14. Rabbit

Watching the numbers return to their normal color, Su You set down her wooden cup and opened her backpack to check the time.

The countdown on the lord’s token now showed fifty-one… almost fifty-two hours remaining.

Based on the elapsed countdown, it should be around five o’clock in the morning.

Since sunrise hadn’t arrived yet, the sky was still a murky gray-black without the sun, as if shrouded in a layer of dark fog.

This gloomy color, combined with the eerily quiet surroundings, made everything feel especially bleak and lonely.

Because it was still dark and there was no portable light source, Su You’s field of vision was quite limited.

But since dawn was approaching, as long as she was careful, she could move around as usual… At this hour, she could already leave the safety of the campfire.

Although it wasn’t quite morning yet and technically still nighttime, moving around now wouldn’t attract wild beasts, since their active hours were generally from around 10 or 11 p.m. to 2 or 3 a.m.

They needed rest too, and by this time, those beasts had already returned to their dens.

With no threat from wild animals, Su You tidied up the campfire and put it out. After organizing her backpack, she prepared to head out.

Her main goal for today was to kill a fire demon and collect flame stones.

But before that, she needed to gather twenty pieces of wood to build a basic arrow tower.

To make sure she had enough space in her backpack, Su You cleared out anything unnecessary as much as possible.

Aside from the lord’s token—which couldn’t be discarded but didn’t take up any space—her backpack now looked like this:

Backpack (7/10): String*4, Roasted Berries*14, Berry Juice*2, Stone*5, Stone Axe (1/100), Stone Pickaxe (100/100), Stone Knife (88/100)

Since she was in a hurry, Su You left right after sorting her backpack.

On the way to her destination, she checked the three small traps she’d set up the day before.

There was no fixed schedule for when traps would yield results. With luck, you might catch something in three to five hours; without it, it could be three to five days, or even ten days to half a month with nothing at all.

Besides luck, human factors were also important.

Things like bait and trap placement all affected the chances of catching prey.

It had been nearly twenty hours since she set the traps. Logically, unless her luck was especially bad, there should be something by now… though what exactly, she couldn’t say.

Her route would take her past all three traps, so Su You decided to check them along the way.

When she checked the traps, she found the first two were completely empty—nothing caught.

Though a bit disappointed, she wasn’t surprised.

It was worth noting, however, that the durability of one trap had decreased a little, which meant it had briefly caught something, but the creature managed to escape.

The way trap durability worked was that any time a creature was caught, at least one point of durability would be lost. If the creature didn’t run away immediately and instead attacked the trap, the durability would drop even further.

Although it was a pity the prey got away, the fact that the trap could catch small animals meant her placement was fine.

To improve her chances, Su You adjusted the positions of the two traps a bit and covered them with some leaves and branches to make them less obvious.

A few minutes later, Su You arrived at the spot where she’d set the third trap.

“What’s this…” Seeing the empty ground, Su You paused, then immediately scanned her surroundings.

There were several reasons a trap might disappear. The most common were that its durability ran out, or it was dragged away by another creature.

If it was the former, there would be a “broken trap” with zero durability left on the ground.

A broken trap was a gray-quality item, basically identical to the failed trap Su You had made before—completely useless.

But since she didn’t see any “trap remains” here, it meant the trap had probably been dragged away…

There were two possibilities for a trap being dragged off: one, a small animal escaped but was angry enough to take the trap with it; two, the animal didn’t escape, but while struggling, ended up dragging the trap away from its original spot…

If it was the first case, the trap would be nowhere nearby, since the animal would want to get far away from this dangerous place, even if it meant dragging the trap along.

But if it was the second case, a trapped animal wouldn’t be able to get very far… Since it was still early and Su You held out a bit of hope, she decided to search the area.

And sure enough, she found a pleasant surprise.

Less than ten steps from where she’d set the third trap, Su You found the remains of the trap.

Its durability had dropped to zero, making it unusable, but next to it, Su You saw a rabbit that was clearly dead.

Although the materials for small traps were simple, they were actually lethal, since the inside was lined with wooden spikes.

The spikes didn’t do much damage, but rabbits didn’t have much defense or health to begin with. If Su You could catch up to one herself, a single axe blow would be enough to take it down.

In short, a small trap was more than enough to kill a rabbit.

Su You hadn’t witnessed the whole process, but judging by the scene, it wasn’t hard to guess what had happened.

First, the rabbit stumbled into the trap. Then it tried to escape, but couldn’t break free from the string, so it ended up dragging the trap along—explaining why the trap wasn’t in its original spot.

While it struggled, the wooden spikes kept inflicting small wounds.

The damage might have been minor, but like ants biting an elephant, as long as the rabbit couldn’t escape, the damage would keep adding up.

In the end, the rabbit was worn down and died, just like the stone monster before.

Although the rabbit wasn’t very big, it could still provide a decent amount of resources. After a moment’s hesitation, Su You decided to head back the way she came.