The Primal Hunter

By now, he felt like he understood his foe well enough. He needed an arrow not to hit his foe hard but to do one thing only: disrupt the fuck out of it and drain a shitload of mana. This was his understanding, and the system seemed to recognize it as valid. The skill at least responded as an arrow began being summoned.

Out of everything Jake had ever summoned – besides maybe that soul-destroying arrow versus the Indigo Fungus – this arrow was the most unique. It was made of metal but had angular blue veins running along its body, making it look almost futuristic. The arrowhead was just a round crystalline orb of mana that Jake recognized – his own destructive arcane mana. Jake hadn’t known the skill could integrate his affinity like that, but he wasn’t complaining.

Jake looked down and saw that the golem was still falling. He had gotten faster at making the arrows, only taking half a minute this time. Jake had focused on doing it as fast as possible, and that seemed to have helped. It was almost too fast… but Jake could use that.

He didn’t fire the Arrow of the Ambitious Hunter right away but aimed his bow upwards as he got a good idea. Jake couldn’t help but hold back a smile as he joked with himself.

Deploying Time On Target stratagem.

Jake fired an exploding arcane arrow upwards with barely any force, turned around, and fired another barrage of arrows downwards. This resulted in ten exploding arrows flying down at the same time. He fired off a blast of mana after them, speeding them all up a bit more.

He repeated firing nine more arrows downwards, each of them with differing levels of strength. He had to do a bit of quick maths but mainly went by feel. Jake didn’t need it to be perfect; it just needed to be good enough.

Finally, he drew the Arrow of the Ambitious Hunter and began charging his Arcane Powershot. Needless to say, Jake went for a full charge, which ended up being nearly 15 seconds. He was fine with taking a bit of damage as he hoped the blow would end up dealing far more damage to the golem than himself.

It was also because he needed to pack a lot more energy than usual into this arrow. He wanted to really make it bring with it a torrent of arcane energy on its way down – the reason for this would become clear shortly.

He released the string as a massive explosion of arcane energy came out. Jake went for full-on scale with the explosion to maximize the energy traveling down with the arrow. This meant the entire airspace in a radius around him became filled with wisps of arcane energy.

But it also meant that the Arrow of the Ambitious Hunter that flew downwards with monstrous momentum also carried an equally monstrous torrent of arcane energy with it.

Simultaneously, Jake began flying downwards, pushing his speed as much as he could. While flying, he kept firing arrows, one after another. It would be a while till he reached the ground, but he constantly accelerated on his way down.

After flying for a bit, he heard a huge explosion down below as the Pillar impacted the ground. For the first time, the black stone had been broken. The Pillar had implanted itself only ten or so centimeters into the stone.

While that didn’t sound like a lot, it did mean that the golem was essentially tied to an immoveable pole. He saw it below begin slowly getting itself free as it now had way more freedom of movement as it wasn’t being constantly pulled downwards by an immense force.

Jake had counted on it not being able to free itself right away, and he was right. It would likely take the golem a few minutes to fully free itself. Maybe if it spammed that disruptive wave, it could free itself faster, but it clearly didn’t want to waste mana.

for hell was raining down from above. It would soon arrive, and while the golem seemed aware of it, it hadn’t bothered to react yet as it thought it had more time than it actually did. This turned out to be yet another major mistake made by the golem during their

more than fifty others that were already falling with incredible speed. As it passed, it was like a

minute, something it clearly hadn’t expected, as it now

was doing at this moment? He

constantly spinning them as a form began taking shape. It looked like a long, thin drill as it spun around while he weaved it. The Arrow of the Ambitious Hunter would hopefully destroy the mana barrier. The other arrows would hopefully damage it and make it unable

the ground somewhere below, so he truly didn’t have

Jake used Gaze once more. His eyes hurt like hell, and he had a growing massive headache from overusing it, but now was not the time to

it. First a flash and then a large pink-purple explosion, followed by several dozens of smaller but similar explosions. It looked like someone had dropped a massive bomb,

if one should be proud of making explosions that could level a smaller city, but he was nevertheless as he stared down at the widespread destruction he had caused. Throughout it all, he never stopped making his drill of strings bigger

flew faster than ever before, pushing mana into his wings to accelerate downwards. He had no idea how fast he was going, but it had to be nearing the double digits in kilometers per second.

so openly deployed and

vacuum of affinities in most ways. The concept of “heaviness,” if that was even a thing and not just some kind of gravity-affinity, made the Pillar fall faster as it got heavier. A part of that concept that the staff deployed appeared to

favor either of them. At least it shouldn’t do so on paper. Yet Jake took advantage of this far more. The lack of wind-affinity made air resistance a non-concern, his entire trick with the Pillar, and even his application of arcane strings. None of it would be as effective in a more normal environment. Shit, with

have been hit

but through his Mark of the Avaricious Hunter. And through that Mark, he knew. The golem had been hit by more than just a

managed to stabilize itself at all as the next attack arrived – a

moment, as victory seemed assured,

know what he had expected. But what struck

the drill, and Jake only managed to move his right hand at the

as the entire drill absolutely shattering as wisps of arcane energy

deal with

left side first, smashing the rest of the arm and breaking his shoulder and a few left ribs at the least, and the wing was entirely crushed. He was happy that the D-grade evolution had gotten rid of a few pesky organs, as those surely would have been punctured or ruptured too. He only avoided getting his head bashed in by landing on his shoulder and his mask absorbing whatever

side of his body took catastrophic damage, turning him into an even more bloody mess than before. His response to all this was the only natural

of a second after hitting the ground, while ignoring all the pain and damage he had taken, he lifted his one leg and sprung forward, reaching out with his right hand. He grabbed the leg of the golem and lifted it up, smashing it into the

go of the Pillar, and Jake sent out a string of mana to grasp it as he swung it and smashed the golem away

was aching. He still had a bit to go till he could use another health potion too. In his arrogance or stupidity, he had forgotten one crucial thing… the Pillar was not recognized as a weapon. Which meant it wasn’t bound by his mana. Which meant the golem could use it just as easily as Jake could. It still needed to purge his mana from it, but its constant disruptive

he wasn’t the only one

wobbly. The entire right arm was broken from Jake pulling the axeblade off earlier, and its pristine metal

on its exterior from the arcane explosions earlier, its right leg didn’t look that good, and while its left hand and arm looked mostly fine, it still had taken a bit