Entering the living room, he found Aya lying on the sofa, reading another book. The sight of the tender girl in a robe over her naked body reading children's fairy tales so touched him that he couldn't hold back, leaned in, and kissed her lips.
"Oh, Kenshin, hi. Done with your stuff?" Aya asked, licking her lips after the kiss.
"Not yet, a couple things left. Rest; in your condition, you need more rest..." Kenshin drawled, stroking her cute but no longer flat belly.
"Mm-hm..." Aya purred, enjoying her man's caress and care.
Kenshin headed to the kitchen, and the girl returned to reading. In the kitchen, the young man tinkered with cooling formations in the refrigerator for about half an hour. It wasn't easy to set a completely new formation different from previous ones, but after half an hour, the fridge was at five degrees Celsius, and the freezer at minus ten.
"Aya, sweetie, come here." Kenshin called from the kitchen.
"Hm? What happened?" the girl asked curiously.
"Look. This is the refrigerator. Reach in—feel it?"
"Um, cool... What's it for?"
"So food lasts longer or stays cold. Like cold water on a hot summer day... Now look here—this is the freezer, much colder. Food can stay frozen here for a very long time!" Kenshin explained proudly, pleased with his handiwork.
"Brrr, really cold..." The girl shivered and pulled her hand out of the freezer.
"Good, sweetie, just don't forget to close the fridge door so the cold doesn't escape." Kenshin said in a lecturing tone, kissed the back of her head, and headed out.
It was five p.m., and Kenshin decided to start drawing a huge formation to divert any trespassers onto his territory. The young man climbed a higher mountain and surveyed his "domain," estimating the formation's approximate scale in his mind.
Then he descended the mountain and trudged to the right. After walking about five kilometers, the young man decided that was enough and mentally shuddered at the enormous volume of work ahead.
"Damn, and why among the knowledge available to me is there no way to shorten formations..." Kenshin muttered under his breath as he walked along the marked territory, leaving a noticeable trail 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 disrupted. The drawn formation line overlaid the terrain in its embryonic state and retained its properties for seven days.
The young man knew that formation masters had access to more advanced drawing methods that allowed setting the main nodes, and the rest of the lines would "grow" on their own. Kenshin suspected that this knowledge would become available at the third level of the "Formation Creation" skill.
After walking about 500 meters with the sharpened stick and spending about an hour on it, Kenshin left a mark at the spot where he stopped and headed to the set snares.
Checking three out of ten snares, the young man found nothing and was already despairing, but in the fourth, a large, long-eared rabbit was firmly caught. Kenshin eagerly jumped over to it and discovered that it was still alive, caught in the snare by its hind legs.
Seeing the human, the rabbit shuddered and, in terror, tried to flee in a random direction, but it didn't work. When Kenshin approached closer, the rabbit squealed and looked at him with its big red eyes.
"Ah, sorry, you long-eared one, but we need something to eat. That's how life is arranged..." The young man sighed, grabbed the rabbit by the ears, freed it from the snares, then tossed it into the formation-reinforced sack.
Then Kenshin went to the remaining snares and found one more live rabbit and one strangled one. Throwing them into a pile, the young man adjusted the snares, checked the set formations, and headed home.
The formations that helped catch the rabbit were arranged on a fairly simple principle and worked on rather stupid animals, influencing their minds and forcing them into the trap. This was one of the two formations available to the young man that affected consciousness. The second was the one he was drawing on the five-kilometer perimeter, and it influenced human minds, forcing random passersby to take another path. But it didn't work on people firmly intent on entering the formation's area.
"I wonder at what level of ability the Thousand Faces Formation will become available to me..." Kenshin thought with anticipation.
The Thousand Faces Formation was so named because of the hundreds of different ghosts with terrifying faces that confronted anyone who entered the formation. And although this formation wasn't offensive, staying in its area severely shook a person's mental health, and the weaker their will, the greater the damage, up to loss of sanity and agonizing death.
Not far from home, the young man tossed the sack of rabbits, stretched a rope between two young trees, tied it tightly, and with a sigh pulled a dead rabbit from the sack. He didn't know if strangled animals could be eaten, but decided that if it was "fresh" enough and the blood drained out, it would be fine.
The young man hung the rabbit upside down, grimaced, and in one motion slit its throat. Fresh blood poured onto the ground, and the rabbits in the sack, as if sensing their fate, tried in horror to break free and squealed wildly.
Kenshin pulled out one of the live rabbits, lifted it by the ears, looked into its eyes, and gently stroked its soft fur, then in one motion broke its neck and hung it on the rope, slitting its throat.
The young man decided not to call Aya too early, thinking it wasn't worth her seeing the cute little animals alive. After doing the same procedure with the third rabbit, the young man headed home.
"Do you know how to butcher rabbits?" Kenshin asked, finding the girl in the living room.
"Rabbits? Well... Grandpa had rabbits once, and I saw how they were gutted. Why?"
"Get dressed and come with me. I caught three rabbits. We've got an hour until dark; we need to skin them." The young man said, settling onto the sofa.
"Wow, caught rabbits that fast? Great, I'll get dressed right now!" The blue-eyed beauty declared, shrugging off her robe and striding toward the bedroom, elegantly swaying her hips, making Kenshin groan.
"Aren't you afraid to tease a hungry husband like that? I might not hold back, and you'll be limping all week..." He said after her, admiring the graceful sway of her firm ass.
"Ah, you only promise..." Aya coquettishly called from the bedroom.
"Getting sneakier and sneakier every day, a real fox! Just wait until she grows nine tails..." Kenshin murmured with a smile, noticing how deeply he had fallen for this girl in such a short time.
Dressed, Aya returned to the living room and announced she was ready. Then, grabbing the necessary things, they left the house and headed to the hanging rabbits.
"Nice rabbits." Aya praised, to the young man's surprise showing no disgust, and began examining them more closely. Kenshin decided that life in the village had dispelled any illusions the girl had about how life worked.
Then the girl, without taking the rabbit off the rope, made several incisions in the skin and in literally five minutes skinned it. Meanwhile, the young man watched attentively and memorized.
"Did I already tell you you're real gold to me?" Kenshin said with a smile, kissing the girl on the neck.
"Mm, you did, but you could say it more often!"
Half an hour later, all three rabbits were skinned, and Kenshin brought two buckets of water from the house to wash away the bloodstains.
Meanwhile, Aya went home and set about dividing the carcasses into parts, then put them in the refrigerator.
An hour later, Kenshin and Aya lay in bed, preparing for sleep. The young man stroked the girl's already visible belly and thought about soon becoming a father. And though the future children, by the "will" of the system, were supposed to be something like bargaining chips, Kenshin hated this setup and didn't want his children to suffer.
"On the other hand—they're all destined to become shinobi, and war is their element..." The young man thought, sighed deeply, hugged the fragile girl, inhaled her tender scent, and fell asleep.