The Primal Hunter

His eyes snapped open as the remnants of the dream left him. But unlike normal dreams, he could remember every single detail vividly.

Jumping out of bed, he threw it back into his necklace along with everything else. Right now, Jake was in a really shitty mood.

He was angry. And sadly for the Den Mother, it had been chosen as his outlet. Jake was tired of feeling like he was stuck in some big game. Tired of not knowing why the hell people kept messing with him. Even now, he didn’t know exactly why Richard had wanted him dead or why that red-robed spearman had believed he had murdered his son.

No, instead, he would just do what he did best: Challenge and improve himself.

Taking out one bottle of hemotoxic poison, he recklessly splashed it over a bundle of arrows in his hand. He summoned his bow as he walked towards the beast.

Applying the Mark of the Ambitious Hunter was done as he lifted his bow, nocked the arrow, and charged an Infused Powershot. He didn’t aim for the head of the beast as it would likely miss.

Charging it as much as he could without affecting his combat-effectiveness afterward, he released the string. The arrow was released in an explosion of mana and stamina, as Jake didn’t even wait for it to hit before nocking another. He was angry but also oddly focused.

Perhaps he felt offended by his own thoughts - by his own perception of the weakness that he carried within. He was angry at himself for believing that he was weak. That the only reason why people wanted to manipulate him was because of his own weakness. And the best way to kill that feeling of weakness was to prove that he was strong. At least Jake believed it to be so.

On the other end of the cavern, the Den Mother woke up abruptly when the Infused Powershot was released. It instinctively tried to dodge but was still hit in one of its hind legs - a minor injury, but more than enough for the poison to enter its system.

The follow-up arrived far earlier than the beast had expected too. Five arrows struck it simultaneously, penetrating only a bit, but penetrating, nevertheless. The creature was surprised but not distraught as it located its attacker.

With no hesitation, it charged towards the arrogant human who had dared to attack it. It had been the Den Mother of this group of badgers for such a long time, and now some lone human dared intrude upon its lair? One that felt far weaker than itself even.

It felt the poison, it knew something was wrong, but it didn’t have the mental faculties to comprehend what exactly it was. All it knew was that it had to kill the human in front of it as fast as possible.

The first swipe was dodged by the pesky human as Jake Shadow Vaulted to the side, still releasing arrows whenever possible. The Den Mother had predicted this, as it turned its head and opened its mouth.

Out came a torrent of green gas that eroded the very ground it hit. It enveloped the human, as the Den Mother gleefully observed what it believed to be the death of its prey.

Instead, it was met by another Infused Powershot that tore right through its shoulder and out the other side. With the shot, the usual explosion of mana occurred as it blew away all the gas.

Surprised, the giant badger locked eyes with the human and felt something it hadn’t in a long time. The feeling it had when it looked at its Den Mother back in the day, the feeling it felt when the King of the Forest had confined it to this cavern.

Fear.

It had misjudged. What was in front of it was not prey; it was a predator, just like itself.

Screeching in fear, it hoped to throw Jake off balance temporarily. The sonic wave passed over him, but he just closed his eyes as he stood unmoving, firing yet another Splitting Arrow.

He felt the pain, but he didn’t care. He didn’t need his

and it had far more skills and what seemed like a higher level of intellect. But in this fight, Jake had something he had been lacking in many

Jake was the one entirely in the drivers’ seat. And the beast felt this confidence as

into the mentality of prey. A dangerous

with all that going for him, it

Even in his arrogance, he wasn’t stupid enough to take a swipe of

barrage of arrows. The Den Mother’s wounds

where he had initially pulled it from, as it made another screech. This one was not a sonic attack, but something

explosions of dirt fell down

fell down around the Den Mother as they guarded her. The Den Mother itself started giving off a faint green sheen as Jake felt the effect of his poisons lessen with his Sense of the Malefic Viper. Along with it, the wounds on its body started wriggling far faster than before as they rapidly started

Jake thought, not discouraged

the hemotoxin poison left, as he quickly brought it out along with a handful of arrows as he doused them. He still couldn’t see the level of the Alphas, but he could feel that all of them were weaker than any of the others he had faced so far.

in the

normal arrow’s penetrative force. He knew he couldn’t kill it with a single shot,

face - quite a few even finding their way into its eyes. One could only imagine the pain

now. Jake managed to land a hemotoxin-poisoned arrow on one of them before they reached him but didn’t have time to shoot the other. He hated

arrows but quickly noticed something vital. The two badger’s teamwork was… lackluster, to say the least. Whenever he Shadow Vaulted, the beasts both struggled to chase him

allies to begin with. They were competitors. Both wanted to earn the favor of the Den Mother, and the best way to do so would be

weakness he would

dagger. While the beasts were stronger than him physically, the

let it be to help keep an eye on the large badger. Besides, it was even damaging her little by

also accidentally made eye contact with him. They, like the Den Mother, felt a sense

enough for Jake to make his way to one of them with a Shadow Vault, as he stabbed an arrow in between its ribs. Only one of the beasts was poisoned before, after all, and it was

gone as he jumped behind it. In one fluid moment mid-dodge, he briefly let go of the dagger, as a bottle of Necrotic

the way, so all it managed to do was to

always to stay extremely close to them,

considerate of each other. The situation only got more interesting as

fight got easier as another one joined. Like completely feral animals, they tried to crawl over one other and tried to push the other out the

each other, Jake of course gladly accommodating their carelessness. He honestly believed fighting one of the beasts would be more challenging than three due to

managed to poison the third one as he kept building

too. He had taken quite a few scratches here and there. Luckily none of them used that skill to release their spikes of poison. Then again, it would likely help him if one of them did, as they

saw that it was getting closer and closer to being fully healed once more. The hemotoxin in its body

fell on the ground, Mark of the Ambitious Hunter being applied seconds before it died. Jake didn't want to miss out

a single badly-wounded Alpha left standing. It was too slow and weak by now to pose any real

starting to dip relatively low. The