The Primal Hunter

The valley looked near-unrecognizable from what it had only a bit less than a day ago. Several ice cubes were spread throughout, a few models of stone were carved, and the environment changed with many symbols arranged into potential magic circles carved onto the ground.

”Ya can’t fucking do that; it fucks over the fourth side,” the ice and fire mage commented.

”Not if we turn it in this way, then the circle will be restored again,” the shadow assassin countered as he manipulated the large cube.

”Aight, but that doesn’t fix the problem with the first side still being a damn mess.”

”True… but the edges look right.”

Jake listened to their conversation as he himself was making symbols appear around him, manifested through his arcane mana. He arranged and re-arranged them repeatedly, trying to get the magic circle to look right. They had already ’solved’ five of the six sides of the cube, and Jake was working on the last one.

When Jake said: ”they,” he meant primarily Jake, the elemental mage, and the guy from the Court of Shadows. It turned out the gun guy was also a talented gunsmith and knew quite a bit about enchantments and runes due to that. Magic guns were just fancy magic wands, after all.

The elemental mage was just naturally talented, as far as Jake could tell. He already made magic circles sometimes during combat and said he was actually a builder who didn’t like building stuff. Instead, he was solely focused on reinforcing objects and making them more durable. He even had skills a bit like Transmute or perhaps Cultivate Toxin in that it hardened objects and could slightly change properties.

As for Jake? Well, Jake wouldn’t say he knew a lot about runes and the like a day or so ago, but by now, he had become quite knowledgeable. The reason for this was simple: he had cheated.

Alright, it wasn’t really cheating, though Jake still thought it kind of was. What he used wasn’t truly his own knowledge, after all, but that of the Malefic Viper.

It wasn’t something Jake thought a lot about. In fact, it was something he often forgot about. But he couldn’t forget that he was still carrying around a drop of blood from the Villy somewhere in his body. In actuality, it was more like it resided within his soul, and more than a drop of blood, it was a fragment of Records. It was a fragment of pure knowledge that his ancient-rarity version of Sagacity of the Malefic Viper was partly designed to explore, as reflected by the description:

[Sagacity of the Malefic Viper (Ancient)] – To hold just a fragment of the wisdom of a Primordial is more than most ever achieve. Much less to be personally taught that knowledge directly by the god himself. Allows the Alchemist to peek into a fragment of the Malefic Viper’s Records to seek his knowledge. Grants the Alchemist of the Malefic Viper far better understanding of mana and of most affinities. Allows the Alchemist to make creations he does not have the associated crafting skill for (does not receive stat effectiveness bonuses without associated skill). Passively provides 1 Wisdom per level in Alchemist of the Malefic Viper. May your search for knowledge be as inexhaustible as the Malefic One.

In fact, Jake believed having the drop of blood was likely a primary contributor to him getting the Sagacity skill to begin with.

Jake had used the fragment actively a few times in the past, but it was rare. He did it while practicing transmutation and sometimes while crafting it passively gave him some insights, courtesy of the Sagacity skill, but to truly delve into it wasn’t easy or simple.

After the first hour or so trapped within the puzzle area, Jake had entered deep meditation to truly explore some of the knowledge within the drop of blood. Of course, Jake was fully aware it was only a fragment of knowledge, but even that fragment proved invaluable to him. Even the tiniest of fractions of the Viper’s knowledge was more than everyone in the valley combined, after all.

Magic runes and such appeared to have some basic rules or at least tendencies Jake began recognizing. While different sets of runes could vary significantly, they had to possess internal logic and consistency. Runes weren’t as simple as something like letters in an alphabet but were something Jake wasn’t quite certain how to define. It was like one could faintly predict how other runes would look and predict their elements based on previous runes, so maybe runes were more like sentences?

more time passed, and he started making some logic of the madness on the cube. He began to see how the different runes ’fit’ together and how magic circles could be formed. With the help of the ice and fire mage as well as the shadow assassin, he slowly ironed out some novice

one made to be learned fast, and Jake was 99% sure it had been altered or created by the system for the Treasure Hunt because it would honestly suck as a legitimate defense. Sure, for the five D-grades, it

they were still only five people. After some hours, this had become odd to them, and Jake had decided to try and discover why. He found out they were isolated by a space barrier of some sort. The mark left on them by the cube didn’t only teleport

all, the earth mage

His manipulation skills and armor of stone were what he appeared to only really rely on, and he hadn’t done much to learn magic outside of skills. His profession wasn’t useful either. At least Jake didn’t think it was. The dude didn’t share what his profession was and overall seemed very defensive and annoyed by being trapped. His ’I don’t care’ attitude fell apart within an hour, though, and he just became an ass whose only good trait was not getting in the way. In the end, he ended up mainly just doing his own thing, using some

she didn’t know much about magic runes. She was a pure melee fighter, and Jake doubted she even had more than a skill or two that actually used mana. Her profession was blacksmithing, too, more specifically, a swordsmith. While that did include some amount of magic, the skills did all the work for her,

a downer, while the rogue worked on arranging different test-circle and just doing whatever she could here and there. While the earth mage seemed almost offended at having to do more menial tasks, the rogue seemed more embarrassed by not

his peeking into the drop of blood he had stolen

was while using Thoughtful Meditation. This led to Jake usually spending a few hours sitting in meditation while everyone else worked around him. For anyone else, this would mean they were

and focused solely on the cube. During the first half a day, the ice and fire mage along with

start with a small quadrant on the cube and make those fit together and then expand from there. Whenever Jake solved these parts, he

the cube within twenty-three hours. But even more importantly for Jake than solving the cube was how much he

didn’t get much out of simply reading a book on alchemy

was a perfect opportunity for Jake to learn theory and immediately try to apply it in the real world. He could see how they could potentially fit together and turn the cube and experiment all he wanted while even getting feedback and discuss with others. Jake also got the

like this especially suitable as a

hour passed, Jake felt the mark placed upon his

us here is gone,” Jake shared with the others. The elemental mage and shadow assassin both nodded in acknowledgment, neither showing any intentions of leaving before the

in particular except take out one of the devices he had been playing with occasionally. The rogue woman closed her eyes, and Jake guessed she tried to look inward to confirm the mark was gone. After

said with some resignation. The woman had tried to help, and Jake would honestly be fine getting her something.

earth mage stopped her as she was about to head out. ”It would be a shame to miss out on something due to a

look. Jake returned it.

the hell did he think they were going to give him anything. He had just been a beacon of negativity from start to finish. In fact, Jake was surprised he didn’t take off first thing as he

It depends on Lord Thayne,” the shadow assassin said,

it first,” Jake dismissed them. It wasn’t even sure solving the cube

stay after a bit more assurance from the earth mage that she would surely get something. It was all very odd, but Jake and the

and a half hours more before they were done. Jake had entered a single more round of delving into the drop of blood and put the last piece of the puzzle together. He summoned a

of times a second, soon speeding up to hundreds. This part was easy enough. They had done so much to figure out the possible magic circles and how to put them together that the actual solving of the Rubik’s cube

clicked into place one after another, all five of them stood with anticipation. When the final turn was done and the Rubik’s cube solved, they all just stood there for

gotta be fucking