The Primal Hunter

Jake walked slowly towards his chosen prey’s direction as Mystie looked to be in internal conflict, so he decided to make it a bit easier for the bird. ”It’s D-grade... clearly intelligent. I have no way to determine its exact power without meeting it, so it will be dangerous. This isn’t your fight, so I won’t drag you into it. Just go back and take care of things.”

Mystie looked at him with a bit of concern, and he understood its doubts. To pursue an enemy of unknown strength wasn’t the safest or wisest course of action, and the two hawks had placed many expectations on him.

”Relax, I’ll be able to escape even if things go south. In fact, I’m pretty sure I’m faster by myself than with you or Hawkie,” he said with a smile, assuring the bird.

Jake saw it fly off as he turned towards the trail with the hoofprints, his smile gone.

D-grade… he was sure of it. With the combination of his Sense of the Malefic Viper, Hunter’s Tracking, high perception, and natural talents, he could sense the presence left behind by the monster that had stayed in the house to torture the family.

Not just sense it, but truly feel it. And Jake felt the aura of a D-grade monster, which only made him all the more determined to hunt it down.

Based on the family not leaving, he assumed they had all been on the weaker side, and yet a D-grade had gone out of its way to kill and torture them. With a power disparity like that… it was just pure cruelty. Clearly, the monster that did it hated them… but it had sowed karma through its actions. And Jake was more than happy to be the reaper.

With One Step Mile on full display, he followed the tracks away from the farmhouse. He crossed the vast fields in only a few minutes, each step crossing nearly 100 meters. It was far faster than his flying speed, and he quickly came to his next destination.

It was in the middle of a field, with countless tracks of bovines present. It looked like hundreds if not thousands of the bovines had been gathered for a period before they all headed off in another direction – directly towards the fort.

The D-grade had stopped there too but hadn’t followed the herd. He felt its presence soaked into the area, indicating it must have been there a while, likely using plenty of skills and mana. With its presence so obvious, it didn’t take him long to find the direction it had left in.

Jake followed the trails for the next few hours and traveled from destination to destination with great speed. He came to several more old farm estates, all of them looking a lot like the first. Many of them were utterly broken, and he found even more corpses of humans around or inside them.

His mood soured for every new farmstead, but it also served to reaffirm his decision to track down the monster. He wanted to kill it… but also to know why. He knew some creatures were just assholes, liking to play with their victims. Humans being principal case-studies of this. But even so… Jake still wanted to know why.

He felt the trail get more and more fresh as he moved forward. By now, he was hundreds of kilometers from the fort at least, showing exactly how much Earth had been expanded. He seriously doubted the farmers lived a hundred kilometers from their neighbors before, after all.

Besides the farmhouses, he also saw the trails left by herds of bovines, but oddly enough, none of the beasts themselves. Have they all been gathered up by Herd Leaders?

The number of bovines there had to be in the tens of thousands based on how many pens there were in the barns, yet no more than a single Herd Leader with a following of less than a thousand cows attacked the fort every time. If they all attacked at once... the fort would have been run over long ago.

He frowned as he kept up the chase, soon finding a small farmhouse that looked like it couldn’t contain more than a few dozen cattle at most. The trail was still incredibly fresh, and he could smell the scent of human blood from far away.

But he also felt something else…

quickly rushed into the small house and was immediately taken aback when

bodies still emanating heat, proving they had died not long ago. Yet they weren’t the most noteworthy thing; it was the person still standing there. A young girl, looking no older than ten or eleven, stood there with

were entirely blank, and if he didn’t know better, he would guess she was sleepwalking. In fact… it reminded him a lot of the

no response as she stood there, utterly unresponsive. She didn’t even react when Jake took the weapon or brought her out of

back, and Jake couldn’t see himself just leaving the girl there alone. But at the same time, he didn’t want

back to the fort with her and return here again… but was that really the best thing to do? She was under some serious mental manipulation right now, and who knows

know much about mental magic, so he could only guess. And even if he disregarded the mental magic… what if she remembered? The bloody sword

her here… hopefully, someone back at the fort can

in a princess carry as he took his first step back towards the fort, nearly seventy meters

and increased resource consumption… but nothing I can’t handle, he thought as he evaluated the effects

Pylon as a compass of sorts to remember the direction of the fort. Even if it wasn’t 100% accurate, the plains were flat and

further than should be possible, he didn’t take long to return. It took him less than 8 minutes to go from the small farmhouse till he saw the fort, and another minute before he appeared on the wall, scaring the living shit out of the soldier

pointed their weapons towards him on instinct, but

asked the frozen soldier. ”And maybe

central keep, not even caring about staying invisible. It gave him a look, but he shook his head and motioned to the girl. The bird seemed to understand and closed its eyes again. Jake was just thankful Mystie had

they rushed out to see what was happening. They saw Jake carrying what looked like an unconscious young girl and

found her while on the trail of the instigator of the attacks. She is under a mental skill of some sort; got any healers who can help

had found as the two stood there listening to his explanation with shock. Phillip deeply frowned when he mentioned that the perpetrator was likely

as she walked out from behind Miranda to take the girl from Jake. He gladly obliged

turned right around again, as he said. ”I’m

said with a worried

smiled a bit below his mask as he took a step forward, appearing on the fort’s

fucker did this

meeting. Everyone else was also there, including a man who used to work as a psychologist at a high school, which was the closest they could get

different kinds of skills, and some of them even dealt with dispelling foreign mana from others. He had gotten especially good at that, having

was quite different from that… some

he focused on the skill. He felt his mana sink into the girl and begin searching for any foreign influences.

and dispel it, but the second he made contact with it, he felt a rush of

as he let the girl go and fell off the chair - blood flowing from his

hesitate

the girl had locked itself completely down as it seeped deep into her soul. He felt an almost taunting intent from the mana as he was

or even killing her...” Silas said with