The Primal Hunter

Sometimes in life, one must take the good with the bad, and disappointment was an unavoidable element of existence. To be honest, Jake shouldn’t really have been disappointed, though, as it was a bit unrealistic to expect it to work…

But damn it, Jake wanted his Splitting Arrow to also duplicate the poison. Was that really too much to ask?

Shortly after upgrading the skill, Jake had with much excitement tried putting his blood on the arrow – the type of poison most aligned with himself and his mana – and tried duplicating it with Enhanced Splitting Arrow. It did exactly the same as the normal Splitting Arrow, with only the “real” one retaining the poison.

No big deal, Jake had thought. He was already on a roll and had just upgraded the skill in rarity, so couldn’t he just keep working on it and upgrade it again? Allow it to also duplicate poison on it?

Jake wasn’t even going to be greedy… it was fine if it only worked with his blood. That shouldn’t be so hard, right?

Wrong.

It was damn impossible. No matter what Jake tried, nothing worked. The poison simply wasn’t at all considered as any part of the “arrow”, so it didn’t duplicate. It wasn’t an issue of resources or methods… the skill just wasn’t compatible at all with what he wanted it to do. It was like trying to use his Brew Potion to make a shotgun…

Well, there was one consolation to it all, at least. A lot of dead monkeys. A lot. Even a good bunch of D-grades, allowing Jake to net his first real level in his class after reaching D-grade.

*’DING!’ Class: [Avaricious Arcane Hunter] has reached level 101 - Stat points allocated, +10 free points*

Jake checked the quest to see how much time he had before the World Congress and noticed that he had a bit over four days left still. It would take him a few hours to get back to the city with how far he had traveled, but that still meant he had plenty of time to explore the rest of the monkey-infested area of the forest he found himself in.

Where he was now, he nearly only saw D-grades, and almost all enemies were monkeys. The vast majority were the normal Tri-Lighttail Monkeys, but there were also plenty of Crushers and even another one called a Suppressor. Yeah… their names weren’t exactly subtle. To the surprise of no one, the Suppressors specialized in suppressing things with their weight magic.

Besides those two, there was also another variant. One Jake was looking at right at that moment.

[Tri-Lighttail Dervish – lvl 123]

It was tall and slender with three tails like all the other monkeys, but its tails themselves were different. While the Crusher had far bulkier ones, the Dervish had tails that looked almost flat. Jake had wondered why they looked like that, but he soon learned the reason.

When Jake came across the group of monkeys, they were in the middle of a battle against another beast. A large bulky bear that was almost ten meters long and had to weigh many tons. Sadly for the bear, its large size became a detriment to it.

[Brownhide Ursine – lvl 131]

The beast was pelted by literal shit by the D-grade monkeys and was slowed down as its weight was forcibly increased. Its hide grew harder as it tried to shield itself, but all it did was limit its own mobility further as it got covered in feces.

It tried roaring, sending a wave of force out, but the monkeys hid away up in the trees and just jeered and laughed at it. Jake didn’t like their way of fighting, but he still chose not to interfere. He didn’t like interfering in the fights of others even more, and besides, the Dervish looked like it was about to make its move.

Jake saw it leap off the tree it was on, and instantly it accelerated manyfold as it quickly fell the nearly 150 meters down towards the bear.

During its descent, it spun around itself, and its three tails were rotating at a tremendous speed as it landed right in front of the bear. The three tails tore into the bear, acting like three whip-like blades, sending blood flying everywhere and making the bear roar in pain and anger.

kind of enraged state, and for a brief moment, it managed to shrug off the weight-increasing effect and move. It attacked the Dervish before it, and when Jake saw its paw land, he thought the

Dervish harmlessly flew away and landed on the ground. It had a few bloody marks left by the claws, but the impact itself seemed to have barely affected it. At least it decided to counterattack

frightening speed, and using a weird spinning technique, it quickly cut into the far

he saw the bear slowly be finished off. The Dervish inflicted many wounds in quick succession, but it wasn’t exactly a fast killer. In the end, two Crushers joined in when the bear became too weak to put up any resistance at all, quickly finishing

the monkeys stood triumphantly and

BOOM!

right through the skull of the one Suppressor that had been the primary force to suppress the bear. It didn’t

second arrow arrived a few moments later, hitting one of the regular D-grades right in its noggin, blowing its head off and ending yet another life. The remnant energy of the Arcane Powershot

for Jake, that was the last easy kill as all the monkeys had now managed to take cover, and he didn't have time to charge another Powershot for a one-shot. He had wanted to fly above the forest before to more easily bombard them from above but found that the crowns of the trees made it impossible. It wasn’t just a question of his sight being physically obstructed either, as clearly the crowns formed some kind of barrier sealing off the forest. Like a giant naturally formed array or magic circle, the entire forest protected itself from attacks from above. Which, in retrospect, probably made a lot of sense with powerful flying

destroy them if he wanted to… it was like being back in the tutorial during

something to do with the mana intensity being different here. Everything was just tougher, and D-grades were aplenty. Just

every single one of them exploding whenever they hit a monkey or a tree. A few monkeys were even taken by surprise when the exploding arrow suddenly duplicated, and instead of one nearly-lethal explosion, it became three

and too weak to pose any real threat, and the entire Lighttail species hadn’t shown themselves very robust yet. They were a race that focused on not getting hit to begin with, while Jake was

had to deal with a total of 11 normal Tri-Lighttail Monkeys, 1 Crusher, and 1 Dervish. That is after killing one of

had already decided to save the Dervish for last…

on the ground below, 500 meters down.

do a flap of his wings to dodge to

the long branches as if it was solid ground. With

Scimitar of Cursed Hunger appeared in his hand. It froze up just as Jake swung the blade and smashed it into the side of the beast. He felt his blade cut a bit

take out his bow, he saw it

eh? Jake thought, understanding their weakness. Blunt force or even cuts did little to the Dervish, but an exploding arcane arrow was a whole other story. Well, not like the other monkeys fared that much better. Very few

he began killing off the regular D-grade Lighttails below, patiently waiting for the Dervish to make its next move. He could feel its attention

line of attack while he whittled down the monkeys that were quickly rushing up towards him. He had to dodge quite a few blasts of force and shrug off quite a few waves of weight-increasing mana, but he managed to get quite a few

and reach him, and he had to contend with several of them leaping between the trees and trying to hit him. A single one was easy

tricks up his sleeve

had mixed a bit of dark-affinity

that his perception alone made him

even the effects of the dark-affinity weren’t noticeable to them… no, the real value lay in Jake being able to detect them

to effortlessly sense poison he had inflicted, and the poison fumes from

of arcane mana flew around, exploding arrows, and the occasional Powershot

to ground him by sending their weight-increasing waves of mana, but Jake countered that by constantly releasing disruptive waves of mana around himself. Was this damn draining on his mana pool? Yes, it sure was, but Jake

mana with the bonus from Palate included, allowing his entire mana pool to effectively be

that they were all weak for D-grades, it still took a while to put them all down. D-grades were still D-grades, and unless he landed a lethal blow

fall as only a single enemy remained. In its final moments, the Crusher had managed to make Jake dodge a direction he would prefer not to, and it put

SWOOSH!

Jake failed to fully dodge the blow as the two tails seemed to extend just as it was about to hit him, leaving him a nasty cut on his stomach and chest