10. Survival Rule #1: Don't Eat Anything You Pick Up (4)
10. Survival Rule #1: Don't Eat Anything You Pick Up (4)
A trap needed bait suited to it.
Prey weren't stupid enough to leap into traps on their own. Catching them required bait tempting enough to draw them in.
"...Forget sweet bait. More like dangerous bait."
Well, as long as it worked as bait. Scattering mushrooms that caused hallucinations was a bit much, but I had no choice if I wanted to survive. One unlucky break could kill me right now; this was no time to be choosy about my methods. Conscience, justification, and all that only mattered if I stayed alive.
Humans were the only ones who cared about such things in the first place.
Granted, my current target was human—just so strong it made me wonder whether she really counted as one. More importantly, how much longer would I have to wait for her? Enough time had passed for the sun to move visibly, yet the forest remained silent.
Unable to stand the boredom, I toyed with the blowgun in my hands. I'd made it with my Skill while waiting for Reni in the tree. It had been quite a while since I'd last made one, but the Skill had faithfully reproduced the blowgun I used to favor. Of course, that was only natural for something so simple...
"Been a while since I shot one of these. Wonder if I'll hit."
Of course, hitting her wouldn't be that difficult. A blowgun's effective range was short, so I had to fire from close up; as long as the target wasn't moving, landing a poison dart should pose no problem. The real question was how long she would keep rampaging before the drug subdued her.
Because the target was Reni.
Thinking about her from the game still made me grind my teeth. She was the boss who had made countless players grind theirs. The actual final boss, Karina, had been so anticlimactically easy that Reni was called the true final boss instead. I still remembered it: acrobatics in full plate armor, grabbing you by the collar and hurling you into a wall before kicking you hard enough to smash you through it, and even a deranged gimmick that countered counterattacks.
"...Couldn't I have been handed an ability like that? If I had, I'd have escaped ages ago."
If I was going to be transmigrated, wasn't it common decency to give me some absurdly overpowered ability? Huh? Or at least throw me an obviously broken item.
How was I supposed to survive in this day and age with only a Skill that could craft simple objects and another that repaired items by consuming materials?
Still, somehow I'd survived for ten years and established a territory of my own.
How long had I been stewing over those faded memories when I heard someone muttering, faint but unmistakable?
"Karina..."
Reni, hopelessly devoted to Karina, was busily picking up and eating mushrooms as she walked straight into the trap. Up close, she looked pitiful enough to stir sympathy; nothing remained of the figure I remembered from the game. Her half-ruined armor barely functioned, her whole appearance was filthy, her hair was brittle, and dark circles hung heavily beneath her eyes.
She could produce monstrous strength even in that state. How strong was she when healthy? I was curious, but I had no intention of testing it on my own body. My life was precious.
I carefully slid a poison dart into the blowgun. If I accidentally pricked my finger, Reni wouldn't be the one falling asleep—I would.
I hoped it would work on Reni. I'd coated the dart with enough powerful anesthetic to put a bear to sleep with one hit. Surely it would work.
With the blowgun between my lips, I waited for Reni to reach the trap. Apparently unaware that she was walking into one of her own accord, she kept stuffing mushrooms into her mouth like a squirrel. A dose that would have killed me long ago still had not stopped the woman known as the true final boss. Watching her stubbornly endure it inspired something close to awe—and fear.
How could that possibly be a human like me? Survival Academy had plenty of characters who could literally be called superhuman, but it was absurd that someone in a condition bad enough to kill an ordinary person still had that much strength left.
And here I was, having fought tooth and nail just to survive.
...No. This was no time to think about that. What mattered was capturing Reni somehow and bringing her to Karina. Karina's holy magic would be able to cure the mushroom poisoning.
"I'll... come... save... you..."
Was this the moment?
I pulled the line attached to the trap. The net hidden beneath the soil sprang up, caught Reni, and left her dangling in midair. She immediately thrashed, trying to break free, but I wasn't about to watch idly. I aimed the blowgun already between my lips at the nape of her neck and blew hard.
With a feeble whoosh, the dart flew through the air and lodged in Reni's neck. It had struck a blood vessel dead-on, so she should pass out soon. I carefully climbed down from the tree and drew my shovel. If she was still conscious after all this, I'd have to hit her on the head and knock her out. For everyone's safety, it couldn't be helped.
"...rina..."
Seeing Reni flail her arms through the dangling net made me feel so sorry for her that I smacked myself once in the head.
I couldn't let myself feel sympathy.
She was someone who could slit my throat at any moment.
Having knocked some sense into myself, I scratched my head and looked up at Reni as her movements gradually weakened. Once she was completely unconscious, I planned to return to my territory with her tightly bound. I'd have to truss her up first, of course. Until she had fully recovered, I wouldn't feel safe unless her arms and legs were restrained.
That was when I relaxed, relieved that everything had ended without incident.
"You."
"Me?"
Was she talking to me? Startled by Reni's sudden voice, I looked at her again. She glared at me through murky eyes. A final desperate struggle, or maybe...
Danger.
My survival instincts sounded an alarm. Reflexively, I pulled out the blowgun and took three steps back. My body went cold, but my heart pounded harder and harder.
"No wonder things were going so smoothly..."
"You... smell like Karina. You kidnapped her, didn't you?"
Instead of answering, I loaded another dart into the blowgun and blew into it with all my strength. Coated in powerful anesthetic, it streaked toward Reni's neck—only to ricochet away before reaching it. She had twisted at the last instant and blocked it with her pauldron. Even on her last legs, the strong were still strong.
The net began tearing apart. I'd made it carefully enough that even a bear should not have escaped easily, yet Reni ripped through it piece by piece. I sighed as she finally tore herself free and dropped to the ground.
"Karina... where... is... she...?"
The sight of her forcing herself upright despite the anesthetic coursing through her body made my skin crawl. Was she rising in that corpse-like state because Karina meant that much to her? She'd probably eaten the mushrooms while searching for Karina as well. Food was scarcer on this island than it seemed, and mushrooms would have been the only obvious option.
Because if she couldn't survive, she'd never get to see Karina again, after all.
I reached for the shovel strapped to my back. It was the last thing I wanted to use, but if I was going to subdue her, I needed it.
Before Reni—the woman known as Mad Dog—could charge, I drove the shovel into the ground and activated a Skill.
"Craft."
A wall rose as though to shield me. Since it was made of dirt, it wasn't very sturdy, but it would at least block an attack once—
"...Even the bears weren't this bad."
I stared in disbelief as Reni smashed the wall apart with her bare fists. Even a bear couldn't break it like that. Her hand burst through the wall and reached for my throat, but I rolled aside. Unable to defy the laws of physics after lunging at me, Reni slammed into the tree where I'd been perched.
The tree shuddered.
The impact was unbelievable for a human who looked tiny beside the massive tree. Wood splinters clung all over Reni as she fixed me once more with those murky eyes. It was the look of someone staring at a sworn enemy.
That look sent a chill through me.
It felt as if the Grim Reaper had hooked a scythe around my neck and was waiting at leisure. One mistake, and this would be the day I died.
I couldn't die in a place like this.
Not after everything I'd done to survive.
"Ha. Fine. Let's do this."
I pulled powder from the pouch slung over my shoulder and sprinkled it liberally onto the blade of the shovel. It was the anesthetic I'd used on the darts.
My objective was to subdue her, not kill her, so I couldn't use a lethal poison that might take her life in one dose. Even Reni, who probably couldn't see straight, crouched with a feral expression when she saw me coat the shovel with the drug.
The face of a predator eyeing its prey.
It was the face of Reni, a veteran of countless battlefields who had fought throughout the game to protect the Saintess.
It was the face of the boss I'd only managed to bring down after seventy-two attempts in the game.
The Reni I knew so well.
With terror and exhilaration warring inside me, I adjusted my grip on the shovel.