The Primal Hunter

Jake sat on the ground as he breathed in heavily, waiting for his left arm to regrow. His right eye was also still a bit blurry after being regenerated, as it turned out that taking a blast of force to the face resulted in quite a lot of it being funneled into the holes in the mask. He was lucky his head was tilted so he only lost one of them.

He was also, of course, half-naked from most of his armor being shredded or blown apart, a lot of the damage done by his own explosions of arcane mana. He had to be honest; he was close to having bitten off a bit more than he could chew here towards the end.

It was now only a bit over 22 hours away from the beginning of the World Congress, and Jake was still in the forest hunting monkeys. After the first Matriarch, the second one to move was the highest level one, but it had gone down quite easily. Mainly because Jake had the tactic down and more and better Hemotoxins than before.

*You have slain [Tri-Lighttail Monkey Matriarch – lvl 147] – Bonus experience earned for killing an enemy above your level*

*’DING!’ Class: [Avaricious Arcane Hunter] has reached level 108 - Stat points allocated, +10 free points*

*’DING!’ Race: [Human (D)] has reached level 105 - Stat points allocated, +15 free points*

He regenerated to full with that one down and had then gone to pull another one of the Matriarchs, hoping to finish it off quickly. Oh boy, that hadn’t at all turned out as planned. Not at all.

When he shot an arrow on the third Matriarch, the fourth one had decided to join in too, with all the young monkeys being ushered into the buildings surrounding the ancient temple. Jake had already found out earlier they led to some small underground caves that were pretty much safety shelters.

Jake had no interest in going after the young ones. He was no sand-hating youngling-slayer, after all. Besides, he didn’t have a lightsaber.

Anyway, Jake had pulled the third Matriarch, the fourth had decided to follow, and eventually, this had resulted in the majority of D-grade monkeys in the entire temple-area chasing him. The only lucky thing was that the Prima was still chilling within the center temple, not taking part. It appeared to honestly not give a shit what the rest of its tribe was doing, and all the other monkeys were just afraid of it from what Jake could tell.

All of this had resulted in Jake on the run from an entire fucking army of D-grade monkeys, including 2 Matriarchs, more than 20 Dervishes, even more Crushers, and a dozen or so Suppressors. The number of normal D-grades Tri-Lighttail Monkeys was above a hundred total. Very much not a good time.

The first hour had been the hardest by far, Jake trying to slow down and injure the horde as much as possible as he ran. He killed and ripped and poisoned with everything he had, with both his blades absolutely covered in blood towards the end.

He did discover that the health draining effect of his Scimitar of Cursed Hunger was extremely valuable against the normal D-grades. It meant he did not have to consume health potions as much but allowed him to regenerate by beheading monkeys.

With his sphere and Sense of the Malefic Viper sensing all the poisoned monkeys, he managed to never get surrounded and outnumbered too much, allowing him to always fight back or escape when things got a bit too spicy.

In the end, the entire ordeal had still taken more than an entire goddamn day - an entire day of running, fighting, killing, and slowly whittling down his foes. A few more monkeys even joined the hunt when they noticed what was going on, making Jake feel like he was facing a neverending tide of simians.

potions. Jake had

was just pure mental exhaustion. His mind wanted to rest; he needed to just not think or do anything intense for a while. Not even necessarily sleep, just at least not have to

D-grade, you never had to sleep anymore. You barely had to at E-grade, needing only a few hours a week tops,

end. He was lucky in the sense that he didn’t have to truly focus when fighting; it was actually quite the opposite: the less he focused, the more he

course, that wasn’t always optimal and worked best in melee. It also wasn’t perfect either, far from it. Hence Jake’s lack of an arm and newly- regenerated eye, and a massive amount of wounds on his body. But it had helped him to never suffer any truly lethal blow… though he did have to trigger

Break taking their toll. Luckily, nothing was alive anywhere close to him, and

but also very accomplished as he went through his wall of notifications. The first of which was the many monkeys, but most importantly, the 2 Matriarchs. Though he did

lvl 142] – Bonus experience earned

– lvl 146] – Bonus experience earned for killing an enemy above your

the best

Hunter] has reached level 109 - Stat points

[Avaricious Arcane Hunter] has reached level

level 106 -

reached level 111 -

Arcane Hunter] has reached level 112 - Stat

level 107 - Stat points

levels always just felt great. So, with great satisfaction, he lay down on the bloody grass, ignored

whims and constant absence and just accepted to do things herself. It worked out fine that way anyway, and in the moments when it truly mattered,

new quests, taking stocks, and all that. The system even had interfaces for all that, and Lillian had recently unlocked a skill that allowed her to send and receive messages through the powers of the Pylon. This meant she could send it to anyone connected to it, such as Miranda, Phillip, Hank, or anyone else with an official position granted by Miranda or someone she

have worked for the owner, but Lillian had tried and found that it failed every time. It was like the skill couldn’t find its destination. Miranda just wrote that up to him having some kind of skill to block

– they being herself and most of the people with positions of leadership in the city – and agreed on

other far larger settlements also existed out there. Many of Haven’s current citizens had family or friends elsewhere and were only in Haven right now because it

was certain of was that it would allow the different world leaders to interact – the

intend to make themselves antagonistic to any forces, but she was damn sure that some other faction would try to cause strife or perhaps even attempt to lay claim and annex the city. Their population appeared to be a

chose to abandon what made it special and ruin the entire atmosphere of the forest. Nobody wanted that, and Miranda was also fairly certain Jake would prefer not to have high-rises surrounding his

was even working on having the area influenced by the Pylon extend to there. Once she reached D-grade,

the “elite” and their immediate family. Nobody currently living