The Primal Hunter

The next few hours were relatively peaceful as everyone worked together to clean up the valley. Neil and his party were in the lodge scrubbing the floorboards like their lives depended on it, while all the others went around and gathered up the corpses of their former comrades.

Nobody judged others for looting them either. All the equipment was sacked, and to Jake’s surprise, offered in a big pile to him and Miranda without any prompt. Showing once more why both Donald and Abby had pretty good gear for their level. They had hoarded everything.

Jake, of course, didn’t care for it and told Miranda to handle that too. Damn, it felt good just to delegate all his responsibilities away.

He also found time to drag Hank to the side and hand him the stuff from Donald. Which, Hank, much to Jake's surprise, rejected adamantly. Not because of the former owner, but because he didn’t see any need for it.

During Jake’s absence, he and Miranda had plenty of conversations about the future, and Hank had decided to focus nearly entirely on his profession moving forward. To lead the building initiative. With their number of citizens increasing nearly tenfold, there was naturally a need for new housing, which he would take charge of. In other words, he was now the de-facto leader responsible for infrastructure in his city. Nice.

Which left Jake with a bunch of stuff he didn’t want but, on the other hand, didn’t want to throw away. After going over the loot situation, he entered his lodge once more, and for the first time, got a good look at it.

It was more spacious than he had first anticipated. However, that may just be the lack of furniture. The cellar was well-hidden as they had agreed, and there was even a lovely small door leading onto a porch overlooking the pond and waterfall. It was better in every way than he expected, and damn impressive they had managed to make it in less than a week.

His entrance caused quite the disturbance for the four people cleaning it. Jake looked at them and noticed how they were all cleaning it without using magical abilities at all. Between them, they had to have a skill that could somehow help, wouldn’t they? Then again, the best he would be able to do was to… actually, he could probably use Alchemist’s Purification to get rid of it. Yeah, let’s try that.

He hadn’t really used the skill before besides purifying water. He extended a tendril of mana as he deployed the purification skill. At first, it didn’t quite work, likely because the floorboards weren’t considered an alchemical ingredient, but after a bit of a push, all the blood just suddenly evaporated.

Neil just stared dumbstruck at him. “Could you do that all along?”

“Seems so,” Jake just shrugged, ignoring the glances he got from Silas, Eleanor, and Christen. Especially Christen. “Now that you are free, I think we should talk.”

With those words, he sat down on the floor and crossed his legs, motioning for the four of them to do the same. Levi was unsurprisingly still out cold. But he should be back up within the day. He had chugged down one of Jake’s own health potions after all.

After they were all sitting comfortably, or as comfortably as they could with a masked man who could kill them staring them down, Jake spoke. “Since you want to stay, I guess we should discuss what exactly that will mean.”

The reason behind it was straightforward. Except for himself, the party of five was the most powerful by a landslide. They could easily wipe out everyone else if they so desired.

“What do you mean?” Neil asked. He had an idea, very much in the same vein as Jake’s, but wanted confirmation, nevertheless.

“I won’t be around all the time, which means someone will have to handle things when I am not here. Things that require strength, so we won’t have a repeat of what happened today. And as the most powerful people besides myself, that falls on you guys,” Jake spoke candidly.

“So we are to act as guards or what?” Christen asked, clearly not approving.

“Nah, shouldn’t really be necessary. We got a good bunch of people now, and I doubt they would dare cause trouble any time soon. I just need you to back up Miranda’s decisions. To be the tough hand that forces things through if her soft approaches fail to work,” he explained.

“I think we can figure something out,” Neil said after thinking a bit. “But won’t we also need to keep improving our strength? I fear we will fall behind and be unable to perform that role if we just sit around.”

“Once again, you won’t be guards. And while there aren’t any beasts in the city area, there are plenty right outside. We are still in the outskirts of the forest, and from what I have seen flying over it, you should be

we in danger of

We won’t give them

the punchline, but nothing came. This is D-grades… could it

Kallox in their tutorial had been D-grade. Only in the early stages,

deep. There is a biodome of sorts deep within, and a real nasty D-grade mushroom monster resides there.

“Pissed it off?”

it a bit until it got pissed, so I took off. The damn thing is the size of a dozen football fields, and I wasn’t entirely confident in outlasting it,” he explained. I guess I should go again soon, he thought. Though he still needed to make a better poison for it first. But he didn’t have time with his hunting sessions with Hawkie and all that fun stuff. Also, he had to get back to that damn

we are getting sidetracked!” Jake continued. “So, do you

I promise,” Neil agreed without thinking much about it. The more he talked to the mysterious owner, the harder

So, what is up with that orb your

he steeled himself. He had expected it. He also felt his comrades freeze up momentarily at its mention. It was a legendary item.

is made only for Disciples of Kallox, so I

yeah, just give it here, let me check it out,” Jake said,

lifted it up from beneath his robes

noted how small it was. Identify, however, confirmed that it indeed was an extraordinary item in many ways. The grade

Neil. The young man was just staring back at him in confusion

Neil asked, feeling more

even that interesting. Its high rarity is clearly because of the comprehension of Kallox’s concept of space within. In every way, it is an item made for his disciple and quite honestly has little value for anyone else, much less someone who isn’t a space mage themselves,”

the orb was useless to him. Not that he would have taken it even if it wasn’t. He wasn’t going to claim to be some saint who wouldn’t have taken it if it proved supremely useful, but

wouldn’t even want it. It did hurt his pride a little to see the item he valued the most criticized, but

anymore and exclaimed

now

mood in the lodge. The tenseness of it all slowly dissipated as Christen joined in on commenting how absurd their

Christen

type of hunter,” Jake answered. It wasn’t really something he saw any

Eleanor asked, confused. “Some mage variant? Magic Hunter? Mage Hunter?

each one more than the one before,” he answered. “Second of all, it has nothing to do with magic. To

off some beefed-up

that: just pure mana control and manipulation. A good piece of advice I would give you is to practice using mana. All of you,” Jake advised

him a bit

around the time where Jake came to realize that was actually an excellent question.

when using it, and then try moving that mana, just without using any skill. Just a tiny sliver, enough to form a string or a ball in

sure I get it… how am I supposed to use the mana without a skill?”