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.

of it, it hadn’t bothered to react yet as it thought it had

passed, it was like a tsunami of arcane energy passed with it, giving

a minute, something it clearly hadn’t expected, as it now began trying more desperately to

doing at this moment? He was

strings that he wound around each other, 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 to reform the shield, while the weapon he was making right now was to

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

hurt like hell, and he had a growing massive headache from overusing it, but now was not the time to complain about it. The freeze ended up just buying

smaller but similar explosions. It looked like someone had dropped a massive bomb, as the explosion had torn up the entire area,

could argue 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

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

had none at all. All concepts and affinities were so openly deployed and easily detected. Perhaps it was to make whatever the “assessment” part of the test was easier, but

part of that concept that the staff deployed appeared to be its desire to “fall”. It even made Jake’s poison not naturally disperse. All in all, it effectively made the natural suppression

this didn’t 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

to have been hit by the entire

he could clearly see the golem. Not visually, but through his Mark of the Avaricious Hunter. And through that Mark, he knew. The golem had been hit by more than just a few

itself at all as the next attack arrived – a nearly two meters long drill of arcane mana coming straight for it with unstoppable

the very last moment, as victory

didn’t know what he had expected. But what struck him

Encumbrance was swung up by the golem and smashed into the side of the drill, and Jake

drill absolutely shattering as wisps of arcane energy filled the air.

deal

his descent, but he didn’t expect it to end this badly. He smashed into the ground, with his 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

body took catastrophic damage, turning him into an even more bloody mess than before.

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

a string of mana to grasp it as he

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

he wasn’t the only

Jake pulling the axeblade off earlier, and

right leg didn’t look that