The Primal Hunter

Jake had a headache. Not the kind of figurative headache, but the literal kind. It felt like he was constantly smashed in the head with a sledgehammer while wearing a motorcycle helmet. At the same time, his body hurt as he had countless bleeding holes all over.

In his surroundings, corpses of dead fish floated, polluting the area around him. Jake had killed eight of them so far, all of them rotten through by his Touch of the Malefic Viper, while the fish had also taken some damage simply by being in the water around him, that hadn’t been the primary killer. The blood he was constantly leaking out had been infused with Blood of the Malefic Viper was the source of this pollutant, and it had ultimately resulted in the fish leaving him alone for the most part, yet still circling him.

He had also tried to release his poison mist but found it useless. The water simply consumed and suppressed it instantly. The only reason his blood worked was due to the tangibility of the toxicity being bound to the blood. Touch of the Malefic Viper also didn’t do shit if he just used it on the water. He also tried doing some stupid stuff like trying to absorb the mana with his new space cube, but spatial items always had the issue of needing to deposit an object. Turns out an ocean’s worth of water didn’t count as an object.

However, what ultimately saved his ass hadn’t been all of his poison or his arcane-affinity or any of his usual go-to’s. No, it had been the Expert Stealth skill coupled with his cloak. He had wrapped it all around him and focused on Expert Stealth to try and meld into the environment. It hadn’t worked, to begin with, as he still had to kill the fish already aware of him, but once those had died, it seemed to work - kind of.

The fish circling him didn’t do so because they were aware of him but because of the blood of their brethren. They knew this was a ‘special spot’ but not why. Jake, wrapped in his cloak, once more focused on comprehending his surroundings, which was the cause of the headache.

Jake knew the affinity surrounding him was solely the water-affinity. His Sense of the Malefic Viper told him that, and Jake also knew he had that affinity himself based on his talks with Villy. Not because he had been tested, but because, according to Villy, every human who started at G-grade had it. Something about water being the basis of life in their newly integrated universe, making everyone have it by default.

With that in mind, he knew he just had to explore the affinity and learn of it to become able to filter it out with his Sphere of Perception. It should be easy… but it wasn’t. For it wasn’t only the water-affinity dominating his surroundings, but something more than that.

A concept Jake wasn’t certain what was. All he knew was that it mixed incredibly well with the water and was the primary cause of the pressure upon him. It was clearly related to water in some ways…

Was it gravity? Just weight? Jake wasn’t sure. He had no idea how far down he was and if it was just sheer water pressure. Wait, was water pressure a concept in itself? His head was filled with many questions, making it only hurt more.

Time slowly passed as Jake slowly tried to filter out the excess information in his sphere. The first thing he did was focusing on limiting its scope from the usual few hundred meters down to only a few dozen. Usually, he didn’t really ‘look’ at his sphere when it was just that large; it more functioned as a passive detection system, only alerting him to movement, working especially well with his danger sense to alert him of potential dangers.

However, as had been shown before, like just after his evolution to D-grade, it could also be a bit of a double-edged sword at times. Jake didn’t have the passive assistance of the system to help him not overload his brain but had to solely rely on himself. He was lucky in the sense that his bloodline was semi-self-regulating, in that he would instinctively try to avoid things that would cause severe harm to him.

His bloodline wasn’t omnipotent, however, and ultimately relied on Jake himself. Which was why he sometimes needed to step up with his more conscious mind, like in his current situation.

Ever so slowly, his sphere shrank. He analyzed and took in the mana around him with Sense of the Malefic Viper. He kept trying to identify the concept but couldn’t exactly put a name on it… but he did get a good feeling for what it did.

The concept wasn’t as simple as just being water-pressure. Water pressure would solely be a physical force, while this was not. It didn’t only pressure the physical water around him, but also the mana density and even Jake mentally. It simply compressed and pushed on everything. In some ways, it did remind him of what the Lighttail Monkeys did.

wasn’t some magical attack, but simply how the environment worked. Also, the fish were clearly unaffected by it based on their agile movements. If they were

weren’t they affected? Was it some passive skill? Perhaps they were affected but were just used to it, and this was their norm? Crazy insane physical stats making them god amongst fish outside of water? Either way, before Jake could figure it out, he would have to actually be able to see what the hell was going

and found that it helped to focus on one of the fish. The fish appeared to just be made of water in his

separating the fish from what was around it. He began trying to discern the details of the creature, filtering out the atmospheric mana that dominated

it had visible scales covering its entire body contrary to eels. Jake didn’t detect any gills, but it did have four large fins on the side of its body. The head was the most peculiar of

nose. The sword’s edges were jagged, and Jake felt toxins embedded on each of the jagged

on filtering all the “sameness” away. He naturally also focused on

so slowly, he began to see. The immediate surroundings of the fish were the first to come clear, and it left a trail of clearness as it swam. It spread and spread, and soon the area around 30 meters of him became visible

up, how the hell do I move

had even done some light training for fun in his pond, and while water did inhibit movements, the depths he currently found himself in took that concept to the extreme.

Wait, is that it?

hadn’t thought of the most obvious reason why the water was harder to move in… it was simply because it

to always displace some amount of water whenever you moved, the same as you had to with air. Of course, water made this harder. Soil and sand even harder as you technically could move in loose soil; it was just

easy to move some water with a light motion. Yet what happens if this density was amplified - If this denseness and friction were heightened to a

what Jake was currently experiencing. It wasn’t that it was some other concept mixing with water... it was simply a concept naturally born of

all along. It was because Jake was

him to see his surroundings more clearly. The mana was simply so damn dense because magic water didn’t only

was just one issue: what the fuck to

move about in it. Furthermore, considering how much harder it was to properly analyze the affinity, he was also damn certain his water-affinity

the water seemed to give way

immune due to system-fuckery and them being fish. However, that didn’t seem to stick either, as clearly, they were doing something. He felt magic from them, a constant hum of mana. It

clear that whatever method

also kept circling him, so he couldn’t move without them noticing him… actually, he had a feeling his cover wouldn’t last much longer. The blood

would

Gotta hurry.

needed to at least find a way to make himself semi-able to fight back. Those eight he had killed so far had come with him losing over half his health pool and forcing him to drink a health potion, and currently, he detected over ten in his immediate surroundings. Jake was not looking forward to dealing