Chapter 234: Rabbit Gathering

He came across a couple more rabbits along his way. None of them managed to make a dent in his barrier, not even surviving the impact.

Realizing that defeated the purpose of his delving, he stopped using [Armaments of the Arcane]. In fact, he put a restriction on using any skills that didn’t have any direct synergy with [Thermal Empowerment].

So when the next rabbit came flying toward him, he didn’t place a barrier, instead concentrating on its movements with razor-sharp focus.

It was fast, but Julius had experienced faster attacks before.

He only used [Thermal Empowerment] to empower his body. The flames from the skill radiated from his body in a soft aura glow.

He refrained from using [Kinetic Augmentation] for the moment. He knew that he would eventually have to use the two in tandem and he wanted to combine them, but for the moment he wanted to see what this new skill could do.

He sent a surge of fire mana to his arm, increasing its speed and allowing him to be barely fast enough to catch the rabbit by the base of its horn before it could impale him in the face.

He let out a sigh of relief but he couldn’t help but notice the addicting thumping in his chest. He missed this.

Training with nothing to lose or risk wasn’t as fun as something like this. At least this way, if he had missed he would have been punished for his mistake.

He felt its wind mana that was surrounding its horn slicing his hand but he ignored it. He could always heal it. However, before he killed it, he stopped himself.

He had a better idea.

He threw the rabbit away from him and allowed it to stagger back to its feet. The monster gave him a confused look, but that only made him smile.

He gestured toward the rabbit with his bloody hand, inviting it to attack again. Fortunately, even if it probably didn’t understand his actions, it decided to attack again.

This time, he stepped aside and tried to grab it by the chest as it passed him.

That was harder than just grabbing it head on and he missed it by a hair. Receiving another cut to his hand for his failure.

The rabbit wasn’t smart by any means, but it was persistent. It continued to attack Julius with no qualms, just launching itself over and over. Toward the end, he got much better at snatching the fast little monster from the air.

He also learned to manipulate the radiating fire mana from his [Thermal Empowerment] skill to create a hardened layer of fire mana woven into his skin.

It was quite similar to how he used [Armaments of the Arcane] to create a skin-thin barrier over himself, but unlike the epic skill, this method didn’t feel restricting at all.

One of the downsides of creating armor or thin barriers over himself with [Armaments of the Arcane] was the slight stiffness he felt whenever he moved using it.

It was similar to trying to run around in denim jeans. This new skill felt like wearing polyester fabric. But it also protected him much worse than his other skill.

He made some good progress at least. In his opinion, he was already making better progress in his new skill than the last week just using it with Richard. The notifications seemed to agree with his opinion too.

[Thermal Empowerment lvl 3 -> lvl 5]

His little breakthrough of using the skill to harden his skin seemed to help him get two levels in one go.

He looked down at where the rabbit was on its back, completely worn out. It had tried to kill Julius until it was too tired to move anymore.

But now that it was totally done for, it was kind of cute. Its pink tongue was rolled out of its mouth and was panting with partially lidded eyes.

He didn’t kill it, no he had another brilliant idea.

He gathered the rabbit in his arms and went off deeper into the forest with a smile.

***

There were now three rabbits in front of him. The original rabbit, the one who had gotten tired out was the only one who was looking at him calmly.

His plan had been to find a couple more rabbits to help him with his practicing. That had been pretty easy considering his [Spatial Perception] and the rabbit’s tendency to attack anything on sight.

The new rabbits were still restricted with kinetic energy, but the lone calm rabbit didn’t need that at all. It was merely staring at Julius as if waiting for him to do something.

Ever since it woke up, it hadn’t tried to attack him once. A totally different attitude than before.

Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.

Not sure what to make of it, he gestured at the rabbit the same way he did before. However, it still didn’t make any moves to attack. Its friends, on the other hand, couldn’t wait to get a piece of him.

They were powering their horns with mana in anticipation.

Feeling kind of confused, he decided to see what would happen if he released all of them. Not to his surprise, the new murderous rabbits shot themselves at him with glowing horns aiming for his vital points.

The original rabbit hesitated for a moment before joining its friends. However, Julius noticed that it wasn’t powering its horn like the last time and it didn’t move as fast either.

He was so distracted by this that although he caught one of the rabbits, he completely missed the second one. Getting impaled just right over his heart.

Julius could have stopped it with his other skills, but he was somewhat curious about what kind of attack it had. So he allowed it to hurt him but made sure to examine it in detail.