The Primal Hunter

Throughout the multiverse, different species and races were famous for different things. Humans were famed for their diversity and their ability to become nearly everything. You could meet humans as strong and tough as the most powerful beasts or mages with magic and skills that employ concepts in line with the most powerful elementals or spirits.

A cat-like monster would often be agile and fast. A fish would excel underwater and have skills well-suited for underwater combat. Among all these species, some were more famous than others. Not only for their relative strength but that it simply was a powerful race.

Unique Lifeforms, beings that were not truly a race in themselves, stood at the pinnacle of this. Any Unique Lifeform was an existence that all knew were powerful solely by hearing what they were, but this was far from limited to only them. Some races existed out there that fell under other archetypes but were nevertheless extremely powerful simply due to the subcategory their race fell into.

The most famous of these were what humans before the system often referred to as mythical beasts. A phoenix, no matter what, would be a powerful beast by courtesy of being a phoenix. The krakens, champions of the sea, chimeras, beings that could adapt to nearly any foe and had oh-so-many abilities. Yet, one creature was more known than any of these: dragons.

There did not exist a creature with the word dragon in its name that was weak. Dragons naturally also had subcategories, but all of them were powerful. There were lesser types of dragon-like monsters, also known as wyverns, land drakes, or such things, but these were not True Dragons.

The word dragon also came with certain expectations. Assumed abilities that one would be correct about, for all dragons had at least two skills.

Dragon’s Breath was a destructive weapon heightened to a concept in itself. The form these breaths took could vary widely. A blue frost dragon would, as expected, spew something ice-related, while the classical red dragons would no doubt release fire. Yet all of these breaths had one thing in common: their unimaginable power.

Jake had read in a book that the weakest Dragon’s Breath ever recorded was of legendary-rarity, which means most were above even that. He had seen the Viper release his breath and seen the power therein. This would be enough for most to fear dragons, but their other trait made them absolute nightmares to deal with if you attempted to slay one.

Dragon Scales. Known as the bane of all magic, these scales would make any mage grit their teeth in anger. More often than not, it would be useless to try and cast magic on a similarly leveled dragon unless you yourself were also a supreme genius.

Naturally, the nature of these scales also varied. Many simply provided ridiculous defense and magic nullification, and the scales always resisted magic more effective based on the dragon’s own affinity. That is to say, using frost magic against a blue dragon was double stupid.

What Jake acquired wasn’t true dragon scales. He wasn’t a dragon, so it would be very weird if he did. However, if he had picked the Malefic Dragonkin race back then, there actually was a chance he could have gotten them by now.

Instead, what he had was imitations of dragon scales. They served much the same function but weren’t simply a passive ability he had at all times. Jake had a feeling he could take his scales in that direction if he wanted, one day making them a permanent fixture, but he really didn’t want to as he would rather upgrade them in other ways.

Also, Jake’s version of the scales did have one small drawback.

“Holy fucking shit, it hurts,” Jake said, it naturally just coming out as water bubbles as he floated there, the massive frame of the dead Eel Lord beneath him. The scales on his body were all supercharged with energy, slowly being refined, but a lot of it couldn’t be. So what did this energy do?

It directly damaged his own health pool, which was essentially a minor soul attack. It fucking hurt, to put it mildly. His decision of simply tanking all the power the eel had at once hadn’t been the smartest and was honestly risky as hell, but hey, he got the job done.

Jake even tried to cut off some scales but saw that it didn’t do shit as new ones automatically regrew, the old charge within. So yeah, he couldn’t hack the system

attention on the corpse of the eel. He felt something within it, and with his blades, quickly dug out what looked like

Lord. This heart has potent lightning-affinity

the eel was still alive. Very freaky. He tossed it in his inventory as he moved on,

larger than any of the others, and coming out of it, he saw countless cables. The cables went to the pillars spread across the room, each

eel unable to absorb electricity? Jake asked himself. He quickly tested it as he

Moving on.

find water on the other side. Instead, he found air. As he had just hurried through, his entire body

weightless before it suddenly felt like it weighed a ton. He fell straight down onto the floor, bracing himself. At the same time, he actively pumped mana out, not only due to his scales but also just from his

a bit to get a look at the room he was now in, all the meanwhile dealing with the scales and adapting to not being under the crushing weight of

books on it that looked unaffected by the moisture, and overall there was a lot of stuff that looked to be worth swiping. Especially two things stood out. One was an altar with a large tome placed on it with an orb right next to it, while the other was a large bowl of water placed on a pedestal. He noticed that some of the water from above had dripped down as he fell and landed in the bowl of water

a stone no larger than a child’s fist

nymphs to help heal a close friend. This stone was eventually acquired by a powerful vampire and brought to Yalsten, where it has been

It looked simple and non-descript, and if it didn’t give off the aura it did, he would easily mistake it for some random stone found anywhere. It did look like it had been polished by water quite a bit like it had come from a beach or a lake

the water had just dropped there, it had yet to be fully affected. Thus, he decided to not touch the bowl quite yet but moved to

long before he made the connection. He had seen two of these before, once when he got his profession for the first time and the

Fulgarian Depthcaller (Unique)] – Allows the user to acquire the

in any class. Compatible

However, they did still take significant investment, meaning all of them were considered very valuable. Of course,

other item on the altar was an orb that clearly

(Ancient)] – A storage orb containing items to assist a Fulgarian Depthcaller, including equipment and

Requirements: Fulgarian Depthcaller

and supportive items or something? That seemed a bit excessive. Jake himself didn’t have any use for it, but it would probably fetch

up to it, his scales disappearing one by one meanwhile. By now, most of his scales had vanished as the mana within was neutralized, and he was beginning to feel back to normal

related to the class, the Vault, and generally just stuff about water magic and such. Jake didn’t want to

learn that the class had once belonged to an A-class vampire King of Yalsten, and this entire Vault had been created

got his class after training for many years underwater. There, he had battled and trained with eels learning from their powers and slowly beginning to mimmick them. Before that, he had already been a lightning mage, and through his evolution, he had merged water

found it worthy of creating an Akashic Tome of and leave behind for future generations should say something. Jake put all of the books and the bookshelf in

everything seemed to be in far better condition than anywhere else.