The Primal Hunter

Time marched onward unforgivingly. Soon two weeks had passed since the conclusion of the tutorial.

Earth was in chaos as the newly returned humans scrambled to find a foothold. Factions quickly formed, though they were more just collections of people who happened to be in the same area when they returned.

Many had thought the nightmare over upon exiting the tutorial, naively believing that humanity could return to some semblance of normalcy. Sadly for them, reality proved the exact opposite. Earth was far more dangerous than nearly all the tutorials.

In Jake’s tutorial, the beasts hadn’t ever really attacked people in the outer zone. They were incredibly passive and could easily be avoided most of the time. It was only in the beginning that people really died to the environment and not their fellow humans.

Upon their return, they found Earth to be far less friendly. Beasts and monsters roamed about without any restrictions. An area filled with weak single-digit monsters could easily be invaded by one several times everything else’s level.

The only solace was that higher-leveled beasts and monsters tended to not bother with lower-leveled things. Like the lizard that had attacked Jake and his coworkers, it had only cared about the ones with a level at least a bit close to its own.

It wasn’t as if the human threat was gone either. With the collapse of social order nearly everywhere, some unsavory individuals chose to take advantage. The powerful became tyrants and were as monstrous as the actual monsters stalking about.

Yet, one place was tranquil. Not a single beast was nearby, not a single drop of blood anywhere. There was only a beautiful waterfall landing in a serene pond. On the shore sat a young man with a cauldron, a transparent fire beneath it, and a strong smell in the air.

For the vast majority of humanity, the last two weeks had, without a doubt, been a constant stream of hectic moments of people trying to survive. For Jake, however, it had been the most relaxing time since before the tutorial.

Without any real external pressure, he had managed to achieve a lot. Many of the things he had put off during the tutorial due to time constraints he now had time to do. The first of which was to practice potion-making.

He had only been able to make inferior-rarity potions of all three types for a long time now but had held off on improving and making common-rarity ones.

Now, however, he had time. In only two weeks, he had broken through and made common-rarity potions of the health and mana type while getting very close with the stamina ones. Looking at the two new brews he had made, they indeed were a lot more potent than before.

[Mana Potion (Common)] – Restores 4347 mana when consumed.

[Health Potion (Common)] – Restores 2824 health when consumed.

First of all, the amount of resources they restored was, of course, higher. In fact, the separator between inferior and common-rarity was twofold. First of all, there was a qualitative improvement in the crafting process.

Common-rarity was harder and required far more skill to make. Of course, better ingredients were also required, something Jake had more than plenty of. He had never used the common versions of the Lavender Flowers that were used in his recipes. Aka, he had a lot of them still sitting around in his spatial storage.

Besides the change in the crafting process, the second requirement was the required amount of resources restored. Common-rarity potions restored a minimum of 2500 in either health, stamina, or mana. Even if Jake made a potion with the improved crafting method that restored less, it would just turn out to be inferior.

Interestingly enough, this didn’t mean that inferior potions couldn’t restore more than 2500 resources. In fact, Jake’s best inferior-rarity mana potion to date had restored 2600 mana. Of course, it remained inferior due to the ‘lesser’ crafting method, and he was beginning to feel the cap approaching with that one.

As for the requirement for potions to be uncommon-rarity, he didn’t even know yet. He remembered that inferior potions needed to restore a minimum of 25 resources. From 25 to 2500 was a 100-fold increase, so if that pattern continued, uncommon-rarity would have to restore 250.000 points. Yeah, he wasn’t sure about that one.

was improving. His very first common-rarity mana potion was made on the first day and restored 2600 mana. The health potion came on the sixth day, it restoring 2541

plenty of potions to spare

him 25% more maximum mana, and at the same time, increasing his mana regeneration. The

more resources after it had been

he also meditated once in a while to ponder on different things, which only helped him keep his mana usage at an easily manageable level. All in

return, he was working on making his first common-rarity stamina potion for the first time. The hardest type

his experience with internal energy through his Limit Break ability as

mixing bowl he used before. Overall, he used less mana as there wasn’t much resistance, and he could way

control from Sagacity of the Malefic

crafted [Stamina Potion (Common)] – A new kind

reached level 69 - Stat points allocated, +5 free

level 76 - Stat points allocated,

one response to the level he

looked just like its inferior version. But Identify made the difference between the

(Common)] – Restores 2511 stamina when

still only had 8200 stamina. That meant that with Palate of the Malefic Viper’s bonus counted in, a single stamina potion

everything up, and threw it in his spatial storage.

the edge of the pond, he didn’t stop as his foot touched the water. An invisible shimmer of mana covered his feet as he walked on water. Walking to the middle of the pond, he sat down in meditation, still on

of tendrils of mana. Each of them reaching six or so meters to the bottom of the lake, where many large stones

more as he didn’t even need to wrap the tendrils around the rocks. Merely touching them was enough for his mana to exert its influence. It even drained less mana than forcefully lifting it by wrapping his strings

weighing more than his own bodyweight. Small beads of sweat appeared on his face after a few minutes as he shuffled the stones around. After nearly 10 minutes, he dropped one of the stones, and in the chaos, lost

pond once more, scaring the small eels that observed the weird human above. Simultaneously, he failed

the first time that happened either. Jake’s routine was pretty much set every single day. Speaking of days, they were

Those who thought that would be wrong, as

still only one sun and one moon. Neither appeared larger or smaller, which probably meant that both had actually gotten bigger. Not

high perception, his eyes may as well have been telescopes. He could see way further and even

expect to see some wondrous supernatural sights. A space octopus, maybe. So far, he had only found disappointment. Space octopuses had

how Jake spent his days since the tutorial ended. Alchemy, mana practice, and stargazing. So far, he had only slept a single time.

got a level in alchemy nearly every second day, which was pretty good according to

to walk around with One Step Mile and practice that a bit. His current dream was to somehow manage to use it while on the water. Currently, he hadn’t been able to as his

that not a single beast had stumbled upon him yet. He hadn’t even seen any check him out. The birds were still around, and he saw a few other animals, such as the eels. But none of them were above level 10,

may feel like a long time without any human contact, but one had to remember that Jake was pretty skilled at being antisocial. He was a bit lonely, and

upon his little valley. A day that came

pavement that had once been a highway. Bertram on his right and a tall woman, carrying a bow,