With his cover being blown, Leon lunged straight at the rabbit. Instinctively, the rabbit dodged to the side and swung its claws at Leon. Even though his body felt like it was being stabbed by hundreds of blades, he clenched his teeth and persevered through the pain that came with dodging.
The two of them faced off and looked each other in the eyes. Leon noticed that rabbit's eyes were completely blood red. Normally, Leon would go back into the shadows like an assassin and strike like a snake, but he didn't think that his body could handle that much movement.
Instead, he called on his near-invisible wind sword and threw it at the rabbit before he lunged with his two knives. Up until now, most foes and every monster were caught completely surprised by the near-invisible wind weapon, however, something happened that caught Leon by surprise.
The rabbit stared in the direction of the near-invisible weapon, while Leon continued to lunge he saw the rabbit's actions and gave a nervous chuckle.
'Surely it can't see the wind weapon and somehow dodges, right?'
His fears would come true as a glint appeared in the rabbit's eyes and at the last moment it dodged to the side with a quick jump that contained all of its explosive power. The wind weapon grazed the fur of the rabbit and gave it a little trim instead of injuring it.
When Leon saw the rabbit dodge the wind weapon, his jaw dropped and if it could, it would've dropped to the floor. Seeing his initial attack ineffective, he tried his best to toss the knife in his right hand at the rabbit even though his shoulder was still injured.
The dagger traveled at a slow speed, which the rabbit could easily dodge. However, the original trajectory of the knife was not targeting the rabbit but just to the side of it. With only his left arm uninjured severely, Leon secured Ensis's left dagger and slashed horizontally at the rabbit.
Being trapped by Leon's other dagger, the rabbit had nowhere to go so it decided to meet the attack head-on and slashed at the approaching dagger with its sharp claws. The moment the dagger collided with the claws a loud screeching noise occurred and sparks started to fly.
Normally, Leon would have an advantage in such situations, but he was using his non-dominant arm with a dagger so the battle between the two was quite close. With the muscles on his left arm and shoulder bulging, he started to scream as he poured all his energy and strength to overpower the rabbit.
With that final push, the rabbit lost the encounter and its sharp, metal-like claws cracked and shattered. It shrieked with pain before its head fell on the ground with a plop. The moment the rabbit had fallen.
Leon dropped to his knees as he panted heavily, having each breath loudly expressed. With the rabbit dead, he could finally analyze everything he learned and came to a couple of conclusions.
First off, even though the battle had looked like it had been a tough one. When he became fully healed, Leon didn't think that fighting one of the rabbits would pose any threat to him since he currently could exert maybe 25-35% of his current power due to injuries.
Second off, he understood why the ogre was so helpless under the rabbit's ferocious assault. Their claws were so hard that Leon thought they were metal when he first collided with them. Any regular pieces of steel with no enchantments or special techniques applied would definitely at least chip and perhaps even shatter.
Luckily he was confident as long as the enemy's strength and power weren't too overwhelming compared to himself, that Ensis would be unrivaled most times. Although, the world-class weapon wasn't even near its apex form since Leon was still too weak.
Leon continued to stay on the ground as he caught his breath, by the time he finally stood up. The rabbit's corpse had already spilled a lot of its blood, which meant that the corpse wouldn't spoil too much. However, just in case, Leon cut a few more cuts in its limbs and picked it up by its hind legs as he slowly walked back towards the cavern.
It took him close to 90 minutes, but he eventually approached the familiar cavern and saw Aurora patiently waiting near the entrance of the cavern.
Aurora had been worried since Leon had been gone for quite a while, but once she saw him walking back with the corpse of the rabbit. She gave a playful pout.
"What took you so long? You had this cute lady worried that something bad happened to you. If that happened what would this cute lady do?"
Leon walked up to Aurora and rubbed her hair which frizzled it up, but he smiled.
"You wouldn't think I'd actually die to a rabbit, would you? I merely enjoyed the walk here and took my time."
Even though he was saying that, in his mind, Leon was thinking about something completely different.
'Sorry for lying Aurora, but it'd be better if you weren't scared and stressed just because I told you how scary those rabbits actually are.'
Walking towards a flat rock, Leon brought the rabbit with him.
"Let's get something cooking shall we?"
Leon wasn't a chef or cook by any means, but he could do a relatively decent job at skinning an animal. Although, the rabbit could be classified as a monster since it wasn't like a normal rabbit found in the wilderness due to its metal-like claws that could cut through a normal human with one slash. The anatomy was still relatively similar.
After he skinned the rabbit, he had to somehow make a fire even though he was stuck in the cavern. Luckily for him, the crack he fell down had been big enough that when Leon hit trees on the way down, some of the branches fell down with him too.
They were extremely wet, but Leon dried some off and used them to kindle a fire. Even though it was dark due to the sheen of night. Even though Leon was still hurting all over and his shoulder looked like a mess. Even though he was still trapped with Aurora underground with no immediate escape, Leon felt better about his situation and started to plan for the future.