Chapter 37: Getting a Bit Used to Horn Rabbit Hunting

Beyond the bushes, a horn rabbit with an arrow in its belly twitched and trembled.

“Kyii! Kyii!”

It let out shrill cries threateningly as Ren approached.

Ren held his breath and gripped the knife handle tightly.

He thrust the knife tip into the horn rabbit’s neck. Almost simultaneously with blood spurting from the wound, he produced the small box and enclosed the horn rabbit—bleeding from its neck and belly—inside.

Thump-thump. The horn rabbit’s blood spread across the transparent bottom of the small box. The horn rabbit was already limp and motionless.

Killing it inside the small box would reduce concerns about the smell of blood spreading to the surroundings, but lately he had been trying to finish them off outside the box whenever possible.

The truth was, he wanted to get used to handling a sword. However, what he used for training at home was a wooden sword, and metal swords were expensive and difficult to afford.

So instead, he decided to first get used to stabbing demon beasts with a knife. In practice, it required considerably more resolve than fixing them in place with the small box before stabbing. Struggling monsters would try to bite or scratch if he hesitated even slightly. After many attempts, he was gradually becoming able to stab decisively.

The problem was that if blood splattered in large quantities, the smell of blood—or perhaps the mana contained in the blood—might attract three-eyed eagles. In fact, they came with high probability. After various attempts, he had now adopted the method of immediately putting them in the small box right after stabbing with the knife to prevent the smell of blood from spreading.

“Alright. I think the blood draining is mostly done. There.”

He imagined a long, vertically-oriented small box and manifested it in the dirt.

Immediately dispelling the box left a square-shaped hole in the ground.

He opened a hole in the bottom of the small box where he had been draining the horn rabbit’s blood and poured the blood into the square hole. When the blood had almost completely dripped out, he gathered mana and held his hand toward the square hole.

“Earth, fill it.”

Releasing the magic while imagining the square hole filling with dirt, soil gathered from around the hole and fell inside. In no time, it was as if the square hole had never existed.

For earth magic practice, he sometimes dug holes with earth magic depending on the day, but since he wanted to bring the horn rabbit back quickly, he used the small box for digging holes. The blood-stained small box, once put away, wouldn’t come out unless he consciously summoned it, so he could probably store it with blood inside, but he wanted to dispose of the blood. It would be troublesome if it came out when he had forgotten about it.

The blood-drained horn rabbit was put in a hemp sack before being stored in the small box. He planned to carry the hemp sack on his back on the way home, but during the hunt, it was bulky, so he kept it in the small box.

“Alright… One more…”

Searching for his next prey, Ren surveyed his surroundings.