The Primal Hunter

A bolt of black lightning struck from a clear sky. It impacted the ground, leaving a crater smoking with dark mana. As the dust settled, a single figure could be seen kneeling within the crater, holding his shoulder as blood dripped down on the ground beneath him.

Caleb slowly got up, breathing heavily as he felt exhausted from using the skill. It had drained a good ninety-five percent of his mana pool, making him not worth much at the current time. He took out a mana potion to at least be functional as he reflected on mistakes made.

It turns out being a shadowy organization had quite a number of challenges, especially if they had a lot of enemies due to the nature of their trade. It made everyone an enemy and forced you to look out for more threats than you possibly could.

The Court of Shadows had faced quite the challenges trying to mobilize themselves and secure their position. Not with getting the loot, that part went relatively easily; the issue was keeping ahold of it. Most assassins operated alone or in very small teams of a maximum of three, so facing a large group was difficult. Hit and run was the name of the game.

Stealth was their only true weapon to hold onto the loot they obtained. Against the usual enemy of independent factions, lone individuals, and small parties, that was all fine and dandy, but they began having issues when all their couriers or smaller groups got hit repeatedly. They then tried to centralize the loot with the stronger people in the Court, but then the couriers just got ambushed during transport.

Their ambushers? The Holy Church.

To hide from someone with the ability to divine the future and peer into fate became a challenge they honestly should have predicted. The Holy Church discovered that there was a lot to be gained by stealing from the thieves, and they could even claim the moral high ground while doing so, making it a purely win-win situation for the religious fanatics.

This forced the Court to pool the loot more on people who were either strong enough to defend it or good enough at hiding. The Augur seemed to know who was worth hitting at all times, and the Court of Shadows took more and more precautions. In the end, they began having a large central group, with the majority of loot being carried by Caleb. He and others could veil them all constantly to keep them hidden, and they escaped the Church and went on with their business without any major issues for a few days.

Keeping an eye on other notable figures was something they also did. Eron had disappeared, so that made them worry a bit. The people of Valhal seemed to just take the losses from the occasional assassin, seeing it as simply a sign of weakness and a teaching moment for those hit. The undead were rarely targeted as they moved in big groups, and they had shown no signs of significant movements against other factions. The people from Haven? They were naturally left alone, and besides, they had been stuck in the massive maze-like Vault for a long time. A few from the Court had also been trapped in there too, as well as over a thousand others.

As for the Noboru Clan? Their notable members were either trapped in the big maze or moved around in one large group these days. The Sword Saint was spotted often with the group, so the Court followed it to keep an eye on him. The man himself disappeared occasionally, but he never strayed too far from the central base of his faction.

Until he did.

Out of nowhere, he was suddenly just there, right in front of their temporary base, one hidden behind endless barriers that had primarily focused on obscuring divination and hiding them. The Sword Saint had cut through them all, and the Court had reacted too slow.

He was just a single man, and in all their arrogance, they had believed he wouldn’t be able to break them himself. They had a few hundred people there. Barriers. Traps. Caleb himself, as well as Matteo, Nadia, and a few others of the most powerful assassins. Even Caleb had believed the man was arrogant for truly believing he could defeat them all alone.

How wrong they had been. Caleb had faced the Sword Saint with all the others… the result?

to flee, fourteen dead, and one-hundred and ninety-one forced to leave the Hunt, including Nadia and Matteo, who had both tried

one with the highest level of confidence in retreating due to his near-immunity to divination and his many methods of escape. But, even

monstrously strong before, and him having even trounced all of those independent factions once more confirmed his strength,

the Sword Saint was also an absolute

to get a better feel for one’s progress and see what the system had conjured up. From fucked up skills telling One to become a sadistic slaver to telling someone

a skill doing things he himself could not, or at least something so darn complicated or weird

was neither of these

Allows the hunter to acclimate to new environments more easily and grants resistance against neutral mana you do not possess

I saw you just experienced something new! Here, let me give you a

made him wonder how many people had died a level or two before being offered skill that would allow them to avoid that death. Sure, he got how the system couldn’t just give skills and

it. It was uncommon-rarity too, which was

the hunter to summon an explosive orb of arcane mana at a target location within your range of perception. The arcane orb will be highly unstable and will automatically

arcane orb-like things had finally become different enough from arcane bolts to warrant their own skill, so that was nice. Proof he was going in the right direction with that one, which naturally made

more just manifested bombs at specific locations and weren’t really designed to be fired, just summoned and then made to explode where he summoned them. A bit of a by-product of his Pride of the Malefic Viper upgrade and his infused presence, making mana control more straightforward in his surrounding area. There

him not skip it, though.

old? Allows the hunter to fire off shards of highly stable arcane mana, functioning as a shotgun. These shards will pierce and deal significant damage at close range while becoming less effective at long distances. Adds a bonus

from the crystalline bolts he kept making against the fish, and he had kind of mimicked how shotguns worked when he fired arcane mana shard with

selection had been a case of “see what you have done in the past in the form of uncommon and rare skills,” which wasn’t very interesting. At least

equipment is always within grasp when you can simply conjure them yourselves. Allows the hunter to summon armaments of stable Arcane mana. The shape of the weapons or equipment is determined by the

create weapons others could temporarily use with his arcane mana. It was an upgraded version of the Spectral Weaponry he

him some inspiration when it came to using Touch of the Malefic

he do that when he could just pick up a legendary

arrow ready, the hunter’s focus reaches new realms. To aim and shoot the perfect shot is what any hunter aims for, and as one who stands at the apex, you refuse for even time to hamper your accuracy. Allows the hunter to significantly

was pretty much just a “steady aim” skill with some fancy title added on and a flavorful description. Also, let’s be fair, the name was bad, and Jake didn’t understand why the skill hadn’t just called it by its rightful name: Arrow Time. The bowman version of

aiming taken to an absolutely extreme level and made into a legendary skill. Perhaps it was one of those times where Jake was meant to be offered some version of Steady Aim,