The Primal Hunter

Jake’s skill selection for his class at level 120 had led to many things. A talk about slavery, a new skill for Jake to experiment with, insight into his own progress, and one more significant aspect. The system more or less telling him to start looking into using his arcane-affinity with more than mana.

As he went deeper and deeper into the Undergrowth dungeon, he began doing a bit of practice with it throughout some of his fights. He had quite a few skills that used stamina, and he went with those first instead of trying to free-form stuff. Magic? He wasn’t even sure what skill-less manipulation of stamina was called.

That is when he remembered… he already had tried using a mix of stamina and mana before in a skill he had upgraded where he made the energies mix. When he upgraded Splitting Arrow, he did by fusing the two energies to split the arrows. Stamina would function as the physical bodies of the arrows, while the mana would function as the inherent magic of the arrows.

Coupled with the system assistance in upgrading skills once he was on the right track, upgrading it hadn’t even taken a day. Yet Jake hadn’t kept testing after that. Well, to be perfectly fair, it wasn’t like he had many chances to. The World Congress and then his crafting marathon came shortly after the last time he upgraded a skill with stamina. He had just needed a reminder to keep working on it.

Of course, neither of those energies had been arcane-affinity, but his arcane-affinity was closely related to pure mana, after all, so it could serve as a base.

Jake began considering all his skills from one end to the other… and found quite a few he used stamina with. Arcane Powershot was the most obvious one... but how would he integrate his arcane-affinity into the stamina portion of that?

The stamina portion of that skill was the stamina moving inside his body. Enhanced Splitting Arrow, Mark of the Avaricious Arcane Hunter… both used either arcane energy or mixed mana and stamina outside the body. Finally, Shadow Vault also used a mix, but that one was honestly just too weird for Jake to study in the short term.

Anyway, Arcane Powershot used stamina in his upper body with arcane mana outside of it, enhancing the bow and as currents running over his body. He used stamina inside his body and closest to his skin to make sure his own destructive arcane mana didn’t harm him while making his entire upper body stronger as he drew the string and charged the arrow.

Meanwhile, the bow was infused with stable arcane-affinity mana. Which made Jake consider more deeply… what kind of effect would his arcane-affinity even create when used with stamina inside his body? Was it even made to be used inside his body, or was it more suited for using it outside?

The Arcane Barrier was, of course, outside of his body. The Arcane Wave was outside, too, even if it did erupt from within him. But… he didn’t truly know if the energy it erupted with would all be arcane-affinity. Maybe it was just the mana-part of it that was, as the skill used both mana and stamina.

Jake’s arcane-affinity had two parts to it: stability and destruction. Together his affinity was all about stable destruction, with both extremes always carrying a bit of the effect from the other. An explosive arrow needed to be highly destructive but still stable enough not just to blow up right away, while a stable arrow needed to be extremely tough but still able to deal damage outside of just purely piercing enemies. If it were just purely a physical arrow, it wouldn’t really be worthy of the arcane-affinity now, would it?

Mobilizing his arcane-affinity outside the body wasn’t that complicated, but so far, all he really did it with was using mana… except for his new Mark. The Mark consumed stamina to use when he placed it on targets. Even the arcane energy that exploded within his foes contained no mana at all but was some other kind of arcane-affinity energy. A part of it was clearly stamina with an arcane-affinity… but all it did was deal damage directly to the health pool of his enemy… and Jake was still unsure if that was something special about his arcane-affinity that it could do that, or if it was just something the Mark made possible through system assistance.

This all led to the ultimate question: was it even possible to use his arcane-affinity to make himself stronger internally? Theoretically, perhaps… but was he really going to risk experimenting?

With normal stamina, Jake had blown off more than one limb with his experimenting… what would happen if he tried to do so with even more potent stamina that had a tendency to go big boom? Sure, he could use the stable version… but would that even be better than normal stamina? No, he would 100% need a mix. Jake felt like now wasn’t the time for that quite yet. Instead, he would focus on the arcane-affinity on external attacks for now.

meant that Jake shelved the exploration of stamina mixed with arcane-affinity for now as he instead focused on clearing the Deepdweller dungeon. Hopefully, he could get a skill or some inspiration

the Aspiring Blade of Nature or even the Nest Watcher back in the day, as it seemed to only use physical moves. Once more, he reached the issue that he didn’t know how to properly do

wings and flew through the Undergrowth, picking up herbs here and there, hunting down the occasional

and he fought more and more variants as he got closer and closer to what he believed was the end of the dungeon

Arcane Hunter] has reached level 125 - Stat points allocated, +10 free

has reached level 116

Arcane Hunter] has reached level 126 - Stat points allocated, +10 free

speed either. After the last village had been turned into a scorching hole of arcane energy, he finally reached something new.

at around 1200 kilometers. It suddenly ended in a large wall - a wall that was 100% artificial. It was constructed, and Jake doubted it had been by the Deepdwellers. No, this was some kind of ancient

wall was more than a kilometer tall and had a width of more than 5 kilometers, cutting off the entire path further into the Undergrowth. Jake tried to lay his hand upon it, and instantly he knew… there was

Perception, he saw that the entire wall was nearly 100 meters thick, but that still meant he could see a couple of hundred meters of the other side. There, he saw what looked like a massive net of vines.. all looking like they congregated towards one area outside

– and a

it besides its size made it look rather normal, as it didn’t

Heartwarden –

the second-strongest entity he had seen – sidenote, Jake with this successful Identify, concluded he could now only see

had been a bit lacking in the excitement department. Maybe the

of the young woman effortlessly as she slid across the ground to strike again. Her sword appeared to split into dozens as phantom blades rained down. Yet with a single swipe, all the blades disappeared, and the young woman

What is bothering you, my child?” Miyamoto

the youngest of the main family clan, meaning she was his youngest direct descendent, which had resulted in quite a bit of doting from all parts of the family. She did have four older siblings, so not much

she had always come by to watch him practice with his sword and had chosen to pick it up herself. Her family had disapproved at first as it was not something they believed a young girl should spend her time on, but when she had proven her talent, they all relented. That the old patriarch had also

but had instead entered with many university students as

clan as the second-strongest member of the entire clan. She had helped claim other Pylons but had not entered the World Congress as Miyamoto saw no reason to tip their hand and make everyone aware that the Noboru Clan had so many powerful members. This was also the reason why they didn’t bring any other D-grades than him despite having two others at the

see how it wouldn’t be preferential only to send a small

talented alchemist. Miyamoto regretted not bringing her to the World

has knowledge of an entirely different path. One of ancientness handed down from an entity above our comprehension. I believe he has much