The Primal Hunter

Jake focused on the threads of mana as he supplied mana through every one of them. One of them reached towards his battered cloak, which had been nearly completely destroyed, again, after the latest fight where he finally took down the last of the badger groups, leaving only the Alpha left.

The self-repair enchant on the cloak would repair it entirely over time, but if one were injecting mana, it would significantly speed up the process.

The second string went to his bracers that had taken quite the beating too. He had used them to block quite liberally, making them well and truly scratched up. One of them even had several bite holes in them from the two times he had been bitten.

The third string went to the empty quiver as he supplied mana to conjure more arrows. Yet another two were currently picking up a blue mushroom each as they slowly put it into the mixing bowl he was holding with his two hands.

If he was doing relatively easy concoctions or brews, he could do it with only one hand on the bowl, but it was more comfortable with two hands if he needed a bit finer control. And as he was currently making more Necrotic Poison, he needed both hands.

Of course, he made it a bit harder for himself by deploying mana strings and charging up or repairing his stuff.

But in the end, it turned out successful as he was met by the beautiful message confirming his successful concoction and finally getting that level-up.

*’DING!’ Profession: [Prodigious Alchemist of the Malefic Viper] has reached level 47 - Stat points allocated, +5 free points*

*’DING!’ Race: [Human (E)] has reached level 43 - Stat points allocated, +5 free points*

Along with that level, he had already gotten quite the gains from the dungeon. Jake had been there for 10 hours by now, as he had to take a break before fighting the second to last and final group of badgers.

He quickly burned through all 60 arrows in every one of those fights, as the damn things were relatively resilient and good at avoiding fatal injuries.

As it took a bit of time to reconjure the arrows, he also spent the time concocting a bit. He had decided to go all out against the Alpha Badger and use some of his limited supply of Necrotic Poison.

He was starting to run a bit low on blue mushrooms by now. He cursed himself for casually eating them out of habit in the period after leaving the challenge dungeon, but not as much as he cursed himself for not clearing out the long tunnel filled with them after exiting the challenge dungeon.

It was unlikely that he would return for them as… well… he kind of didn’t know the way back. He was a hunter, sure, but that didn’t mean that his sense of direction was that powerful. Besides, the damn forest in the outer zone looked the same all over, with nearly no discernable landmarks. At least the inner area had huge mountains of different heights to orientate oneself quickly.

At least the dungeon was straight-forward. Quite literally, as there was only an opening at each end of the cave.

After he finished most of his preparations, he meditated for a few hours to fully restore himself. Only a single enemy remained in front of him, and from the feeling it gave off, the thing was stronger than anything he had ever faced before.

Exiting meditation, he took out the newly concocted bottle of Necrotic Poison, as he started dipping his arrows in it one by one. Leaving nothing up to chance, he dipped all sixty of them, making sure that he could give the beast a sufficient dosage of death.

After he was done, he put on the now fully repaired cloak and bracers. It was a bit weird how he retained the stats from the bracers even after removing them. Though his connection to them slowly worsened when he didn’t have them on, so he assumed that if he took them off for too long, the stats would disappear.

Shifting his focus back on the huge Alpha Venomfang Badger, he noted that he still couldn’t see its level even after his level-ups.

The Alpha was no longer sleeping but sitting on the ground, almost as if it was waiting for him. The moment he defeated the group with six badgers in it, the beast had woken up and moved to the position it was currently in. Likely by design, Jake noted.

beast could be only a hundred meters away from him on flat ground, and while

attack one group without any of the others bothering. They should clearly be able to both hear and see, and yet…

different, with the beasts roaming more, and while their range of perception was limited, the mere fact

and accidentally moved too close to a bunch of the small buggers. The fact that their range of engagement was more extensive than his sphere of perception hadn’t

had a range of a bit

so he wasn’t

the distance, he took out an arrow from his quiver, nocked it, and took aim at the beast. It still didn’t react as he started charging Powershot. He couldn’t overdo it, as he doubted the creature would die

be too weak either. After 8 or so seconds, as Jake started to feel the soreness set in, he released

eyes turned sharp, and the beast sprung into motion as it dodged to the side far faster than any other opponent Jake had faced before.

get disappointed but instead felt excitement. This one was a

he fired a Splitting Arrow that surprised the

But notably, it clearly purposefully avoided the original

his eyes, Jake knew this beast, despite its prior

Splitting Arrows before the beast made it to him. It passed the 100-meter gap in only three or so seconds,

the beast was upon him once more. His tactic of briefly confusing his enemy by vaulting

block a swipe of its claws. Its strength outclassed Jake by far, and right before it hit him, he leaped backward, borrowing the momentum of its blow to create some

well. He felt his bones creak a bit, and it

managed to land an arrow on the beast, though not hitting any critical areas, but it was enough to deliver the toxic

beast, notably less than with the normal Venomfang badgers,

fine. As long as the arrow could penetrate

it screeched in anger, far louder than even the Molerat Screechers had. His ears were ringing, and he felt his vision go black for a second. However, his danger sense still warned him of the maw of the beast descending upon him, allowing him to Shadow Vault to the side and

of the venom of the smaller ones,

noticed the beast behind him scratching at the wound he had inflicted. To his

spread that well though blood… it broke down the flesh and spread through

he decided as he pulled out a poison he had barely used. The very first type of

– Increases bleeding on infected entities and makes any injuries harder to heal. The poison must be introduced directly into the bloodstream to have

this type of foe. It already had several bleeding wounds, including the one it

visibly started healing, so he had no

arrow and swiftly cleaned as much of the necrotic poison off it as he could with his cloak. Mixing

dip the arrow in the poison, he just poured it out over the arrow swiftly as he briefly made eye-contact with the beast out of the corner of his eyes. It

Luckily the creature decided that the empty bottle was a

no confidence in facing the beast in a melee brawl. Not yet, at least. If he

proved not to work, and a regular shot had a big chance of being dodged… he needed to get a short-channeled Powershot

it now… but he didn’t exactly have a tremendous

the gamble. What better time to try something new and risky

beast’s fear of bottles. He had thousands of empty bottles for poison and potions still in his storage and was more than willing to toss