The Primal Hunter

Jake sauntered before the mighty beast. It easily towered over him, reaching the size of a small van. It hadn’t grown massively compared to its prior evolution, but Jake could feel the power hidden within its porky body. The boar was built like a tank, with a hide perhaps comparable to one.

As he got closer, the beast seemed to wake from its stupor as it turned towards him, glaring. Perhaps the system was doing its magic since it was night, but it didn’t immediately attack. It just stared at him. He instinctively felt that if he moved just a couple of steps closer, the beast would charge with abandon.

The logical move would be to take out his bow use Powershot with the maximum charge to do massive damage or even kill it with a single attack, but where was the fun in that? Where was the challenge? He didn’t even use any poison either.

Instead, he took a step forward and entered its range, and as predicted, the beast squealed as it made its way towards him. A charge he gladly met with his own. A bit stupid in retrospect, but he trusted in his powerful body.

The result was as he expected as the beast rammed into him, making him fly backward, but not before landing a good stab with the bone dagger on the snout of the big pig. This did little more than anger it further as it tried trampling him along with everything else in the surroundings.

This time he decided to dodge as he rolled to the side and started moving around the pig as if dancing. If he had learned one thing, it was that these things had horrible mobility. However, this was highly made up for by the hide on its side being near-impenetrable to regular attacks.

All of this was true, for the Irontusk boar. But the evolved Steeltusk one had more tricks up its sleeve. As Jake moved to the side, the ground beneath him suddenly shifted, nearly making him lose his balance. Simultaneously, the earth itself seemed to help rotate the mighty boar, making it turn far faster than Jake had first calculated.

Forced to move back due to the unforeseen circumstances, Jake was not distraught but happy. The stronger the beast, the more interesting the fight. He could kill the creature far faster and easier if he used poisons, giving him a reliable backup if his pure melee approach failed.

But he would be damned if he didn’t even try. Training dual-wielding yourself is all well and good, but it was nothing compared to the experience one would get in live combat.

Which was the ultimate reason why he had chosen to engage in this dance of death. Totally nothing to do with having a bit of fun with the first beast above level 25.

The moving ground made his dance difficult, his steps sometimes not finding the expected foothold, but he nevertheless managed to avoid the tusks time after time. He knew that even with his durable body, it would hurt like hell to get impaled.

An issue that quickly materialized was the weakness of the starting knife he used. Against the formidable defenses of the boar, it couldn’t even leave a mark with his slashes. Only when he stabbed did he manage to barely leave a mark. Even the bone dagger only managed to make light cuts. The enchantment was doing work, though, making each of those small cuts bleed far more and for longer than usual.

Minutes passed as Jake dodged and weaved, stabbed, and cut, while the beast furiously tried to pin him down and skewer him. As the damage to the creature increased, so did its fury and bloodlust. With little warning, the beast’s eyes suddenly started to emit a red glow, as the entire boar started to give off a similar red aura.

Jake felt his danger sense flare up as he raised his arms to block, and with a squeal of fury, the boar turned its head and hit him with one of its tusks, sending him airborne for a few moments. However, the boar was far from done as the very earth seemed to reach up and grab hold of him as the beast began a full-power charge straight at him.

With no way to move, he tossed his two daggers into the air and prepared to meet the beast. Its size was both a strength and a weakness, as Jake managed to slide between the two tusks aiming at him and instead have the snout of the beast crash into him.

He felt all air leave his lungs as he managed to grab hold of the boar, avoiding to get trampled beneath it. The beast with berserk-movements tried to shake him off, but Jake kept hold as he managed to somehow get up on the back of the creature.

his hand.

to the side, attempting to squash him beneath it. Jake pulled himself up by the hide of the massive creature and avoided

and jump off, as the beast started rolling around while at the same time manipulating the earth itself to try and

the beast had started getting slower. Blood was everywhere by now, on the creature,

straightforward. He dodged and

minor injuries on Jake, the worst one being a long gash on one of his shoulders. Jake called it a minor injury, though, before the system it would without a doubt have required a trip to the emergency room. But his high vitality kept him in top

back. The ground manipulation kept going even after the creature couldn’t

was starting to feel bad for it, and finally pulled out his bow and fired a

slain [Steeltusk Boar – lvl 28] – Experienced earned. 16000 TP

level 20 - Stat points

reached level 32 - Stat points allocated, +5 free

ending, Jake had still very much enjoyed the fight. There

less than he had lost during the short exchange with the metal manipulating caster, which

catastrophic damage once again. Luckily the self-repair enchant remained active even after being utterly ruined by William’s final attack, but now it

he injected mana into the cloak, the repair function would speed up significantly. It still took its time, though. Speaking of injecting

absorb the ambient mana. The same

stages of practice, but he believed that it should be possible to also improve already enchanted items somehow. Currently, he couldn’t inject any mana into his bone

that was not really injection per se. Mana injection is more like how one would directly shoot electricity into a bar of metal to heat it up and eventually

the mana to fulfill the desired function. Such as taking an item in or out of storage. As to how this metaphorical transformer worked… that was way above

these days, but he was also very actively studying it. Before he met with the Malefic Viper, he had taken a lot of its properties for granted. He had seen it as just the

times, and his control had vastly improved without a doubt. His little trick of pulling the bone dagger to himself during the fight was more than proof of that. Also, it felt really awesome to do. Could

had appeared or been made available regarding mana manipulation was a bit weird to him,

health points either. He had tried controlling those two sources of energy and found it way harder. He could kind of control his vital energy to focus on specific areas as he had done during the final part of the challenge dungeon, but Jake couldn’t

so far. He had theorized that he should be able to use it to enhance his own body somehow, as it was known as the inner energy. The

were all just different forms of energy. Not to say that

he

*Archer class skills available*

suspects he had been offered at level 10. While some of them still appealed to him, especially the Active Camouflage skill, he chose to ignore