The Primal Hunter

Jake could feel that both his mana and stamina were reasonable despite the many Shadow Vaults. His quiver was also more than half-full making it unnecessary to reconjure more quite yet.

After he had poisoned a few more arrows, he set his sights on the next pack - four badgers, levels similar to the one he had just taken out.

With a Powershot, he once more took out the group's strongest, as he retreated to where he had fought the first group to not attract more beasts. He had to be a bit cautious for the last group and kite them in a circle, while he now had more space to use.

Minutes later, the beasts met their end, as Jake once more got a level. Quite honestly, this was too easy. His arrows were getting low, though, so he had to conjure some more. His stamina also began getting low, so he decided to take a quick break to stock up on arrows while restoring some stamina.

Said restoration happened through the consumption of a stamina potion, as he took a quick peek in his spatial storage and saw that his stock was getting low.

His consumption of stamina potions was quite insane. He used his skills liberally, making him consume a lot of stamina. That, coupled with him still not being all that practiced making the potions, made him have to drink one nearly every hour when it was off cooldown.

Deciding to extend his break a little, he retreated to the tunnel in which he had entered and sat down on the ground as he summoned his mixing bowl.

Following that, he took out some purified water and put it in the bowl, along with the Green Lavender and Evergreen Grass, as he prepared himself to make the stamina potions.

Placing his palm under it, he activated Alchemist’s Flame, making the transparent flame spring forth. The water slowly heated up, as he used his other hand and small strings of mana to pick up the other ingredients as he started his brewing.

He always found alchemy relaxing. Even during the challenge dungeon where his life was on the line, he still enjoyed it. It was challenging and complex, yet immensely satisfying to create something. Jake had never really had any hobbies that led to any actual products, being far too into archery or games.

His job was the same, with most of his creations simply being documents and figures on a computer. He didn’t count putting together a PowerPoint with a bunch of graphs and forecasts to be considered a worthwhile or satisfying creation.

But seeing herbs and water slowly turn into the desired color, and hearing the following message of his success was oh so satisfying, especially after struggling for a long time to make it correctly. He seriously doubted he would ever forget the first time he made a common-rarity Necrotic Poison.

Smiling to himself, he jumped into the work.

The hours passed by in the blink of an eye, as Jake sat there absorbed in his alchemy.

The dungeon around him was silent, the badgers simply milling about, sniffing the ground and sometimes bumping into each other. The Alpha was just sleeping, as it seemed to be waiting for a challenger to appear before it.

Only four groups of badgers remained. One of them had four members like those he had already taken down, while two of the others had five, and the last one six. By how they were placed, it seemed apparent that you should fight them in order of least to most, ending up against the Alpha at the end.

Just like a goddamn game, Jake sighed as he started packing up the unused materials and threw the stamina potions he had made into his spatial storage, but not before taking one and chugging it down. Interestingly enough, newly created potions tasted exactly the same as older ones, making Jake briefly wonder if potions had expiration dates.

He didn’t get a level despite hours passing, but he hadn’t expected to either. While his leveling speed was likely monstrous compared to many others with their professions, it was a slow and arduous process compared to leveling his class.

could easily do alchemy for an entire day without seeing

while doing alchemy, and that was even with Jake’s profession being one with relatively high levels of risk due to the focus

high amount of vitality and toughness, making him far more

cleaning everything up, he dismissed all distracting thoughts as he locked onto the next group of badgers. Four of them

to kite them back and kill them one by one. He was exceptionally well-matched against them, making it an

single one of them even

the last group, but luckily there were many

a bit more annoying than the others. The extra beast allowed them to slowly gain ground on him until he was forced to meet the final one in melee. He

repeatedly while holding it down, with it becoming a battle of attrition. Perhaps the badger had hoped that the potent venom within its teeth would take out Jake before it succumbed to his attacks. A hope that swiftly died as Jake got the notification of the

sensation in his arm as

increased his resistance still, as he could feel the venom’s toxic potency through his Sense of the Malefic Viper. In terms of pure toxicity, it was

poison themselves. Nothing of note, at least. Which wasn’t that surprising as many animals

venomous snake of the same species, or even if it bit itself. Their venom was protein-based, which meant that while they could easily eat prey they had killed with their poison, the same

it down and absorb it, making drinking snake venom not actually dangerous under most circumstances. If you didn’t have any open wounds in your mouth, throat,

it seemed to be of the same kind as snake venom. Of course, one had to factor in the system and possible magic elements involved. Jake could

it was quite literally mana-injected blood. The ingredients used in poison concoction were also

before the system would fare against his current body. He remembered certain animals being absolutely ridiculously poisonous, being able to kill giant animals with even

the toxin would be far less effective due to all the magical mumbo-jumbo going on. Taking the venom currently being eradicated in Jake’s arm into consideration, he could only imagine how easily non-magical

to know in the end. The system was here, and it was likely going to

had finally removed the final trace of venom in his arm, as he noticed that it had

at his notifications quickly, he saw that he

36 - Stat points allocated,

reached level 41 - Stat points allocated, +5

Hunter skill, which helped him close the stat-gap by quite a lot. Noticing his class also reaching level 36,

the hell had he used an arrow to stab the badger? He could finally use

this one didn’t reject him at all but smoothly absorbed his mana. He immediately felt the faint connection and became aware of how

with Ice-affinity mana over a long time. Due to the material used, the blade afflicts anyone hit

Lvl 35+

if compared to toxins that

also activated as its edge chilled - a frosty

the sword before he reached level 35 and found that he couldn’t inject his mana into it at all. As for wielding it without binding it to himself, that too was impossible as the blade just

had forgotten actually to test if the theory was correct, but perhaps that was another experiment for

a proper melee weapon once more. He had found a common-rarity dagger in the valley