The Primal Hunter

Villy, you fucking troll, Jake cursed as he finally found the problem. Holy fucking shit, did he feel like beating that snake god up with a tire iron. Jake had no damn clue how long he had been sitting there; all he knew was that the bastard had fooled him.

Five types of Identify. Race, profession, class, level of Blessing, and general power level. This was what Villy had said the telescopes and mirrors were enchanted to Identify. There were a total of thirty-seven-hundred and seventy-two mirrors and fifteen-hundred and ninety-eight telescopes present. Jake had felt them all repeatedly Identify him in waves about once every second. Not all of one type at the same time, but totally mixed up, and he was pretty sure that the exact same set of mirrors and telescopes had not Identified him twice during the entire training session.

How long it had taken till he began to differentiate between them was unknown… but it felt like months. Maybe a year? He didn’t know and hadn’t spared the brainpower to think about it.

After he could differentiate, he began discovering what type did what. He began labeling all mirrors and telescopes with their respective versions and tested them. At some point, Jake had marked all the ones he believed Identified race, and to his amazement, all of them lit up and correctly displayed their results.

After that, he moved on and found that Blessing was the second easiest for him to detect. He had quickly labeled all of them as he felt the faint differences between each Identify. Not all of them were identical, but Jake began to see patterns in where they hit the Shroud and how it “poked” his soul if that was the correct thing to call it.

It took him a while longer to nail down profession and class as they felt very similar. It was difficult to truly differentiate them, and at some point, Jake even began to believe they were the same, but he intuitively knew that wasn’t true. So he kept trying until finally, he found something. It was a faint difference, but once he felt it, he focused on it like a bloodhound and explored it until he got results.

With time, he got all of them labeled too. So now he just needed to mark all of the rest of the mirrors and telescopes with the general level of power identification, right? Wrong. He had done that, and it had not worked, which made Jake realize he felt there was a difference between some of the final Identify items.

Okay, that actually made sense, as it would trivialize this last part if they were all the same. Jake began focusing on different ones, until he felt one he was certain was just a normal Identify. Right, so some of them were just there to mess with him and make him have to actually find the last type, right?

Wrong again.

Because there were more types. The thing is, Jake had a hard time nailing it down. He also took note that nearly forty percent of the mirrors and telescopes were still unmarked, even if it should only be twenty if there were five types. It was a possibility there were just a lot of general identification ones, though… that seemed improbable.

Jake felt frustration as time passed, and he soon noticed a flaw in his approach. What he did only worked if he knew what was trying to Identify him. What was behind it - the intent. But could he do that in the real world? What if he modified his Shroud to only hide him from known types of Identify, and he met someone with an unknown one?

But… how could he protect himself from something he didn’t know what was? How could he find out what the Identify was looking for? Before, he had figured out what kind of feeling the items gave, labeled them according to those feeling, and been right, but that had clearly been the wrong way to go about it.

Villy had baited Jake into thinking this was the way to go by telling him what to find… when the truth was that the actual hard part of this training was for himself to find out what it was. The entire setup had been a red herring.

Well… not entirely. For there were still patterns. That is when Jake had the realization.

Don’t try to find out what the skill is looking for… just what parts of the Shroud are engaged when Identify comes.

Rather than find out what the Shroud was blocking and what the Identify was doing or looking for… Jake would just make up his own response to anything triggering the patterns stemming from an attempted Identity.

He would simulate the Identify on his end, so it got the result he wanted no matter what skill was used… no, he would modify it a little to tailor the responses to the most obvious kinds. The unknown one would just get race every time, maybe? He wasn’t quite sure yet, but he wanted to try this different approach.

by feel. When he went wrong, it felt wrong. When he did something right, his intuition told him he was on the right track. All of this was due to the thousands of Identify’s constantly making

as he focused everything he had, time not being a

planned on him doing. He had expected Jake to begin to recognize the incoming signals and begin to slowly adapt his Shroud to block all of them one-by-one until he discovered the type the “hidden” Identify was. Or at least for him to realize that the hidden one was touching on many of the same concepts as the one regarding total power. The last ones analyzed what affinities

unexpected ways. Ways that were originally meant to be the third phase of this training session, after Jake had recognized the last kind of Identify. If he did that, Jake should be able to correctly detect new kinds on the fly, too, by

Jake was doing was instead modifying not the viewable information but scrambling it on the fly whenever he was Identified. It was in some ways a safer method as it was more adaptable and could

suddenly thought. Maybe that can

to see the mortal skip, not just one step, but

metaphor for what he was doing would be someone trying to look at a piece of paper with Identify through a window that is the soul. When using Identify, the person is looking at a specific portion of

just make it one-way, effectively blocking all forms of Identify as the information given makes no sense. If a laser is shined through one-way glass, it won’t bounce back out,

more or less put a fake piece of paper on top of the real one with the information Jake wanted to

the window itself. He would make it distort what one saw through it, scramble the letters, and make the other person see a

method was, as said, better. It could only work due to Identify taking a moment to work – even for gods – due to the innate resistance every living being had to any kind of Record-scrying due to their Truesouls. The problem was, as also mentioned

do… but he had

will take over

told Jake to do this, there is no way the system would offer any assistance… it just worked like that. Personal realizations led to far more Records and even assistance than if someone told you what to do. This is also why the Viper never told Jake what he had to do, only what general goal he had

could lead to

problem was… that five-year

that had to

as Lillian brought in some ordered food before leaving the two women to discuss. In truth, this was the

Previously it had all been about the constructed compound or the procurement of

had among the members of the Noboru clan, and an unsettling question has begun to emerge the more time we spend here… what

Miranda asked, having kind of expected this day to come. She was actually

to admit, Haven did seem directionless. They were not expanding actively, weren’t recruiting powerful elites or individuals with nobility titles. They weren’t even making true alliances. They just made non-aggression agreements with everyone. Their only true allies were forged due to the relationship between Jake and another city owner and Sylphie just making friends, but even that was not a true alliance.

a year? Ten? What will happen as all the other factions expand their territory, claim control of more dungeons, natural resources, and influence over the populace? Haven is currently growing, but that is only due to refugees still coming. What happens when that stops? Just natural

was a bit surprised at the level of thought the younger woman had

find it interesting you ask what we strive to be, almost as if Haven requires change,”

well as dozens of smaller factions and alliances are expanding every day. They are growing in influence while Haven remains stale. If this continues, it will be left

his preference, nothing more, nothing less. While I certainly take some liberties, I am also fully aware that this place only exists

understand that,” Reika answered in understanding. “But… I say this with the best intentions at heart… Jake is a bit of a moron when it comes to anything related to managing a city, much less

bit of a different outlook due to having more context and insight into the multiverse. “That may be so, but ultimately, that is not for me to question. As long as Jake is here, Haven will stand. As long as Jake is here, Haven will be powerful. Power is not necessarily measured by size. I am certain that with the

of his home, do all of the managerial tasks. Much less would he want to. Without proper territory, how do you plan

forget one thing. Where is Jake