Chapter 15 –– Lapinus Village

When I was young, my village hosted an assembly for the 7 chieftains of the realm. Each of them brought their own guards and folks from their village, including their children.

Chieftain of Lapinus Tribe chose Arnevet District to hold the assembly, my district. For around a week, there were outsiders from other tribes staying at our district. That was the first time I saw anyone from outside of the village and realised how different they looked from us.

One day, I went to the woods to run off from my parents just to spite them. Being born as a middle child, I felt like my parents did not give me enough attention. Even though it was a completely normal and common thing to be a middle child in Lapinus Village–– since mated couples usually had multiple children here–– it still nevertheless impacted me as a child. I ran off to see if they cared, or even noticed the fact that I was gone.

I wandered about the woods and accidentally stumbled upon the Sacred Giant Mushroom. It was a gigantic mushroom consisted of countless smaller mushrooms. Behind it, I saw a boy sitting under the mushroom, all alone on his own. I didn’t remember how he looked, but I was certain that he was not someone from Lapinus Tribe. He didn’t have the bunny ears like I did.

I accidentally stepped on a dried twig and made a loud crunch sound. He turned his head around to see the person lurking behind him. We then ended up making an eye contact. I was stunned by what I saw. He was the prettiest, most beautiful person I ever saw. I slowly walked towards him to approach him. I was so nervous back then I felt like my heart was going to pop.

Suddenly, I heard a voice calling out a name in the middle of the woods. It sounded like someone was searching for him.

“–– where are you?”

Before I got close to him, he immediately ran to the opposite direction from where the voice was coming from. It looked like he also ran away from his caretaker, a similar situation to mine. I watched as he escaped and decided not to catch up to him.

“So you found him.”

Suddenly, a translucent looking being appeared next to me. He was an old man who called himself Hubal, even though I just called him old man. I didn’t know which village he came from, but he was definitely not a Lapinus tribesman. In fact, I didn’t even think he was a Werebeast at all. He looked like one of those mythological furless creature*. He had no tail, no fangs, no paws, no claws, and his ears were on the sides of his head instead of on top of it. He had a bald head and a long white goatee. I didn’t think I’d ever seen any Werebeast like him before. Moreover, his feet were not touching the ground and he had a translucent and intangible body, which meant that he was no longer alive.

For some reason, I was not scared by him, despite him being a literal ghost. I was more fixated on the boy whom I saw just now whose name I didn’t know. I didn’t know why, but I felt an instant connection with him just from our first glance.

“Who was he?” I asked the old man.

“He is your soulmate. You two are fated to be together.”

I was too young to understand what he meant by that at that time. However, the connection I had with him was beyond anything I could describe.

Suddenly, a red thread appeared at the tip of my pinky finger. It was tied to my pinky finger and extended to somewhere far far away, farther than my eyes could see.

“What is this...?” I asked him.

“This is the red thread of fate. As long as you two are alive, you will be connected via this thread for the rest of your lives.”

I tried to touch the thread, but it was intangible. I moved my hand around and the thread stayed tied to my pinky finger. I noticed that it extended to the direction the boy was running.

After a while, the thread vanished and turned invisible. I couldn’t see it nor touch it, as if nothing was ever there. I looked around to see the old man, but he disappeared along with it.

The next day, I went to the exact same place. This time, neither the old man nor the boy appeared by the Sacred Giant Mushroom. I kept coming to that same spot after that, but I never saw them again.

On the last day of the 7 chieftains Assembly, the red thread of fate suddenly appeared again right in front of my eyes. I asked my siblings if they could see it, but they didn’t even have a clue about what I was talking about. I finally learnt that only I could see it. Before the thread vanished like before, I immediately ran towards the end of the thread to meet the boy whom I saw that day.

On my way there, I saw outsiders leaving the district. It was a crowd full of people from other villages. I saw the thread tied to a boy in the middle of the crowd, but I couldn’t see him clearly. I only saw a silhouette of his back, walking away from me.

I tried to follow him but he was already too far away on his saddle. In the end, that was the last time I saw him. He never returned to my district and I never met him again ever since.

“Had a good rest, child?”

I woke up to the voice of the old man standing next to me. Or rather, floating. I didn’t realise I was sleeping under the Sacred Giant Mushroom while I was doing my “daily duty.” I had that same dream again, a dream about my fated one. Actually, instead of a dream, it was more of a memory.

I immediately put on my gloves and picked up the wicker basket that I brought and continued my task for the day. I plucked some of the mushrooms off the Sacred Giant Mushroom and put them in the basket.

My name was Avram Arnevet, a 17 year old beta male pygmy rabbit from Lapinus Village. I am a fifth born child out of seven children. My parents worked as farmers, just like most people in this village. We had several acres of farmland where we mainly grew carrots and cassava. We woke up early in the morning and worked until noon for a lunch break. After that, my parents continued the work while I went to the woods to start doing my daily duty.

Out of all the 7 villages, our village had by far the largest space and land area, along with the largest population in the realm due to our incredible fertility. I even heard that most of the workforce in the realm came from this village, which showed just how many of us there were. It was common for a household to have more than 4 children, especially those who owned farmlands and managed their own farms and gardens.

Lapinus Village was known for its crops and agricultural produce. Since many of us were vegetarians, we grew a lot of vegetables and exported them to other villages. Because we were regarded as one of the lowest ranking tribes in the realm, we tried so hard to make up for it by working to provide sustenance for the realm. Culturally, we had a tendency to mate with fellow Lapinus tribesfolk rather than people from outside of the village. However, we made special exceptions for Rodent tribe and Bear tribe since we shared a long history together. Even then, only 10% of Lapinus village population came from other tribes. I hadn’t even seen anyone from other tribe in this district.

Fun fact: Lapinus tribesfolk all had bunny ears. Contrary to popular belief, it was not polite to call us “cute” upon first meeting. I didn’t know how this came about, but it was considered insincere and disrespectful to do so.

Due to the vast area of our village, we were divided into several districts. Mine was called Arnevet district, which was how I got my surname from. According to the customs in this village, our surname derived from the district we came from. My family and relatives lived here all their lives, so we all shared the same surname.

“Stop thinking while working” the old man commented on my work.

“Come help me instead of just watching,” I told him, getting annoyed by his remark.

“That is a task you have to finish by yourself,” he said, speaking like some kind of saint.

“Just say you can’t, old man.”

I kept plucking the mushrooms and put them in my basket. So far, I had collected more than 20 mushrooms in my basket. I didn’t know how many I should pick for today, but I knew that I could stop anytime.

In Lapinus Village, everyone was assigned a task called a “calling.” Every Lapinus tribesman and woman received their calling at the age of seven by their respective District Ruler. Mine was to pluck the Sacred Giant Mushroom, a gigantic purple mushroom in the middle of the woods, connected to Arnevet District.

The Sacred Giant Mushroom was a type of fungus who absorbed the minerals and gnox energy in the area, including from our district. Because of it, we could neither till nor cultivate the lands within its surroundings as they would immediately wither and die. Oddly, it did not affect the wild plants and animals in the woods who were already there in the first place, so it only affected the ones that we deliberately tried to cultivate.

That was why, in every generation, someone from our district was chosen to have this calling to destroy the Sacred Giant Mushroom altogether so that our district could flourish further. After 8 generations, this calling was finally passed down to me.

As I mentioned earlier, the mushroom consisted of countless smaller mushrooms that we could pluck one by one. This had to be done by hand because some tried using other means in the past and nothing ever worked. Literally nothing. Someone tried using an axe to bring the mushroom down, only to learn that the spores of the mushroom spurted out to the surrounding area and spread the mushrooms to an even larger area. Some tried to burn it down with fire but to no avail due to its resistance to fire caused by its incredibly high content of moisture. That left me with the only traditional method available: plucking them one by one by hand.

The mushroom itself was inedible and most likely poisonous to consume. No known organism had the ability to consume nor digest it. It was, however, safe to touch; even though I always wore gloves for precautions. The mushroom also became useless after being plucked, as it would evaporate in a few minutes after being disconnected from its stem and exposed to stonelight**. It was said that once it evaporated, it returned the gnox energy that it absorbed back to the groundsphere***.

Even after 8 generations, we were not even halfway through plucking the entire giant mushroom. It sprouted more every day, which meant that we had to keep plucking more than it could regenerate. After I picked enough mushrooms for today, I decided to spend the rest of the day foraging some other stuff in the woods. Who knows, I might find something interesting along the way.

“Are you done?” the old man asked me.

“Yeah. I’m gonna go do some foraging now.”

I left the Sacred Giant Mushroom to explore other areas of the woods. I left the mushrooms that I plucked on the ground, since they would evaporate anyway. I brought my trowel and wicker basket with me in case I found something interesting.

Lucky! I found some wild berries and put them in my wicker basket. It was extremely rare to see them, especially when they were not in season. They were considered as a delicacy everywhere in the realm so it was hard to get your hands on them.

While I was wandering around the woods, I stumbled upon something hard beneath my feet. It felt like I just stomped on something really sturdy and hard. I looked down and saw some kind of orange ore protruding from the ground. I used my trowel to carefully dig some of the soil around it. I found an ore that radiated some kind of orange aura around it, with a bit of golden dust covering it.

“What is this...?”