The Primal Hunter

”Underground… water is not like up above,” Draskil began, speaking far more than usual. “We sought long and far for it. Digging. We needed water to live… but the water was also a bringer of death. The skilled ones tried to be careful, but they failed. Sometimes. If they made a mistake…”

Draskil stared into the air again as he sighed and spoke in a serious tone. “They fucked up. Made a hole into a large reservoir of groundwater, flooding everything. It spread through our caverns and into our homes. So many drowned… I was the only one left. Family dead. Alone. Stuck for days with the water rising… had to swim.”

Jake saw the now so powerful dragonkin shiver as he stopped talking. He had known that Draskil had been a mole-type creature before the system and what Villy had described as half-human-like. Something with intellect between that of a human and a chimpanzee. Smarter than any normal animal for sure and smart enough to form societies and have full sapience.

“Happened often… but we needed to dig. Water fine, but being in it is not,” Draskil finally shook his head as he stared down. A few more moments passed before he looked at Jake. “Fear makes me weak?”

“Being afraid of something and being weak has nothing to do with one another,” Jake said with a shrug. “What matters is what you do when afraid. You swam alongside us, you fought, you killed. Even if you were afraid, you didn’t show weakness. So no, that doesn’t make you weak, but quite the opposite.”

Draskil was clearly skeptical as he sneered. “I was weaker because of fear.”

Does he want me to scold him or what? Jake asked himself but still didn’t fully agree.

“We were all weaker. You have already shown that even in the face of fear, you don’t back down, and even if you are afraid of it now, you can overcome that fear,” Jake said, trying to be convincing. He hoped for Draskil to accept the answer and feel relieved, but it didn’t go that way.

“What do you fear?” Draskil instead just asked.

Jake opened his mouth and was about to answer but stopped. What was he afraid of? If he was thinking back… he felt a bit scared of Oras when he saw him in the void? No, that wasn’t’ really him being scared but more an instinctual fear. But there was…

His silence seemed to annoy Draskil as the dragonkin asked. “Don’t know?”

Jake took a moment longer before shaking his head. “I don’t. Not really.”

That was… a lie. Jake just didn’t want to say it as he realized he did have one fear. It was a weird thought, but Jake was legitimately scared of one thing – losing control. Not in the sense of momentarily being unable to do something or being forced into doing things, but truly losing control of himself. He remembered one time that had truly scared him.

It was the time he thought Miranda had tried to take over his Pylon. The anger and bloodlust he had felt at that moment. Those emotions that now felt so foreign. He had not been in control then but acted on pure impulse and emotion. Jake feared those kinds of emotions. And there was one other recent time where that happened.

During his meeting with Ell’Hakan within the Seat of the Exalted Prima, Jake had lost his wits and trusted someone for no god damn reason. He had been furious afterward but knew deep down it was due to fear. He was afraid of that kind of power that could make Jake lose, even just momentarily, control of his own emotions… because he knew that even without any outside sources interfering, his own emotions were scary.

It was honestly a stupid fear. Fearing your own strong emotions. Or maybe it was a normal fear that many people had. Perhaps it wasn’t truly the emotions themselves he feared either, but what he would do while feeling those emotions.

“Or you do… and don’t want to share,” Draskil accurately read Jake. For some reason, this seemed to make the dragonkin feel better as he regained his old toothy smile. “All things to overcome.”

Jake wryly smiled as he nodded, not sure if his fear was something one could truly overcome. Especially not with his bloodline. Perhaps it was closer to something you just came to accept and live with. Something to manage.

and meditated a bit. Hours passed as they all got back into optimal condition, just needing a potion or two to top themselves up. The break was ultimately more to replenish mental energy than anything else and have them have a mental reset

being

Man Giant Warrior -

the same. They all felt

as he killed in droves together with the Malefic Dragonkin. Reika and Irin also joined in, but Bastilla could well and truly no longer participate meaningfully in

skills mainly related to subterfuge and illusion magic, as well as other things one would expect of a succubus. Skills that were obviously not

their way through the cavern, they soon reached the next gate and saw the challenge to pass

uncommon rarity from the materials found on this floor and place it in

killed: 78/800. Poison placed in

as there were even a few rare rarity mushrooms they could use. On this floor, based on their initial observations, the

However…

pulled out two types of mushrooms he had already picked up earlier. “I will need more of these two mushrooms.

at him a bit as Jake just shrugged. “What? Not my fault the dungeon decided to suddenly get easy. I wanted to gather all this stuff to eat anyway, as

nodded in approval showing himself a

Jake had asked for and Reika handed him the stalks before going to find more. Jake ate some of the materials he had gathered to absorb some knowledge through Palate as he got to work while the rest of his group killed things. Occasionally they would return with materials as Jake slowly refined the process. He made a common

materials, only to see Jake toss the poison bottle towards the cauldron. It landed on the

hold himself back from saying. He

killed: 771/800. Poison placed in the

bring

got up. Draskil looked slightly annoyed but didn’t complain more. In fact, he looked happy even with all his grumbling as the

a thousand giant mushroom men on the floor total, and they ended up slaying most while collecting materials. Even if they could have been out of the floor within less than five hours, they ended up staying for ten or

who had Lifecores within. If they had to wait for her to dismantle nearly a thousand corpses – well, realistically, nine hundred as Draskil had taken his frustrations from the water level out on a

floor left,” Irin smiled after they had ended their break and now stood before the passageway to

C-grade optional boss floor,” Jake

the fourth is optional,” Reika correctly

like I should be paying to be here,”

gate and went through the passageway. Jake dearly hoped the designer hadn’t decided to make the ninth floor a water level and was relieved when he saw it was just more mushrooms without the water. It was a bit of a mix between the giant stuff on the eighth floor and all the prior mushroom floors with regular-sized foes. Regular-sized being the three-meter tall mushroom

number of foes. Just standing at the entrance to the floor, Jake saw thousands of them. Some were Mushroom Man Healers, Mushroom Man Warriors, Mushroom Man Defenders, and Mushroom Man Mages. All kinds of mushroom men. And in the middle of them, standing on a large

General – lvl

versions of the boss on the fourth

Commander – lvl

enemy diversity in this dungeon is just utter shit-tier,” Jake said, stating facts. Recycling older

it does seem rather uninspired,”