Chapter 52: War! Clash of the Gnolls and Forest Rabbits!

Growl?Seemingly having noticed the something out of place in the direction that the rabbits had gathered not too far away from the tribe, one of the gnolls on guard duty narrowed both of its eyes before cautiously approaching the place where the rabbits were gathered. Unaware of the danger he was putting himself in by doing something like this-

Squeak!

Sqeuaak~!

Squeeeaaaak!

And only a few seconds later he was surrounded on all sides by close to a dozen of the big forest rabbits that had gone ahead of the group upon noticing him approaching.

GROWL!?

Swish-!

Knowing that he would have no way to escape from the dozen or so big forest rabbit, he could only let out a loud growling sound to hopefully alert the rest of the tribe about the large number of forest rabbits before he was ultimately cut down by their sharp claws.

Growl!?

Grrr-!

Luckily, his last-ditch effort to alert the rest of the tribe about the impending attack was successful, as the other gnolls out patrolling instantly realized something was wrong and dashed back to alert the tribe-

Swish!

SQUEAK-!

However, the large rabbit far larger than even the big forest rabbits didn’t seem to care about this, as it let out a cute sounding war cry, causing the hundreds of forest rabbits behind it to charge forward towards the large gnoll tribe filled with killing intent. Officially starting a full-fledged war between the gnolls and the forest rabbits.

...

Chomp~!

Unaware of the battle that had started between the gnolls and the forest rabbits due in part to her killing the group of forest rabbits and the gnolls dragging their bodies back to their tribe, Scaly happily finished a third forest rabbit that had left behind by the larger group of forest rabbits already engaged in battle at the large gnoll tribe.

Squeak~

[Forest Rabbit, lvl 3]

This... Another one won’t- No! I really can’t eat any more than this or it might really start to affect my fighting ability!

Spotting another forest rabbit jumping along the bloody trail not too far away from her without noticing her, Scaly forcibly stopped herself as she was about to jump forward to chomp down on the unaware forest rabbit.

Eating three of them at once had already added quite a bit of weight to her body. Eating any more would almost definitely start to affect her speed and agility. Possibly making her intended approach of the gnoll tribe a far more dangerous endeavor than first anticipated.

With this in mind, Scaly decided to follow the bloody trail without stopping to eat the forest rabbit along the way-

Swish~!

Squeak!?

Ptsh-!

[Gained 40 Exp]

Of course, not stopping to eat it, didn’t mean she had any plans of giving up on the free exp that it provided. Especially considering that forest rabbit might end up alerting other forest rabbits to her presence, something that might result in the ones who had escaped from her back then possibly showing up at a bad time to ambush her again.

[Gained 45 Exp]

[Gained 15 Exp]

[Gained 25 Exp]

[Gain...]

As a result of this, Scaly ended up killing every single forest rabbit that she encountered along the bloody trail. Making her both happy at the unexpected free exp provided, but at the same time made her slightly worried due to the large number of forest rabbits that seemed to be travelling along the bloody trail.

Although she had no idea why there were so many forest rabbits around, she felt that it had something to do with the bloody trail that had been left by the gnolls when they dragged away the dead bodies of the forest rabbits that she had killed.

Wait... Could it be that some other forest rabbits happened to see the gnolls dragging away the dead forest rabbits and thought they were behind their death and then ended up chasing after them for revenge!?

As this thought suddenly occurred to her, Scaly felt that it was indeed possible considering that the gnolls didn’t really make any attempt to hide the fact that they were carrying the bodies of the dead forest rabbits with them, the bloody trail alone was more than enough to conclude this.

Not to mention, the forest rabbits did also seem to have the ability to work together in groups like the gnolls. Even though it wasn’t highlighted in their description when she had inspected them, the ambush she herself had experienced not too long ago was more than enough to show they had this ability...

SQUEAK-!

GROOOOWL!

Just as she was lost in her own thoughts thinking about the intelligence of the forest rabbits, a loud squeaking sound followed by an equally loud growling sound broke through the tranquility of the forest.

Huh? Forest Rabbit... And a gnoll!?

Taken aback by the sudden loud squeaking sound of a forest rabbit and the growling sound she had already begun to associate with gnolls, Scaly could not help momentarily freezing on the spot before quickly hiding herself to avoid getting noticed by the owners of the two loud sounds... And only after making sure that she hadn’t been spotted, did she begin to cautiously approach the direction of the sound.

Rustle~

After cautiously continuing forward like this for a little over five minutes, Scaly found herself at the edge of a massive battle that seemed to rage on as far as she could see, with countless forest rabbits swarming a large number of gnolls protectively guarding a large tribe surrounded in wall that she had never expected gnolls to be capable of creating.

Bang! Bang! Bang!

However, out of the hundreds, if not thousands of forest rabbits and gnolls clashing with each other on the battlefield, the most eye catching was a massive rabbit more than five times larger than an ordinary big forest rabbit clashing violently with an equally large and familiar looking gnoll-

[Forest Gnoll Chieftain, lvl 51]

And that gnoll was none other than the gnoll chieftain she had encountered back at the destroyed encampment when she had first ventured into the forest in search of monsters to hunt down!