The Primal Hunter

Absolute mayhem. That is the only phrase Jake could use to accurately describe the chaos happening inside the biodome.

Vines were flying everywhere, random bolts of mana fired at anything moving, and all the poor insects that were just crawling around the biodome minding their own business were ripped to pieces. The fungus didn’t even look like it tried to absorb them; it just killed them and evaporated their bodies.

Jake just sat there, patiently monitoring the poison.

[Indigo Fungus Mycorrhiza – lvl ???]

While he was there, he also tried to focus on improving his Sense of the Malefic Viper. To better sense how his poison interacted with the body of the fungi. He felt how it spread and invaded every part of it, how it polluted its resource-pools and devoured its health points.

He felt like he was improving his ability to sense the energy, once more also finding parallels between it and his mana control. Learning how the fungicide worked to kill the fungus would help him out in the future when he needed to create better mana techniques, so he took it all in.

As long as he could, that is.

Finally, the mushroom noticed him.

It fired a few small blasts of mana his way in what Jake could barely even recognize as an attack. Clearly, it didn’t focus on him or even recognize him from their last encounter. Indeed he was right when he surmised the fungus was stupid. Unsurprising, considering it was a goddamn overgrown blue mushroom.

Jake got up and went into action after dodging the mana blasts thrown his way. He knew he would now catch its attention, but he was prepared. He summoned orbs of mana above him that he charged up to hold quite a quantity.

He then sent them floating into the biodome, where he instantly saw a few vines fly over and try to destroy them. Jake smiled as once more his theory was confirmed: it indeed did rely on some kind of mana vision.

It went well with how it also sucked at detecting that it was infected by something. All in all, its perception just sucked outright. It didn’t need to see things when it could just kill them by way of its sheer size and overwhelming power. It was a monster designed to be the king within its own hunting grounds.

A king that Jake was about to dethrone by poisoning the land the king reigned over.

Two wings appeared behind him as they began pumping out a mist of poison. Yet Jake didn’t blow it into the dome but kept it around himself in a cloud of thick smoke. He obscured the entrance to the biodome, far from enough for Jake not to be able to see through it, but enough for the fungus to only see a giant blob of mana in its vision.

At the same time, he summoned mana bolts - weak versions of his regular bolts that looked more like transparent floating crystals than anything meant to attack with. He waved his hand, and bottle after bottle appeared, each containing mushroom-killing juices.

It was all the common-rarity fungicide he had concocted over the last weeks. Far from as effective as the uncommon-rarity soul-invading poison, but more than effective nevertheless.

He swayed a bit to avoid a blast of mana fired his way as strings of mana sprung out of his hands and began tying the bottles to his bolts. He fused the bottles inside each bolt and fired them into the dome, aiming for the larger mushrooms or plants within.

When the bolts hit, they exploded in a rather unimpressive explosion. It didn’t even harm the plants, but it was more than enough to make the bottles shatter and send the fungicide flying everywhere.

This continued as Jake dodged all attacks coming his way, noticing that the fungus’ aim was totally off. It tried to make up for it with quantity, but the poison mist made the area it had to bombard too large, especially considering it had to shoot all its bolts through the relatively small entrance to the biodome.

He kept up his barrage of fungicide and weak bolts. The reason why he used bolts to deliver his attacks was quite simple - the fungus reacted to them. Several of the bolts were intercepted by vines that either stabbed into the bolt or just slapped it, making the bolt explode and spraying the fungicide all over it.

Minutes passed with the damage building up. Finally, it was forced to show its actual body.

biodome shook. The moment Jake saw the first blue vine, he marked it and jumped back around the corner of the cave, away from the fungi. He had learned that he could only mark

to have a sufficient understanding of the monster. Sufficient enough so that

of the

fed him constant information of the toxins in its body. And as the toxins had invaded every part of its body, Jake could feel

understanding the fungus - every single part of not only its body but its soul. Jake didn’t even notice that the fungus was

the integration was now attempting to flee. Jake just kept his

hand looked like nothing he had ever made prior. It seemed almost ethereal as it appeared to flicker in and out of existence. It was in an odd state of both

at it. Looks-wise its shape was not much different from a normal arrow… but Jake felt a headache coming on by just looking at it. When he saw what resources it had consumed, he was also confused. It drained equally

understood. This arrow would not strike at the body

phased partway through the arrow, but he soon noticed it was just his gloves. It ignored anything that was not his physical body, caring not for his clothes at

feared he wouldn’t be able to nock it but was happy to see that wasn’t an issue. Likely because the bow

now stood right in front of the biodome entrance again and could once more see inside… and

shocked him for a moment because

so thick root-like tendrils doing most of the work. Jake instantly knew it was the creature’s actual body and that it was trying

fungicide. Afterward, fungicide was spread

to try and flee the biodome to escape the environment that would end up killing it, and even if it somehow

the Indigo Fungus Mycorrhiza, it would never find a new home. An arrow that flickered in and out of existence flew through the air with unprecedented speed. It contained incredible amounts of mana, not just due to the arrow itself but

and block, and Jake allowed it to because he knew that no

in its vine and simply sank

made a spasm-like movement as one of

knew… something had broken inside it. It was already so weak, to begin with… its soul eroded and tortured for so long by the uncommon-rarity poison.

the Ambitious Hunter, but just normal ones. He fired Infused Powershot after Infused Powershot, ripping the true form of

to this biodome. Two times he had been forced to flee. The last time

it was just a slaughter. In some ways, one could say that Jake had been fighting the fungus for over a month. The battle had been won not in a direct confrontation with his enemy but through

far from

slain [Indigo Fungus Mycorrhiza – lvl 105] – Bonus experience earned for killing an

Fungus collapsed to the ground, looking like a giant pile of overcooked spaghetti – a fitting

got the notification but soon frowned as he

confused as he double-checked the notification. How could

that mean it had just reached D-grade the day he went to the biodome the first

but none had proven to be big challenges. The Minotaur Mindlord has been quite a lot higher than anything else, and yet he couldn’t see

Jake was pretty damn sure the Minotaur Mindlord could have killed the Indigo Fungus with some mental magic bullshit – pun intended – as the overgrown

match-up? Or was it

Jake had ever faced before. Just the absolutely ridiculous amount of energy it had was more than all the other D-grades he had

notifications weren’t unexpected but were

has reached level 97 - Stat points allocated,

level 98 - Stat points

class. Quite frankly, it didn’t mean much, as all it meant was that his next few levels in his professions wouldn’t also net him race levels. Well, it would matter if he decided to level his race to 100 and evolve… but

loot.