Chapter 7

Night of the tenth day. Seriously nothing happened. A few more traps went off, so I'll collect those in the morning. I don't have to sleep, so I decide to stay up this night. I can see only a few stars in the sky, but that is because the trees cover most of the sky. If I was higher up, I would be able to see more, but the branches would not be able to take my weight. I suppose this will have to be enough for me for now.

I thought nothing else was in the night, but I hear something. It's not the sound of toppling trees. It's not the sound of broken branches. It is the sound of snow being squished, dozens of square feet at a time. The same sound you hear when you lay in a pile of heavy snow, I can hear it. Something enormous is moving in the snow.

Creepypasta! If there is one good thing about this, I will be able to tell where it came from and where it went. Other than that, this sucks. It probably came from the cave, but I can't start making assumptions. Instead, I should think about getting higher up. I don't need the hammock, so I put it in my inventory and climb higher in the tree. Another dozen feet up, I think I'm safe. Though I can't see anything when I look around, I can see two yellow dots moving through the trees.

As I look closer, I notice the two yellow dots are coming my way, and they are followed by the enormous black body of a snake. Over 50 feet in length, and with piercing yellow eyes, this is the scariest thing I have ever seen. As the black snake-like body slithers through the trees and comes ever closer to my position, I do nothing. I do absolutely nothing and try to hide my presence. I just want that monster to leave me alone.

When the morning of the eleventh day comes around, the monster is gone. I waited all night for it to leave, and it only just started to make its way away from me at the first signs of daylight. When the snake creature did leave, it went to the cave in the west.

From what I can tell, the snake monster purposefully didn't snap any twigs or trigger any traps, and my wall if fine too. The first thing I do in the morning is check my traps. I increased the number from the previous day, but it seems to have not increased the amount of capture. I place the six hares into my inventory and reset all the traps. I've got twelve hares now, and I wonder how many credits they are worth. Probably not much because they are peaceful creatures, but at least I have a lot of them.

I've got two more days after this until the shop opens, so I need to kill the snake monster before that. I really want to see how many credits it can give me, and I want to get a magic skill book. To prepare, I place many more traps around my wall. These traps don't aim to capture anything, but instead, aim to maim large animals. With my axe, I can cut large pieces of wood into spikes and ready them for the attack. After a few more hours, night comes and I am waiting in my tree. I moved to the highest branch I could, and now I'm going to wait with my bow and an iron arrow. I've got 5 wooden arrows and 100 iron arrows, so I have plenty of ammo to use.

An hour or two after the sun goes down, I hear the familiar sound of crunching snow. Only the vibrant yellow eyes of the snake monster are visible in the night, and I follow them with my own eyes. The snakes slowly moves closer to my position, and narrowly avoids traps.

BANG! A trap gets set off and impales the snake monster with a wooden spike. I ready my bow at once and start shooting arrows. The snake moves quickly between the trees, panicking, but that only sets off more traps. Bang, bang, bang, the snake keeps getting hit by traps and continues to take damage from my arrows. Even as the snake quickly moves, I am able to hit it with arrows because of my Archer skill.