The Primal Hunter

The night was quiet, far quieter than one would expect from a forest filled with borderline mindless beasts who wanted nothing more than to munch on human flesh. There were no roars, no howls of wolves or hoots of owls. No sounds at all, really, except the breeze rustling the trees and bushes, and the crackling of the bonfire.

The responsibility of the person on watch was quite simple. Keep an eye out for things trying to kill them, and keep the bonfire lit. Jake checked his stamina, seeing it up to 135/140. Nearly maxed out again by around three hours of sleep. It had only been at around half when he went to sleep, regenerating far faster than he had predicted.

The need for sleep being reduced with levels was certainly a possibility, or perhaps the introduction to the system had changed something fundamental that simply made sleep less important. For example, Jake was wondering what would happen if one just chugged down stamina potions whenever it got low if one could stay awake indefinitely.

Shaking his head, Jake got up and took a short walk around the camp, surveying the perimeter of the small clearing. In hindsight, the location of their camp was poorly chosen, to say the least. There were trees and dense bushes all around them, making easy hiding spots for any predators, and not a single direction offered any solid cover from potential assaults.

Jake considered if they should look for a cave or something like that in the morning. Then again, caves also had their drawbacks, as chances are there would only be one entrance… and he could just imagine a beast like the big boar charging through the narrow tunnels, trampling anything in its wake. Yeah, not a pretty picture.

Looking at the trees, it was perhaps possible to somehow make camp up in one of the larger ones? Though that would make having a fire impossible, and he was not completely confident in everybody’s ability to climb said trees.

Thinking about how little activity there was in the forest at this time of night made Jake think that the system or whatever/whoever had designed this tutorial was not completely ruthless. The absence of nocturnal beasts made surviving quite a bit easier, giving them time to sleep and recuperate. Even animals like badgers, which were normally active at night, seemed to only hunt during the daytime.

Jake, however, still had to remain vigilant as he had no solid evidence that there were no beasts out there, still hunting. He could also not forget the other humans of the tutorial. He had seen them on the giant pillar at the start, spread out to all sides. Thinking back on it, they had only been to the left and right, and none in front or behind him. He also couldn’t forget the giant wall off to the back of them.

The space between the pillars was measured in kilometers easily, so it was not surprising that they had not run into other survivors yet. It had only been half a day or so, and while they had been moving for a while, they had not gone far, perhaps only a few kilometers tops. The pace had been slow, and everyone tense and overly careful, even taking some detours to avoid potentially dangerous areas. The direction they had traveled was also directly away from the wall.

He didn’t even know if the other participants in the tutorial all were actually human. He had seen silhouettes, indicating bipedal creatures, but he had no way to know if they just had roughly the same shape as humans, or if they were humans. And quite honestly, he was not sure if he preferred for them to be humans or for them to be aliens, as chances are, they would end up in conflict at some point.

While sitting still and just keeping an eye out sounds easy, anyone who has worked any kind of night job knows exactly how boring it is. But sadly, reading a book or playing

and keeping the other awake and aware. The boredom, mixed with the lack of even the slightest stimulations from the environment, led to Jake slowly becoming

stupor once more when he heard rustling from one of the bushes at the far end of the clearing, the furthest away from the bonfire. Jake fixated his eyes on it as the bush kept rustling. He did not feel any sense of danger from the bush as he focused on it, but his instinct nevertheless told him something was wrong. For him to

been dead tired yesterday, mainly due to the mental exhaustion of this whole ordeal, so he was

it still rustled slightly once every couple of seconds as he got closer. He scanned the bush, seeing nothing, but still hesitant to go right up to it. He started drawing his bow and aimed it at the bush, as he slowly walked closer, taking tiny steps, prepared

out from the bushes.

sound had barely left his mouth when he haphazardly raised his bow to try and block

at the assailant and saw that it was a bearded man, who seemed to be

his bow back and retreat, with the warrior trying to cut all the way through and into Jake’s

than Jake, and he had already been forced into close combat, meaning he had no way to use his bow. The others back at the camp had awoken by now, but they were scrambling and confused, with not

as the axe wielding warrior got closer. He had no time to think, so instead of thinking… he just reacted. Less than a second before the axe smashed his head in, he let go of his bow just as the warrior tugged, making him fall backward from his own momentum. Jake took the opportunity to pull back as the axe smashed into the ground where he

warrior with his knife but was blocked by his armored arm. Without any hesitation, Jake pulled an arrow from his quiver and making use of the arrow’s length, managed to hit the axe wielder's eye with an overhead blow, just reaching across his guard. The arrow barely penetrated, but it

once more, but this time there was a slight red gleam around it, as it moved faster and was far stronger. Jakes's attempt to block it was met with severe pain in his wrist as the

danger from behind him. No… it was not the feeling of danger, but that of sure death. Time seemed to get slower, as Jakes's senses were stimulated like never before. He saw, no, felt the battlefield. The axe wielder had gotten up once more, bleeding from his eye, but had managed

first time ever, he completely embraced the feeling of these new, unfamiliar senses. But even more so than that, he completely and unquestionably followed exactly what his instinct told him to

out in pain as he dropped the sword. The axe wielding warrior behind him once more tried to strike him, but he dodged the blow by ducking beneath it as if

off the now disarmed man. Jake ran towards him and cut him once across his arms as he raised them to try and block, with the

time to do so, as he, in full sprint, kicked him in the head. Before the disorientated warrior could recollect himself, Jake lifted the sword and stabbed it downwards into the skull of the