The Primal Hunter

Jake saw Miranda leave and reentered the lodge to continue his work. It was a nice break to get once in a while when she came by, and he often got something quite valuable out of it too. Today, he had gotten the idea of actually using the city to his advantage.

The issues of upgrading his Touch of the Malefic Viper and Sense of the Malefic Viper had been bothering him more than before these last few days. Especially so after he had reached level 80 in his profession only a few hours prior and gained the next incredibly powerful stat-granting skill.

It hadn’t taken him long to decide between Fang and Pride. His encounter with the Minotaur Mindlord had made him aware of how weak he was against any kind of mental attack, even if the fight had been on the easy side for him.

He feared he would encounter something stronger, as the memory of briefly considering the Mindlord a ‘friend’ still haunted him. What if it had been permanent? Or lasted far longer? What if he had been with actual friends, and it fooled him for long enough to kill one of them?

What if Mystie had come along and he had made Jake fight it… all of those things had been bothering him, so he wanted to shore up the weakness at least a little bit. So yeah, he picked Pride of the Malefic Viper.

[Pride of the Malefic Viper (Ancient)] – The arrogance and strong will of the Malefic Viper is known throughout the multiverse. Now, you have learned to take after him, your own pride now a tangible weapon. Allows the Alchemist to force their will upon the world far more easily. Significantly increases the effect of all Words of Power spoken. Your pride increases all resistance to any kind of mind-affecting effects but be warned that it wanes in despair. Passively provides 1 Willpower per level in Prodigious Alchemist of the Malefic Viper. May your will be truth, your pride eternal.

Jake still had no idea what Words of Power were, but he figured he would find out eventually. He wanted it for the mental resistance thing anyway. To explore an entirely new ‘thing’ when he already had two skills to upgrade and his profession to level up also seemed like a bit too much.

The skill hadn’t come with any instinctive knowledge or anything like that. Then again, it just made him do things better. Things he didn’t know how to do, but.. he was better at them now, so yay?

He had experimented a bit with the whole “force your will upon the world” part, and… he had just made himself look silly. How the hell was he supposed to do that anyway? It wasn’t like it just made all his skills stronger because he wanted them to be, and it didn’t make mana manipulation any easier either. Jake was sure there was some trick to it, and he was looking forward to figuring it out.

But back on the topic of what he had made Miranda get… he had just asked for one thing. Equipment, but preferably weapons. Not anything for him to use but to experiment on. He had spent quite a lot of time thinking about improving the Touch skill and had come to some realizations.

Jake had to remember that at its core, Touch of the Malefic Viper was an alchemy-skill, not a combat-skill. The one time he had upgraded it prior was when he infused the Essence in the Valley of Tusks dungeon. Before that, he had also used his Touch on the massive concoction in the Lucenti Plains, and most recently, he used it on the Malefic Beastorb he created to help the little birdie sleeping on his head.

In every one of those cases, he had changed an item, or more accurately, corrupted an item. He hadn’t just poisoned them but made their properties different, even making them be seen as other objects entirely.

Jake had a theory that Touch of the Malefic Viper’s original purpose was to be used during concoction-processes to fuse different poisons or add the property of another poison to the concoction. That… or just corrupt the shit out of it all and make something far deadlier than before.

He had injected Touch into the Beastcore through the cauldron, showing the runes on the cauldron recognized the Touch as an alchemy-skill. He knew the base-runes for alchemy were entirely system-created and actually weren’t that hard to make. Given a few weeks, Jake could likely learn to create a basic mixing bowl. They would be shit but useable by anyone with any crafting-skill related to potions or poisons or just knowledge of how to use the runes.

He had already done a few experiments using Touch during the crafting process, and quite honestly… it went swimmingly. No issues at all, and he even felt like it improved some of his concoctions a bit. He made his best Necrotic Poison yet by mixing in some of the effects from his blood towards the end, amplifying some aspect of the concoction instead of just using his blood purely as a catalyst.

wasn’t enough for it to change the name or description at all; it was just the feeling he got from his Sense of

to do was the issue. Clearly, the skill was already meant to do that, and Jake was just a bit of a dummy for not having done it a lot earlier. Well, he hadn’t lost much as it didn’t necessarily make the concoctions stronger, often just slightly altering the effects. Sometimes

scope by allowing the effects of affinities to be mixed in, so now he wanted to increase its depth. He wanted to double down on

cheating… but he had asked

your understanding. Your epic-rarity version may not be the same

and gave him some good insight into how all those Legacy skill-things worked. It was pretty much just saying:

he could further corrupt and change items, so he had Miranda put out a

epic-rarity Scimitar of Debauchery, for example. Both of those interesting due to how different they

breaking the scimitar, he would prefer to at least get something useful out of doing so. So he would start out by breaking a bunch of inferior-rarity items made by smiths training their craft. It

for now, it was back to trying

he had intended to create something to help Sylphie grow

an entirely new area. While that was a bit exciting, he found out it really was way outside his area of expertise. He found a book that described a few recipes, and it noted

things. You needed to know the beast’s mana affinities, its general species, and last but not least, the grade of its Origin. The Origin was related to the core of its Records and was something Jake had encountered in the description of

the Origin of all his skills carrying the name. Origins then had grades, the grade of the Malefic Viper, of course being pretty damn high. This again tied back

his profession was naturally also the

that of a hawk, not hard that one, but the name Sylphian was a bit more challenging to figure out. Jake assumed it was related to

had no idea where the hell even to start. He would at most make some shitty inferior-rarity soup for

his original goal, which was actually going

A new kind of creation has been

of the Malefic Viper] has reached level 82 - Stat points allocated, +5 free

and nearly gagged. God was it horrid. He also felt some of the poison enter his system before quickly being eliminated by Palate of

were outside running around as the small hawk was still too young to

to grow pretty quickly. Sylphie was definitely growing up slower than pre-system hawks, not that

an average pre-system adult no problem, seeing as he had already seen the small bird peck small holes into the incredible resilient bark of some

worked on potions, but the fumes from poison alone would hurt the little one. With the common-rarity toxins, perhaps even a chance she could die. Either way, it was a risk he was

also served to keep any fumes

noted that the