LIGHTNOVELONLINE Chapter 72 – A Serf
After the strange rabbits visit no other creature dared even move in the camp's direction. Jason for the first time in days has a decent night’s sleep. He wakes up an hour after sunrise to the rabbit kit nudging him, whining for more berries. A little groggy after the unexpected sleep he takes some time to remember where he put them. After feeding the kit he stops, frozen in place by a thought. As far as it concerns him he should not have fallen asleep. Breaking out of his shock Jason goes over all his gear. A relieved sigh escapes his lips after he confirms nothing is missing. Still freaked out about the situation he packs fast and readies to leave. Jason turns to the kit, “You’re still here? I guess you get to come with me. Though I know you won’t understand I might as well ask just in case. Do you want to join me on my journey?” To his surprise, a prompt from the System pops up.
Unnamed Rabbit Kit has agreed to serve you
Do you accept? Y/N
Jason stands there for a few moments as the prompt blinks to get his answer. He looks back to the rabbit kit, “I guess that answers my question, huh? Well, I see no one else here to take care of you so”, and he presses the ‘Y’. With his answer entered the System pops up more and more screens. None of it is too important. Just things about unlocking the pets and companions tab for his character sheet and how he is limited to a single non-combat pet before level 10. Luckily a baby rabbit is not the most combative creature. While it might rank up into something combat ready that is still in the future. After Jason closes all the screens, he notices something odd about the kit. The best he could describe it is the rabbit looks to be bowing to him. Not sure about what to do he firsts [Observes] it and gets back [Female Rabbit Kit Lv1] so nothing odd there. Then he remembers the message had mentioned it wanting to serve him. With no better ideas he verbally replies to it, “I accept your service.” A slight glow surrounds the rabbit. However as the glow fades nothing seems to have changed but another [Observe] proves different. The results he gets back this time is [Female Rabbit Serf Lv1]. A single word has changed but it makes a world of difference. This is the second new rabbit rank he had seen. Though he guesses that, “it might just be a path for non-combat rabbits since that would not be all that common out in the wild. Even if such a thing existed naturally, they would likely stay in the burrows doing things like taking care of the young.” Without a better answer and without any other tasks Jason picks up the rabbit and proceeds towards town.
The rabbit on the other hand is having a confusing time. Ever since Jason accepted her, screen after screen has been popping up in front of her eyes. Now in normal situations any creature in the game unable to understand the screens wouldn’t ever see them. However fates have aligned. The strange rabbit from last night had placed a seed in her mind to ask to serve Jason. All it took was for him to ask to trigger the prompt. The barrage of screens slow down as the young rabbit slowly tries to make sense of what is going on. She takes most of the trip to town before she figures out how to close the informational prompts. After a while it leaves her with a single screen. Without a clue of what to do she just stares at it for a while. Another seed left by the strange rabbit comes to fruition. The option on the screen is declined for her and all the System screens have gone away. This leaves her to enjoy the scenery. Though oddly the trip stops for a while before it continues.
This stop from Jason’s side is not odd at all though. After all it is normal to stop and check when a System screen pops up for no observable reason. Odd that it is asking to name his companion. This comes from the time it happened though. Most would expect this sort of prompt to come up right away. Not really sure what to make of it combined with the fact it has the option to minimize the prompt to answer later causes Jason to put it off. After all, he has the rest of the trip to town to figure it out.
The trip flies by as Jason mulls over this choice. No way is he going to name her one of the ‘descriptive’ rabbit names. No thumper, fluffy, or anything with the word ‘bun’ in it. He also wants to avoid the joke names like bouncer or dust bunny. While they seem cute enough whenever he has seen someone use it for a normal pet rabbit. This is a game and pets have a shockingly high tendency towards developing at least childlike levels of sentience and intelligence. No, Jason will not saddle her with some odd name because it makes a good pet name. However he also has never been that good at naming things. Eventually he gives up on thinking of it on his own. While still jogging along he pulls up a browser screen off to the side and does a quick search of ‘names for a girl rabbit’. Lots of results pop up and reinforces his decision to avoid most of them. Halfway down the page he finds what he wanted. A simple list for a few good and most importantly ‘normal’ names for a girl rabbit. From that he picks out five names that fits what he wants. Lily, Melody, Tina, Roxy, and Gloria. He took the rest of the trip to decide between those five. First to go was Gloria. Nothing against the name but for some reason the young rabbit in his arms didn’t feel like one. Tina and Roxy went one right after another because they had a harder sound to them than he wanted. This left two names to pick from and it stayed that way until the walls for the town come into view. His final decision is to name the rabbit Lily. In the end Jason went with the shorter name. Melody is an interesting name but despite his attempt to stay away from generic rabbit names he picked the flower.
