The Primal Hunter

Jake sat on a small cloud away from the large continent. The bird perched in a tree beside him. He was breathing heavily still from his nearly empty pool of mana and low stamina. Even his health was only at around half.

The cloud elemental was far harder to deal with than he had predicted. Luckily the hawk did wonders against it. Its blades of wind cut off parts of the cloud elemental, with another blast of wind dispersing the cut-off part into nothing.

Even then, it took the two of them nearly half an hour before the elemental became unable to regenerate parts of its body and finally died. Or dispersed… or whatever elementals do.

Jake felt pretty damn fucking useless after the long fight. All he could really do was toss weak bolts of dark mana at the elemental to distract it while dodging its blows. If the elemental hadn’t been so stupid as to focus on him over the hawk, he wasn’t even sure they would have won.

He did throw a mana potion to the hawk during the fight, so he had made some kind of contribution. The hawk didn’t even seem very condescending after the battle. Maybe surprised at Jake’s many means to stay alive.

It made him reflect on the massive skill disparity between beasts and humans once more. Even the dungeon bosses he fought never had more than a handful of skills he was aware of. Humans, on the other hand, had so many.

Granted, many skills of beasts you never discovered. So maybe beasts just had a lot more passive skills or skills that buffed other parts of them. Or perhaps they just had fewer skills and more stats. Maybe they were slightly inferior in the skill department by the system’s design. Who knows?

Probably Villy. Gotta ask him next time. Or maybe he could just ask out loud, and the scaly god would hear him. He had been spying on him at random times these days, after all. At least he had been nice enough not to have any more viewing parties.

“Hawkie, let’s just stick to hunting birds and leave those damn clouds alone for now, yeah?” he asked, looking up at the bird.

He was pretty sure it understood him as it blinked its eyes a few times in a row in response. At least he believed it understood as it was clearly brilliant. The only question was if it understood him due to its intelligence or if the translation skill he got worked with birds. Though he doubted it as he had yet to hear anything speak that wasn’t humanoid.

As for why he called it Hawkie… well, he just got tired of thinking of it as ‘the hawk,’ or when he occasionally talked to it, he wanted to give it some kind of name. Granted, Hawkie was a shitty name, but he had never claimed to be good at naming things.

Closing his eyes while sitting and resting on the cloud, he entered meditation. But this time, he didn’t focus on pure recovery or summoned his usual strings of mana, but instead, he cupped his hands in front of him.

Despite his plan to avoid the elementals, it didn’t mean that he was satisfied with the situation. He wanted to create a tool to fight them.

He had Sagacity of the Malefic Viper that helped him. He had been practicing controlling and using mana continuously ever since he got the ability to sense it. Yet, he found himself so disappointingly useless when he had to use it in combat.

Looking back, he was beginning to regret not just picking up the Dark Bolt skill at some point. Maybe instead of the still useless Hunter’s Tracking skill. Not because of the Dark Bolt itself, but because of what he could potentially learn from it.

Something was missing from his mana attacks. He knew that his spells had to be more powerful even without a skill being used. He saw the many birds fire off basic-looking bolts of mana to kill the elementals, and he, for the life of him, didn’t understand what separated his from theirs.

Jake used more, it barely did anything. When he

even that was useless with his current predicament. What he did to use that was just to pour mana into the gloves, and it would fire out the mana

to help him either. He understood how that skill worked, and it was clearly fundamentally different. It didn’t use mana to attack but to fuel

the effects of Touch of the Malefic Viper into a ball of mana and throw it, which is when he learned

- him, the poisoner, and his target, the poisoned. Not that he knew how to in any way replicate the effects of the skill without actually using it. He was fully aware of how far above his understanding it was, being

he gone wrong in his entire approach to manipulating mana? So far, he had focused on making those strings. Practiced lifting stones and

during the Forgotten Sewers dungeon. How he could cover his feet in mana to walk on water. He was proud of those achievements, but was his philosophy behind doing

The effect of increased concentration from the skill upgrade was doing as much harm as good. If he was wrong in his approach

He knew that even when the system gave a skill, it didn’t necessarily mean one was on the right track.

alchemy first. Gods had observed him doing it, and he had gotten a strong profession-upgrade. He could make powerful potions and had acquired so many powerful skills. Even if his path in that regard

he thought about all the methods he used mana there. Brewing potions and concocting poisons were reliant on the skills associated with those actions. He wasn’t even sure if it was possible to do either without the skills. If it was, that too was way

the Malefic Viper he had already gone

things better, but it didn’t come with any knowledge or sudden enlightenment on how to use mana offensively. It would help him,

out too. It transformed his blood to do harm, but everything that skill did was also just far too complicated. He knew it had weird interactions with the vital energy in his body, but

provide any hints either. Even the ability to burn the blood in the wings was entirely based on Blood of the Malefic Viper and his Alchemical

flame of pure mana. Jake had tested its offensive might long ago, and it was pretty much non-existent. The flame

explosion, it was far too stable to be viewed as any kind

there was Palate of the Malefic Viper. It was a skill associated with knowledge of alchemical ingredients he consumed while also amplifying the effects of his creations on himself. He couldn’t see how that

within the vat of poisons, they invaded his body repeatedly - to the point that he struggled with the pain and staying conscious. But more importantly, he replayed his efforts to

break down the ingredients. Rip them apart with his mana to absorb them easier. He had tapped into the natural effects of the skill and helped it make the process

then wasn’t the same gentle type as what he formed his bolts with. If his normal mana was like a serene

up as he lifted his hand and formed a ball of

was peaceful by nature. Its default form one of balance. If it weren’t, the world would fall apart. It dominated the atmosphere and the air around him - the many affinities not changing

anyone, all it did was to impact them with a bit of foreign mana temporarily. It wasn’t even a proper attack. It barely held any kinetic energy, which was only because

dark mana had some real effect. It was not because that was a proper attack either, but because of the innate qualities of dark mana and its ability

been crude and

hand, the ball of mana formed into a bolt once more. He remembered the first time he saw a mana bolt being used during the tutorial’s first day. He remembered how it

Had the other mana bolts ever

he had made the mana in his hand change. He just tried to mimic the feeling he got when he sought to destroy and refine the poison in his body and directed his mana into the structure it had been back

pouring more mana into the blue bolt in his hand. Its color remained unchanged, but he felt its power increase, and he knew it would explode upon impact with something. As a