Slowly but surely, the adventurers closed the distance between them and their attackers. If the pattern held, the monsters would turn around and try to hold them up again soon. That would be their opportunity.
And right when the pursuers took up their weapons in anticipation...something happened.
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“Houghf—” A breastplated warrior tumbled down with a rather unladylike exclamation, as if she’d tripped in the dirt.
An adventurer who had been behind her ran past, sparing her nothing but a glance and a smirk. A club-wielding man from the woman’s party caught up to her soon after, and grabbed at her arm to pull his companion to her feet.
“Wait! Don’t!” the woman shouted, swatting away her party member’s hand. At her strange reaction, he looked down and groaned, spotting the problem. The fighter had fallen into a small pit, dug down about thigh-depth. Wooden beams were set along the sides of the pit’s walls, each with several nails sticking out of them, pointing downward.
Yes... the woman had run straight into a fang-filled mouth hidden under some leaves. When she’d tried to pull herself out, the long nails on either side of her had dug into her like fishhooks. Any further pulling would only cause the nails to dig deeper into her flesh. Even squirming would further deepen her wounds. To save her, she’d need to be dug out, and the trap dismantled around her.
Thinking it would be difficult to accomplish this on his own, the club-wielder waited for more members of their party to catch up with them so he could ask them for help. If they took the time to free her, the whole party would end up far behind those pursuing the kobolds.
...But the trouble didn’t end with only this one party.
The adventurer who’d sneered at the fallen warrior raised his axe to strike at a kobold who’d tripped, and felt his boot snag on something. In the next instant there was a whoosh as a long, flexible object snapped through the air and whipped him across the abdomen. The blow doubled him over, the impact more than stopping him in his tracks.
“Ah...gah...?” The impact had knocked the breath and the contents of his stomach out of him and he’d almost lost consciousness, but as he came back to his senses, he pushed aside the object that had struck him with trembling hands... slip... He felt something wet and looked down to discover himself pulling a sharpened stick from his navel. The “whip” that had struck him was a strong, supple branch. The strength of the blow had likely come from the flexible branch snapping itself straight, and several stakes tied to the branch had gouged into his abdomen. The thing his foot had touched was the tripwire for this trap.
It was a primitive trap, really, but it had still packed enough punch to pierce through his leather armor.
“Aaah?! Ah, aaah, ahhh...” The man fell to his knees, groaning as a sequence of feelings took hold: surprise, then pain, and finally resignation. His midsection no longer able to support his upper body, the adventurer toppled over onto his back on the grass.
“Fhoo, fhoo, fhoo...” His eyes were wide as he tried to regulate his breathing. Every time his chest rose and fell, more blood oozed from the holes in his gut. At this point, his only hope was for someone to find him and help him. But with the stakes having gouged all the way into his internal organs, it was unlikely that the healers the guild had brought with them would be able to save him with their first aid even if someone did find him.
A scream went up somewhere else. This time, it was a long-haired man in a deep blue cloak who stood as short as a child.
No, he wasn’t short; he was probably over six feet tall. His head was just lower than it should have been, for the simple reason that he had fallen into a pit trap. It wasn’t even that deep; they’d all probably dug similar pits as children, horsing around in fields. The problem was that this pit was full of thin, sharpened stakes sticking up out of its floor.
The pit had been hidden by dirt and grass, and when he stepped on it the force from his fall and his own weight had impaled his feet, calves, and thighs on countless tiny spikes. The man was wearing a breastplate over chainmail, which was considered heavily armored for an adventurer, but all that protection was powerless against a trap that targeted only his legs.
“Fuck! Fuuuck! It hurts! It hurts! Help me! Somebody help me!”
“Hey! Hold on!”
Luckily for him, another member of his party was nearby. The second man, wearing well-worn infantry armor, quickly doubled back to his wounded comrade and set about helping him.
What was unluckier was that that man then set off another trap.
His foot brushed at a wire concealed by leaves, releasing a sphere held in place on a nearby tree. The sphere was a ball of thorns made up of stones and lumber held together by rope to weigh it down, with countless sharpened stakes sticking out of it.
Ka-shunk. Once released from its bonds, the ball swung like a pendulum and impacted the man’s shoddy helmet, the thorns piercing his face.
“Rrgh.” With a short grunt, the poor victim crumpled powerlessly to the ground. The spikes pulled free of his head, wet with various fluids now leaking from new holes.
All the man in the cloak could do now was scream, his savior gone.
In other places, more and more traps of various designs like these were sprung one after another, injuring or killing their victims.