Nathan gazed at the new interface the system had given him at his request for traps. Like buildings, the traps there went from Grade F to S, which confused him a little as he'd assumed that the highest grade should have been A, but apparently, the system thought differently.

Shrugging at the conflicting opinions, Nathan began shifting from the thought back to the most important thing of the moment: the traps. The Grade F ones seemed to be mundane-level traps, shit that could be used to trap bears.

The list started to get much more interesting the further he read into the various options. By the C grade, the traps went from mundane titles like "Graco claws" to almost all traps above their grade having the suffix "formation flag" attached to them.

Azure formation flag.

Nathan focused on the grade C trap, the price attached to it making his eyes widen in shock—almost two hundred thousand Ra'hal coins for a trap. Reining in his disbelief, he read through what the trap could do and had to accept that it was definitely a magical trap with a magical price.

The gist of it was that the Azure formation flag could securely trap any entity below level 150 and continuously bombard anything that was trapped in the formation with lightning for five minutes non-stop. The catch was that it was a one-use trap.

Pretty neat.

Shaking his head, he scrolled to the traps that he could actually afford. There were five options for him, and after going through the list, Nathan decided to go for a moderately priced one: Sebalos hand.

Sebalos hand (Grade F)

This trap can hold entities below level 50.

Please note that no trap is truly unbreakable; with a sufficient strength stat, this trap can be broken through.

Price: 4,000 Ra'hal coins.

Four thousand Ra'hal coins was a significant chunk of money, but it was better to be safe than sorry at this point. With a thought, he transferred the money to his account and bought the trap.

A sack materialized in front of him, and all the information on how to set up the trap flooded his brain. Nathan couldn't explain it, but even as he opened the bag to see the disassembled trap, he knew exactly where each component was supposed to slot in.

The question right now was if he was going to set up today or tomorrow morning. It was already pretty late right about now, but Nathan still preferred the former. No point buying a trap he wasn't going to set up immediately, especially since whatever had toured his stronghold when he was gone could easily return when he was asleep for a more thorough tour.

Leaving the sack on the floor, he went around the cabin searching for where the monster's paws were dominant—in other words, the places the monster had spent the most time canvassing.

It didn't really come as a surprise to Nathan, who'd gone around the stronghold, to come to the conclusion that the cabin had been the focus of the monster. But the specific spot that had multiple paw prints was about two feet away from his bedroom window.

The monster had probably been drawn by Nathan's dominant scent, as that was the place where he spent the most time.

That takes care of the set-up location.

Nathan hauled the sack towards the window and got to work. The way his fingers moved on their own was kind of creepy, but he was also kind of interested in finding out how the system had gotten him to learn how to put together a trap he'd never seen before in a couple of minutes.

Sebalos hand was just a fancy name for a bear trap, although it did have a few funny-looking additions that Nathan had no idea what function they served. With his trap fully set up, he got up to inspect his work.

Too visible.

After a few moments of staring at the trap for a couple of seconds, he came to the conclusion that the trap was way too visible—even he himself wouldn't make the mistake of stepping into that trap. That made it almost useless, the reasoning being if he could see it during the night, the monster would definitely be able to see it whenever it came by to say hi.

Unless it was blind.

If that was the case, then Nathan didn't think he'd need to do anything more, but he highly doubted that it was so. He set out to figure out what he could actually do about the placement of the trap.

The location of the trap was excellent, but the visibility was something he'd have to sort out. He mulled over different ideas on how to go about it until he finally decided to go for one that he was very, very familiar with.

This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

A pit.

It didn't even need to be a deep one—something shallow that could hide the trap and at the same time let it be completely unhindered when it came down to doing its job.

With an idea in mind, Nathan started putting together a list of items he'd need to get his pit ready. So far, he'd come up with four: a shovel, sticks, a tarp, and sand.

I'll have to improvise.

He didn't have a shovel or tarp on hand, so he'd have to figure out a quick improvisation. He could use his sword to soften the ground and use his hands to scoop out the dirt, solving that problem. For the tarp, he could just use the sack the trap came with. Solutions found, Nathan got to work.

The first thing he did was slice off thin strips of wood from a log he had lying around the camp. Then he set to digging; the sword had comically slow but still did the job, so he didn't fuss. When he was done digging a hole wide enough to hide the trap and high enough to reach his knees, Nathan got out of the hole, gently laid Sebalos hand at the bottom of the hole, and then laid the sticks like he'd seen the imps do.

Next up was laying the sack over the sticks and then gently pouring sand over it, making sure to go slow so he didn't have to redo the trap or worse, be trapped in Sebalos hand. Luckily, his plan so far hadn't gone astray. He spread the rest of the loose sand from the hole around the hidden trap to make it seem even.

Glancing around the trap-hiding trap, Nathan wouldn't say it was a perfect illusion, but it was certainly better than having the trap out there in the open. On the plus side, he actually thought the illusion had a seventy to ninety percent chance of catching whatever had visited Blood Rock.

Ninety percent if the monster was a dumb one—and by the heavens, he hoped it was. Confirming the chances of his trap catching something, Nathan shook off the dirt on him, heading into the cabin as he was finally done with the day's activities.

The warmth that embraced him as he stepped into the cabin was enough to let the stress begin to seep away. Closing the door behind him, he got into the bathroom and had a bath—a luxury that he certainly deserved after the day he'd had. Stepping out of the shower, he dried off and went into his bedroom.

Pulling out his bag of holding, he took a fruit out, biting into it with joy as the flavor exploded in his mouth. He reveled in the taste a little longer before focusing his thoughts on the events of the day. His stalker rabbit had once again "run" into him in the forest, although Nathan didn't really think that two times was enough to label the little bully a stalker per se.

Although he did feel like the odds of running into the same monster twice within a couple of days was a little "meh," while he'd admit that the island itself was small, it wasn't that small.

Shaking his head, he began turning his brain power towards much more important things than a freaking bunny, even if he secretly found it a little cool.

The dungeon.

The last dungeon he'd entered before calling it quits with rank-F dungeons had given him three useless items: another rope (if you could believe that), a skillet which Nathan found weird, and finally an axe.

All items that Nathan had no urgent use for at the moment, although the skillet could serve some purpose if he could actually find something to hunt that wasn't a freaking monster on the island.

Taking a deep breath, Nathan calmed himself before pulling out the axe from his bag of holding. While he wasn't a fan of the weapon itself, he had to admit it was pretty nice to have a backup weapon just in case things went south with his sword. He'd already been dispossessed of his sword in fights a few times as it was. With a sigh, he analyzed the axe.

[Axe (Common)]

Pretty drab description if you asked him—it was almost as if the system was saying that this item wasn't worth its time, and Nathan couldn't really argue with that logic.

I might as well.

Since the weapon was already out of the bag and in his hand, Nathan thought it'd be a waste to put it back in without giving it a spin. So he hacked and slashed and cleaved through imaginary enemies, careful not to embed the axe in the walls of his room or in his body.

Yeah, I'm not feeling it.

The axe didn't give him the same thrill he got from swinging his sword. The weapon felt barbaric more than anything—less elegant, much heavier, and less favorable than his sword. All these things pretty much cemented the fact that the axe had no chance whatsoever of displacing his sword as his primary weapon. It could have been a contest if the axe was of the uncommon grade, but at the moment, the axe and the sword were at the lowest grade—common—and Nathan would pick the sword ten times out of ten in every fight he'd had so far.

With a sigh, Nathan returned the axe to his bag of holding while taking out another fruit and biting into it as his mind whirred. He unsheathed his sword and dropped to the floor, laying the sword within reach while he gazed out the window.

His thoughts wandered to his first day on the island when he'd been thrust into an apocalypse. It wasn't ideal, but Nathan was a survivor, and more than anything, if he was being honest with himself, he liked the new world.

There probably wouldn't be any rich, pompous brats trying to downplay his hard work because they were born into a wealthy family with a trust fund in place, while Nathan was left spinning signs for Mr. Wong's Snorting Dragon.

Day and night, trying to pay his bills and still have enough time to play video games and have a childhood. This new world was much better—trust funds didn't mean shit to the system; only raw power made a difference.

Nathan wasn't going to sit back and relax, no. He'd work twice as hard as anyone, ten times even if that was what it took to get to the top. The apocalypse had at first been nothing but a bad dream for him, but right now he knew what it truly was.

My chance to change the status quo.

One thing was certain for Nathan: he had been given an opportunity, and he wasn't going to let it slip through his fingers because of anything. He'd work hard, he'd make good use of this second chance at life. Heck, he'd made it this far and already had a class that could make the jump from rare to legendary—somehow, he had managed to get his hands on a class that could climb to the pinnacle of all classes.

"Legendary"

Nathan loved the way the word rolled out of his mouth. Just the thought of evolving his class to that level made him giddy.

"What do you know, life really does begin at eighteen."