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.

and move. It attacked

on the ground. It had a few bloody marks left by the claws, but

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

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

monkeys stood triumphantly and cheered, something descended from

BOOM!

had been the primary force to suppress the

noggin, blowing its head off and ending yet another

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

even destroy them if he wanted to… it was like being back in the tutorial during the first days, where just penetrating the bark with a dagger

something to do with the mana intensity being different here. Everything was just

wings out, he flew around the trunks of the 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 very-much lethal

monkeys just weren’t worth much. They were too slow and too weak to pose any real threat, and the entire Lighttail species hadn’t shown themselves very

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

already decided to save the Dervish

ground below, 500 meters down. Bending its legs, it

of his wings to

of the long branches as if

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

about to take out his bow, he saw it purposefully bounce off a tree and behind another, clearly fearing his arrows

force or even cuts did little to the Dervish, but an exploding arcane arrow was a

Lighttails below, patiently waiting for the Dervish to make its next move.

fly around the different trees to never give it a straight line of attack while he whittled down the monkeys that were

to contend with several of them leaping between the trees and trying to hit him. A single one was

quite a few tricks up his sleeve to

glowing a dark green color as they began emanating a dark toxic gas. Jake had mixed a bit of dark-affinity mana into the poison, and soon large parts of the

made it significantly harder for the monkeys to strike back, while Jake honestly barely noticed the dark cloud. He had learned quite a while ago that his perception alone made him able to peer through many magical obstructions of sight, and even if it didn’t, he was quite accustomed to dark mana

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

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

and the occasional Powershot tore up the entire section of the forest he was in. None

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, 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 was a bit of a cheat when

included, allowing his entire mana pool to effectively be above 40000. His mask increasing his mana recovery to a large amount sure also

Jake countered the beasts quite hard and 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 with Arcane Powershot, they took quite a bit

the second-to-last to fall as only a single enemy remained. In its final moments, the Crusher had managed to make Jake dodge

SWOOSH!

it was about to hit him, leaving him a nasty cut on his stomach and chest when the beast passed