Chapter 9: Hunting Traps
As soon as daylight broke, Jia Zhengjin emerged from his room in high spirits, singing a Chen Xiaochun song while stretching and breathing in the fresh air.
He had slept soundly through the night without any skeletons or monsters attacking, which felt incredibly comfortable.
However, when he turned back to look at his stone brick house, he discovered that most of the ground spike traps surrounding it had been destroyed. The cause was a dense mass of mushroom corpses.
Clearly, after he had gone to sleep, another large group of mushrooms from the forest had come and crowded around the house. They had all perished on the traps.
Remembering how the mushrooms had clung to him before, and noticing there were especially many near the furnace in the corner inside, Jia Zhengjin suddenly had a thought. Could it be that these mushrooms were attracted to heat, and that's why they walked right into the trap?
It seemed very likely! His own body heat may have attracted the mushrooms, causing them to stick to him. that would also explain why the greater heat from the furnace in the house drew even more of them.
But if that was the case, why didn't they just leave the forest and go out in the sun during the day? Wouldn't the temperature be hotter in the day?
He decided not to dwell on it further.
Jia Zhengjin dragged the mushroom corpses out one by one, making sure to search them for loot. As expected, most of the mushrooms still dropped [Spores], but the largest mushroom finally yielded two new items:
[Message]: You obtained [Mushroom Toxin]!
[Message]: You obtained [Mushroom Headdress Blueprint]!
"Good thing I didn't try eating these mushrooms yesterday, they're poisonous!" Jia Zhengjin was startled. "I was nuzzled by them so much yesterday and didn't get poisoned? How lucky! Or maybe the poison is only inside them and doesn't affect anybody unless they eat them?"
Feeling fortunate, he promptly learned the Mushroom Headdress Blueprint.
A new crafting option immediately lit up in the armor crafting interface:
[Mushroom Headdress] Consumes 5 mushrooms, 10 plant fibers.
"So these mushroom corpses are actually useful?" Jia Zhengjin hadn't known what a mushroom headdress was, since this equipment didn't exist in the game before his transmigration. It must have been automatically added after he arrived in this world! He quickly picked up five mushrooms from the ground and put them in his backpack, and the crafting option immediately became available.
Jia Zhengjin clicked to craft it, and the mushroom corpses in his backpack quickly disappeared, replaced by a large mushroom hat. Its shape was essentially like the shape of the cap of these mushrooms made into a hat, with some added patterns.
[Poor Quality Mushroom Headdress] Defense +1, Can camouflage the wearer as a mushroom in grass, avoiding the sight of carnivores. But has a chance of being attacked by herbivores.
Though it looked silly, this hat was quite good! After reading the description, Jia Zhengjin decisively threw away his 0 defense fiber hat and put on the mushroom headdress with 1 defense point and camouflage ability.
The mushroom headdress made him look like a clown, but he was very satisfied with it.
Jia Zhengjin put the remaining mushroom corpses into his virtual backpack, then took out his stone axe and chopped down a nearby large tree, obtaining a batch of lumber.
He immediately returned to the house and used the lumber to craft a wooden chest, placing it in the corner of the room. Then he threw all his stone blocks, plant fibers, lumber, mushrooms, and coconuts into it. He kept only the stone axe, stone pickaxe, stone shovel, stone spears, wooden bow and eleven arrows in his backpack.
He surrounded the house with another layer of ground spikes traps to prevent any otherworldly creatures from damaging his home while he was out hunting.
After preparing to leave the house, he ventured into the dangerous forest.
Upon finding an animal-trampled path leading to the river, Jia Zhengjin immediately got to work. Using his stone shovel, he dug a huge pit about two meters deep on the spot, then covered it with a layer of branches and leaves, creating a simple hunting trap.
This type of trap wouldn't work on the large creatures he had seen yesterday, but it would be very effective against smaller animals! Once a creature fell into the trap, Jia Zhengjin could easily kill it with his stone spear without much effort!
Of course, one trap wouldn't be very effective. So he dug three more traps in other locations.
The next step was to wait, so after carefully observing his surroundings, he climbed up a large tree, using the dense leaves to conceal himself.
For camouflage, it would actually be easier to hide in the grass below because of his mushroom headdress. However, he wouldn't be able to see anything that way! Up in the tree was different - the wide view allowed him to see all four traps clearly. As soon as any creature fell in, he could immediately go collect experience by killing them. This method was clumsy and not very efficient, but at least it was safe!
If monsters killed using traps still counted for experience, he definitely would have placed wooden spikes in the traps. Who would want to wait around like an idiot otherwise?
Waiting was very boring. After sitting in the tree for several hours, Jia Zhengjin almost fell asleep.
The first creature to appear near the trap nearly scared him to death. It looked somewhat like the ancient dinosaurs seen in sci-fi movies, specifically the huge creature called a triceratops. Or perhaps it actually was a triceratops?
Regardless of whether it was truly a triceratops from the dinosaur era, this giant beast's leg alone was taller than the pit he had dug. If it stepped on the trap, not only would he fail to capture the creature, but it would instantly destroy his trap!
So Jia Zhengjin prayed constantly from up in the tree, hoping the triceratops would quickly go away!
Luckily, the triceratops did not step on his trap.
Many other otherworldly creatures came and went during this time, passing along the small path to drink water from the river. However, they were either too big or too small, and none of them triggered the traps. He still couldn't find any suitable prey.
After waiting another hour or so, when the sun had risen to its zenith and the air in the forest became even more stifling, Jia Zhengjin was starting to doze off. Just as his eyelids began to droop, a sudden panic-stricken cry came from below.
He immediately perked up and looked down. To his surprise, he saw a group of strange-looking creatures scattering in all directions amidst screams. A few unlucky ones had fallen into the traps and couldn't climb out!
This was a group of otherworldly creatures that had come to drink water by the river. They were very short, only about a meter tall. But they could walk upright like humans! Their overall shape was essentially like dogs walking on two legs!
To be more precise, they were kobolds!
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