The Primal Hunter

Jake stood on the small island of clouds with Hawkie still at his side. The hawk had been giving him inquisitive looks for the last few hours as Jake had just been standing there, staring at the giant creature in the distance while recovering his resources.

[Storm Elemental – lvl ???]

Can I?

He honestly wasn’t sure. The Thunder Roc had been far easier to take down than expected, but he was well-matched against it. His poisons worked wonders as it was flesh and blood, its defenses were weak, and it had been barely D-grade.

The Storm Elemental gave him the feeling that it was slightly stronger… and that was ignoring how bad of a matchup it was for him. His poisons were borderline useless. Even the poison mist from his wings would be ineffective, as there was a constant current of air surrounded the elementals, blowing away the poison.

Arrow of the Ambitious Hunter was still useful, but it could only be used once as it simply took too long to summon another arrow. He had thought of having Hawkie join him, but… without sounding rude, the bird would only get in the way.

He doubted the bird’s attacks would do much harm to the Storm Elemental and instead just end up getting fried by the streaming bolts of lightning within its body. It would only distract Jake, making him worried about the bird throughout it all.

Jake’s mana bolts would do damage, but far from enough to bring down the massive elemental. Sure, if he could just bombard it constantly from far away without it fighting back, he could maybe… wait a second.

Why couldn’t he just do that?

Cloud Elementals were slow as hell, and he assumed the Storm Elemental to be no different. He saw it mulling about close to the massive tree at the center of the cloud continent, and its movements were slow. Sure, due to its enormous size, it still traveled tens of meters a second, but to Jake… that was actually pretty damn unimpressive.

Can I?

What if he just stayed… tens of kilometers… no… even further away. Finally, put his massive perception and range to good use by being a true sniper.

Hawkie kept looking at him, and as it saw determination begin to form in Jake’s eyes, it gave him an encouraging call.

Jake looked up at the hawk as he remembered something. “You collect those beads from the Cloud Elementals… could it be you want the one from that one?”

It gave him another encouraging sound, pretty much confirming it to Jake.

“Why do you need them, anyway?”

Hawkie looked a bit hesitant before finally motioning for him to follow. Jake was still unsure why he should follow, but he was still low on resources from the Thunder Roc fight, so it wasn’t liked he planned on fighting right away.

Spreading his wings, he glided down after the hawk as he soon noticed the direction they were heading. Hawkie tended to leave nearly every day for a few to over a dozen hours. Jake had tried to follow on prior occasions, but every time the bird rebuffed him.

Yet this time, it wanted him to follow.

Without questioning it, he flew down towards the forest below together with Hawkie. They kept flying at their high speed as Jake noted exactly where they were going.

The forest was absolutely massive, larger than most major continents on the old planet if he had to guess. He saw only trees from far up in the air, some even being at eye-level with him ten kilometers up in the air. He knew that D-grade beasts roamed deeper within. And at the moment, they were going deeper.

Pylon’s location, it was already hundreds of kilometers away, towards the outside of the forest, yet they kept flying. Deeper and deeper they went, and Jake began

spotted a monkey-like beast at the top of one of the trees at level 73, higher than the Mole Lord that had dominated the

deeper parts

going on this far in? Jake

with, was that it had been heading towards the cloud continent when it saw him, but he hadn’t thought that it lived this deep

even feel D-grades deeper inside… no… one was close. Straight ahead of them,

he wasn’t that afraid. He felt confident in escaping from an early-stage D-grade, and on the way, he

the hawk didn’t wish to cause him

Hawkie didn’t feel the D-grade ahead either. It was practically

clearly the territory of a D-grade beast as Jake felt the aura come down on him. He scoffed as he countered with his own, utterly rebuffing it. He didn’t fear the

all, or maybe it was just used to it. At least that is

aware that the beast had some kind of perception skill to zone

kept following Hawkie confidently as they reached a barrier of some kind. It blocked both vision and sound,

as what was within came

figure with blue mana flashing around it

identified this was indeed the D-grade. Well, the aura also made

–

all over its body. It actually reminded him a bit of the Great White Stag with

agreement. Jake smiled a bit

if Hawkie was a he or she, but it didn’t matter. A score

the deal?” Jake finally asked after more than a minute of intelligible

because the shiny bird screeched madly,

what’s inside that barrier you really don’t

who just completely ignored it. A few quick sounds from Hawkie made it look over before looking back at Jake with

Jake asked again, seriously considering

what Jake could only interpret as a sigh before turning around and flying back into the barrier. Conveniently leaving a hole more

didn’t need a bird-translator to get that one,

in the barrier closed right away. Jake noticed that you could still see out but not into

mist covered the entire area,

“Screech!”

to cut it out. Jake got the message as

barrier was only forty or so meters across, more than large enough to house the two hawks and the human, but also small enough so that his sphere covered a large part

had all been replaced with intricate markings and runes, glowing a faint sheen of mana. Specific gathering points with piles of small orbs were also found around the pattern, and Jake identified one of

A cloud orb dropped by an

or amplifying the formation and the source of the abundance of mana

based on the knowledge his Sagacity of the Malefic Viper provided, but the white clouds leaned far more towards the air-affinity. Why it

birds still making sounds at each other were interesting, he saw one thing that gave him pause. The formation was clearly built with a center,

D-grade and an E-grade had ‘gotten it on’ but was genuinely happy for the two hawks. Sure, it was a bit