Kaal looked at Josh, not with any fear, but with mockery in his eyes. There was a touch of an evil smile on his face. Although his jaw was broken and his body pained like hell but that didn't stop him from laughing uproariously.
"Hahahahahahaha…"
As Josh heard him laugh, he felt uncomfortable suddenly, but he had already rushed a few steps ahead and couldn't stop immediately. Just as he was about to stop because of the strange feeling he got from Kaal's laugh, he felt that the earth beneath his feet was a little loose.
Thud!
"AAAYYYYOOOHHHHHHHHHH…"
Suddenly, a big pit suddenly opened in front of Josh. As he fell down, a sound like a pig was being slaughtered came. He kept on shouting for a very long time before he stopped. When Kaal heard this, he heaved a sigh of relief and tears also started pouring like rain from his eyes. He cried, not loudly, yet heart-wrenchingly. His boiling blood had also cooled down after surviving that one-sided slaughter. It was almost late into the night when his eyes went dry.
That was a trap set up by Kaal when he first saw the condition of his house. When he had first asked Khajoor if their home was even safe, Khajoor had denied him outright. Their small thatched hut was at the very corner of the village with forest covering all the sides of the village. There was a constant danger of wild animals entering their hut and prey on the 'sleeping sheeps'. When Kaal thought until here, he was very scared. He hurriedly started thinking of a solution to this very problem and the only solution he got was a word from his inner voice.
'Traps'
When he thought about it, traps were the only solution for that situation. Then, he told his plan to khajoor and they started working on it as soon as possible. It took them quite a few days but they still were able to set up 5 traps around their thatched hut. 4 of them were set up at the 4 corners of their hut respectively, but he set up the last one in front of their entrance. It took a few days of hard work to set up the one in front of their thatched hut. Now, one would ask, if the traps were activated by just setting a foot on them, then wouldn't it be dangerous for Kaal and Khajoor as it was just in front of their house?
Well, Kaal took that in note when he built the traps. He dug two small branches of a tree in the ground at a small distance and wrapped a thin wire around them which was stretched tightly and would break easily if one were to step on it. Then, he attached some more wires to that thin, stretched wire which went inside the pit by a small hole he dug. Those wires were connected to some logs which would hold the ground tightly if one walked on it without breaking the wire. If the wire was to be broken, the logs would also fall down and the trap would be activated.
Although they knew that this plan of theirs was definitely not a good one and they, themselves could also fall into that trap, but this was the only way for their survival. So, whenever they reached their homes, they would jump a bit to avoid breaking the wire. As for forgetting about where it was, both of them remembered the positions of the traps by heart and after jumping for many ays it had almost become an instinct for them. After all, who would want to die in the traps they had made themselves?
As for the people visiting them, that absolutely wouldn't happen. They were the poorest of the poor in the village and they hadn't had even a single visitor in the 13 years they had lived there because of the closeness of their home to the forest. Only a few villagers would dare to come here. So, what would happen if someone accidentally came to their house and fell into the traps? Kaal and Khajoor had also got the solution for this. They had thought that they would think about that if the situation ever occurred. It's not that they were very cruel it was just that they also wanted to survive.
This is what Kaal had thought of the problem for wild beasts and animals, but who knew he would have to use that for a human instead of an animal. At the time when he had smashed his knee on Josh's face, Kaal didn't even think about the trap but when he turned around, he saw himself not far away from the trap which he had always constantly reminded himself of. The gears in his mind shifted and he suddenly came up with a plan of making Josh fall into the trap.
When he ran, he constantly had the fear of being killed by just one strike of Josh who was at the 1st level of Body Strengthening realm. What he counted on was Josh's arrogance, his lack of vigilance around an ordinary mortal and him wanting to play slowly with his prey. From what he saw from Khajoor's bum and experienced himself, he knew that Josh was just playing with them and trying to give them a slow and painful death otherwise he didn't have any reason to just poke them with his horns. If he really wanted to kill him or Khajoor, he just would have needed to lift his arm and punch them once seriously and their small, malnutritioned body would have been shattered.
Luck also played an important part in his plan. When Josh only kicked him instead of just killing him in one blow, he knew his plan had succeeded. When he had turned back and rushed towards the hut, he had already broken the thin wire. All that was needed next was just a little push to get past the trap he had set up 3 steps from the stretched wire. If Josh hadn't kicked him 5-6 meters away, Kaal, himself would have been in danger of falling into the trap.
Imagine a lion toying with his prey and suddenly that prey bit him on his nose and tried to run away. What would he do? He would feel angered and first catch his prey and show them that whatever they did were useless as they couldn't escape from him and at last kill them mercilessly. This also applied to this situation. Josh felt angry when Kaal has smashed his nose and tried to run away so he firstly kicked him on his back and rendered him motionless.
Next, only death awaited Kaal. So, when Kaal fell down on the ground 5-6 meters away without even budging a bit, he felt thrilled and rushed in like a hunter to finish his prey. But that move had sealed his fate.
Kaal dragged his injured and worn out body towards the large pit. When he looked inside, he found that Josh's body right now was in a very bad shape. Inside the pit, there were many sharp-edged bamboos protruding out dangerously out of the pit with a steel coating on the sharp edges. Josh was lying at the corner of the pit with his eyes closed, unconscious. Some of these sharp bamboos had already pierced Josh left and right. Some even went right through his skin and coming out from other sides. If he had fallen at the center of the pit, then his body definitely would have become a sieve until now. A large amount of blood had already flowed out of his body and the scene was very gory. Seeing all the blood and torn flesh and smelling the reek of blood, Kaal had an urge to vomit.
Although Josh was not dead, which was evident from his continuous twitching body and constantly moving eyelids, he was also not in a shape of moving too. Seeing the josh was still alive, Kaal felt conflicted. His mind had cooled down and he understood a thing. Josh was Chooha's one and only father and if he died, Chooha would become a child without a father and would have started hating him. He knew how it felt without anyone to depend on and the sadness of being an orphan. He had been accustomed to it since he woke up but Chooha was only a 7-8-year-old kid. He wouldn't be able to withstand the shock of his father being killed by his best friends. Chooha's mother would also become a widow. But because Josh didn't die he felt that his brother would not be able to rest in peace.
As he was thinking about what he should do next, he heard something. When he listened carefully, he heard it coming from the pit. Josh was about to wake up. He hurriedly dragged his body somewhere else. If Josh woke up and somehow came out of the pit, then this time he definitely wouldn't be able to save himself. Suddenly, he heard a groaning sound from somewhere near him.
There was a constant danger of wild animals at that place and that groaning felt like a wild boar's grunt. Kaal thought a wild animal was attracted towards that place due to the smell of the reeking blood.
Argh!
Kaal's eyes suddenly widened as he screamed.