Entering the living room, he found Aya lying on the sofa reading another book. He was so touched by the sight of the tender girl in a robe over her naked body reading children's fairy tales that he couldn't resist, leaned down, and kissed her lips.
"Oh, Kenshin, hello. Finished with your chores?" Aya asked, licking her lips after the kiss.
"Not yet, there's still something left. Rest, in your condition you need more rest…" Kenshin drawled and stroked her cute but no longer so flat stomach.
"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 spent about half an hour working with "cooling" formations in the refrigerator. It didn't work out right away to install a completely different formation from those he had done before, but after half an hour the refrigerator was set to five degrees Celsius, and the freezer to minus ten degrees Celsius.
"Aya, girl, come here," Kenshin shouted from the kitchen.
"M? What happened?" the girl asked with interest.
"Look. This is a refrigerator. Reach in, feel it?"
"Um, cool… What's this thing for?"
"So that food stays fresh longer or stays cold. For example, cold water on a hot summer day… And now look here, this is the freezer compartment, and it's much colder. Food can be stored frozen here for a very long time!" Kenshin proudly explained, pleased with the fruits of his labour.
"Brrr, really cold…" the girl shivered and pulled her hand out of the freezer.
"Good, dear, just don't forget to close the refrigerator door so all the cold doesn't escape," Kenshin said in a teaching tone, kissed the girl on the back of the head, and headed for the exit.
It was five in the evening, and Kenshin decided to start drawing a huge formation to divert people who wandered into his territory. The young man climbed a higher mountain and surveyed his "possessions", estimating the approximate scale of the formation in his mind.
Then he descended the mountain and walked to the right. After walking about five kilometres, the young man decided that was enough and mentally shuddered at the huge amount of work ahead.
"Damn, and why among the knowledge available to me is there no way to reduce formations…" Kenshin muttered to himself, walking along the intended territory and 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 would be broken. A drawn formation line was applied to the terrain in an embryonic state and retained its properties for seven days.
The young man knew that masters of formations had access to more advanced drawing methods that allowed setting main nodes and the rest of the lines would "grow" by themselves. Kenshin guessed that this knowledge would become available at the third level of the "Formation Creation" skill.
After walking with the sharpened stick for about 500 metres and spending about an hour on it, Kenshin left a mark where he stopped and headed to the set snares.
After checking three of the ten snares, the young man found nothing and was already despairing, but in the fourth a large long-eared rabbit was firmly caught. Kenshin jumped to it with enthusiasm and discovered that it was still alive and caught by its hind legs.
Seeing the human, the rabbit shuddered and tried to run away in a random direction out of fear, but failed. When Kenshin approached closer, the rabbit squealed and looked at him with its large red eyes.
"Ah, sorry, long-ears, but we need something to eat. That's how life works…" the young man sighed, grabbed the rabbit by the ears, freed it from the snare, and then threw it into the bag reinforced with a formation.
Then Kenshin went to the remaining snares and found another live rabbit and one strangled one. Throwing them into one pile, the young man adjusted the snares, checked the installed formations, and headed home.
The formations that helped catch rabbits were arranged on a fairly simple principle and worked on rather stupid animals, affecting their minds and forcing them to go into the trap. This was one of two formations available to the young man that affected consciousness. The second was the formation he was drawing on the five-kilometre perimeter, and it affected people's minds, forcing random passers-by to go another way. But it didn't work on people firmly intent on entering the formation's area of effect.
"I wonder at what skill level the Thousand Faces formation will become available…" Kenshin thought with anticipation.
The Thousand Faces formation was so named because of the hundreds of different ghosts with terrible faces that a person caught in the formation encountered. And although this formation was not offensive in nature, being in the formation area greatly shook a person's mental health, and the weaker their will, the greater the damage, up to loss of sanity and agonising death.
****
Before reaching home, the young man threw the bag with rabbits, stretched a rope between two young trees, tied it tightly, and with a sigh took a dead rabbit out of the bag. He didn't know if a strangled animal could be eaten, but decided that if it was "fresh" enough and the blood drained, then it would be fine.
The young man hung the rabbit upside down, grimaced, and in one motion cut its throat. Fresh blood poured onto the ground, and the rabbits in the bag, as if sensing their fate, tried to escape in horror 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, cutting its throat.
The young man decided not to call Aya early, thinking it wasn't worth her seeing the cute animals alive. After doing the same procedure with the third rabbit, the young man went home.
"Do you know how to skin rabbits?" Kenshin asked, finding the girl in the living room.
"Rabbits? Well… Grandfather once had rabbits, and I saw how they were gutted. Why?"
"Get dressed and follow me. I caught three rabbits. There's an hour until dark, we need to skin them," the young man said and sat on the sofa.
"Wow, caught rabbits so quickly? All right, I'll get dressed now!" the blue-eyed beauty declared, throwing off her robe and walking toward the bedroom, elegantly swaying her hips, making Kenshin moan.
"Not 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 swaying of her firm ass.
"Ah, you only promise…" Aya coquettishly shouted from the bedroom.
"Getting craftier every day, a real fox! Just have to wait for her to grow nine tails…" Kenshin muttered with a smile, noticing how much he had fallen in love with this girl in such a short time.
After dressing, 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.
"Good 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 led to the girl having no illusions about how life worked.
Then the girl, without removing the rabbit from the rope, made several cuts in the skin and literally skinned it in five minutes. The young man watched carefully and memorised.
"Have I already told you that you're pure gold?" Kenshin said with a smile and kissed the girl's neck.
"Mm, you have, 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 blood traces.
Meanwhile Aya returned home and began dividing the carcasses into several parts, then placed them in the refrigerator.
An hour later Kenshin and Aya were lying in bed preparing for sleep. The young man stroked the girl's already visible belly and thought about soon becoming a father. And although the future children, by the "will" of the system, were supposed to be something like bargaining chips, Kenshin didn't like this arrangement at all and didn't want his children to suffer.
"On the other hand—they'll all have to become shinobi, and war is their element…" the young man thought, sighed deeply, hugged the fragile girl, and inhaling her tender scent fell asleep.