The Primal Hunter

Fifteen minutes passed without any movement before Jake dared to take out a healing potion and consume it. His Mark made him aware the Hive King had returned to somewhere deep underground again before the Mark expired, so he felt relatively safe.

His entire body was aching as he drank the life-saving liquid and just laid back on the ground. He was missing an arm; his one leg had been torn apart down the center, leaving two flappy slices of flesh, and his entire midsection was a fucking mess.

The initial attack had ripped through his entire ribcage, one lung, several other organs and only narrowly missed his heart. The stab with the leg after that had torn out his entire stomach, too, making it all just a bloody mess.

Finally, his face was filled with blood and some gross gooey substance that had once been his own eyes. Even while waiting, his body had begun healing, but these wounds would not be fixed immediately, especially not while he was still experiencing the period of weakness after Arcane Awakening.

Jake would not say he had been lucky… because he had only survived due to his reactions. The only reason his heart had not been torn in two was that he had narrowly swayed. He had avoided getting his head torn off on more than one occasion in the exchange that had not even taken half a minute, and in the end, he had escaped by using dark mana, hiding, and quick thinking. His equipment had also helped immensely, even if it didn’t look like it. Chances are he would have been ripped in two without his chest armor right off the bat.

Fuck, it was strong, Jake thought to himself as he shivered a bit when he recalled how the Hive King had moved. Strong, fast, durable… it was a living killing machine designed to do only that. If the Queen was the caretaker of the hive, the King was the defender.

Like humans and everyone else, different people and creatures had different specializations. The Queen had invested all her evolution points in being better at laying and hatching eggs as well as nurturing them with barriers and healing and such. It was all to protect them.

Meanwhile, the Hive King had all points focused on killing anything that tried to destroy the hive. Jake also had a feeling the Hive King was probably around level 215 or 220, but he couldn’t be sure… it all depended on how good the stat growth and natural power of Isoptera Hive Kings were. However, he had a feeling it was not weak for its level. Far from someone like Jake or the King of the Forest, but perhaps about as strong as someone like a party member of Neil if they fought at equal levels? Either way, it was no scrub.

Jake wanted to punch himself in embarrassment the more he thought about it. How the hell would a C-grade Hive Queen make sense if all she had was far weaker defenders? Any other C-grade would be able to kill her just by tiring her out like Jake did, putting the entire hive at risk.

He knew insect monsters like these that formed colonies were incredibly dangerous in the multiverse, to the point of dominating entire regions of space the same as enlightened empires. They even had other lifeforms live with them.

Ectognamorph Queens at high enough grades could spawn entire armies of powerful soldiers. However, it was rare for them to have a King, even if they did have protectors. This was also when Jake recalled his only other time encountering a similar structure to this hive: the ratmen in the Forgotten Sewers.

The Nest Watcher was more or less the Hive King in this scenario, defending the mothers of the next generation. That case had been even more lopsided with the Incubators back then not even able to defend themselves, being little more than breeding machines.

Jake shelved the thoughts as he just focused on healing himself, but also to stay hidden. He felt the movements of termites not even ten minutes later through his sphere. He knew he had killed far from all of them, and it seemed that with Jake gone, the Hive Queen had ordered them to get back to work and repair the damage inflicted by the pesky human that had ravaged their hive.

Needless to say, this was bad news for Jake. Termites began running both above and below him as he saw them through his sphere. Thankfully he was hidden well in the makeshift tunnel dug by the Hive King, with none of the workers walking his way quite yet.

bit of mana to try and hide better. A small barrier covered the outside of his cloak as Jake mixed a bit of dark mana and his stable arcane mana. Nothing was visible

create a shell around him that was solid to not only make him

moving on. Jake held his breath as he hoped none would make its way down into it. He would no doubt be discovered if one did as he blocked a good part of it with

his side – the one made by the Hive King when it returned to the biodome. They

of soil and rock separating them. It began touching the walls, and he faintly felt a pulse of

termite on the other side looked confused. Another wave came as Jake realized he had made an error. In a moment of clarity, he chose to instead absorb

been dark mana. This had made him “invisible” to the termite’s scan, but that in itself was suspicious. A black spot on a map was suspicious in its own

just in time as the second scan of the termite worker hit him. It just ran across the barrier like he was

scurried off. Jake breathed out a sigh of relief as a bit of tension left his body after it disappeared. He had been so tense he hadn’t even noticed that he had gotten a notification halfway through his hiding

- The deadliest blow is the one not seen coming. You have proven yourself an expert in the arts of stealth, as you have learned to become a shadow that is only seen when you wish to be so. You find it easier than ever to blend into the environment, making your presence, mana,

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presence, mana, and nearly all traces of your existence hidden as you wait for your prey

feel like the system helped me out a bit there, he thought. It had been easier than expected to absorb the mana to make him blend in. Probably because the system had believed it high time for him to upgrade the skill, and when he was on the right track to improving it, the upgrade came, thus making it easier as he now had a skill and did not

because Jake doubted he could even beat a few workers in his current state, much less if the Hive Queen was made aware of his continued presence and decided to send a

out of this shitty situation as he entered meditation again while keeping himself hidden. Soon enough, the termites began running through the tunnel he was in, stepping on the barrier, and one of them even decided to move it slightly to the side, likely just seeing

respond as he was buried in soil and stone

herself with an unlikely group as she

coming at them. The Deepdwellers threw their spears as the Fungalmancers cast their magic. At least they tried to as a vortex of frost and

appeared behind it and stabbed it through the face. Miranda herself threw out bolts of Verdant energy as a shield protected her from attacks, a constant ritual in place making green wisps of

their small village but were simply too weak as they kept getting killed. Out of all of them, Sultan was the most frightening as he made the Deepwellers kill

final member of their group and the weakest by a fair margin as she had only recently evolved her class. Yet she did do

to Lillian, who had what Jake had called a “dogshit” class. She had graciously accepted it and began power-leveling it. She had chosen to forfeit the Perfect

levels too. They had discussed a lot if Lillian could even evolve her race

Mage class was… odd. Miranda did not quite get it herself yet, and while Lillian had been relatively open about what she could do, she also kept some

the Lucenti concept mixed into everything, giving her magic a mystical feel. It even allowed her to do some healing magic despite not actually being a healer at

used a gun? Because Miranda had come to learn that Lillian was damn good with one for some reason. She still had no idea about her assistant’s history before the system, how she ended up with Abby and Donald, or anything really about her background. What she did know was that Lillian had only shown loyalty and gratitude so far towards both Miranda and Jake, and that was good enough.