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.

every hour on the dot to keep himself at least a bit healthy, most of them stamina potions. Jake had to use Limit Break at

of a fight that he could indeed still get tired. Not because he lacked stamina or mana or anything like that, it was just pure mental exhaustion. His mind wanted to rest; he needed to just not think or do anything intense for

anymore. You barely had to at E-grade, needing only a few hours a week tops, most of it just being done with meditating anyway.

exhaustion hadn’t had much effect except Jake maybe not fighting in an as tactical manner towards the end. He was lucky in the sense that he didn’t

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

below 20%, and the negative after-effects of Limit Break taking their toll. Luckily, nothing was alive anywhere close to him, and

fuck, 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 see that there were Dervishes all the way to 140 also mixed

Monkey Matriarch – lvl 142] – Bonus experience earned for

Matriarch – lvl 146] – Bonus

best part:

[Avaricious Arcane Hunter] has reached level

reached level 110 - Stat points allocated,

level 106

reached level 111 - Stat points allocated,

level 112 - Stat

(D)] has reached level 107 - Stat points allocated, +15

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

fine that way anyway, and in the moments when it truly

to the Verdant Lagoon, where she had ended up spending most of the time going through paperwork and dealing with stuff through the system menus, making use of the time distortion to get work done. Creating 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 had given the authority to grant positions to. A position-giving position,

destination. Miranda just wrote that up to him having some kind of skill to block it,

herself and most of the people with positions of leadership in the city – and agreed on a few things concerning the World Congress. One of the largest subjects of discussion was related

city was truly massive and that 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

the only real thing Miranda was certain of was that it would allow the different world leaders to

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 weakness, which is why

would never become a metropolis unless they 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

was even working on having the area influenced by the Pylon extend

the “elite” and their immediate family. Nobody currently living there would be thrown out, but they would limit how many newcomers