Ren stood over the Scarred Horned Rabbit and opened his Skills menu.
Something that shouldn’t have changed had.
Skills
Normal Learned Skills: None
Plunder Skill Slots: 0/1
Plunder Affinity Slots: 0/1
Vault:
Keen Bite F — Combat Passive
Unique:
[Plunder] — Slotless
Ren stared at the two separate slot counters.
That answered one question immediately: the Plunder slot was separate from normal skills.
He could still learn skills from trainers, books or wherever Pantheon expected people to get them. The single skill slot only limited the combat abilities he stole.
It even had a separate slot for affinities. Ren did not have one of those yet, but the trailers had shown enough magic for him to guess at some of the possibilities. Fire. Frost. Lightning. Whatever other schools Pantheon was hiding.
One stolen ability was already useful. The idea that Plunder could take an entirely different category of power was considerably more interesting.
He grinned again as he selected Keen Bite F.
Keen Bite — F
Combat Passive
Physical attacks against exposed weak points deal 8% increased damage.
Equip to Plunder Skill Slot?
[YES] / [NO]
Ren chose [YES].
A short channel began.
Ten seconds later: Keen Bite F equipped.
Plunder Skill Slots: 1/1
That was it.
No glow or sudden change to his body. Ren ran his tongue across his teeth. His front teeth had not grown noticeably longer.
"Good."
The Scarred Rabbit was still lying beside him.
Ren crouched and touched the corpse. The system highlighted both ears, the remaining horn, the hide and several cuts of usable meat.
He pressed the ears against the ground and worked the edge of the spearhead through their bases.
Both vanished into his inventory.
Horned Rabbit Ear Pair x1
Rabbit Cull: 2/10
He looked at the remaining horn. Then at the spear. The horn stayed where it was.
Being resourceful and destroying something valuable because he was too broke to own a knife were two different things, so he left it there.
A hunter too broke to claim his prey’s trophy. Quite aggravating. Hmm. Two dead rabbits and already calling yourself a hunter. That’s even worse when said rabbits almost hunted you instead.
Ren stood with a short laugh and checked his health.
47/100 HP.
Less than ideal.
He sat against the stone wall while his HP slowly recovered.
With nothing trying to bite him for once, he finally had time to look beyond the nearest field.
The fields were still packed with players. Hundreds were chasing rabbits between the crops, shouting over kills, calling friends over, arguing about loot or streaming whatever disaster they had just caused.
Beyond the fields, a floating island hung in the sky.
Trees covered most of it, and a ruined tower stood near one edge. A river crossed the island and poured over the side in a huge waterfall, disappearing into mist long before it reached the ground. Winged shapes circled high above it.
Right. Rabbits first.
Ren was not the only one staring.
"HOW DO WE GET UP THERE?"
Someone farther down the field shouted back, "YOU’RE LEVEL ONE!"
"I CAN HAVE DREAMS EVEN AT LEVEL ONE. AND THAT WASN’T MY QUESTION!"
Ren laughed.
Pantheon had put an island in the sky and several thousand idiots underneath it killing rabbits.
He was beginning to like the place.
His HP eventually climbed back to something he was willing to gamble with, and he pushed himself away from the wall.
The next Horned Rabbit he found crouched beneath an apple tree and watched him approach. It was Level 1, which was almost comforting after the Elite.
Horned Rabbit
Level 1
HP: 42/42
Ren raised his spear. He wanted to know whether Keen Bite actually worked. That meant hitting vulnerable targets.
The rabbit charged.
Ren kept the rabbit between himself and the tree, waited until it committed and thrust toward the center of its body.
The spear caught it in the chest.
-17 HP
Horned Rabbit: 25/42 HP
No Keen Bite.
Good. At least the passive was not just free damage on everything.
The rabbit landed, wheeled around and charged again.
Ren raised the spear point and this time he aimed higher.
The rabbit jumped.
Ren shifted the point at the last moment and drove it up through the soft underside of its throat and into its brain. He felt the skull give way through the spear shaft and grimaced. He hadn’t expected the point to go through so easily.
Critical Hit
Keen Bite F activated.
-31 HP
Horned Rabbit: 0/42 HP
The rabbit dropped beside his boots.
Ren looked at the notification, then at the wound. An eye. A throat. Probably old injuries, gaps in armor, and anything else Pantheon considered a vulnerable target counted.
Eight percent did not sound enormous. Applied on top of a critical hit, it was still a welcome bonus.
"That’s useful, but less than what comes next."
Horned Rabbit slain. +8 XP.
Level 1 — 37/100 XP
Ren grinned and waited. Slowly, the grin faded.
No black window appeared.
He even gave the corpse a long, suspicious glare.
Still nothing.
Right. Glaring at a corpse as though it owed me money won’t trigger Plunder. Still hoped it would.
So killing something didn’t guarantee Plunder. The Scarred Rabbit had been an Elite, and it had used a named ability during the fight. Either of those could have mattered.
Ren harvested the ears.
Rabbit Cull: 3/10