Restart Again: Volume 2 by Adam Scott (best adventure books to read .TXT) 📗

currently served as my destination. While it was true I craved fresh meat over the jerky packed in our wagon, I also wanted a moment alone with my thoughts.

There was a novel feeling of contentment in my mind as I trekked across the grassy field to the small forest. Somewhere in the back of my head I knew that I was inevitably heading towards the end of my time in this world, but the idea was held at bay with happier thoughts. I was finally getting along with Val, and her raw combat talent surpassed my own. Lia seemed happier than ever, and I was slowly coming to terms with the idea of putting away my protective cynicism and allowing myself to enjoy life.

When I reached the tree line, I stopped and sent out a pulse of Detection magic. A starry sea of wriggling lights lined every surface before me as tiny insects crawled through the dirt and over the flora. As I pushed further outwards, larger creatures began to appear: a pair of squirrels rummaging through the underbrush, a songbird chirping happily high up on a tree branch, and a groundhog sleeping underground in its burrow.

About two hundred feet into the thicket my mana came across a plump looking rabbit. With perfect timing my stomach let out a loud gurgle, and I chuckled to myself as I decided on my prey. I placed my hand gently on the grip of my sword and took a slow, deliberate step into the underbrush, then paused in thought. I don’t need to sneak up on it if I kill it from here.

An electric tingle of excitement ran down my spine as I proposed myself the challenge. Even after multiple lifetimes of using magic in one form or another, purely offensive magic was entirely new to me. My comfort zone was firmly planted in the self-enhancement camp; unless I wanted to make the rabbit significantly harder to kill, that field would be useless in my current endeavor.

Standing isolated in a thicket of trees gave me the unique opportunity to test some of the potentially dangerous ideas I had been mulling over during my training with Lia, although I still had an obstacle to overcome before I could consider trying new spells. While the idea of channeling and casting magic through a distant object seemed airtight in theory, it was not something I had ever attempted before. Start simple, with an easy proof of concept. Something to put my mind at ease.

I steadied my breathing and focused hard on the small creature. The mana surrounding it slowly suffused down through its fur and into the skin, which brought the rabbit into a stunning level of focus in my mind. I could feel the rapid beat of its small heart, see the blood pump through its body, and hear the shallow inhale and exhale as it sat contented in the grass. For a brief moment, I relived a sensation I had experienced with Lia when we had shared our mana; it was as though I could sense what the rabbit experienced, though only through vague flashes and snippets.

“Pain Reduction,” I whispered under my breath. To my delight, I felt the telltale tug at the edge of my mana reserves that signaled the successful use of magic. The rabbit’s head popped up suddenly as it looked around in distress, and I felt the primal urge to run flash through my mind. After a moment to scan the surrounding area, it returned to nibbling on a patch of grass.

Well, THAT certainly warrants further investigation. My head was swimming with possible implications of what I had just experienced, but I clapped my cheeks lightly in my hands to regain focus. Later. The issue at hand still remained: How do you kill a rabbit with magic? I knew that a simple invocation of Fire would do the trick, but it wasn’t suited for the situation. Not only would it ruin the point of the excursion by soiling the meat, but I also knew that even through the Pain Reduction it would be an agonizing death, and animal experimentation didn’t sit well with me.

Start simple. With renewed focus, I reached out to the rabbit and pulled on my mana. “Kill,” I intoned solemnly. There was a subtle stirring of energy in my core, but the moment passed and the rabbit continued to chew on its greens. Not that I expected that to work, but it’s good to know. While magic was still a mostly unknown art to me, I had suspected that the imprecise and open-ended nature of the command would fail. In that regard, the next item to test on my list held much more promise.

I brought the image of the rabbit to full focus within my mind and studied its skeletal structure intently: the way the vertebrae of its back interlocked, how the muscles and tendons articulated, and the minute electrical impulses that controlled them. The lessons I had learned in school about anatomy were over a century old, and I had been a particularly unmotivated student, but any scientific knowledge from my first life was still an enormous boon. After another meditative breath, I spoke my next command. “Paralysis.”

There was a static rush down my leg as the energy raced out to where the rabbit rested. All at once, the muscles in its body contracted uncontrollably, as though it were being electrocuted. It bounced in place once, and then tipped over onto its side where it stayed motionless. I could feel the mana continue to drain as I channeled the spell, and noted that it drew considerably more energy than the Pain Reduction enhancement also in effect.

A sense of urgency washed over me, a combination of sympathetic fight-or-flight responses from the rabbit pinging in the back of my brain and the sudden realization that my prey was now asphyxiating. How do you kill a rabbit? In my time hunting rabbits in Alderea, it had been a simple