The Primal Hunter

Jake held the bowstring as he felt his stamina slowly drain. When he finally let go, the arrow literally exploded forth from the bow as it smashed into the ostrich. The arrow itself broke into splinters upon impact due to the massive power behind it. Not that the ostrich fared any better.

The arrow had hit it on its neck, effectively blowing its head off. Jake could only smile at the tremendous power of his new Powershot skill. The stamina drain was quite insane when he made shots like he just did, but it was still oh so satisfying to do.

The skill had many drawbacks, though. First of all, you had to stand nearly entirely still while channeling the shot. You could make minor movements by turning your upper body but taking a step would ‘drain’ a bit of the charged up energy and force you to sometimes start over entirely, which wouldn’t be so bad if it wasn’t for the second big drawback.

It was a very slow skill to use. It took several seconds to charge a shot that did just half-decent damage, while it could easily take close to 10 seconds to fire a shot like Jake just had. The skill’s power increased exponentially as he charged, but so did the stamina drain and the general drain on his body.

Funnily enough, his high defensive stats turned out to be very useful with the skill. He could imagine if he tried to use the skill after simply leveled to 10 in his class a month ago. He wouldn’t even be able to charge the shot for 5 seconds without his arm giving out.

Earlier in the day, he had tried to do the maximum charge he could. He held it for 12 seconds before his arm simply gave out as it’s veins burst, and half his arm got covered in blood along with a very sore shoulder and upper body. However, this did show the skill’s potential as the arrow hit a tree carving a fist-sized hole into it. The wooden arrow was borderline disintegrated upon impact, completely splintered in all directions.

If he had been able to use that skill against the metal-manipulating caster, he would have been able to pierce straight through that wall of iron, or at least have the kinetic force behind the impact be strong enough to send the wall smashing back into him. Too bad the guy didn’t allow him to stand still and charge a shot for over 10 seconds. Quite rude, actually.

Checking his notifications, he noted that he had put another level under his belt.

*You have slain [Velocta Ostrich – lvl 24] – Experience Earned. 4000 TP earned*

*’DING!’ Class: [Archer] has reached level 19 - Stat points allocated, +1 free point*

The leveling was getting quite a bit slower now, and that was disregarding the difficulty in finding beasts. He had yet to see a single one above level 25 so far, but he had also purposefully avoided heading further into the forest.

It had been around two days since he met the caster who called himself William. He knew the caster still had to be alive as he had never gotten any notification for the kill. He wanted to avoid other people for now as he still deemed it too risky to meet others. A squad of Williams would very likely result in certain death.

So, he leveled. His plan currently was to get to at least level 25 before making contact. It all depended on how long his leveling would take, but for now, he had time. Looking at the tutorial panel, he noted that less than a month was remaining.

Tutorial Panel

Duration: 29 days & 23:17:03

Total Survivors Remaining: 389/1200

He said less than a month, but it still was still nearly an entire month - plenty of time for a lot to happen. A month in the dungeon had resulted in him getting a profession, level it 44 times, evolving it once, and even evolve his race twice. Oh yeah, and he met a god.

Jake was still worried about his colleagues, but if they had lived to now, he saw no reason to rush to their side. If they hadn’t survived… he would process that if that time comes.

The levels had naturally also come with a skill at level 15. Jake had honestly been expecting nothing and had thought of going with the basic tracking skill he passed up at level 5 over a month ago. The logic behind it being to try and use it to locate his colleagues when the time came.

He also considered getting basic dual-wielding briefly. Jake preferred using a weapon in each hand a lot more than just a single dagger. So when he finally leveled and saw the options, he went with a new option that was a welcome addition for sure.

– The twin fang style is an ancient dual-wielding fighting technique. Fighters of this style prefer shorter weapons and do not shy away from using afflictions to take down their foe. Unlocks basic proficiency in the Twin Fang Style and adds a minuscule bonus to the effect of agility and

it, he didn’t know. Maybe it had something to do with the Dagger of Bloodletting being made of bone, but it also mentioned the use of afflictions, which

also was the whole Malefic Viper angle to consider, fangs being easily associated with vipers after all. Not that it mattered

to an inferior-rarity skill, this one also came with more ‘true’ knowledge. Like he had been thrown a guide-book into his memory, but he still had to learn and practice it himself, which he had spent a while doing whenever he had time. Yet he found that he barely used what it taught. He only used it to improve his existent style, if you can even call it that. Currently, he just acted based on instinct when fighting, relying on making split-second decisions over anything

rather basic. One of them even gave a small passive danger sense, which he found kind

practice did give him more to do while not hunting. He was already practicing his mana techniques whenever possible, so

better intuitively. Using items, however, wasn’t close to the same as having to

had tried hard to locate more lockboxes but had ended up with not even a single common-rarity item or token. The area seemed to have been entirely scoured by other survivors, which was likely also the reason why nearly no beasts remained. He remembered before the dungeon that if one looked for beasts, you found beasts within minutes. Now he was happy

either increasing his speed or his defenses at 20. Beasts were naturally not his concern; in fact, he hoped to meet stronger beasts than he

was apparently going on. But he liked it. Perhaps the confinement of the dungeon was still at the forefront of his mind, but he loved how open it was. The weird ‘immortal birds of ambiance’ even appearing endearing now. Yeah, those were still a

it

knowing anything was annoying him endlessly. Not knowing how his parents were or if they were even alive, the state of his other family members, how the world was currently looking outside… what would happen to all the animals on earth. All of this was disregarding his general lack of knowledge about

far more than most, heck, he was still carrying an entire library-worth of books around with him. He hadn’t really had the time or desire

the dark than himself. Unless Jake had missed another massive happening besides the whole faction war going on, they should all be utterly clueless as to how pretty much everything worked. Which kind of made Jake think that for a tutorial, this place sure sucked at teaching

less well after meeting that William

Status

Name: Jake Thayne

[Human (E) –

– lvl

the

Health Points (HP): 2986/3100

Mana Points (MP): 3248/3680

Stamina: 694/1040

Stats

Strength: 105

Agility: 126

Endurance: 104

Vitality: 310

Toughness: 157

Wisdom: 368

Intelligence: 107

Perception: 247

Willpower: 180

Free points: 0

New World], [Bloodline Patriarch],[Holder of a

[Basic Stealth (Inferior)], [Advanced Archery (Common)], [Archers Eye (Common)], [Powershot (Uncommon)], [Basic Twin Fang

[Toxicology (Uncommon)], [Cultivate Toxin (Uncommon)], [Malefic Viper’s Poison (Rare)], [Palate of the Malefic Viper (Rare)], [Touch

the Malefic Viper (Blessing -