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…

rushed into the small house and was immediately

the person still standing there. A young girl, looking no older than ten or eleven, stood there

if he didn’t know better, he would guess she was sleepwalking. In fact… it reminded him a

Jake said anyway, trying to get her attention. He got no response as she stood there, utterly unresponsive. She didn’t even react when Jake took the weapon or brought her out

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

was that really the best thing to do? She was under some serious mental manipulation right now, and who

he could only guess. And even if he disregarded the mental magic… what if she remembered? The bloody sword and two corpses were leaving little up to

her here… hopefully, someone

the bloody girl, who didn’t even react to being picked up. He took her in

can’t handle, he thought as he evaluated the effects carrying the girl

speed. He didn’t have to watch for any tracks, and he used the Pylon as a compass of sorts to remember the direction

that of a light jog, but as every footfall took him 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

instinct, but Jake froze them all with

magic?” he asked the frozen soldier. ”And maybe a psychiatrist or someone

there either. Glancing up, he saw Mystie sit on top of the central keep, not even caring about staying invisible. It gave

as they rushed out to see what was happening. They saw Jake carrying what looked like an

is under a mental skill of some sort; got any healers who can help with that?

his explanation with shock. Phillip deeply frowned when he mentioned

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

around again, as

said with a

mask as he took a step forward,

did this that should be

girl inside the keep, using the room where they had just had a meeting. Everyone else was also there, including a man who used to work

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

was quite different from that… some

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

made contact with it, he felt a rush of mental

yelled as he let the girl go and fell

about the girl. He didn’t hesitate to place his hands on her again and inspect the energy, fearing

deep into her soul. He felt an almost taunting intent from the mana as he was forced to let go

dispel it… and even if I could, I am unsure how to do it without harming or even killing her...” Silas said with regret as he shook his head and looked at the poor girl. Drool was coming out