The Primal Hunter

As he closed his status window, Jake was momentarily a bit lost. He had been in the zone for two weeks, doing alchemy at every waking hour. His first interaction with another living being for over two weeks had been with an ancient being of immense power that had ended up giving him quite an overpowered blessing, along with a several-hour long pleasant conversation.

Now, however, he would have to get back into it. It would frankly be a bit embarrassing if he ended up dying to a poison weeks after receiving the blessing of a snake-god. On that note, they hadn’t at any point spoken about how to cure it. Jake hadn’t asked, and the Viper hadn’t offered up any information. They had an unspoken agreement that it would be… well, boring.

But the Viper did give something, as he thought back to the one solid piece of advice the Malefic Viper gave. To focus on the mana. He knew mana was necessary for all the concocting and brewing he had done; it was easily the most crucial aspect of the crafting process.

Yet the Viper hadn’t mentioned anything about alchemy necessarily. He spoke of feeling it around him…

Closing his eyes, he could still feel the ever-present mana in his surroundings. Jake never thought much of it, much like how one would stop smelling it if one lived with a particular smell for long. The same was valid with mana. If it was just something that was there, you never noticed it. Perhaps that had been a mistake.

Feeling the mana was easy, his Sphere of Perception making it even easier. Jake just wasn’t sure exactly what he was supposed to do with that feeling. Moving his hands around, he could vaguely feel the mana being dislocated from where his hand was, but otherwise wholly unaffected.

Did the Viper just mean for him to try and feel it more? No, that couldn’t be it. Did he then suggest to somehow manipulate or control it? But Jake didn’t have a skill for that. He did have some skills to manipulate mana through his alchemy, but those were very specific.

When doing alchemy, he made use of the small runes in the mixing bowl. He had to control the mana in the bowl through those. One could say that the bowl itself functioned as a joystick, his mana the hand controlling it.

Jake saw no way to manipulate the mana in the mix without these runes.

Jake proceeded to try the whole ‘believe-hard-enough-tactic’, but it had yielded nothing after an hour of trying. But he refused to give up. The Viper may have been slightly unstable in many ways, but he didn’t strike Jake as a liar. A bit a jokester maybe, but he had a serious look in his eyes when he gave the advice.

Instead of attempting futility, he decided to quickly test out his new Alchemical Flame. Like with all other skills, it came with instinctive knowledge of how to use it. Raising his hand and opening it, a small flame appeared, swaying back and forth on his palm.

The heat was low, but so was the mana expenditure. The most surprising was the color of the flame. It was nearly entirely colorless. If Jake poured more mana into it, the intensity and heat increased per the increased mana use.

While playing with fire, he discovered that it could cause him injuries, but only when he poured in the maximum mana he could while holding his hand over the flame for a long time. In other words, the offensive capabilities, at least in its current stage, were nearly non-existent. Not that it was the purpose of the flame to begin with.

As he kept experimenting, he noticed something through his sphere. When he poured more mana into the flame than it could contain, it seeped out the side of his hands, slightly affecting the surrounding mana. A lightbulb went off in his head as he had a revelation.

He couldn’t move the surrounding mana, but he had many ways of moving his own. When he used Cultivate Toxin, he always poured mana straight out of his hands into the plants, and when using his crafting skills, he naturally poured mana into the bowl.

So, what if he moved the mana, not according to the pattern of a skill, but simply as an attempt to affect his surroundings? It was weird that the thought hadn’t occurred to him earlier, but in his defense, the concept of moving an invisible force was not exactly a natural thing to him.

later, he hadn’t found much progress, but he did have some. It was early days, but he felt like he could slightly move the atmospheric mana by using his own as a catalyst. It was currently hugely inefficient,

he could keep the practice up for quite a while. Chugging

potions, so he decided

practice, he could already feel that his control had improved slightly, though

potion that

it was time to make a final push to clear this dungeon. His theory on how to cure the poison was still in

days of grinding and practice. If this plan worked, he wouldn’t leave early, which gave

the line, Jake could only smile in satisfaction. This new world may be

towards his own profession evolution. The man achieved his class upgrade already. Jacob and Caroline both agreed that he would likely be the first with both an upgraded class and

how is work going? Any progress on the spearheads for Casper?” Jacob asked as he got

the forge as he grumbled. “Didn’t bother. Had the

as he turned to ‘the kid’ who worked the forge, beside the man. He had kind of turned into a half-apprentice of The Smith over the last week or so. A caster who specialized in metal-magic. Jacob knew he had also gotten his class upgrade but wasn’t exactly sure when, or what the evolution’s specifics entailed. All he knew was that the young man had

teenager, Jacob asked once more: “Hey Will, Smith told me that he had

with his soot-covered face. He lifted 10 spearheads or so off the ground with

they are, Chief! Made them just like Mr. Smith asked!” he

and put them in a small sack he had been carrying. Jacob had never quite liked the kid. He just felt..

from Joanna. The kid stood still as she wiped his face clean and healed his slightly injured hands from the small cuts and bruises he got during his crafting.

watch out when working at the forge. I still don’t get why you didn’t just do tailoring with Joanna, Jacob, and I, or maybe even leatherworking like many of the other casters,” she said with slight

Blonde hair, clear blue eyes, and a bright personality. Not that Jacob felt any threat to his love-life. All the women in the camp treated William with partiality, like

two smiths, he left with Caroline to deliver the spearheads to Casper. Casper was working nearly every day on his traps, having

had to in order to get his class bonuses, and the construction itself also yielded experience to his builder profession.

past his trauma of taking another human’s life. He had gotten close with another archer, a woman, and they had spent a lot of time together. That was until four days ago where her headless corpse was found just outside

other side died that day. Before, he mainly tried to make traps to capture. Now he only made to kill. Jacob tried to make conversation but was met with no response as

died, Casper had spent the entire day crying and mourning. The second he had started making traps like a madman. He had even tried to leave and fight the other side directly, but luckily, they had managed to

of him when he mentioned Ahmed dying. Jacob was lost as to what he could do. He cursed this

little as they made their way over to the tailors and sat down. It was

hard as he did every day. The stats didn’t do much for him, but he got the ability to craft more specialized weapons for himself. Daggers were all fine and good, but he knew that

hadn’t initially planned on doing the whole profession-crap but had to admit that the race levels and stats were worth it. On top of that, leveling his class was just a waste of time at this

other guy Hayden by killing his son, but somehow it had ended up just making it worse. The number of people fighting hadn’t increased much;