Vee grumpily walked through the thick, heavy snow, tracking her idiot master Yuki’s location using her system radar.
"Hey! Yuki, what the hell is wrong with your hearing, huh? Are you deaf?!" Vee spat angrily the moment she finally caught up to him.
But when she actually looked at him, she saw he wasn’t hurt at all. He was just standing there, blissfully smiling at her as he always did. Vee let out a long internal sigh, realizing for the hundredth time that she just couldn’t stay mad at him.
"You decided to run off again just to kill... wait. What exactly am I looking at?" Vee’s voice trailed off as she blinked at the massive carcass behind him.
"It was a snow salamander!" Yuki said proudly, puffing out his chest. "And I took it down all by myself."
"Huh. Well... good job," Vee said, clearing her throat to hide how impressed she actually was. "But you need to stick close to me from now on, got it?"
"Yes, ma’am!"
"Don’t call me ma’am! It makes me sound old," Vee pouted, crossing her arms. "And please, change your clothes. You look terrible with all those rips. By the way, why are you even hunting out here by yourself anyway?"
"To gather as many essence cores as I can, and to sell the monster materials for lifestyle points!" Yuki said excitedly, his eyes practically sparkling.
Vee sighed, scratching her head. "Okay, fine. You stay right here and dissect the lizard, and I’ll go out ahead and hunt the snow wolves we passed earlier."
"Sounds good!"
"Stay ’here’. Only leave this spot if you are actively being attacked by something, got it?"
"Uh-huh, got it! I won’t go anywhere, I promise," Yuki said, giving her a bright, blindingly innocent smile.
"Alright..." Vee muttered, her cheeks turning flustered and pink under his gaze. "I’ll be going then."
She turned around and began to walk away into the trees when Yuki’s soft voice called out to her.
"Vee."
"Yeah?" She paused, looking back over her shoulder.
"Be careful out there, okay?"
A soft, genuine smile played on Vee’s lips as her heart fluttered. "I will."
With that final exchange of words, the two continued with their separate tasks—Vee heading deeper into the forest to hunt snow wolves, while Yuki stayed behind to dissect the salamander for its valuable materials.
Vee soon arrived at a small clearing in the woods. Standing directly in front of her were three massive snow wolves. They instantly turned to face her, baring their razor-sharp fangs and growling deeply.
"Just the three of you?" Vee said, sounding thoroughly disappointed.
She interlocked her fingers and stretched her arms out in front of her, holding the position until she heard her muscles loosen up with a soft, satisfying pop. "Mmmm, oh yeah, that’s the stuff. Alright, you meat bags, it’s time to hunt. And unfortunately for you, this new body of mine is a walking power unit," she declared smugly.
Then, Vee froze as a sudden realization hit her. ’Wait... how exactly was Yuki able to afford such a powerful avatar so early?’
Curiosity getting the better of her, she opened up the shared Store History interface to see exactly how much Yuki had spent. There was absolutely no way that idiot had accumulated that many lifestyle points so quickly.
"Let’s see..."
[Vee,] the System interrupted smoothly. [You should focus on the fight right now, not the shop log.]
"It will just take a second."
[No, I am telling you. You really do not want to look at that right now.]
"How bad could it possibly be? Ah, there it is... thirty thousand points?!" Vee screamed out in utter shock, her rabbit ears pinning straight back. "What the hell?!"
[I told you so.]
Vee quickly dismissed the floating interface and turned back to the remaining wolves, a deeply guilty yet predatory expression darkling her face. "I am so sorry for what I’m about to do to you guys, but Yuki’s got a massive debt to pay off somehow."
In a split second, Vee vanished from where she was standing. The wolves instantly grew on edge, their senses scrambling as their target completely disappeared from sight.
The second wolf whipped its head to the left, sensing a sudden displacement of air. Before it could even register the danger, Vee’s foot connected brutally with its underbelly. The intense, high-velocity strike sent the beast flying straight into a nearby tree, killing it on impact with a loud sickening crunch.
The third wolf dashed forward, snapping its jaws in a desperate attempt to bite her, but Vee wasn’t just any regular beast-kin rabbit woman, she was a high-tier Killer Rabbit variant.
With a effortless fluid motion, she brought her heel down like a meteor onto the wolf’s skull, crushing its brains instantly with a loud, echoing BANG.
Before the final wolf of the initial trio could even react, it was already soaring through the air from a devastating follow-up attack, landing dead in the snow a few yards away.
Vee let out a triumphant puff of air, a childish, prideful smile spreading across her face. "This body is way better than I thought! This is going to be an absolute cake walk..."
[Or not,] the System chimed in.
Suddenly, dozens of glowing red dots began flashing on her radar, approaching rapidly from every direction. There were at least twenty of them closing in.
"Looks like you boys brought backup for round two," Vee said, her smile turning competitive as she cracked her knuckles.
The pack of twenty snow wolves wasted no time, launching a coordinated ambush. A frenzy of snapping jaws and clawed paws lashed out at her from the brush.
Vee cleverly angled her body, creating a defensive pocket to maximize her room for movement as the onslaught of monsters converged on her position.
Chomp!
The first wolf lunged, its teeth missing Vee’s shoulder by a mere fraction of an inch. In that exact microsecond, three more wolves rushed into her blind spot, swiping their razor-sharp claws at her.
BANG!
"Arf!" a wolf yelped in agony as Vee’s heavy fist connected squarely with its snout, sending it reeling backward into the snow.
Vee’s eyes locked onto another wolf flanking her right side. Whipping her leg around in a blindingly fast horizontal arc, she smashed her foot into the beast’s ribs, the sheer force launching its body directly into another incoming attacker.
The moment her front path cleared, she pushed off the ground using the full explosive power of her long rabbit legs. She agilely closed the distance between herself and the remaining wolves, slamming her fists into them before fluidly pivoting to the next target.
Even though the wolves heavily outnumbered her, they simply couldn’t keep up with her high maneuverability, blinding speed, and monstrous physical strength.
A few of the wolves managed to land desperate, grazing strikes on her arms and sides, but every single scratch they dealt was immediately met with a devastating counterattack from Vee that almost always ended in their deaths.
One final wolf charged in, biting down forcefully right where Vee’s legs had been standing a millisecond prior. But she was already gone. In the next heartbeat, she descended from the air, landing directly on its spine with full force and crushing the beast into the dirt.