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.

the footsteps, they suddenly seemed to

he heard something pierce through the wind, followed by a thud. The light warrior at his side, falling

immediate internal reaction as he

into the clearing, he saw

up in one of those, and it didn’t

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

came from, dashing between trees. Arriving at the 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 out his last health potion, making the man drink

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

Nicholas left the man to lick his wounds as he heard more

himself as he examined the 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

He also felt the sensation of level-ups,

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. If the man did not have any healing potions, he would bleed out in minutes. Or drown in his own blood as it filled up his lungs. Jake wasn’t a doctor, but he was pretty sure it

was now hiding in, he focused on his sphere as he moved out, sneaking in between trees. He saw a lone light warrior hidden behind a tree in his sphere, the tree itself posing no obstacle to his perception ability. His initial plan had worked out perfectly, baiting

a small rock to the left of the warrior as he approached from the right. The man turned instantly towards the sound, and Jake promptly charged forth, sliding up behind him, putting his left hand across the man’s mouth, and using his right to slit his

he let the corpse go as he looked at the knife wound

At least three

in charge of their little assassination-troop. He was fast, faster than Jake, indicating that he had a higher level. And not by a little either,

decided to leave one alive to send a message if possible, but it sure as hell was not going to be their

had already spotted the one he wanted to function as his messenger. It was a young archer, 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 kept throwing glances towards the clearing where the

target. From the way the kid had frozen up, Jake

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

appeared in his sphere. Unlike the others, this one had decided to cover himself in leaves and parts of the underbrush,

see him. The man was hidden well if you looked at him, but with an omnidirectional sphere, what he was doing barely counted as hiding. Jake decided to get a vertical

right at the man. He sure had done a decent job hiding, as Jake could not even spot him from above, mainly due to him lying completely