THE LAST KEEPER

Chapter 201: 201. TRAPS AND BOREDOM

The team finished setting up traps as silently as possible and perched in trees. Kiuga was perched upside down, resting his weight on the back of his knees. The squad had been silent for a few minutes now, and their postures had shifted from tense to relaxed.

”Sagiri the blind,” Kiuga suddenly whispered, looking up at Sagiri, who was perched upright on a branch beside the one Kiuga was dangling from. Sagiri turned his head to look at him, and he was smiling widely. Being upside down made the smile even more creepy, but then, when wasn’t his smile creepy? ”You know if you win against the Tsanka tribe girl, the challenge continues till a time she beats you, then she will marry you?” Kiuga continued in a loud whisper. Sagiri was already confused by the challenge and the rules, and now he was even more confused. The rules were much more treacherous than the current game. So was he supposed to win or lose?

”How do I get out of the challenge?” Sagiri asked.

”You can’t. But if you fail terribly in this test, she might stop considering you a worthy life partner.” Kiuga said.

”That is not an option,” Sagiri said. This was a final exam, and most of his teammates had been training for this for the past four years. Making them fail just to get out of a challenge was out of the question. If his benefactor did not kill him first, Kaka Asakana would peel his skin from bone. Maita could help dismember him piece by piece. Speak of being stuck between a rock and an even bigger rock. Worse of all, she had to be the niece of the kun of the Tsanka. He would be leaving for the south anyway. It won’t matter.

Suddenly, Sagiri tensed, and with a finger gesture to his lips, Kiuga fell silent and halted like a bat remaining completely still. Minutes ticked by, and Sagiri could now feel more than a dozen heartbeats walking slowly to the place from different directions. The runner hare rabbit species was too paranoid and restless, so it was important that the team remained completely still and silent. Soon, a ball of fur suddenly burst from behind the tree line. An ash grey ball of fur. It was still panicked from the chase, but it suddenly calmed down, and its fur that was standing on end from the chase smoothed down, giving it a shade of black. Its beady red eyes against the colour of its coat under the canopies made it look more enteral. Perhaps the one who set the exam was a rabbit lover and did not want them to be killed.

It was so beautiful, and Sagiri could suddenly perceive the excitement and warmth rolling off his teammates. Whether it was from their beauty or from the tag secured around its neck, it was still up for debate. The squad was perched in a circle around the place, but they could wait for a signal from Sagiri to finally move. Sagiri raised his hand to signal they wait, and they waited. Minutes later, another joined, and the excitement from the group was now through the roof. It was two out of the thousand they were meant to catch, but their current excitement made it seem like it was the thousandth rabbit. Besides the traps, they had placed uprooted grass in piles, and the two rabbits began to move toward the traps.

Minutes ticked by, and more rabbits joined. There were now a dozen, and the first two were already inside the traps. The process went on for almost an hour, and by now over a hundred rabbits had joined the party. Sagiri waited till the traps could not take any more before he lowered his hand. The traps were made in such a way that they were cylindrical in shape. Banga had bound the stick-made cylinders in such a way that the rabbits could enter from both sides, but could not leave because of the inverted sharp sticks facing the inside. It made it easy to go and hard to come out.

The team jumped down in excitement, and at the sudden noise, the rabbits’ fur turned ash grey again with fear as they tried to escape, but couldn’t. It was as easy as pie to strip them of the tags. In total, they collected a hundred and twenty tags from the rabbits. Six had already been stripped of the tags.

”This feels way too easy,” Kiuga whined, but everyone ignored him. The team set the rabbits free and returned to their positions after splitting the tags equally. Most of the team secured the tags on their upper arms except for Kaka. His forearms were just too big, and he resorted to putting them on his wrists, the same as Maita. The team fell back to silence, and after a few more minutes, more rabbits started pouring into the place. The process went on and off for a few more hours, with the team waiting for the rabbits to be trapped. Gather the tags from the ones who had tags, and then release the rest. The process was so boring that Ulekai had forgotten all his fear and started dozing off.

By the time nightfall came, the team had gathered 63 tags each, and more than being hungry, they were bored. The sigils on the chest’s red glow had started to become more prominent now in the dark.

”I’m so hungry I could eat a runner hare rabbit,” Kiuga yawned loudly. ”We have already passed the average passing mark. Why don’t we fire the red flare? Then I can get to eat this beautiful creature,” Kiuga said, looking at the runner rabbit he was betting on with his hands. He was now sitting upright on a branch.

”You are a monster,” Ulekai said. ”How can you bear to look at this beauty and think it’s food?” He had been completely swept off his feet by the rabbit’s beauty, and he now wanted to quit being a warrior and keep rabbits till he died of old age.

”How am I a monster? Would you rather I die of hunger?” Kiuga clutched the rabbit even tighter as if he wanted to break its neck and pet it at the same time.

”Why don’t you kill a hundred of them and fail the test?” Kaka snickered.

More rabbits were coming in, but the more time went by, the fewer the tags on them. There were a hundred and fifty squads hunting, and it was safe to assume that there were other good teams too. Not all squads were as foolish as to chase the runner hare species, and it was even safer to assume there were other teams with the same strategy as them.

”There are not many rabbits coming in. We should change our position deeper into this terrain,” Kiuga suddenly said on a serious note.

”I think we should just wait here. We have already passed the test.” Ulekai said.

”Sagiri said there are snakes to the east, so we are continuing south. All the rabbits here are tagless,” Kiuga said. ”Sagiri, any grave scale further south?” Kiuga asked, turning to sagiri. Sagiri had not stopped perceiving their surroundings even for a moment ever since the exercise started, and he could perceive snakes to the east and big cats to the west, but he had not perceived a two-headed beast.

”No,” he answered immediately.

”Then it’s set. We move south for a while, set traps, and find a place to camp till midnight. The team moved south for a bit before coming face-to-face with an abandoned cave. It was not big, and it looked like it was formed from the ancient tree roots in the area. A cave from roots?

Suddenly, the archive stirred violently, and sagiri retracted his senses. He could not tell if it was the residual of the poison in his blood or something else, but this one was accompanied by some bad feeling.

”What is it?” N’varu, who had been watching him intently, was the first to notice.

”You can rest. We can watch our own backs,” Kaka said, shoving past him to be the first to enter the cave. Kiuga was already assigning duties of trap setting and the first watch. The exam seemed hard, but it had turned out to be almost too easy. Well, with Kiuga in charge, Sagiri’s knowledge and sensory abilities, and Banga’s innovation, it was bound to be easy. Sagiri walked to a stream and poured water on his face, but the odd feeling did not recede for a moment. He walked back and rested his back on a fat root of the ancient tree, but he could not rest or relax, even if he wanted to.

Something was wrong, or perhaps was about to go horribly wrong.