The Primal Hunter

The three remaining monkeys looked as their comrade was blasted away in shock, but it only made them more aggressive than before.

With one down, he turned his attention to the Crusher. It came at him with tails swinging and arms flailing, now even more berserk than before. It was pretty strong but not very fast, and Jake easily evaded its simple movements as he took out his melee weapons.

In a fluid motion, he ran his palms over both, drawing blood and coating them in Blood of the Malefic Viper. Venomfang felt oddly frail in his hand as he held it, and he knew the weapon would soon be unable to keep up with his progress… and if he was honest, he had a feeling it would soon break anyway, him growing stronger or not. The weapon had been through a lot, and he would prefer for it not to break entirely.

But for this hunt you’ll be just fine, old buddy.

He blocked the clawed hand of the Crusher as he felt the weight on the blade. To Jake, it felt like the beast before him weighed tons, yet when it jumped on the trees or swung from a branch, the wood didn’t even budge, showing there indeed was some magic going on there.

Being this close, he also noticed what appeared to be a passive aura of sorts around the monkey, weighing him down even further. Even the regular D-ranks in the background had this aura active.

Angling himself a bit, Jake made sure to do so the monkey releasing blasts couldn’t get a good shot as he landed small cuts on the body of the Crusher. Slowly the scimitar began glowing red, and Jake felt the curse within spin to life as he felt its hunger permeate his body – and luckily for it, today it would be sated.

With every landed cut, a small stream of red energy entered the blade and Jake himself, restoring a few health points to him while draining it from the Crusher. Simultaneously, the poison quickly accumulated in its system, and the monkey soon noticed that something was very wrong.

It didn’t know it yet, but it was practically already dead. The two other D-grade monkeys in the background tried to help as they also entered melee and began swinging their tails and hands. One of them even tried to grab and hold him down while increasing its own weight, but Jake was faster than all of them. While the Crusher had more pure strength than him, he had more than the regular ones.

All the E-grades attempted to throw more of their damn feces here and there, but it was difficult for them with Jake surrounded by the three D-grades.

Jake had to admit that the pressure building up from the three weight-increasing auras was beginning to get cumbersome as he moved to finish one of the beasts off. He laid eyes on all three of them and used Gaze of the Apex Hunter, making all of them freeze up as his scimitar was coated in a mix of arcane mana and the energy of the curse.

The blade extended as he swept it horizontally through the neck of the closest monkey, sending its head flying into the air.

*You have slain [Tri-Lighttail Monkey – lvl 103] – Bonus experience earned for killing an enemy above your level*

A moment after the head left its neck, the two surviving monkeys became able to move again, and their fury had spiked even more than before.

But it was all for naught. The Crusher was already sluggish from all the poison, and the other regular one wasn’t doing that much better itself, having taken a few solid stabs from Venomfang already.

Perhaps realizing they were both screwed, they held nothing back. It was as if the air shimmered, and Jake felt like he had just been thrown deep underwater as he felt the pressure mount on him, and he was forced down to the ground with the two monkeys in tow. Their two auras overlapped as they tried to crush him, and Jake even became unable to avoid the attacks of the shit-slingers.

with Hawkie – and had all the feces land on that. He felt every impact drain some mana, and he even felt that the shit could corrode the mana even faster, but if there was

jump around, he could still move

his bow and, with great willpower, stood up straight as he began channeling. He felt like his bones creaked a bit doing so, but his body was durable enough

energy began building up. Both D-grade monkeys noticed this, and the Crusher moved in to attack, moving

sphere used it to travel nearly 100 meters backward as the ground where he had just stood exploded

up, the Crusher confused by its blow missing the human that shouldn’t be able

only doubled when an arcane arrow parted the cloud

– Bonus experience earned for killing an enemy above

just standing there, looking like it was about to shit itself. Before it got the chance to throw that hypothetical

D-grade monkey peek out from behind a tree before it quickly bolted away, rushing further into the forest. It was the one he had sent flying earlier, and it had only barely managed to get its bearing

honestly too weak for him… he reckoned those four together only managed to reach the level of a single Thunder Roc, even

surprising as often solitary creatures were more powerful individually. They had more skills to square up their own shortcomings and just more stats overall. This didn’t mean that beasts or monsters in groups were weaker, though. Often they had powerful leaders, even for their level,

had skills that allowed their subjects to level and grow faster. Jake didn’t doubt that these monkeys had some strong leaders hidden away in the core of their

be polite so teach them some basic courtesy, wouldn’t it? Such as

that… he had a skill to upgrade and more than a hundred E-grade monkeys still hiding in the trees all around him, thinking he couldn’t see them. Joke’s on them because Jake had more perception than

fired towards a tree nearby, trying to use Splitting Arrow, using the stable version of his arcane arrows, as he noticed before, they would persist for a bit longer. Yet again, the arrow

had only consumed a bit of stamina from

arrows use mana,

fundamental energies for humans: vital energy – also called health points, mana, and stamina were able to act like one another, but this required a bit

all viable in combat unless used with some specific technique. Self-healing spells, as an example, were often just a

that? Sadly the Viper shot that down quickly. He learned that you didn’t truly transform the energy; you just allowed it to act as another kind of energy for a bit. You had to use it, or it would just disperse, like if Jake

physical arrows. At least they were viewed as physical entities by the system. Jake’s arcane arrows, on the other hand, were considered entirely magical. Honestly… the easiest way to spot the difference was just what stats the skills benefitted from. If it benefitted from physical stats, it was a stamina-move; if it benefitted from mental stats, it was a mana move, and if it used stats from both camps, it had mixed cost - his own Arcane Powershot an example of

ones and wisdom and perception for the stable arrows. Perception was a stat that didn’t really fit into either camp as a physical or mental stat, but was a bit of both. That is because, objectively

Splitting Arrow skill to work with his mana rather

Hunter’s Arrows was all about… no, the issue was to do it while in flight and at the same time allow them

based on distance and perception because of his Archery of Vast Horizons, so he had to make sure the arrows were still considered archery – no matter how weird

that in mind,

but even more of them were just perplexed at how bad the accuracy of their attacker was. A few of the shots