The Primal Hunter

”Why does he keep commenting on the taste?” one of the projections muttered.

”A better question would be why he wastes his time inserting insults towards every fungus he consumes, most of which aren’t even sensical,” another chimed in.

”But his speed and accuracy…” a third one said.

”Oh no, definitely a five-star performance so far; I am just saying that having entire rants on mushrooms and comparing the taste of herbs to that of foodstuff none of us are even familiar with doesn’t hold much meaning,” the first projection said.

”You mean to claim ”that green cake they had for sale every Saturday at the local bakery close to work” is not a known type of food?” a new projection said with a laugh.

The projection that had shown Jake around initially due to ”winning” the random number generator just leaned back as he looked on as the D-grades methodically went through the boxes one by one. Level 150 human, but he had stats far surpassing the expected, making it clear he was considered genius-tier.

Moreover, his legacy skills were of high rarity, with the assumption that Sense and Palate were both at least ancient. Based on how fast the knowledge was interpreted, it was also possible he had Sagacity, and the Scales were likely at legendary rarity.

But more than anything… his Perception stat had to be through the roof. His senses dove into the essence of every herb right away. He ignored every veil that some plants placed around themselves to hide their true toxicity or purpose, and he even instantly identified those with soul-attacking properties.

”Fifty-four minutes,” he said as the others turned to him, all of them also seeing the human was done. Six minutes before the limit did not seem like much, but it was considered outstanding as going through all the herbs in itself would be a challenge.

In the chamber, working as judges were a total of one-hundred and twenty individuals, all of them of various ranks, grades, levels of power, and specializations. They had all left projections there and served as a council to determine the performance of new initiates, a huge honor in itself. Together with system-assisted observation tools available due to it being a dungeon, it was hard to get a better panel.

”Let’s move on to the next test,” the original projection said as he disappeared.

Jake was happy pooping was no longer a thing after D-grade because he sure as hell would have gotten diarrhea after eating that much weird shit within an hour. The difficulty boxes had totally been a thing, and there had been ten ”hard” items, thirty ”medium” items, and sixty ”easy” ones. The ten hard ones had been the most fun for sure, while the others were a bit simpler.

If he had to guess, then the difficulty was based on rarity, and the easy ones were rare with a few being epic, the medium ones were epic with a few being ancient, and the hard ones were ancient or legendary. He could be completely wrong, but his gut feelings rarely were.

He had no idea how well he had done, though. Jake had just poured his thoughts into that weird crystal thing as he went through everything, not sure what information was deemed necessary and what was just fluff. But he had to have done alright… right?

Just as he thought that, the projection popped up in front of him. ”Good performance on the first test. Ready for the next, or will you need a break? Note that there are no penalties associated with breaks in between tests.”

a health potion and drank it to restore some health as he spoke: ”Nah, I’m

had lost quite a bit of health due to eating extremely deadly plants and herbs. He also had to admit the test had been interesting. Some of the herbs had been quite hard to identify, and some even avoided his Sense of the Malefic

to use some of his other senses. Smell was a big one as it also partly stimulated Palate, and hearing even played a role with a

yeah, it had been

that knowledge, as well as test your experience as an alchemist and your ability to identify and rectify issues,” the projection said as the room began

”Cauldron,” Jake answered.

test, your objective is to finish the simulated crafting session fifty times. A failure will merely result in moving onto the next simulated craft until a total of fifty have elapsed. Each crafting session will require you to quickly identify any issues that crop up and apply your knowledge and experience to fix them. Merely imagine how you would do it, and even without additional ingredients, the cauldron will react as

kind of crafts are we talking about?”

the projection answered with a smirk. ”Would kind of ruin the challenge if you knew, wouldn’t it? It would just turn into me telling you and you sitting down and studying the entire library

went south during the craft. He

be a one-minute delay in between each craft for you

he put both hands on it and infused mana. The cauldron was

of energy existed within it as if several herbs had just been put into the cauldron. The cauldron made him aware he was crafting some kind of healing item, but a stream of energy went haywire just as

control it, but nothing came to mind. It kept getting worse as Jake isolated

stable arcane mana earlier

out a sigh of relief at succeeding in the first craft. Quite a bit harder than expected,

few seconds in, Jake realized it was a neurotoxin, but

poured destructive arcane energy in to fight off the energy destroying the creation. At the same time, he pushed the unaffected energy to merge,

an utter failure as Jake tried to destroy the energy, but when he did so, everything else just fell apart as it resulted in his first failure. Luckily he refined his approach

herbs that came to mind he had used in the past. The overwhelming death energy from the Bluebright Mushrooms and some of his own blood consumed the unwanted energy and only empowered the creation, while he tossed in

success as the craft

to the same tactic of isolation and destruction. At least where it worked. Jake did get one more at number forty-seven where he got an idea as he bumped into a soul-affecting poison, and he

of fifty crafts. It wasn’t ideal, but he had completed the craft nearly nine out of ten times, so his overall

failure I have ever seen in over ten thousand years of alchemy,” the

Jake said,

course, not counting those you failed completely. This is like me telling you to go weed out a garden, and you set the entire thing on fire while protecting a few of the plants with mana, leaving only those few ones alive together with fire-resistant herbs. Sure, you may have killed all the weeds, but you also destroyed the garden. You performed like someone who has never made more than a dozen different products total throughout all your years of doing alchemy,” the projection said, shaking his head

the words. ”That does sound about

projection asked, looking at