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.

dispel his scales if they were charged with any magic. 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

through the pain, Jake instead focused his attention on the corpse of the eel. He felt something

Lord. This heart has potent lightning-affinity energy within and will passively generate electricity if infused with mana.

like the eel was still alive. Very freaky. He tossed it in his inventory as he moved on, still wanting to exit the Vault sooner rather than later. Oh, and to get the

of the others, and coming out of it, he saw

asked himself. He quickly tested it as he fired a

Moving on.

next area, and to his surprise, found that when he went through the barrier, he did not find water on the other side. Instead, he found air.

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

ground for a while as he collected himself. He had quite a few things to focus on, including expanding his sphere 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

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

saw a stone no

of a group of water nymphs to help heal a close friend. This stone was eventually acquired by a powerful vampire and brought to Yalsten, where it has been ever since. Will passively transform surrounding water by infusing the power of serenity into it. Effect lessens, and the transformation process becomes slower the

mistake it for some random stone found anywhere. It did look

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

it didn’t take him 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 other after he killed the Great White Stag. Identify confirmed it truly was such

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

99-199 in

quite rare but not impossible to create. However, they did

item on the altar was an orb that clearly came

containing items to assist a Fulgarian Depthcaller, including equipment and guidance. This orb is near-indestructible

Requirements: Fulgarian Depthcaller

Jake himself didn’t have any use for it, but it would probably fetch a pretty penny in the big

and he had a feeling the bookshelf would help him answer that. Jake waltzed 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 after being so suddenly

them seemingly related to the class, the Vault, and generally just stuff about water magic and such. Jake didn’t want to check them all out now, but he did find one

He came to learn that the class had once belonged to an A-class vampire King of Yalsten, and this

description of the class as well as a damn history lesson about how the King got his class after training for many years underwater. There, he had battled and trained with eels learning from their

the fact that an A-grade 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 the Hunter Insignia. Some of them he would keep for himself,

another look around the room, Jake once more noted how everything seemed to be in far better condition than anywhere else. A bit like a Count’s chamber. Considering that…