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.

off the weight-increasing effect and move. It attacked the Dervish before it, and when Jake saw its paw land, he thought the

a few bloody marks left by the claws, but the impact itself seemed to have barely affected it. At least it decided to counterattack

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

quick succession, but it wasn’t exactly a fast killer. In the end, two

monkeys stood triumphantly and cheered, something

BOOM!

the one Suppressor that had been the primary force to suppress the

head off and ending yet another

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

Jake couldn’t even destroy them if he wanted to… it was like being

do with the mana intensity being different here.

trees and loosed arrow after arrow towards the monkeys below, 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 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 quite good

with a total of 11 normal Tri-Lighttail Monkeys, 1 Crusher, and 1 Dervish. That is after killing one of the Crushers and a few of the normal

the Dervish for last…

on the ground below, 500 meters

to think as he had to do a flap of his wings

the air, and just as it hit the top of the forest, it turned and landed on only a few leaves of the long branches as if it was solid ground. With another mighty jump, it once more flew like a meteor towards

looked up at it and used Gaze of the Apex Predator as the 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 into his target, but after barely managing to leave a wound, he felt all resistance disappear as if he was striking something without any mass – or in

Jake was about to take out his bow, he saw it purposefully bounce off a tree and behind another, clearly fearing his arrows that had killed several of its

their weakness. Blunt force or even cuts did little to the Dervish, but an exploding arcane arrow

lost as 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 on him as it looked

fly around the different trees to never give it a straight line of attack while he whittled down the monkeys that were quickly rushing up towards him. He had to dodge quite

and he had to contend with several of them leaping between the trees and trying to hit him. A single one was easy enough, but when five came

quite a few tricks up his sleeve to

dark toxic gas. Jake had mixed a bit

barely noticed the dark cloud. He had learned quite a while ago that his perception alone made him

the monkeys passed through the cloud, they were ever-so-slowly infected by the poison. The poison didn’t actually do much damage, and even the effects of the dark-affinity weren’t noticeable to them…

Malefic Viper allowed him to effortlessly sense poison he had inflicted, and the poison fumes from his wings naturally counted. It was technically just his burned

used everything in his arsenal as he slaughtered the entire group of D-grades. Bolts of arcane mana flew around, exploding arrows, and the occasional Powershot tore up the entire section of

would hurt like hell if it managed to strike him, but Jake was never in any real danger of that happening. It was slower than even the regular monkeys and didn’t have much chance of pinning him down. They kept trying to ground him by sending their weight-increasing waves of mana,

restored more than 10000 mana with the bonus from Palate included, allowing his entire mana pool to effectively be above 40000. His mask

all weak for D-grades, it still took a while to put them all down. D-grades were still

to make Jake dodge a direction

SWOOSH!

him, and 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 when the beast passed by.