The Primal Hunter

Lavender, Evergreen Grass, a lot of mana and a bit of love, and you have a perfectly healthy potion. It seemed simple on paper, but there was a bit of work going into it. The mana-control aspect of the crafting process was something that could always be improved, and the more you trained, the better your potions would inadvertently get. While there was a cap caused by the ingredients and your own stats, it wasn’t one Jake could ever feasibly reach.

He did improve a whole lot, though. His potions got better and better, and he honestly took quite a while to get proper pricing down but ended up just settling on 20.000 for each potion. While he certainly could charge more, he didn’t feel the need to. He didn’t craft them to make money, to begin with, but to level his profession and get as comfortable with his new D-grade mana control prowess as he could before he would begin crafting some more interesting things.

Like some uncommon-rarity poison.

Well, his pricing scheme was like that for the first week until he talked about it with Miranda.

“Why don’t you have someone else sell it for you? Merchants or others with compatible professions apparently get great experience selling items through the store to other cities and have even better methods to price goods with their skills. That way, they can gain levels, and you can gain Credits without thinking about putting them up for sale yourself,” she said, sounding quite reasonable.

“Do you have anyone in mind?” he had asked.

This was when he learned that apparently, being a City Lord’s assistant also included selling stuff as a part of the job, at least the system agreed it did. Lillian came by later that day, and from the first week and moving forward, she handled all the commercial stuff for him. She just came by once a day or so and took all the potions he had already made while giving him any stuff he asked her to buy or look out for.

Jake still bought most of the items he wanted himself, as quite frankly, he only knew he wanted it when he saw it. Every item above common-rarity was more or less an impulse buy because he thought: ”hey, I guess I can use this for something.”

It had now been two weeks total since the World Congress ended, and Jake was spending most of his time every day experimenting on making an uncommon-rarity poison, but he did still spend a few hours pumping out potions.

The experience was great when he mass-produced things, and he had gained two levels during this period. While that doesn’t seem like a lot, one had to remember that leveling only got harder and harder as time went on. Villy had told him that sometimes going years between levels at higher grades was just to be expected.

*’ DING!’ Profession: [Heretic-Chosen Alchemist of the Malefic Viper] has reached level 103 - Stat points allocated, +10 free points*

*’ DING!’ Race: [Human (D)] has reached level 109 - Stat points allocated, +15 free points*

*’ DING!’ Profession: [Heretic-Chosen Alchemist of the Malefic Viper] has reached level 104 - Stat points allocated, +10 free points*

As for what kind of poison he was trying to make an uncommon variant of? He had decided to start with the old trusty one: Necrotic Poison.

Necrotic Poison did have some drawbacks, but against any living being, it was just great. Against elementals, it was quite bad, but it even functioned okay-ish versus plant-based foes. It also happened to be the poison Jake had the most experience with.

Finally, he decided to go for this poison because of a certain herb. Or, more accurately, mushroom. An old friend of his, but in a new and improved form.

[Aged Bluebright Mushroom (Uncommon)] - A poisonous blue mushroom that emits blue light. The Aged Blue Mushroom has grown to a point where simply being touched by its light can bring you harm, and the juices found within are more toxic than ever.

Jake had discovered that the System Store was indeed a bit dynamic and adaptable. He had bought all the normal common-rarity Bluebright Mushrooms that he could and found that the store stocked a few more every time, with it even giving out a few uncommon-rarity ones every time now.

the first many mushrooms, he did as any reasonable person would do and ate them. All competent doctors would agree that death-shrooms would be a part

was perfectly aware that without Palate of the Malefic Viper, half his mouth would have rotted away, but with it,

run, even after the System Store disappeared. Problem is… Jake had never actually done any proper gardening in his life, and

do it for you? Maybe train someone to do it properly. That should also get

enough not to be killed by the mushrooms. He considered it for a while and decided to just postpone it for now. He would also need someplace to properly

mana it leaked, but the issue was that the dungeon portal leaked life-affinity mana, while the mushrooms primarily had death-affinity or perhaps rot-affinity mana. Chances are the mushrooms would get worse if put down

herbs and plants in. There were many different types of mushrooms too, and

save all the herbs he wanted to plant later in

with Sylphie or meeting with Miranda and/or Lillian. All in

Dungeon time.

patterns. But there was a method to the madness as she began chanting words in a language she truly didn’t understand. It wasn’t a question of her translation skill not working either; it was that the

did hold power,

view appeared, and she saw her targets. It was an old enemy most in the city would recognize as an Oakwood Tiger – the kind of beast that

a small mark on it that it could neither detect with its mana sense nor see with its eyes. It was a green sigil depicting a circular mark, looking a lot like a green lagoon. It was

combat class but was a witch. While they could fight with regular magic, flinging fire and ice like any other caster, their specialty

Tiger she had killed days prior, leaves from the forest, bark from many different kinds of trees, and several catalysts she

weaved her spell, and through

placed around the circle began burning

Feast Of the Lagoon’s

natural treasure that served as a natural gathering point for all the Oakwood Tigers in the area. It was their domain, and no other beast had been

of natural treasures – this one included - functioned better for some beasts than others. This tree was highly beneficial to the tigers but wouldn’t help many other

their doom and that this haven they had named their home would be their

noticed a shift in the air as a green wind seemed to sweep

they knew anything was wrong,

of the tigers. It struggled, but another arm came up, followed by a dozen more as they began dragging it down. Down to the

began resembling a still lake. Every single tiger was assaulted at once by the greedy hands that sought to bring them down, and

the hands began succeeding in dragging the tigers down. The first to be grabbed was also the first to be fully submerged as it failed to keep

were all half-corporeal but physical enough to bite and tear into the tiger as it struggled. As a monster growing up in a forest, it had never fought in water nor was built to do so.

They did all struggle, and they managed to “kill” many of the creatures trying to devour them, but there were just too many. They did notice that these creatures didn’t respawn and no new ones appeared…

hour before the depths below became calm, with

aura from the ritual faded. Not a

as she had taken a bit of damage towards the end from pushing herself too far. Yet, she

down, and all the catalysts burned away by the green fire. It had been an expensive one, and it had taken quite a bit of work to set it