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.

out of social anxiety. He was only a single level away from getting his next Prodigious Alchemist of the Malefic Viper skill. On top of that, after reaching level 70, he could look for something new to do. Oh, it would be cool to go explore around the area a bit… those caves looked cool, and he wanted to go look

Jake sitting at the shore staring into the water. He looked like he was deep in thought,

had slowly begun relaxing now. To their surprise, they hadn’t encountered a single beast on

so idyllic. Peaceful. There were no sounds of beasts fighting in the distance, only the chirping of birds and

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, just a lot smaller and with a

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 added to the mixture. Finally, he placed the lid on it as he just seemed to sit there

her to sense mana easier, and with it could see that something was happening

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

powerful healing potion to give Hank. It was surprising as she had never seen someone make potions before. She even had suspicions they were special items only for the

be a very high level in his class,

as it were, and she feared that asking him could lead to him forcing them out. Or worse. Just get rid

had seen their share of human-on-human conflict, and people were far faster jumping straight to 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,

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 race, he had gained the meditation skill, which

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 Mark more often than not

sure she could say she hadn’t been the most significant burden of the group. Her class was only at a measly level 18, though her profession was at a respectable level 41. Sadly though, her profession didn’t have

had gotten a profession very closely related to that. It gave her

builders, smiths, tailors, etc. But her profession did help those other ones. She got experience simply by

work as her skills passively helped them also if they

the 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

included some kind of combat and many opportunities 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 and Hank did

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. Though there was quite a lot of different factions and groups, so she couldn’t exactly

a hundred thousand people assigned by the system. Seven more factions were also around, each of them with around the same number. She called them factions because they were clearly set up

conflicts as some teams came in to slaughter every other team besides their own.

And those that weren’t wiped out had it even harder as they

for her profession, however. It relied on 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

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 or an intuition skill was required to truly feel it. Moreover, she felt

she didn’t quite comprehend yet. It did as advertised and sometimes allowed her to get a ‘feel’ for something. A notion that a particular course of