The Primal Hunter

Jake walked through the cave again, the first time in quite a while. He was heading for the biodome with the Indigo Fungus, ignoring anything on the way. He was just there for a few samples… but he wanted to test a few things if he was there anyway.

He wanted to test how effective the poison mist from his Wings of the Malefic Viper was and to try and fight the mushroom a bit. He had already made a dozen bottles of common-rarity fungicide, and he wanted to test the effect of those too.

Heck… maybe he could even kill it without the need to create an uncommon-rarity poison. In that case, he could switch to making a better necrotic poison or something like that. He sure as hell wouldn’t complain about one less massive blue mushroom in the world.

When the entrance to the biodome was within sight, he already began scouting inside. He didn’t see any movement, so maybe he had come just after feeding time. Assuming the mushroom was still doing its lure-and-kill strategy.

He had felt the mana-lure for a while now, so he was pretty sure it was.

Jake walked into the biodome, and everything was as idyllic as last time he came here. Even more so as there weren’t murder-mantises running around the place.

Moving in a bit further, he did spot some signs of life in the form of a large centipede crawling on one of the larger mushrooms, munching on it. It was only level 40, so not really worth noting, but it did show that at least he hadn’t come just after the mushroom had eaten everything.

It only became more apparent as he got closer to the mana-lure. More centipedes appeared, fighting some beetle-like creatures. All of them the size of horses, none of them below level 50. It was quite the brawl, but Jake didn’t have any intentions of getting involved.

He wasn’t there for them.

They didn’t get in his way either but kept just fighting each other.

Jake needed to wake up the monster lurking below to hopefully get a good sample. The needle-like tendrils had to be connected to the rest of the fungus to deliver nutrients, so he wanted a few of those.

He prepared himself by summoning his wings and jumping up, flying towards the ceiling.

There were only around 130 meters from ceiling to floor, but it was enough to get a bit of a vantage point. Jake found a small pockets in the wall, just slightly large enough for him to stand on. He closed his eyes as he tried to focus on his foe and summon his Arrow of the Ambitious Hunter.

…Wait, what is that damn Blue Mushroom even? It was called a Mycorrhiza, which according to the books, is a type of fungus creating a symbiotic relationship between itself and plants… what kind of arrow can be used against that?

This was when Jake discovered a weakness of his Arrow of the Ambitious Hunter that he hadn’t even considered. He could only summon an arrow specially made to slay a particular enemy if he had a good enough idea of what was needed to kill the aforementioned enemy.

Sure, Jake could imagine an arrow that would impact the ground and spread deadly energy throughout the entire area… but he couldn’t focus on it and summon the arrow with confidence. He knew what kind of attack worked well against the Cloud Elementals and pretty much anything made of flesh and blood… but against this damn mushroom, he just held too many doubts. The most significant doubt being if arrows were even of any use.

In summary, he just didn’t know enough about the enemy to summon his Arrow of the Ambitious Hunter. So learning more about the damn mushroom was another item added to his to-do list.

Mushrooms are truly my bane… he thought disgruntedly but soon picked himself up again when he imagined making an uncommon-rarity poison that would slowly make the entire fungi-nightmare wither.

His vain hope of maybe slaying the damn thing had waned by now, however. Let’s just get some samples and get a feel for the thing before getting the hell out of here.

So Jake took out a regular arrow, nocked it, and aimed down for the mana-lure. He was pretty sure breaking it would piss off the big bad boss, so naturally, he began charging a Powershot to ensure breaking it.

At the same time, he opened his wings as the blood within began boiling. A faint mist began being emanated as he channeled the Infused Powershot for a full ten seconds.

Wakey-wakey little mushroom.

BOOM!

the arrow. It flew straight down towards the crystal that functioned as a mana-lure, shattering it completely. To double-up on the pain, he flapped his wings to send a cloud of poison gas down into the biodome

OoOOoOOOOooO

in poison did wonders to wake up the sleeping mushroom, and Identify once more worked as he

Mycorrhiza

could tell that it was slightly stronger than the last time he came. It had likely grown a few levels since then from eating all the insects coming there. Or

devour them. Like last time, the fungus didn’t respond by attacking him directly, but just by killing everything within its domain. Or maybe it hadn’t detected him yet… it

over the place, and some of the mushrooms released paralyzing gas. Hundreds of insects died in seconds, sucked dry of all nutrients. Ten or so seconds

Tendrils also began worming their way up the dome from all

on the dome below, but the effects were minimal. The plants had some inherent resistance to poison, while the mushrooms clearly

hit one of the mushrooms and sank into it unnoticed as Jake kept dodging the many attacks

with his bow, and with a quick fly-by, threw them into his spatial storage. Jake felt like the mushroom was barely trying; as soon a minute had passed, the

just began cutting off parts of the other plants and threw them in his storage. Soon, he would be the only living thing in the biodome besides the fungus, and he was considering to spread some more fungicide to see if he could maybe actually kill the damn

*SWOOSH*

and without his danger-sense, he would have now been one arm lighter. But he still had a

knew about the fungicide… and

tendril that attacked him before was… different. It was teal and

A lot stronger.

now attacked him. Both of them were like whips as they cut through the entire biodome, carving deep gashes into the

to 20% as he flew towards the exit of the

if he tried to dodge, it was too late. His right wing was cut off, and one of the original two tendrils returned and severed

his breath as he air-stepped to avoid getting his legs cut off. With difficulty, he leaned to the side, allowing himself to fall once more as he accelerated himself downwards with two blasts of mana

flew towards him, fired from one of the teal tendrils. Jake quickly summoned his scales, dodging one of them,

he flew towards the exit of the cavern, but he had made a colossal

a bloody mess. Without the scales, the strike would

to get the fuck out of

and more tendrils to kill him, and soon a fourth one joined the

a step forward, he teleported back fifty meters, and with another, he stood right in front of the exit of the cavern – two tendrils sticking out behind

off by a mass of tendrils, with even one of the blue ones reinforcing it. Jake ran straight for it and tried to use Shadow Vault to phase through, which resulted in it feeling

simply contained too much mana for him to phase through. They also counted as living things, which he wasn’t even sure he could phase through, to begin with… he could sometimes barely get through a tree, but the vines

so he tried to cut a hole with Descending Dark Fang. He managed

Stumbling, he couldn’t avoid in time as two thin needles

the Apex

a dozen bottles on it while also spraying some of his own poisoned blood over it. It wasn’t to

than expected, proving his Gaze of the Apex Hunter was very effective. It had bought him quite a lot of time, even allowing him to summon three mana bolts that he fired towards a tendril charging up another magic attack. He would have used his bow, but he

something interesting. A tendril flew for each of them, making them explode, but the way they moved was as if they attacked him. Mana-based vision? Jake barely managed to think before the next tendrils came for

below him. He saw a whole net of roots coming up towards him. Far more than he could possibly handle. Jake turned to hack away at the barrier closing off the