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.

entire 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

with his extensive research on how to slay it, had led him to have a sufficient understanding of the

the Ambitious

the Malefic Viper fed him constant

as he sunk his consciousness into understanding the fungus - every single part of not only its body but its soul. Jake didn’t even notice that the fungus was ripping itself out of the ground as a massive figure

integration was now attempting to flee. Jake just kept his focus honed on making an arrow to finish off

that emerged from 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

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 from his health, mana, and stamina pools during

he understood. This arrow would not strike at the

it extremely peculiar when he did so. His hand phased partway through the arrow, but he

happy to see that wasn’t an issue. Likely because the bow was infused

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

shocked him for a moment because it looked absolutely

of roots was slowly crawling across the ground, with a dozen or so thick root-like tendrils doing most of the

its home. It had absorbed energy from the earth and been heavily poisoned by the fungicide. Afterward, fungicide was spread all over its area, and Jake had even pushed in some poison mist

any fungus. It was going to try and flee the biodome to escape the environment that would end up killing it, and even if it somehow survived,

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 because it was shot

began moving up to try and block, and Jake allowed it to because he knew that no physical movement could possibly stop an arrow heading directly

its vine and

nothing seemed to happen as the entire Indigo Fungus just froze up. Suddenly, It made a spasm-like movement as one of its vines flew out and slammed into one of the biodome walls. Followed by another chaotic

kept his distance. He knew… something had broken inside it. It was already so weak, to begin with…

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

to this biodome. Two times he had been forced to

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

lvl 105] – Bonus

like a giant pile of overcooked spaghetti – a fitting

he got the notification but soon frowned as he looked at the aforementioned

he double-checked the notification. How could it only

was barely D-grade, and it had grown even stronger between his visits… did that mean it had just reached D-grade the

already, 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

Fungus with some mental magic bullshit – pun intended – as the overgrown mushroom had a weak

the match-up? Or was it particularly

had to trump anything Jake had ever faced before. Just the absolutely ridiculous amount of energy it had was more than all the other D-grades he had ever met put together. Well, besides the King of the Forest, but that freak didn’t

notifications weren’t unexpected but were still something relatively

97 -

(E)] has reached level 98

all it meant was that his next few levels in his professions wouldn’t also net him

some of that sweet loot. Because if there were one thing mushrooms were