A FEW DAYS LATER

Aito stood in front of his now repaired entrance, patiently awaiting the first attack of the day to finally test out his new pitfall.

Those past few days had been quite interesting. He had learned much about the bigfoots. According to the tracks and the number of corpses, around a dozen evol monkeys were roaming the island every day.

What’s more, they seemed to wander in either group of two to three—with one of them being the leader—or alone. Dealing with a group was already hard enough, but if all of them attacked at the same time, Aito was uncertain to have the necessary strength to handle it, even with Jack. At best, seven bigfoots would be manageable, or so he thought, but Aito wasn’t dumb enough to try it out for real.

Fortunately, there appeared to be discord between each group of evol monkeys. One group would sometimes fight another over food or leadership, preventing a bigger group to form around one leader. At least until a bigfoot strong enough to unite them all appears.

Expecting such a situation to happen—because by now he understood it was inevitable—he wanted to properly test out Jack’s poison, but to do that he needed test subjects. Healthy ones.

Not that he never tried out the poison. In fact, he used it quite frequently, and it proved very effective. However, he’s never seen the limits of it yet. Could it kill a monkey by itself? If yes, how long did it take? What dosage should he use?

Following this train of thought, he had tried to capture test subjects by trapping them, but those monkeys were now smart enough to avoid his glaringly obvious traps. Being a total amateur in building those, Aito left a lot of tracks around them, such as footprints, weirdly arranged leaves, and fragile sticks to close the trap.

Now, his old pitfalls could only divert his enemies’ attention in a fight, but they never fell for it if not pushed inside.

But that new pitfall should work since it had the best bait one could hope for attracting evol monkeys. A bait called Aito Walker, who stood right on the wooden platform that was covered by earth and grass. One horizontal wooden pole, assisted by a vertical one, formed a T-shaped foundation to support the trap’s cover just enough for some people to safely walk on it.

Finally, not long after sunrise, two bigfoots armed with two-handed axes showed up near his doorstep.

Aito rapidly gazed at a nearby bush where Jack was hidden. It had a rope coming out of the earth in both hands, awaiting Aito’s signal.

Bigfoots’ approaching steps grew louder as they cautiously closed in on Aito. Eyeing the human suspiciously, they halted their steps to take a quick glance around them.

Signs of traps spread around at random intervals. Some tree trunks amidst the vegetation from woods that had been recently cut down. The smell of sweat originating from the puny human in front of them. Nothing really suspicious to worry about, but they seemed uneasy for some reason.

Seeing how they were hesitating, Aito brought out a wooden spear from his inventory, aimed, and hurled it with every iota of strength he had at the nearest monkey.

It knocked the spear aside with its weapon and, provoked, ran toward its enemy that dared to enrage it, followed closely by its comrade.

‘Too easy’ Aito thought, pleased that those monkeys still had a savage side to them.

Just before they entered his range, he lifted his thumb. Having seen the signal from inside its bush, Jack pulled on the rope with all the strength he could muster.

The weaved tree barks that made up the rope stretched under the pull, menacing to tear apart. At the other end of the rope, the vertical pole supporting the horizontal one budged slightly, destabilizing the entire structure’s foundation that started to show signs of crumbling.

Aito swiftly stepped back, just in time to see the platform he had been standing on tumbling down, sending two bigfoots to the “lab.”

Jack came out of the bushes, rushed to its partner’s side, and stood on its two legs to take a look at what was trapped inside the deep hole Aito and it had spent hours digging in between fights and other manual labors.

Aito glanced at Jack who had some sort of smirk on its face when looking down at two of its kind.

With the passing days, Jack adopted more and more humanlike physical expressions it learned from Aito. So when Aito added his own smirk to Jack’s, the two bigfoot below could only dread what was coming next at the sight of such similar evil grins.

“Seems like we got ourselves two test subjects. Let’s start experiment n°1 immediately, shall we?”

“Kyaak!”

Worried but also angry, the two bigfoots wanted to hammer the surrounding earth to search for an escape path but multiple bamboo spikes embedded in the walls discouraged them.

“Oh, look at them, doctor Jack. It seems that our patients down there suffer from severe alcohol withdrawal symptoms. Would you please ‘prepare’ the adequate treatment? Let’s start with a fairly hefty dose since they appear to have been drinking for quite a while.” Aito said, a devilish smile creeping up its face at the thought of his small revenge.

Those bigfoots were a real pain in the ass. He had to leave Jack to guard the camp while he went exploring and hunting for resources if he didn’t want to find it ransacked upon his return. Thus the pleasure he felt from the experiment.

Jack gave a weird nod, and its facial expression contracted. Its tail reached in between his legs to bring out a white half solid substance that he threw at one bigfoot, but without the element of surprise Jack usually had the creature dodged the putrid projectile.

“Oh! It seems we have quite the rebellious patient, doctor Jack. No matter, prepare a second dose while I keep them busy.” Aito said, grabbing some pebbles.

He then threw as many as he could at the bigfoots and succeeded in attracting their attention.

Meanwhile, Jack prepared yet another dose of its groundbreaking medication and positioned itself in one bigfoot’s blind spot to wait for an opening, which came quickly thanks to Aito.

BAM!

Feces splashed on a bigfoot’s face, the stench invaded its nostrils and some of it got into its eyes. In pain, it grabbed its face and tried to remove the poison. Feeling its current state worsening, the evol monkey hit its own head on the ground for the greatest pleasure of its tormentors.

‘Nothing new for now.’ Aito thought, observing the bigfoot. ‘Same reaction. Face and eyes burning. Nostrils hum, hard to judge from up here. It also looks like the poison entered its body through the eyes. Not sure.’

—Gift: Intuition—

He felt a chilly feeling creeping up its spine and turned towards the forest. A group of three evol monkeys had made their way to his camp’s surroundings, which surprised him since there were usually breaks in between attacks. Then he remembered that today marked the start of a new week.

“Shit…” He said, bringing out two spears from his inventory. “Jack, could you keep those three over there busy while I kill those two?”

Jack gave him a thumbs up and quickly disappeared into the surrounding vegetation. The pitfall could restrain the two bigfoots for a while, but Aito knew they were far from being as stupid as to not try to take advantage of the situation.

Therefore, even if it was regrettable, he preferred to kill them now rather than being surprised during a fight.

“Experiment N°1, postponed.”

BAM!