Chapter Eighteen

  Three days later, Alex was back in the Warped Forest, but not in the deeper sections where she'd encountered the cobrawasp. She stood on a branch about twenty feet up, hand on the trunk beside her, keeping a lookout.

  It was daytime rather than night when she normally hunted, which gave her a good view of the forest. The Shocking Strangler hung by her side, but the tip had unraveled and was caressing her leg, which had been a little strange when it first started, but Alex quickly got used to it.

  She heard crashing through the undergrowth long before she felt the connection to her minions return. A hundred feet ahead or so, the small trees shook as something large passed by. Occasionally, a gnarly snout appeared above the brush, snapping at the tasty steak hovering right out of reach.

  Two of her bloats had a Tasty Moth Meat carried between them in a harness she'd made for them, while a gatorbear muscled through the undergrowth after it.

  The creature had the body of a brown bear but the head of a gator. Its mouth of jagged teeth kept rising from the brush, snapping its jaws.

  Reaching out to her minions, Alex nudged them towards her trap. In relentless pursuit of food, the gatorbear failed to notice the loop of weaved rope suspended between two trees. As the creature's head passed through it, the rope cinched around its neck, and then on the other end, a heavy log was pulled off its perch, creating a counterweight.

  Ms. Vance, her high school physics teacher, would have been proud of the contraption, but Alex had no time to admire it. When the log fell, it yanked the gatorbear backwards momentarily, but the creature thrashed around trying to get at the rope.

  Alex stayed on her perch, head swiveling in all directions. She didn't see when the Ghostly Cobrawasp appeared, but Inky, who was flying in the upper canopy watching her, sent a stab of alarm through their physic link.

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  Without looking, Alex grabbed the rope near her head and jumped, which simultaneously slowed her fall and dropped a weighted net on the creature flying above her head.

  She hit the ground with a roll as the net crashed down nearby. The cobrawasp was only half contained by the net. Alex cast Dewdrop Orb on the hooded cobra head. Her first try fizzled out, but the second attempt created a glistening ball of water around its head. She didn't think it would suffocate the creature, but it would keep it from spitting on her.

  Fifty feet behind her, she could hear the gatorbear lunging around, making a strangled growl as it tried to dislodge itself from her cunning rope trap. But she ignored it. It was the cobrawasp she needed to kill.

  The problem was it wasn't completely covered by the weighted net. She'd applied heavy stones to the edges so it would fall onto the cobrawasp and keep it grounded so she could kill it with her new whip, but only half its body was under the net.

  Alex rushed to the net and tried to drag it over the glistening black stinger, but it kept thrashing around, making her task difficult. Since her strength was nonexistent, she was thrown around by the larger cobrawasp.

  Around the time she realized she wasn't going to be able to drag the net back on it, the dewdrop orb disappeared from the cobra's mouth. Before it could spit on her and destroy more of her gear, Alex fled, sprinting through the undergrowth back to her camp.

  After a ten-minute run, she was back in her cave, huddling with her bloats. She hated giving up, since it'd taken two days to build her traps, but a tactical retreat was better than failure.

  She had hopes the rope trap might strangle the gatorbear and she'd get a random experience gain, but when no pop-up came, she knew it'd escaped along with the Ghostly Cobrawasp.

  Inky, Blinky, Pinky, and Clyde hovered around her as if they were consoling her for the botched attempt.

  "It's okay, guys. It was a good shot. We almost had it, and learned some things. You can go hunt if you want," she said.

  Immediately, they pushed through the fur covering on the cave and shot across the chasm. She'd been training them with the harness, so they hadn't had time to hunt as normal.

  While there was some disappointment, she was also pleased that she'd been able to survive an encounter with the Ghostly Cobrawasp. She'd proved that her minions could be a good scout for her, and that a weighted net could capture the cobrawasp. If it'd fallen more cleanly, she was sure she could have killed the cobrawasp while it was stuck beneath the net.

  "Next time...next time."