots were only ankle-high. After all, I didn't need tall boots while I was sitting in a tractor. If anything, that would be detrimental. They'd just get creased and rub the hair off the area between my foot and leg. I was usually sitting down while wearing boots, so ankle high slip ons made the most sense. My dad and brothers weren't always the best at keeping their tractors clean.

But my tractor was always spotless inside. I swept every day, and I kept cleaning wipes on hand to wipe away the dust that inevitably got inside. My feet sweated badly, so I wanted my tractor clean enough that I could work in just my socks most of the time, slip ons made it easy to take them off and put them on whenever I needed to. When I got to the field, my lower legs were absolutely soaked and I was regretting my decision to come out here. I surveyed the field, nothing had come up yet, but that was normal.

It should take at least a couple more weeks for the potato plants to break the surface, especially if the weather stayed on the cool side. I knelt down and stuck my hand into the wet earth. The moisture had definitely made it all the way down below where we had planted the potatoes. My Homesteader class had said that my row crops would need less water than normal. I wasn't sure what that meant, so I'd asked Emily.

She said it meant that my crops would need about half a percent less water per level I possessed, so basically they would need 10 percent less water right now. That wasn't enough that I would never want to water my crops, but it was a nice little bonus for sure. The amount of moisture in the ground should make it so I wouldn't need to water my potatoes for a couple of weeks if it didn't get too warm. That definitely convinced me that cutting more lumber was the wise decision for now.

That reminded me, I hadn't looked at my quests for a while. I couldn't earn XP right now after all. I didn't even know if rough-cutting logs for my cabin had counted. Making a pole fence hadn't been enough refinement of the lumber to count. I opened up my UI and, sure enough, it said I now had 22/100 boards cut. That was nice. After I checked the potato field, I wandered over to the wheat field. I hadn't spent as much time over here because wheat was going to grow in this kind of weather no matter what I did.

I'd seen fields where they harvested in the summer and then left it fallow until field work happened in the spring. There'd be enough grain that had fallen from the stalk during harvest that it half looked like you'd planted a field of wheat on purpose. I'd definitely planted a few weeks later than was optimal, but if we just scheduled ourselves to be the last place to be harvested in the area, we should be just fine. I disturbed the wet soil and found a few seeds.

Little green shoots sprouted from all five seeds I disturbed. It looked like it would only be another day or two before this field would look like a carpet of green. To test my theory about the rabbits, I'd have to tell them to monitor things right as the field sprouted. Small rodents loved the tender shoots. After looking things over, I walked back to the cabin. Emily was inside, and Colin was still skinning the coyote. I asked them both if they had anything they needed me to help with.

Emily said if I could let the pigs and goats out it would be handy, but even with the rain we had gathered the eggs this morning, so that was done. I let them out and thought about talking to the rabbits, but I swore I saw them drooling as they watched Colin work. I didn't want to disturb them right now. Then I looked around and tried to figure out what to do. My mantra had always been to take things one day at a time and get as much done on that day as you could since farm work was never ending.

But for the moment, I didn't seem to have much to do. I supposed I could go find some river stones to make my base for the cabin. But I just didn't feel like it right now. I'd just end up even more soaked in about five minutes. Instead, I decided I was just going to spend the afternoon sitting in my tractor here in the barnyard, and read my almanac for a few more hours. The sun was peeking out of the clouds, so it would warm the cab up soon enough. I could dry out and get some good solid me time in.

I told Emily and Colin they were welcome to join me if one of them wanted to do some reading. Emily looked like she might say yes, she'd never set foot in the tractor so far. But in the end she pursed her lips, smiled, and said she had things to do. Colin looked scandalized. Not because I'd asked his mother to join me. No, he just couldn't imagine choosing to spend extra time reading when his mom would still make him do some sort of math or grammar lesson later. I laughed and told them the offer still stood.

Then, I climbed in my tractor and pulled my almanac out from the large storage cubby I was keeping it in. Today I wanted to read a bit more about the history of the other races on the planet. ———————————————- According to the earliest records that the empire has attained from the elves, gnomes, and dwarves, each of the invading races arrived on Talamh via portals over 3, 000 years ago.

These records all attest to the three races encountering humans already living in small settlements on every continent when they arrived. Orcs were first encountered over five hundred years later. They are capable sailors, and they first appeared as marauders sailing in from the north and west in strange double-hulled boats. They would hit coastal settlements, raiding and pillaging and then disappearing as quickly as they appeared. They never made attempts to colonize or hold any of the settlements they attacked.

Goblins remain a mystery to this day. There are reports they were seen crewing orcish ships, but they are not recorded as having taken part in the raids. They weren't encountered on the home isles, nor the mainland continent of Ennor. If the gnomes encountered them on the continent of Gnimafar, to the south of the Middle Sea, they have not spoken of it.

The dwarves of the Androl Mountains in the Farsi-Gavin-Khazad continent to the south of the Western Territories are secretive, and rarely share information even with their kinfolk who have relocated to Ennor. The Expeditionary Force of the Anglican Empire encountered goblins in large numbers on the shores of the Western Territories. While weak compared to humans, they proved a cunning foe who utilized magic, and their extensive knowledge of the terrain to slow down the advance of the empire's soldiers.

Their strange alliance with the humans, who must have remained behind when Arturos and Merlotus led the rest of humanity on the continent to the Home Isles, led to the only major defeat of the Expeditionary Force. That battle can be read about in detail in The Battles of the Reclamation, available on the Albion Guild Shop. Excerpt from The History of the Non-Native Races of Talamh by The Royal Historian Arthur Byrne of the House of Byrne, who can claim direct lineage from Arturos.

This book is available in the Albion Guild Shop.