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.

could spread slightly faster than before. It wasn’t enough for it to change the name or description

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

affinities to be mixed in, so now he wanted to increase its depth. He wanted to double down on the corruption effect and learn

cheating… but he had

may not be the same as

good insight into how all those Legacy skill-things worked. It was pretty much just saying: “go right ahead and try to improve

did. He wanted to see if he could further corrupt and change items, so he had Miranda put out a quest to deliver him some. He had some items in his inventory… but quite frankly, they were just too good to experiment

Realms and the epic-rarity Scimitar of Debauchery, for example. Both of those interesting due to how different they were. One held mana of moonlight, a very pure type of mana, while

get something useful out of doing so. So he would start out by breaking a bunch of inferior-rarity items made

back to trying to make something

out, and while Miranda collected weapons he had intended to

so it was 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 that creating any kind of nurturing

and last but not least, the grade of its Origin. The Origin was related to the core of its Records and was something

grades, the grade of the Malefic Viper, of course being pretty damn high. This again tied back to upgrading the

his profession was naturally also the Malefic

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

Jake had no idea where the hell even to start. He would at most make some shitty inferior-rarity soup for the bird, and at that point, it would

Jake returned to his original goal, which was actually going quite

[Fungicide (Common)] – A new kind of creation has been made.

Profession: [Prodigious Alchemist of the Malefic Viper] has reached level 82 -

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

was with her parents. They were outside running around as the small hawk was still too young to fly. She hadn’t

wasn’t the most knowledgeable about birds, but he was pretty sure most birds tended to grow pretty quickly. Sylphie was definitely growing up slower than pre-system hawks, not that he minded. She had gotten slightly bigger

he was pretty sure the little eyas could kill an average pre-system adult no problem, seeing as he had already seen

potions, but the fumes from poison alone would hurt the little one. With the common-rarity

keep any fumes inside, an unexpected but

noted that the description was pretty