Chapter 14

When he entered the living room, he found Aya lying on the couch, reading another book. He was so moved by the sight of the gentle girl, in a naked robe, reading children's stories, that he couldn't help but lean over and kiss her on the lips.

- Oh, Kenshin, hello. Finished with your business? - Licking her lips after the kiss, Aya asked.

- No, not yet, there's still some things to do. Rest, you should rest more in your condition..." Kenshin stretched, and stroked her cute but not so flat stomach anymore.

- Uh-huh... - Aya murmured, enjoying her man's caress and care.

Kenshin headed for the kitchen, and the girl returned to her reading. In the kitchen, the young man fiddled with the "cooling" formations in the refrigerator for about half an hour. He didn't immediately succeed in setting a completely different formation from the ones he had done before, but after half an hour the refrigerator was set at five gdaus Celsius and the freezer at minus ten Celsius.

- Aya, girl, come here. - Shouted Kenshin from the kitchen.

- М? What happened? - Interestedly asked the girl.

- Look. It's the refrigerator. Hold out your hand, can you feel it?

- Um, it's cool... What's that thing for?

- To keep food longer, or to keep it cold. Like cold water on a hot summer day... Now look here, this is a freezer, and it's much colder. Here food can be kept frozen for a very long time! - Kenshin said proudly, pleased with the fruits of his labors.

- Brrr, it's really cold..." The girl shivered and took her hand out of the freezer.

- Well, honey, just do not forget to close the door of the fridge, so that all the cold does not escape. - Kenshin said in a cautionary tone, kissed the girl on the back of the head, and headed out.

It was five p.m. on the clock, and Kenshin decided to start drafting a huge formation to distract people who wandered into his territory. The young man climbed up a higher mountain, and surveyed his "domain," estimating in his mind the approximate scale of the formation.

Then he descended the mountain and walked to his right. After traveling about five kilometers, he decided that was enough, and mentally shuddered at the enormous amount of work to be done.

- Damn, why is there no method of shortening formations among my knowledge..." muttered Kenshin to himself as he walked through the planned area, leaving a noticeable mark in the ground with a large sharpened stick. He wasn't worried that by the time he finished the last line, the first one would be broken. The line of formation he had drawn was overlaid on the terrain in its infancy, and retained its properties for seven days.

The young man knew that more advanced methods of drawing were available to formation masters to establish the basic nodes, and the remaining lines would "grow" by themselves. Kenshin guessed that this knowledge would become available at the third level of the Formation Creation skill.

After walking about 500 meters with a sharpened stick, and taking about an hour to do so, Kenshin left a mark where he stopped and headed for the set snares.

After checking three of the ten snares, the young man found nothing and was about to despair, but in the fourth, a large, long-eared hare was firmly caught. Kenshin excitedly jumped up to him and found that he was still alive and caught in the snare with his hind legs.

On seeing the man, the hare flinched, and with terror tried to run away at random, but it failed. When Kenshin came closer, the hare squealed, and looked at him with its big red eyes.

- Eh, sorry, squint, but we have to eat something. That's the way of life..." The young man sighed, and grabbed the hare by its ears, releasing it from its snares, then threw it into a form-fastened bag.

Then Kenshin went to the rest of the snares, and found another hare alive, and one strangled. Throwing them into the same pile, the young man corrected the snares, checked the set formations, and went home.

The formations that helped catch the hare were arranged on a fairly simple principle, and acted on rather stupid animals by influencing their minds and forcing them into a trap. It was one of two mind-affecting formations available to the young man. The second was a formation he drew on a five-kilometer perimeter, and it affected the minds of people, making the wanderers go the other way. But it had no effect on people determined to go into the area of the formation.

"I wonder at what level of ability, the Thousand Face Formation will become available to me..." thought Kenshin with anticipation.

The Thousand Faces Formation was so named because of the hundreds of different ghosts with horrible faces that one encountered when entering the formation. Though the formation was not of an attacking nature, being in the area of the formation shook one's mental health badly, and the weaker one's will, the greater the damage, up to and including loss of mind and agonizing death.

****

Before he reached home, the young man dropped the bag of hares, stretched a rope between two young trees, tied it tightly, and with a sigh pulled a dead hare from the bag. He didn't know if it was okay to eat a strangled animal, but decided that if it was "fresh" enough and would bleed out, then it was okay.

The young man hung the hare upside down, grimaced, and in one motion slit its throat. Fresh blood poured on the ground, and the hares in the sack, as if sensing the fate prepared for them, tried to escape in terror, and squealed wildly.

Kenshin pulled one of the live hares out, picked it up by its ears, looked it in the eyes, and gently stroked its soft fur, then in one motion broke its neck, and hung it on a rope, slitting its throat.

The young man decided not to call out to Aya prematurely, figuring she shouldn't see the cute animals alive. After doing the same with the third rabbit, he went home.

- Do you know how to butcher rabbits? - Kenshin asked, finding the girl in the living room.

- Hares? Well... Grandfather once had rabbits, and I saw how they were gutted. Why?

- Get dressed, and come with me. I caught three rabbits. It's an hour before dark, we've got to skin them. - Said the young man, and sat down on the couch.

- Wow, you caught rabbits so fast? Okay, I'll get dressed! - Declared blue-eyed beauty, threw off her robe, and marched toward the bedroom, elegantly swaying her hips, making Kenshin groan.

- Aren't you afraid of teasing your hungry husband like that? I might not be able to help it, and you'll be limping all week..." he said as he followed her, admiring the graceful jiggling of her firm ass.

- Oh, you only promise..." Aya shouted coquettishly to him from the bedroom.

- More cunning every day, a real fox! Just wait until she grows nine tails..." Kenshin muttered with a smile, noticing how much he had grown to love this girl in such a short time.

After getting dressed, Aya returned to the living room, and notified him that she was ready. Then grabbing the necessary items, they left the house, and headed for the hanging bunnies.

- Good bunnies. - Praised Aya, who to the young man's surprise showed no squeamishness and began to examine them more closely. Kenshin decided that life in the village had caused the girl to have no illusions about how life works.

Then the girl, without taking the hare off the rope, made a few incisions in the hide, and in literally five minutes she skinned it. The young man, meanwhile, watched carefully and remembered.

- Have I told you before, you're real gold to me? - Kenshin said with a smile, and kissed the girl on the neck.

- Mm, you did, but you could say it more often!

Half an hour later, all three hares were skinned, and Kenshin brought two buckets of water from the house to wash off the traces of blood.

Aya, meanwhile, returned home, and busied herself cutting the carcasses into several pieces, and then placing them in the refrigerator.

An hour later, Kenshin and Aya were lying in bed, getting ready for bed. The young man stroked the girl's already visible tummy, and thought about becoming a father soon. Although the future children, according to the "dictates" of the system, were supposed to be something of a bargaining chip, Kenshin did not like this arrangement at all, and he did not want his children to suffer.

"On the other hand - they are all to become shinobi, and war is their element..." - thought the young man, took a deep breath, hugged the fragile girl, and inhaling her delicate scent, fell asleep.