The Primal Hunter

How troublesome, he thought as he pursued the archer on Richard's orders.

Nicholas, an archer himself, was silently running through the forest with six of his companions. Four archers and three light warriors made up the hunting party. In his opinion, it was total overkill to send seven men for a single archer from some corporate office.

Seriously, what the fuck was up with that guy? Spewing off some cliché bullshit to look like a badass. He had to hold himself back from cringing during the entire thing and barely managed not just to shoot him in the back as he walked off.

Sadly, Richard didn’t want to spoil the relationship with their new healer. While the guy did do some weird stuff, it was nothing to make Nicholas wary of him. It was totally unnecessary to send so many, but Richard was nothing if not thorough.

Ultimately, he did, of course, understand why Richard sent people after him. Either he was for real, and a serious threat, or he was a lunatic, in which case he would be a chaotic threat. In both cases, the issue was best nipped in the bud.

Nicholas himself had been one of the people who entered the tutorial with Richard, and he worked for the man before the initiation. Richard ran a private security firm and had employees contracted in several offices in their city of operation. Nicolas was just another faceless employee, but his track record had earned him some amount of trust, which had netted him the right-hand man's position in this tutorial.

Finding a healer was fortunate. Having none was quite honestly hell, especially for the warriors who often got minor injuries, being forced to be in melee and all that. They had a healer when they first got here, but he got impaled by a huge stag in one of their first fights. This left them with only a limited amount of healing potions, made worse by having to waste them on what a healer could fix in minutes for just a bit of mana.

Even luckier was that the healer was a part of a team of laymen who were clearly inexperienced when it came to battle. And yet he had been asked by his boss to pursue some archer with a big mouth who decided to play cool. He did not buy the guys bullshit at all.

He personally wanted to just bet on the guy getting himself killed, but Richard was not the kind of man you rejected. He was their leader, with pretty much everyone just calling him ‘boss’. Earned not through nepotism or posturing, but sheer competence.

Nicholas didn’t question his decision, but it did suck a bit that they had to take in a group of weaklings. He doubted a single one of them was even level 5. At least the healer chick looked nice, and the red-haired caster was quite good too. The one he found the most annoying was that crippled middle-aged woman - the very definition of a burden in his opinion.

I am sure Richard will find some way to fix it, he thought. How would they be to blame if the newbies had unfortunate accidents during combat? As long as they could get the healer on their side, all was fair game.

They had been running for a while and finally reached the area where Mr. Bigmouth had entered the forest, as they all entered stealth. They had a rule that every archer and light-warrior had to pick stealth at level 5, as Richard wanted a strong scouting-force, and as this situation proved, assassination-team.

They snuck through the underbrush as they scouted ahead. The guy had not exactly been sneaky, leaving clear footsteps in the underbrush. While none of them had a tracking skill, it did not mean that tracking was impossible. You just had to do it the old-fashioned way.

footsteps, they suddenly seemed to stop in the middle of

them could react, he heard something pierce through the wind, followed by a thud. The light warrior at his side, falling over with an

THE FUCK, was his immediate internal reaction

the clearing, he saw two corpses, one of the archers now also dead, shot during their retreat. What the fuck is

up in one of those, and it didn’t take long before he spotted the enemy. It was another archer based on the fact that another arrow flew out from a

nocked an arrow and went out from behind the tree, firing where the arrow had come from. He got no feedback from his shot as he quickly backed behind the tree once more. He peeked around it once more, his high perception and skill both working on

location, he saw a wounded archer with an arrow in his chest, and luckily, he was still alive. Nicholas quickly ripped the arrow out and took

the now healing archer opened his mouth: “I got a shot in,” he barely managed to say, still heaving for breath as

man fell, still out of breath, while the potion did its magic. Nicholas left the man to

arrow in his stomach. He considered ripping it out and drinking a healing potion, but looking at his health, it had only gone down a measly 50 points. Not even one-sixth of his total health after his new title. Ripping it out would only make it bleed more, making him lose more health, and quite frankly,

two of them right off the bat. He also felt the sensation of level-ups, but he

the third target he had gone for had been prepared and had been outside his sphere when they spotted each other, resulting in them both landing an arrow on the other. Jake narrowly missed the man’s heart, but still landed a fatal blow.

tree itself posing no obstacle to his perception ability. His initial plan had worked out perfectly, baiting all of them into the middle of a small clearing, and then attack, making them split to all sides. Divide and conquer and all

charged forth, sliding up behind him, putting his left hand across the man’s mouth, and using his right to slit his throat. The man managed to yank his dagger

he let the corpse go as he looked at the knife wound on his left shoulder. It hurt,

maybe four down. At least three to go, including the

faster than Jake, indicating that he had a higher level. And not by a

began sneaking towards his next target as he tried to stay hidden. He had already decided to leave one alive to send a message if possible, but it sure as hell was not going

could not be more than seventeen or eighteen. Jake was looking at him at this moment and could both see and feel him shake in fear. He

kid and instead started looking for another target. From the way the kid had frozen up,

and focused on his hearing. At first, he heard nothing but the ambient sound of the wind and the occasional beast or

and soon the last light warrior appeared in his sphere. Unlike the others, this one had decided to cover himself in leaves and parts of the underbrush, practically invisible in combination with the basic stealth skill as he lay prone on the ground. Jake

Jake did not need his eyes to see him. The man was hidden well if you looked at him, but with an omnidirectional sphere, what he was

job hiding, as Jake could not even spot him from above, mainly