Rabbit's Foot

The second day began much like the first. I had grabbed an hour or two of shuteye before the bandits came back in. I wasn’t exactly well-rested, but stats helped keep me in good shape..more or less. Even with sleep, the others weren’t looking so hot. Gloomies 1 and 2 were looking even paler, and the kids were mostly silent as they were led back down.

I spent a lot more time helping pick up the slack for the others, but the bandits weren’t that stupid. They started to notice the size of the rubble and how slowly the children were moving. There was a lot more yelling today. A lot more kids got scraps tonight; there were more eating nothing, too.

I dug my way to the food storage that night. I swiped a few loaves of bread and put them under my neck and in my mouth before sneaking back, covering the hole back up as I left. I couldn’t smooth over the area, but I was hoping they wouldn’t notice some extra piles of dirt in a mine.

The tricky part was getting the food into the kids. More specifically, doing it without making too much noise. I woke up Kid Senior first. She woke with a startle, but calmed down pretty fast when she saw me. I let the bread fall from my neck and mouth and nodded towards the other kids. She got the message, and I went to work on expanding my tunnel to the nearest group of kids. After a few hours, I went and grabbed another couple hours of sleep.

The days and nights ticked by like this. I started making tunnel systems underneath all the kids’ groups. I had never gotten so much use out of my burrowing skill before. I made multiple tunnels in case one ever got found. After two long weeks, I had created quite the maze. Which was good, because the bandits were noticing their food going missing. I had limited myself to what I could carry and did what I could to spread it around, sometimes needing multiple trips to get to anyone. But it was hard for that much food to go unnoticed. Or how the kids didn’t look like skin and bones. There were now guards on the food. I could take them, but not without making the situation much worse.

I was smashing some stone to help out one of the kids when I heard a loud boom. The kid next to me froze in terror. “Hey, it’s alright. Just focus on yourself right now.” I gave him a gentle nuzzle of reassurance, and he hesitantly picked up his pickaxe.

Should I go investigate? Someone could be hurt. But if I leave now, my cover is blown. I won’t be able to help any of the kids here, and it’ll be harder to help them in general.

As I waffled back and forth on what to do, I tried to listen in to figure out what had happened, but I wasn’t nearly proficient with mana fields to try and pick out conversations on the opposite side of the mine. A knot of worry grew in my stomach as I returned to helping the kids and carrying the stupid cart.

At meal time that…night?

Day and night have really started to lose all meaning.

A few of the grunts were chatting about what happened. Another grunt was explaining, saying “It was a tunnel collapse. Shouldn’t take too long to clear up. Did lose a couple of the brats, though.”

I threw up.

Fuck fuck fuck. I was supposed to be there for them. Why didn’t I go as soon as I heard the sound? Kids are dead and I could’ve helped them. Fuck fuck fuck.

I wanted to cry and scream. But more than that, I wanted to hit something. Or rather, someone.

No, stupid stupid. Don’t blow your cool. You can’t help them if you die venting your anger smashing those stupid fucking faces.

I had lost my appetite, so I handed what was left of my pittance of food to the Gloomies.

I continued my daily trips up and down the shaft, helping where I could. That was when I heard the yelling. As I got closer, the yelling gave way to the sound of a violent smack. I quickly shed the harness for the wheelbarrow and sprinted toward the sound. Gloomy 1 was standing rigid. Gloomy 2 was on the ground, Mushroom standing over her. Fwipshit was still yelling. Mushroom raised his hand again and my rage finally snapped. I never broke stride; I sprinted at them and landed a kick that crushed Mushroom’s windpipe. I skidded to a stop, then roundhoused Fwipshit into the wall before he could make a sound, then kicked his head through the wall and stomped on Mushroom’s for good measure.

Two down. 201 to go.

Gloomies 1 and 2 looked up at me. I kneeled down to them.

“You two weren’t here when I did this, understand. I was the only one here, and you saw me running away. Are we clear?”

They nodded weakly.

“Now, I know this is hard and scary, but I need you two to look at me.”

They slowly raised their heads.

“You each have a sister to protect; you can’t afford to waste energy sulking when your sister needs you. Understood?”

They looked at each other and back to me with newfound life in their eyes. “Mhm!” They both grunted in agreement.

I smiled and bent over to nuzzle each of them. “Good! Toodle-loo for now. Hopefully I can still bring some food later.” I took off and found one of the escape holes I had spent many restless nights digging.

I hate having to remember where things are and crap. I miss you, Corby and Bea.

I moved down my tunnels until I got near the food supply. I found a spot near the food supply and made a tiny airhole while I took a nap. I had a little bit of time before anyone realized I had dropped some bodies. I was betting on the commotion the bodies were going to garner, so I planned a big heist of the food. Sure enough, I heard a ruckus above me and the sound of a bunch of people storming down the shaft. When I stopped hearing people, I poked my head out. Unfortunately, there were two bandits still left in here.

Shit.

It was too late to turn back, so I expanded the hole as quietly as I could, and snuck over and killed one instantly, crushing his head. I tried to do the same to the other. His head buckled as my foot collided with it, but it didn’t break.

Double shit. Someone has a massive Beefy stat. Can’t let him make noise.

I concentrated and made a bubble of silence around us. The guy started yelling for backup, but they couldn’t hear a peep. The sound reverberating did give me a wicked headache, though. I landed a few hits on Beefy Boy, but he wouldn’t go down easy. I tried wrapping myself around him, choking him out with my legs. I had his throat in my legs, so I let the silence bubble fade, my mana reserves hit hard by the effort. He thrashed about, knocking me into the walls. My pitiful Beefy stats made this hurt like hell, but I kept holding on. The guy was finally fading, but I heard movement from the shaft.

I really wanted to finish this guy off, but it would take too much time. I got off Beefy Boy and gave him one last kick, hoping to at least knock him out, and pushed a crate of food into the hole with my magic and then sealed the hole up again.

Really hope he didn’t see that.

Pushing a crate in this tunnel was not pleasant, but I made it to the hole where Kid Senior and the Gloomies were. I waited for the kids to be alone. Turned out, I had to wait for a while. Long enough that I started expanding my tunnels and even made some space for me to move around a little. I even had a little time to make the ground I would be sleeping on more comfortable. I also took the time to chat with Crayon. I wasn’t used to being by myself.

So what does a god do for fun besides hang out with me?

Eh, I watch over merchants making deals, mostly. A lot of them invoke my name to ensure everyone’s being honest.

Huh. Is that more work or pleasure for you?

Mostly work, but I do have a few favorite merchants that get real crafty with their words and I love seeing the look on their mark’s face when they realize they’ve been had. I’ve been giving discounted mana rates to those that amuse me for the past few centuries, but I don’t think anyone has noticed yet.

That does sound like your kind of fun. Why not just tell them?

I can’t be bothered to make a link with any random ass person. I don’t want a direct line to someone who’s gonna bore me most of the time.

Awww, that might be the nicest thing you’ve ever said about me.

Any chance you’ll convince Amorica to stop calling me ‘Crayon’ then?

Nope!

What if I threatened to smite you?

You wouldn’t. Apparently, I’m too entertaining.

Grrrr.

It turned out that they kept guard in the rooms now, so I was able to work a lot on tunnels. First, I made them deep enough to be able to actually run in them. Speed was key to my survival, after all. I even made tunnels some that went in-between the walls. Figuring out ventilation was trickier, but I managed. What was even harder was trying to make tunnel systems separate from one another. It meant I had to leave the safety of my hidey-hole to dig. But it was a necessary risk for when they inevitably found a tunnel. If there was only one tunnel, I’d be dead the moment they found an entrance.

They were vigilant the first few days, but eventually some of them started to slack and sleep. I did my best to eat as little as possible, with the food seeming to taunt me as I sat next to it. . I needed to save it for the kids. I tunneled under one that was sleeping and made a silence bubble. Then I dug up and the dumbass fell down, where I promptly crushed his skull.

199.

I quickly got the crate and took some food to the group. Kid Senior nodded to me all serious, and I ducked back into the tunnels. I buried the body down deeper so I didn’t have to keep moving around it as I traversed the tunnels. I moved the crate to my new room between the walls.

I followed the same pattern the next day in the 5th group. If they were going to get lazy and let me kill them, I wasn’t going to complain. However, I didn’t think my luck was going to hold, so I needed to start being more proactive. I would scour the mines to find stragglers and isolated bandits during patrols. By the third day living in these tunnels I had whittled them down even more.

190.

Getting food to the kids had become almost impossible, but I had started to really rattle the bandits. They were getting jumpy and paranoid. A lot of them had stopped sleeping, and they were getting angry. That anger was taken out on their fellow bandits, but the kids were also subjected to it.

I heard two bandits beating a kid. I tunneled over to them and put up my silence bubble. Problem was, it wasn’t big enough for both of them. I opened my hole and was able to kill the first one instantly. The second one started shouting, and I raced over to him to put him in the bubble. I was at least getting better at maintaining the bubble while moving. I tried to kick him into the wall, but he dodged, then landed a slice with his sword into my gut.

This is getting dangerous.

I kicked off the wall and landed a kick to his arm, knocking the sword out of his hand. I pushed off him towards the sword and launched it back at him, impaling him in the chest. I kicked it deeper in for good measure.

The kids were fine, so I buried the bodies and sung a quiet tune to fix my gut.

“Getting sliced and stabbed still sucks.

Hope my blood doesn’t lead them here

But if I get caught by these chucklefucks

I’ll keep swinging till the kids are all clear.”

I took another short nap. Between the need for safe air holes and the dangers the kids were facing, I couldn’t let myself sleep for very long. The nightmares didn’t help either. I tried not to focus too much on the faces of all these bandits that I had been killing, but Mohawk and his damn friends were burned into my memory, their ridiculous haircuts stained with blood from their brains bleeding and skulls cracking like walnuts.

I was startled awake by a loud sound. Another cave-in. I made my way over through my network, and I made a small hole near where I had heard the crash. I let out a few pulses. I didn’t see any trapped kids, but I did catch an alarming number of bandits lying in wait.

Fuck, they tried to lure me out? Wait, if they’re all bunched up in here like this, maybe I can use it to my advantage…

I tried to suppress my worry over my close call and dug a hole below where the ambush had positioned themselves. I dug it much deeper than my usual tunnels, leaving just enough sturdy rock and dirt to keep the floor up for them…for now.

I could hear them whispering above me. I had to move fast or I would miss my chance. Deciding the hole was deep enough, I moved to the side of my tunnel opposite the mound of dirt and rubble and focused on my silence barrier, making sure it covered the entire width of the floor above me. I let out a sonic cannon that collapsed the floor under them.

Thirteen sets of limbs came tumbling down in one heaping mess. Not waiting for them to recognize their situation, I started using the sonic magic as well as my feet to start burying them. The ones on top might’ve had a chance to climb out, but their compatriots at the bottom were pulling on them for leverage to save themselves.

188 minus 13 is…172?

No.

…175!

I heaved a big sigh and looked up–

Oh fuck!

A bandit charging some kind of fire magic was staring at me, eyes seething with sadistic rage. I tried to scurry away, but the first volley burned my feet. I let out a scream, but didn’t stop moving, even as rocks and dirt stung at my singed feet. I was in a pickle. I could hear the bandits coming. I made my way through the tunnel as fast as I could as I heard shouting from above. Then I felt heat starting to swell behind me.

Oh fuuuuuuuuuck. Not again.

I looked back and saw a sea of flame headed towards me. I embraced the only stupid idea I could think of and belted out a blast to cave-in that part of the tunnel as well, then booked it as fast as I could in case the cave-in was more extensive than I intended. I made it to an exit that was less cluttered with people trying to kill me and hopped into a new tunnel system. I eventually made it back to a room I carved out that I thought to be the safest of my hiding spots and collapsed. I belatedly realized I had left a blood trail all the way here.

“My tunnels are probably exposed now.

I really fucked up on this

But I still refuse to give up and bow,

I’ll teach them not to make me pissed.”

I didn’t know how I was going to do it, but–

Oh, I didn’t even realize I had a notification pending.

Upgrade into ?

I immediately agreed and a wealth of information about tunnels and caves and structural integrity flooded into my brain.

Oh yeah, that’ll definitely work

…

…

Probably.

Name: Nymia

Age: 18

Species: Rabbitfolk+ Lv. 70

Class 1: Musical Medic Lv. 34

Class 2: Student of the Unorthodox Blade Lv. 4

Stats:

Bonk: 121+12

Zoom: 298

Sturdy: 109+10

Senses: 295

Brain: 118

Mana: 161

Willpower: 268+187

Free points remaining: 0

Class Skills

Sound magic Lv. 34

Soundproof Lv. 34

Calming Music Lv. 1

Healing Words Lv. 31

Medical Knowledge Lv. 18

Class 2 Skills

Weird Stabbies Lv 4

Easy Stabbies Lv. 4

Studying Stabbies Lv. 1

Zoom Stabs Lv. –

Must stab weird Lv. –

General Skills

More Running Lv. 25

Dodge! Lv 70

Barefoot Lv 70

Sneaky Lv 70

Stubbornness Lv 70

Species Skills

Rabbit’s Foot

Enhanced Senses

Forage

Big Brain Burrow

Cuddles