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.

was kind of eerie how the beast could be only a hundred meters away from

could attack one group without any of the others bothering. They should

while their range of perception was limited, the

he usually did and accidentally moved too close to a bunch of the small buggers. The fact that their

a bit over 20 meters. Heck, the fact that he could sit here in the dungeon

though, so he wasn’t going to complain that

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 in

couldn’t be too weak either. After 8 or so seconds, as Jake started to feel the soreness set in, he

dull eyes turned sharp, and the beast sprung into motion

blow, Jake didn’t get disappointed but instead felt excitement. This one was

he fired a Splitting Arrow that surprised the beast charging towards

arrows hit as it dodged. But notably, it clearly purposefully

his eyes, Jake knew this beast,

gap in only three or so seconds, putting most sportscars to shame with its monstrous acceleration. And this was even

Shadow Vaulted backward but didn’t have time to fire another arrow before the beast was upon him once more. His tactic of briefly

claws. Its strength outclassed Jake by far, and right before it hit him, he leaped backward, borrowing the momentum of its

blow relatively well. He felt his bones creak a bit, and it did send reverberations

gotten some distance, Jake finally managed to land an arrow on the beast, though not hitting any critical areas, but it was enough to

the normal Venomfang badgers, where

penetrate

effects as 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

the venom of the smaller ones, so he saw no chance with the Alpha. No

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

spread that well though blood… it broke down the flesh and spread through that. With the beast having ripped out the infected meat, it

pulled out a poison he had barely used.

and makes any injuries harder to

well against this type of foe. It already

flesh writhing as it visibly started healing, so he had no

infected flesh, he took out an arrow and swiftly cleaned as much of the necrotic poison off it as he could with his cloak. Mixing poisons never ended well and

poured it out over the arrow swiftly as he briefly made eye-contact with the beast out

the empty bottle was a major threat as it jumped to the side to avoid it, buying Jake even more

know if he would get time to make another. He had no confidence in facing the beast in a melee brawl. Not yet, at least. If he could weaken it significantly first, perhaps he would be able

Splitting Arrow had proved not to work, and a regular shot had a big chance of being dodged… he needed to

could slightly do it now… but he didn’t exactly have a tremendous rate of success. Either it was negligible, or it just made the skill fail as all the stored inner energy dispersed into

as he took the gamble. What better time to try something

fear of bottles. He had thousands of empty bottles for poison and potions still