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…

and was immediately

their 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

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

there, utterly unresponsive. She didn’t even react when Jake took the weapon

didn’t know what to do. Mystie had already been sent back, and Jake couldn’t see himself just leaving the girl there alone. But at the same time, he didn’t want to give up on

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

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

can’t leave her here… hopefully, someone back at

react to being picked up. He took her in a princess carry as he took his first

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

He didn’t have to watch for any tracks, and he used the 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 open enough that he couldn’t miss the

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

weapons towards him on instinct, but Jake

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

on top of the 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

what was happening. They saw Jake carrying what

attacks. She is under a mental skill of some sort; got any healers

stood there listening to his explanation with shock. Phillip deeply frowned when he mentioned that the perpetrator was likely some kind of D-grade monster

let me,” Lillian said as she walked out from behind Miranda to take the girl from Jake. He gladly obliged and handed the still unresponsive

Jake turned right around again,

said with

bit below his mask as he took a step forward, appearing on the fort’s wall and another to

this

who used to work as a psychologist at a high school, which

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

was quite different from that… some of the same

on her head and closed his eyes as he focused on the skill. He felt his mana sink into the girl and begin searching for any foreign influences. It didn’t take long before he found the

second he made contact with it, he felt a

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

the hell happened?” Neil asked in fright, but Silas was more concerned about the girl. He didn’t hesitate to place his hands on her again and inspect

had locked itself completely down as it seeped deep into her soul.

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 of her