The Primal Hunter

Poisons? Now, Poisons were easy mode. That’s where Jake quickly found his footing and created some cool stuff right away. It felt natural to him, and he had so many skills to make it easier. Sure, there were many things he couldn’t make, but he was pretty confident in his abilities.

Potions? Still kind of easy. Especially mana potions. Heck, all the three fundamentals potions weren’t that complicated, and Jake had that shit down to a science by now. At least he felt like he did, as his improvements were only marginal, and it would take him a long time to begin seeing tangible improvements.

Transmutations? Jake found a way to be a dirty little cheater with those. He had no idea how to do a proper transmutation. He just pulled a fast one with his arcane-affinity and made that affinity eat up enchantments on stuff to make the items more suitable for himself while making them useless for everyone else.

Besides that, he had done some other more minor things. He had made a Beastorb, made weird concoctions to corrode a moon, turning a moon shard into a small nuclear bomb of corruption and light. Also known as small things that are fun for the entire family.

Which all led to his next objective. Elixirs, the staple of D-grade alchemists. It was one of the reasons D-grade alchemists were far more sought after, besides, of course, the better potions. Few professions could take natural stat-increasing treasures and improve or change them, but alchemists could. Well, cooks and some other professions could too, but alchemists tended to be the go-to profession for it.

It had been around two weeks since Sultan joined Haven, and Jake hadn’t heard much from the man beside him sending the stalker-slave woman with a delivery of herbs he had acquired from another merchant. Jake hadn’t even requested it, but he was happy to take the goods.

The woman had seemed oddly content with her situation, and Jake really didn’t want to question it. He had no idea what Miranda had done with that Gabi lady and didn’t care about her either way. Right now, he wanted to focus solely on making elixirs.

Elixirs were quite a bit different from anything he had created before. Potions and poisons were far more - how could one put it – temporary in nature. They were once and done kinds of things. Their energy only had to do their work for a brief period before fizzling out. Of course, there were poisons and likely also potions with more long-lasting effects, but nothing to the level of an elixir.

Elixirs had a strong feeling of permanence. A permanent effect on the Records of a person. A permanent increase in stats. For many other goods, Jake could infuse far more of himself into his creations, and it would be fine, but for elixirs, he needed a sense of separation. He needed to allow the ingredients to truly shine, with himself only being a facilitator of the process.

While that didn’t sound that hard or complicated, it sure as hell was. Because not only could Jake not come in and be a dominating force in the process, the ingredients also had to be nice to each other and mesh. With many poisons, he could pretty much force them together with his will, but that wouldn’t work here.

Jake did have some advantages going into it, though. He had the eagle eye absorbed with Palate and was slowly learning about that, and a benefit of eating some of the bananas had been that he had gained a bit of understanding from those too.

Ultimately, this resulted in Jake making some damn solid progress. Jake burning through materials like he had no cares in the world also meant he didn’t have to waste much time considering things. He could just impulsively give it a go, and if it failed… tough luck. He could just try again. Also, snacking on ingredients was always a good time, even if some of the stuff tasted a bit weird.

Two weeks wasn’t a long time, but it wasn’t short either. In the beginning, Jake struggled over if he should start with agility or vitality-enhancing elixirs but eventually decided on agility. Ultimately, he didn’t really wanna consume those for vitality but would happily chug down agility elixirs. After that, he would make ones for perception.

So even with difficulty, this meant that after two weeks of experimenting, three profession, and two race-levels, he was confident in his first success. While it was difficult and a new challenge, Jake wasn’t an inexperienced alchemist anymore.

And, as much as he hated to admit it, his arcane-affinity kinda did come to be of assistance again. At least it helped him more easily tune into the permanence part of the creations by considering the stability inherent to his affinity. It wasn’t anything significant, just a nice nudge.

with, he stuck to those he had plenty of. In the last two days, he had moved on to also implementing those he had a bit fewer of. Tri-Lighttail Monkey

uncommon-rarity ingredients, he splurged a bit to increase his

used the core as the center as he slowly melted it using his flames within the cauldron. Next, he added a few berries that were too weak to increase agility by themselves but still contained the energy. After that, a bit of grass, a small piece of

the core residue was aligned towards agility already and the parts of the core not aligned towards agility were quickly realigned by the ingredients. Jake had only failed three crafts using this method before, and the last time had been close. This time it wasn’t close –

have successfully crafted [Celerita Elixir (Common)] – A new kind of creation

has reached

nodded at the result. He barely noticed the level-up notifications and hadn’t bothered with them for these last two weeks.

a D-grade Beastcore of a Tri-Lighttail Monkey. Allows any who drink

Requirements: D-rank or higher.

was the worth of two bananas. Not that his elixirs were as

to be D-grade to get any use of the elixir. Jake knew a lot of the difficulty around elixirs was to allow those weaker, especially those below D-grade, to be able to benefit from them. Jake still had a ways to go before he could successfully craft those. Not that he

for uncommon-rarity elixirs and finally a rare version

eye and a few other items he hoped Sultan could procure in time for the rare version. Then, hopefully, he could also make a rare vitality elixir with

construction underground had really taken off. Jake had also

man wasn’t close to D-grade, though, having neglected

complex was making swift progress. Naturally, the alchemist who would own it had also been down to give some

also allowed him to count whenever a new banana spawned on the tree, and Mystie’s automatic banana retrieval system captured one. Jake counted eleven right now. That’s

was these days? He really didn’t know. He hoped she was having fun, though, as she got closer and closer to becoming a fully-fledged D-grade hawk. The cute little

up so

struggled as they did everything they could to survive, but some had it harder than others. For example, if the leaders of a certain species fell, they would have to struggle to survive and rebuild, hoping a powerful alpha would not come by and claim their territory. This was rare but could happen

with the hidden young, as she had been far below ground with them as the predator came through and annihilated all in his path. They fast grew, and before long, D-grades entered the forest to try

Natural Treasure was gone. This didn’t mean that the territory was useless, though. On the contrary, there was

least… it should

of its lesser brethren and had moved too far from the nest. It should have known better, but it hadn’t detected the foe

one, almost as if the summoner didn’t seek to do any damage with it but simply have it up for aesthetic effects. It couldn’t be to hide

that tornado had turned into a frightening foe. A blast had slain one of the weaker monkeys nearly instantly; a blade of wind cut into another. The Tri-Lighttail had tried to fight back, but it found that its weight magic did not have the effect it should. Nothing it

yet it was. It was too fast, too strong, and its talons, wings, and magic cut into the Tri-Lighttail time and time again as