The Primal Hunter

That day had been like any other to Jake. Alchemy, meditation, skill testing, and mana practice. Everything was tranquil until he suddenly got a weird feeling. One he quickly identified as coming from the mana in the air itself.

Something had entered the area permeated with traces of his mana by the Pylon of Civilization. In the back of his mind, he had a vague feeling of the direction of the intruder. Or Intruders. He felt several responses, but he was unsure of how many or how powerful they were.

He hesitated a few moments before he stopped his mana practice and decided to go towards the disturbance. Whatever it was, he would have to deal with it eventually. Besides, his danger sense and intuition didn’t ring out in warning even as he used One Step Mile towards the intruders.

There he found four humans under attack. One middle-aged man, two were teenagers or in their early twenties, and a woman around thirty. Their attacker, a tiger that actually reminded him of the King of the Forest, quite a bit. The bark-like skin was very similar, at least.

Of course… it was no King.

He didn’t really think much as he just went and killed the tiger to save the humans. It was like one would naturally call out if they saw someone start attacking another person on the street. While many would perhaps just stand by, Jake was the type who would interfere and then deal with the consequences afterward.

In this case, the consequence was that the group survived, forcing him into an unwanted social encounter. It wasn’t that bad, though, if a little awkward. He did learn that they were a family of three together with a family friend.

Jake hadn’t been able to say no when they asked if they could stay. All of them were relatively weak, the man only a level 31 human. He didn’t appear to have a powerful class or profession, judging from how he nearly died to a level 59 beast.

He had been level 43 when he killed the Alpha Venomfang Badger, a mini-boss type beast at level 71. The tiger did have some impressive abilities, but in the end, it was nothing compared to that badger. It would have been ripped apart with a single swipe.

Jake was pretty sure that he could have killed the Oakwood Tiger at level 31, though it would have been a tough fight. However, he did know that sending the four of them back into the forest in their current states would be no different from killing them.

None of the family appeared very interesting initially, besides maybe the boy since he was a healer. But he found out that the woman, Miranda, did have something interesting. He didn’t know exactly what she did, but she clearly had some kind of negotiation or communication skill. He couldn’t pinpoint what it did, but he was very sure that her words were infused with a skill.

Jake didn’t wait for them as he made his way back to his makeshift camp. It was little more than a blanket on the ground beside the pond.

He wasn’t afraid of them being attacked on the way. First of all, he could vaguely feel their positions when he focused on it, and secondly, no beasts appeared to want to enter the area.

Sitting down once more, he was lost in thought for a while. His daily routine had been completely interrupted, and he wasn’t quite sure what to do now. It felt weird just to start doing alchemy with the four of them also there.

getting his next Prodigious Alchemist of the Malefic Viper skill. On top of that, after reaching level 70, he could look for

arrived in the valley. They saw the beautiful waterfall and pond, with Jake sitting at the shore staring into the water. He looked

Hank found a tree where they could settle down beneath. All of them were still on guard but had slowly begun relaxing now. To their surprise, they hadn’t encountered a single

seemed so idyllic. Peaceful. There were no sounds of beasts fighting in the

on as she saw the masked man summon something out of thin air. At first sight, she thought it was an old metal pot, but on second look recognized it as a cauldron of some sort. Like the sort a witch would use in old movies,

him summon a barrel and from it added water to the cauldron. The barrel disappeared as quickly as it appeared before, and the one behind it all placed both hands on the cauldron. The air shimmered as if an invisible flame was lit beneath it. Soon after, plants and flowers appeared only to be

unmoving. Miranda had a skill that allowed her to sense mana easier, and with it could see that

saw him bottle up a green liquid from within the cauldron. It took her a while, but she soon recognized

surprising as she had never seen someone make potions before. She even had suspicions they were special

he had to be a very high level in his class,

she was quite frankly too afraid to ask- they were already intruding as it were, and she feared that asking him

violence than before the system. The strong often acted like tyrants or superiors towards everyone around them. Forced them to do their bidding. So far, she found the disinterest of their masked savior to

was sitting with his eyes closed, leaning up against a tree. His arm was slowly growing out, looking quite grotesque if she had to say so herself. As he had reached level 25 in his

like her and Hank yet, meaning neither of them had the skill. A shame as the low mana recovery without it was one of the big reasons why their progress had been so slow in the forest, as

of the group. Her class was only at a

had worked as a manager and had gotten a profession very closely related to that. It gave her skills related to communication, planning, and even some that gave

tailors, etc. But her profession did help those other ones. She got experience simply by guiding people and

and get experience just from that. It even helped the ones doing the actual work as her skills passively helped them also if they worked following her instructions. It was

only social profession either. The tutorial had been relatively peaceful most of the time, only forcing people into these insane ‘trials’ once every week, each trial taking a day. Trials they entered in teams

for those less suited for combat. Miranda distinctly remembered one filled with wooden puppets that she could guide to fortify their position, lay down traps and put up barriers. Granted, Louise

in their tutorial, and as they were, many support-type social professions also emerged. Miranda herself was perhaps the most prominent of all in her local group in her faction.

around, each of them with around the same

team got shared rewards. But every trial would have a team from each faction. This naturally led to many conflicts as some teams came in to slaughter every other team besides their own. The cursed system even rewarding them extra tutorial points for

those that weren’t wiped out had it even harder as they were either forced to find a new team or continue on their lonesome. Skipping the trial was never an

others to level, and there being only four of them was far from enough. The only useful skills she had was her ability to sense mana and

horizon, it lit up, making everyone aware that this place was unique. However, only Miranda could feel it, so it appeared that having a skill to sense mana

It did as advertised and sometimes allowed her to get a ‘feel’ for something. A notion that a particular course of action would be correct, or maybe give her an