The Primal Hunter

Against pretty much any other foe, using a blunt weapon wouldn’t be even close to as good. It didn’t work even with any of Jake’s skills. Additionally, it was a bit unwieldy to use for anything except wild swings, and it was far slower to swing. Finally, against most foes, it would deal roughly equal damage anyway. Though he doubted he could even hit most foes.

But the Altmar Census Golem was not most foes.

*DONG!* *BOOM!*

He swung again, hitting it in the side, sending it flying away in a glorious explosion of unstable arcane mana. The Pillar of Encumbrance crackled with energy as Jake infused it with his arcane mana – primarily the destructive variant.

The Pillar’s metal was so damn durable Jake couldn’t even leave a scratch on it, and the constant weight-shifting made it extremely powerful as a weapon even if the system didn’t truly recognize it as such.

Jake’s control of the Pillar was far better than the inexperienced Minotaur Mindchief that used to own it. This didn’t mean Jake hit harder with the staff, far from it. The Minotaur Mindchief honestly had a really fucked up unbalanced build with an insane focus on its mental magic and pure strength. Jake made up for his lacking strength with his mana control and speed.

During the fight earlier, Jake had noticed one thing: the golem didn’t actively avoid many attacks but preferred just to tank them. Unless it would take minimal effort to avoid, it chose to take the trade every time, aiming to land a blow in exchange for getting hit itself.

It avoided his arcane arrows due to the low effort required, but dodging the big metal pole was far harder and took way more movement. Jake swung it rather wildly, but every hit was near-perfectly timed as he tried to keep the golem at bay.

He equipped his bow as it was sent flying back and quickly fired a Splitting Arrow that turned into five explosive payloads, blasting the golem back even further. He tried firing a second arrow but had to dodge an eyebeam. Before he could shoot yet again, he was forced to block with his staff. He jumped right before he was hit, made the Pillar weightless, and let himself be blasted into the distance.

In mid-air, he summoned his wings to try and get some more height and distance. Once more, he summoned an arrow to repeatedly do damage to the mana shield of the golem.

He had theorized many ways to get rid of the mana shield, and so far, none seemed to work. At least not in the long term. If he corroded through it and made physical contact, it could not reform the shield where he touched. Jake also considered if a disruptive mana wave could temporarily dispel the shield for him to do damage, but to fire off such a blast would require him to hit it in very close melee range. Far closer than he felt comfortable being for a prolonged period. He had only ever used disruptive mana waves to dispel harmful effects on himself, never offensively, so he was a bit doubtful in its effectiveness. But, theoretically, it should work.

The next thing he considered was some kind of acid. He didn’t really have to consider it much, though, as his blood was essentially an acid. The problem there was that the golem had now adapted. Whenever blood hit it, it would shimmer and move its mana shield to make it fall off. Because the mana shield wasn’t entirely physical, nothing could really stick on it… nothing besides his arcana mana.

Jake’s destructive arcana mana sought to destroy, and whenever it made contact with the golem, the arcane mana burned into its barrier until it ran out of energy and was dispelled. This turned out to be a very Jake-favored exchange, which is why he kept infused the Pillar with destructive arcana mana – also because it was possibly his only piece of equipment that could handle it – and why he kept using explosive arcane arrows.

He had to admit, the fight didn’t look good from an outside perspective. The only wounds on the golem were its one hand that looked slightly damaged and two small chips in its otherwise pristine surface.

Meanwhile, Jake was a bloody mess. He had bloodstains running from his eyes from overusing Gaze, blood from his mouth from clenching his teeth too hard, and generally wounds all over. The black veins of burned flesh from the electrocution didn’t make him look healthy either.

The health potion had done a lot, but he had taken too much damage for a single one to regenerate his health pool fully. That damn grappling hook had done far too much harm, showing how just a single fuck-up could prove lethal. Yet, it had also demonstrated that he was far from fragile. In fact, he was barely affected by what had happened to him but moved just as fluidly as before.

at the battle as a whole…

all change on a dime, so he had to press his advantage. There was still the looming threat of the currently unusable hand repairing enough

down the primary weapon

it was the only part of the entire golem not covered in the mana shield. Jake assumed it was because it would make

tough, and even after the axeblade smashed into the far tougher Pillar, there was no mark on it whatsoever. But Jake did have one method of damaging the metal significantly: Touch of the Malefic Viper. He had already taken out one of its hands… it was time to

scales, use of at least three different kinds of weapons. An exceptionally balanced build that seems to have its roots in either magic or archery,” the Dungeon Monitor

energy reminiscent of pure mana. An oddity for sure. Perhaps both these affinities are new as neither have reliable records, which would be an exceptional find? However, it is also possible they are related to gods with no records stored in this particular facility. Potential arcane-affinity cannot be ruled out either,

was there only to monitor and record, yet it still had its own thoughts. It had these to make it better at its job and allow it to voice its own subjective understandings and assessments of the

well. Note, no observations of the concept of

a category 8,1 to 8,3 on our hands. Skilled in air combat also. The golem will soon be able to use its other arm again, which should turn the tide again. Oh? Despite the Mana Disruptive Pulse, the challenger has futilely

momentarily confused at what he saw play out

need to

upwards, firing arrows down at the golem following him or giving it a good smash to send it flying back down whenever it got too close. The golem did have some ability to adapt. He based this on how it knew when to stop using certain

come close to him. This seemed to work wonders

had as much height to it as it had width and breadth…

up as he kept making use of the airspace. His mind was busy with four things: shooting arrows, smashing tin can golem,

back, something was being woven that would be used

got higher and higher. 100 kilometers, 200 kilometers, 300 kilometers. On the way, he had a few close shaves and even had one of his wings cut off at one point, but he swiftly re-stabilized and summoned a new one to keep going up. He had to

400 kilometers, 500 kilometers.

the cube was. As he

sometimes he needed to. He left his right wing entirely open, and he knew the golem wouldn’t be able to resist slicing it off. It seemed not to have enjoyed the constant cloud of poison it had to fly through on their way

allowed it to

his side, cleaving into his back and cutting off his wing, but at the

sprung to life and bound up the entire lower body and left arm of the golem – the arm that didn’t have the axeblade. The other end of the strings wrung themselves around the Pillar of Encumbrance as Jake infused mana into it with a string

the Pillar got heavier,

golem tried to cut off the strings with the axeblade, but Jake was one moment too fast. While the strings could

into parts of his shoulder but stopping the swing. He froze the golem with Gaze, spun around the arm, and pointed the edge of the axeblade away from himself. Finally, he held the arm in a

just got heavier and heavier. They began being dragged downwards. The golem couldn’t move any parts

doing exactly what he came to do: rip out the axeblade. His hands began glowing green as he held onto the back of the axeblade. Touch of the Malefic Viper began burning into the unprotected metal of the weapon, and this time it would have

such a crude armbar. It was a tactic much like the one Jake used whenever magical constructs bound him up: its