Deadworld Isekai

Pit traps were some of the oldest traps in human history for a reason. They were simple. A hunter just dug a hole, concealed it, and waited for prey to fall in. Sometimes, the prey would be killed and crippled by the fall. Even when it wasn't, the hunter had the luxury of waiting until the prey weakened from thirst and lack of food before striking the final blow.

To speed this process up, there were some modifications that could be made to the trap to make them more effective. Spikes were the obvious choice, but Matt had figured that spikes wouldn't do much to an animal covered in thick bone plates. Instead, he found himself smiling as the Bonecat was greeted by the special option he had prepared: water.

Water in a pit trap, survivor’s instincts told him, was not meant to drown prey. Rather, it was to keep them from leaving the trap by exhausting them. The fact that animals often drowned was a beneficial after-effect that kept the energy outlay needed to actually kill them to a minimum, while the bigger benefits came by keeping the trapped in the trap itself. Fighting the water would tire the animals, which made them worse climbers as they used their wet paws to scale the slippery walls.

Matt's first hope was that the Bonecat might not be capable of climbing at all, but that had been dashed during the chase when he led it over increasingly rough terrain. It handled the shifts in elevation without even slowing down. Without the water, the cat was definitely going to be able to get out. Now, the big question was if it could swim well enough to get purchase on the side of the pit, and if it could climb well enough to get out before it exhausted itself and drowned.

Looking down into the pit, he found the Bonecat almost bumping against the edges. It could apparently swim, if not very gracefully. It splashed around in the water, turning it from a clear blue to a murky brown. More importantly, it had kept its head above the water and could still draw in deep breaths.

The water itself had been easy to fill the pit with. With the recent hurricane, Matt had found pools of water around the island. All it took was selecting the right reservoir filled with rainwater and digging the pit slightly outside its borders. Once the pit was done, he joined a channel between the two and watched as the water poured in.

In those moments, he had hoped that the Bonecat would immediately drown. That was apparently too much of a dream to be true.

“You know there’s zero chance this will work, right? It’s a Bonecat. As in, can probably climb pretty well. It’s going to be pissed when it gets out.”

“Do you know if it can climb? Like, actually know that, or are you just giving me shit?”

“I know they can climb. At least a bit. I don’t know if they can climb up a muddy wall, but do you really think you'll get that lucky?”

Matt was a bit more hopeful than the guardian, but still kept his own doubts. This was his best option, and if it failed, he was going to be a world of trouble. If the Bonecat got out, it probably wasn't even worth it to run. Getting ripped apart wouldn't exactly be fun but it was better than starving to death over the next few weeks.

The first thing the Bonecat tried was to scramble up the wall head-on. It went poorly in an almost amusing sense. As a poor swimmer, it couldn't get much initial momentum to use to propel itself upwards. Even if it found purchase on the bottom, the muddy bottom would suck energy up rather than support movement. So, it ended up approaching the wall at a sluggish pace and could only cling to the wall, mere inches above where it started. Eventually, it'd tire and splash back down into the water. Briefly submerging itself before it surfaced again, coughing and shrieking.

“It didn’t like that at all,” the guardian flashed a small smile, “Are you sure your best move is making things personal with a giant death machine? That doesn’t seem like the kind of animal I’d want to have holding a grudge against me.”

“Heh.” Matt tried to laugh naturally, but he was pretty sure even a child could tell he was nervous, “Yeah, I’m sort of betting everything on this.”

As if in answer to Matt's worries, the Bonecat shrieked and did the worst possible thing that Matt could think of: it started experimenting. It tried gouging at the side of the pit itself. Matt was fine with that, the dirt deep down was compressed pretty heavily and although the cat's claws could mar it, it wasn't enough to be anything serious. If it kept going, it would mostly just be weighing itself down as the clay stuck to its skeleton.

Unfortunately, it moved on from that tactic pretty quickly, remembering it had claws and that claws were pretty useful for climbing. With yet another ear-drum breaking roar, the Bonecat planted each of its front claws into the side of the pit, then drew itself up level with them. Bracing its rear legs against the side of the pit, it raised one claw up and stabbed it even higher, then drew itself level enough to set the other claw into the wall alongside it. It was spiking its way up the wall, slowly but surely.

The combination of Matt’s increased VIT and STR stats, his survivor’s instincts, and his sheer will to survive this monster had given him strength to dig a pretty deep hole. The Bonecat wasn’t climbing that fast, so there was some time before it got to the top. But the time it took wouldn’t matter much. The difference between ten seconds and ten minutes was mostly academic. If it got out, Matt was as good as dead.

Time wasn’t the only thing in play, though. The Bonecat was huge. It might have good stamina, but nothing had infinite endurance. Every claw it applied to the side of the wall and every ascension to a new level represented energy it was spending, and Matt could see it getting visibly tired by the time it made the halfway point. It was going to be close. By the three-quarter mark, the thing’s arms were shaking.

The guardian peered down with Matt. “I don’t know how you can just sit there and look at that thing. It’s like staring at your own gravestone. One that's very motivated in beating you to jelly.”

Matt ignored the system guardian. That’s probably about as much time as I’m going to get, he thought. He had been hoping the Bonecat would take a little more time and energy in getting as far as it had, but it would have to do. He walked over to a nearby outcropping of rock and picked up his shovel from the base of it. On top of the outcropping was a huge boulder, nearly the size of the mouth of the pit.

It had taken him forever to raise the damn thing. In the process, he had to keep stabilizing it with small rocks to keep it from tumbling down from its place. Now, he crammed his shovel behind those same rocks and cranked. He heard earthy creaks as the boulder started to pull away from the last remaining pieces of soil holding it in place.

Please don’t miss. Please don’t miss.

It didn’t miss. As if by magic, the rock rolled forward in a straight line, directly off the outcropping and towards the pit. Then, with all the grace and style of a high diver, it plummeted into the pit directly on top of a very, very surprised Bonecat.

Matt would have accepted the cat dying from the initial fall. He would have been glad to see it drown. He would have punched the air if it had been unable to climb. Now, he would settle for the idea that most animals don't survive getting hit in the face with half-ton rocks. If there was any part of his plan that could do the job, the boulder seemed like the clearest bet.

But it didn't work. For a moment, there was no sound from the pit. Then, Matt saw the rock bob around in the water. Then, it popped upwards a bit. It wasn't surprising that the Bonecat could swim or climb. But “can a Bonecat swim or climb with a massive rock on its back” had been a pretty open question. Now, the answer had turned out to be not very positive for Matt.

Could it climb all the way to the top with the rock on it? Probably not, but it was possible. Could it get around the rock somehow? Maybe. Could it figure out that it could take extended rests by just letting its bone spikes hold it in place? Matt had no idea how smart the thing was, but it was at least imaginable that the Bonecat might figure it out. One way or another, it was likely to figure out a way to keep the rock from drowning it.

Matt looked away from the pit. He walked over to a couple of poles.

Unfortunately for the Bonecat, when Matt first set up the trap, he had an inkling that the rock wouldn't be able to crush or drown it.

When someone digs a pretty big hole, they end up with a equally big amount of dirt. Matt could have just dumped that dirt around the hole itself, letting it form a small hill. But that seemed like a waste.

Why let perfectly good dirt pile around doing nothing when you could store it behind a slanted wall made of branches and tarp, ready to be let loose like a stored landslide? Why, he thought, you could kick out a couple of poles and let that retaining wall fall like a drawbridge, dumping all the dirt back into the hole. If it fired accidentally, it would ruin a couple of days' work. But fired intentionally, it could ruin a Bonecat's life.

As Matt kicked the poles out, he reflected that this was really his last shot. Every step until now might have taken care of the Bonecat, but this was truly his last chance. He watched all of his hard work from the past few days evaporate as the dirt cascaded back into the hole. When the landslide slowed, he ran around with his shovel like a madman and desperately shoveled more dirt into the pit to pile up on the rock.

His thinking here was pretty simple. If the Bonecat could swim and climb, Matt wasn't going to bet against its ability to also dig.

But the extra dirt would weigh something, and the Bonecat still couldn't breathe water. It also presumably couldn't dig upwards with a massive boulder on its back. After a few minutes, the pit was as full of dirt as it was going to get, and Matt leaned back to watch the aftermath.

He was hoping that the Bonecat would give up. Honestly, he would have given up by now if he was at the bottom of the pit. But it wasn't going to be that clean. The dirt heaved up and down, spilling out of the hole as the beast fought against the rock. Suddenly, the level of the dirt dropped a few feet. There was only one explanation for that - the Bonecat had gotten around the rock somehow. It could start digging up now.

Matt wasn't going to sit idly by. He once again went into a flurry with his shovel, trying his best to add more dirt to the pit. As the dirt in the pit shifted and sank, Matt prayed that the minutes it took the Bonecat to fight its way free would add up. That they would be enough to sap the Bonecat's energy. That enough planning could beat overwhelming, terrifying strength.

And then, carrying all the fear Matt had buried away in the pit, a claw broke through the soil. It just wasn’t enough.