Immortal Era's Crafting Master 102 First: A Pitfall Trap

A few kilometers away from where Kirou was fighting the group of bandits, his two clones were currently tailing the one archer that had managed to escape. Although the archer couldn't see anyone chasing him, he kept making various odd twists and turns throughout his journey in an attempt to throw off whoever or whatever it was that was giving it the feeling of being watched. As for the clones, they made sure to track the archer from a distance without giving their positions away to the fleeing archer.

After shaking off his feeling of paranoia, the archer eventually stopped making these odd turns and traveled to an area with dense foliage. The clones slowed down their approach and took to the very top of the trees in the surroundings to get a better view of the area covered in dense foliage from above. From their line of sight, both could see that behind the wall of foliage hid a small village of sorts.

This hidden village was much smaller in size when compared to villages such as Elderwood Village and Thousand Wood Village. It looks similar to that small village that Kirou had teleported to in order to get to the mountainous region where the lizardman tribe lived. The clones observed the archer heading to what looks like the village head's house before turning to give each other a knowing look. Giving each other a nod, one of the clones dispelled to relay the information back to Kirou while the other kept a silent watch over the hidden village from its hidden location amongst the treetops. For now, its job was to observe any changes and report them back to Kirou if anything major happened before he made it here.

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Kirou was already halfway towards the village when he suddenly stopped in his tracks. The reason for this was due to him receiving memories from the second clone that he had sent to track down that archer. The memories he just received showed that all the inhabitants of the village were now leaving and making their way towards the location where he had just finished his fight. Although Kirou didn't expend too much energy in defeating the previous group of attackers, that happened mainly due to the fact that they had underestimated him from the start, making it easy for him to take advantage of their carelessness. The group heading towards him this time, however, was taking him very seriously.

With their numbers tripled, along with the inclusion of a few more mages and archers, Kirou was sure that he wouldn't be able to take down this new group in a head-on fight without facing quite a few dangers to himself, especially with the inclusion of a few bandits whose levels his clone was unable to see, signifying that they were level 30 or above. That said, Kirou wasn't about to avoid the fight since those bandits could more than help with finis.h.i.+ng his quest. With that thought in mind, Kirou decided that since he can't face them head-on like a fighter, he would go about doing so like an a.s.sa.s.sin, making use of various traps and the environment to dwindle down the entire group into something that he could manage until he completes his quest and makes his getaway before those level 30+ bandits gang up against him.

Having decided this, Kirou quickly summoned out his three pets and instantly had them get to work on the traps. They didn't have much time so Kirou had to move quickly if he wanted to catch the remaining twenty-one targets that his quest requires. It's a good thing that the only weapon he's allowed to wield at the moment due to the quest restriction just so happens to excel in traps as well as direct combat. As for those he has no chance of beating now, Kirou made sure to make a note of their hidden village's location, along with the general surroundings. He'll be sure to pay them a visit in the future when he's strong enough to deal with them.

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The group of bandits leaving the village was headed by a warrior with a huge axe strapped to his back. Just like the leader of the group that led the a.s.sault against Kirou earlier, he too was equipped with worn leather armor and was similarly within his thirties in terms of appearance. Behind him, over forty men and women dressed in similarly worn leather armor, equipped with various weapons. They had just received news on one of their raiding squads being slaughtered by a lone werewolf.

At first, this axe-wielding warrior along with the rest refused to believe that a single werewolf, a level 20 one at that, would be able to take out an entire squad of bandits with an average level of 26, with the inclusion of a mage in their ranks. It was only after the archer carefully explained the sequence of events that he saw, along with taking a blood oath swearing all of it to be the truth and not dying on the spot that the entire group had believed his words, albeit slightly.

(*Hidden gimmick alert: A blood oath is similar to swearing on one's Dao as seen in most wuxia novels. It's a thing in Immortal Era, allowing NPCs and creatures with intelligence to swear on their blood in order to prove a truth. These oaths are to be taken very seriously as breaking them means instant death by a blood-red lightning bolt from the heavens. The players can experience something similar by making a contract with the system as the witness, but this won't be touched until later.)

It was only after the archer made this oath that the axe-wielding warrior took his words seriously and decided to mobilize the forces that are currently with him. As for the archer, he's within the group as well, providing the directions to the exact spot in which the failed ambush had taken place. As for the rest of the group, they were treating this as a simple errand run, completely not taking this seriously.

While the group was heading to the area, they never noticed a pair of glowing blue eyes watching their movements after they had pa.s.sed the halfway mark. This pair of blue eyes were on a face with an impa.s.sive expression that quickly morphed into a feral one as they saw the group entering the area where the traps had just been finished set up. After the group disappeared from the area, a voice flowed out from the mouth of the owner of the glowing blue eyes, "Let the games begin."

Following those words, the owner of the glowing blue eyes vanished from the treetop in which he was in, returning the peace and tranquility to the area. This could be thought of as the prelude to the shocking events that were about to hit the large group of bandits.

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The group never made it two hundred meters before the bandits started experiencing troubles. As soon as they pa.s.sed by a certain tree, someone had unintentionally stepped on an area with loose earth, prompting the big reveal of a pitfall trap roughly two and a half meters wide and eight meters deep with various sharp spikes protruding from the base of the trap and were as high as two meters each. On its own, roughly ten or so people fell into this pit trap. This by itself wasn't that bad since the bandits were all skilled persons that could not only survive the fall while avoiding the spikes, they could also climb out with relative ease.

What truly made this trap effective was the fact that a net made from sticky webbing had fallen on them just as the pitfall opened, binding them and preventing them from taking any proper action on their own. Because of this, the ten unlucky bandits fell into the eight-meter deep pit, hoping to rely on their natural s.h.i.+elds to keep them alive long enough for the rest of the group to save them from being skewered to death. Unfortunately for them, however, was that help wouldn't come as the remaining forty bandits had their own problems to deal with.

Following the fall of the ten bandits, the leader of the group stopped immediately and began scanning the surroundings to see if there were any more traps while sending someone to help out those that had fallen. Sadly, before either of these objectives could be met, he heard whistling sounds of objects flying through the air, aiming for him and his party. It didn't long for him to see large boulders and blocks of stones flying towards them.

Seeing this, the axe-wielding warrior could only shout while removing his axe from his back, "Evasive maneuverS, NOW!"

Immediately after his shout, the warrior did his best to dodge all the projectiles heading his way as fast as he could. As for those that he couldn't dodge in time, the warrior used his large axe to split them down the middle before resuming his dodging. The rest of the group did similar actions themselves in the face of the incoming projectiles. Due to their own skill, or lack thereof, quite a few of them were injured in the a.s.sault but they still managed to survive the ambush.

As for the ten unlucky bandits both bound and skewered in the pit, they received a silent visitor who sent them off on their way to the afterlife. Kirou had made use of the distraction provided by his pets and clones to sneak into the pit to deal with the trapped bandits. With their limbs bound by Shadow Arachne's specially designed sticky thread net and them being impaled by a few earthen skewers, the natural s.h.i.+eld surrounding their bodies were drained pretty quickly.

Kirou only had to move in quickly and finish them off before they died of blood loss from the skewers. With the commotion caused by the flying projectiles, the screams of these ten bandits before their deaths were perfectly hidden. After killing the ten bandits, Kirou wasted no time in escaping the pit through his use of u003cShadow Teleportationu003e, but not before giving his pets and clones the order to move on to stage two of his traps.

Less than twenty seconds later, the rush of projectiles finally came to an end, giving the group a well-needed respite. The axe-wielding warrior had a scowl on his face as he took a look around at his men. Although they were alive, he could see that each had suffered from some degree of damage during that ambush. He was livid at this sight but managed to keep his anger under control as he barked at a member of the group, "Go rescue those slackers that got caught in the pit and regroup in five minutes. We're retreating to the village."

The group member, a dagger-wielding bandit, nodded grimly before running over to the pit. Some twenty seconds later, the bandit returned to the group leader and spoke in a quiet voice, "Boss, they're dead."

The axe-wielding bandit did a double-take at the dagger-wielding bandit's words before rus.h.i.+ng over to the pit to check for himself. Seeing their leader act like that, the rest of the group joined in and went over to the pit as well, only to see the lifeless corpses of their ten comrades that fell in.

While many were thinking that the ten had died because they were too late in rescuing them due to the sudden ambush, the axe-wielding bandit and a few others looked at the corpses with narrowed eyes as they noticed other wounds on the bodies of the ten unlucky bandits in the pit. Seeing those wounds confirmed to the axe-wielding bandit that this truly was a trap for them and from how it was executed, the perpetrator wasn't done.

Upon this realization, the axe-wielding bandit immediately shouted at his group while holding his large axe in one arm, "Those that can walk on their own, help those that can't. As for the rest, prepare for combat. The b.a.s.t.a.r.d that set this up isn't done with us yet."

Immediately after his words, the entire group carried out his orders while the axe-wielding warrior and a few others took up defensive positions around them. Unfortunately for them, this action started too little, too late.

A voice suddenly sounded within the forest around the group, showing no signs of origin, "I'm sorry to have to say this after seeing how resolute you are in retreating with your injured, but I'm afraid that a few of you are going to have to leave your lives here."