The Primal Hunter

Jake considered taking a quick trip to clean off all the blood but decided against it. Chances are, he was going to get dirty again from all the fighting one way or another. He instead picked up his bow, which he had dropped during the fight with the horde of badgers.

He started looking for more prey to hunt. While walking, he also conjured more arrows in order to fill his quiver. He had no idea what he would do if he did not have this magical quiver. He imagined having to make every single arrow manually and shivered at the thought.

While walking, he got an idea that could perhaps help alleviate his issues locating prey. To find something to hunt and get a good view of his surroundings, he found the biggest tree he could. The thing easily exceeded 80 meters and towered over the nearby trees.

The climb itself was surprisingly easy. The stats had made Jake’s grip strength strong enough that he could grab the small imperfections in the rough bark and easily climb. It took him a couple of minutes as he finally got above the tree-line of the surrounding trees and activated his Archer’s Eye.

His vision turned sharper, and he looked around him. He could see the spot where they had initially entered the tutorial, and in the distance, he still saw the vast wall. His suspicions that this whole place was a sphere was only fortified as his now even more improved vision allowed him to see details he couldn’t before.

The curvature of the wall in the distance was slight but noticeable. It was bending for sure. Jake could not see the base or top of the wall properly, but if his guess of the spherical design were correct, they would naturally extend to the sky.

After looking a bit more around, he saw something glinting in a tree a couple of hundreds of meters away from him. It was slightly above his eye-level and was in another of the super-tall trees, one even more massive than the one he was currently sitting in. He was nearly 70 meters up at this point, and this glinting object was perhaps 100 meters up.

Despite his Archer’s Eye’s effectiveness, he could not see what it was, only increasing his curiosity. He decided to climb down the tree and head towards the even taller tree with the shiny object. Who doesn’t like shiny things, right?

On the way, he encountered a small group of deer, all level 7, which he easily killed. Once again, not getting a level. The only thing he got out of it was a bit of TP and even more blood on him that he couldn’t be bothered washing off.

He quickly reached the tree, and once more, started climbing. It went easy enough like before, as he got further and further up. He kept looking at the bark as he rose, searching for what had been reflecting the light.

Finally, he spotted what seemed like a hole in the tree trunk above him. When he got up there, he saw that the opening was more than big enough for him to climb into. The tree was, after all, massive, having a diameter above five meters. When he got into the hole, he finally spotted what had returned the light.

A shining box of either bronze or brass with pretty decorations of jewels was sitting on a small wooden platform. The hole was far from big enough for Jake to stand in, but he could still crawl. Before he crawled to the box, he focused on his Sphere of Perception and looked for any potential traps.

You may call him overly paranoid, but Jake found it rather suspicious for jewel-boxes to be found in giant trees. And yet his suspicions were unfounded as he saw nothing indicating a trap or any foul play. It was just a perfectly normal jeweled box in a perfectly normal tree-hole. He was unable to see what was inside the box even with his sphere, and quickly found the reason as he used Identify on it:

[Magical Jeweled Lockbox (Uncommon)] – A system-created magical lockbox enchanted with the ability to block off all types of attempts to peek inside before opening.

He nearly got the sense that the part about blocking out peepers was directly aimed at him. Sorry for having an omnipresent perception-ability, I guess?

The box was able to block him out and was apparently created by the system. It was also the first uncommon-rarity item he had encountered since entering the tutorial. It was the highest level of rarity he had seen thus far everywhere; everything else was at most common-rarity. Well, that was ignoring his bloodline ability and the translation skill, which did not have any rarity-ranking besides just being unique.

the box were lessened, but he was still a bit unsure if it was safe to open. Then again, unless the system was just being a complete dick, he saw no reason for an all-powerful entity to leave a killer-box in a tutorial. Though it could be a mimic?

fairness. Such as beasts not hunting at night, water being plentiful, and the

despite it being called a lockbox. Only a small mechanism that you could turn for it to open. He opened the box,

found inside was a pair of leather bracers. They seemed

Bracers of the Novice Rogue (Uncommon)] – A pair of bracers made of fine leather, originally designed for new initiates in the Order of Umbra. Enchantments: Self-Repair. +5 agility, +3 strength. Increases the effectiveness of all stealth skills, further amplified while remaining hidden in the

class or

idea what the Order of Umbra was or whatever, the bonus to the stats and his stealth

Jake had not been looking for things like the lockbox with his sphere of perception, that while passively active at all times, did not really make him notice anything

have moved past several of such lockboxes already. Or perhaps not. None of the other humans he had encountered so far had any equipment not provided during the introduction, so such lockboxes

see that the box was not actually merging into the tree with his sphere; it was just... disappearing. When the final part of the box sank into the wood, all traces of the container having ever existed vanished with it. Very similar

robust than any other material he had seen with that kind of flexibility. He could likely even block swords and daggers with them,

were strapped correctly and all. As he was beginning to wonder if they were broken or that he didn’t meet the requirements to equip them, he got the idea to inject mana into the braces as

similar to when he leveled up. He felt the strength and especially the agility as 5 extra stats were not a minor matter at this stage. It was more stats total than a

mark he made on the bracers quickly disappear in only a couple of

remained sharp enough to kill beasts. He

of his tall vantage point. Besides the vista being quite beautiful, he also spotted a group of animals that he did not immediately recognize when

with how exactly the equipment worked with the system, but he was far more interested in testing its effects in combat. He could do stuff like that later. Right now, he was

seen the beasts. These were… different. They looked like hairless rodents or rats or something. Molerats perhaps?

dog-size big, but pony-size big. Despite them being on

[??? – lvl 10]

[??? – lvl 10]

two of them, but both were level 10. The same level as the big boar. But he was different than he was then. He had leveled

rats had weak defenses on his initial assessment, which made him confident in facing them. Even if he could not kill both, killing one and then escaping

logical justifications, he just wanted to fight them.

just idling about. He could attack them on the hill, but if he decided to run, they would chase him in

would bombard them from a tree and force them to

he climbed it and got in position. Chances are they could climb trees, so he decided a spot where he could also conveniently shoot down the trunk in case they followed up after

his shot and waited for the one closest to him to stop moving. Finding his chance, he released the arrow and saw it fly true, hitting the rat in the side of its head, penetrating all the way into the brain as

had ever heard before. It was loud enough to make his ears ring, as he missed his second arrow due to feeling slightly dizzy. The molerat-thing he hit in the brain earlier somehow started rushing toward him with its friend