The Primal Hunter

The last times Jake went shopping, he had either gone to the vampire place because he also wanted to sell stuff or went with Villy to get new clothes. All other shopping was done by Meira after that for a few reasons. First of all, it saved Jake time. Secondly, Meira was incredibly insistent on doing it as she was almost desperate to prove herself useful – something that had gotten better recently – and lastly… Jake had no idea where the hell to go shopping in the first place. Like, he had some ideas, and he could just go where he went last time with Villy, but he didn’t feel confident. The problem was that the place he and the Viper went was fucking huge, and Jake really didn’t want to wander around for hours on end to try and find what he was looking for. Could he ask someone for directions? Probably, but that was also something Jake really didn’t wanna do. Asking strangers for directions sucked.

So dragging Meira along and buying some equipment for her was just killing two birds with one stone. The two of them left only about an hour later, with Meira taking the lead and first bringing him to a place primarily dealing with alchemical products.

The Order of the Malefic Viper didn’t have any official stores, and as far as Jake knew, there was no massive trade emporium run by them either. All the stores one could encounter were run by individuals or other merchant organizations that simply operated within the Order. All the Order really got out of it was a small tax added on each product sold and payment for the spaces they occupied. This system allowed individual merchants to use the Order to progress and for alchemists from the Order to easily earn money by selling their products to one of many merchants eager to work as their broker. A bit like how Sultan had helped Jake.

He would probably love it if I brought him to the Order and had him get a store here, Jake thought as he entered a large street from one of the many large gateway-obelisk-things spread throughout this part of the Order.

Jake had gone to the same general area as he had gone with Villy. This was pretty much the epicenter of trade for the Order and filled with shops catering to every kind of customer. To call it an entire city was no understatement as Jake reckoned it was larger than any metropolis on Earth had ever been. This city was split into several districts that were then split into grades, and each district was further split into smaller portions based on product type. Jake had gone to the D-grade part of the trade city.

“I have gone to this store many times when Teacher or Lord Thayne asked for me to get alchemy ingredients,” Meira explained as they walked on the street. Jake chose not to comment on her using what many would interpret as a less formal name for Duskleaf by just calling him Teacher compared to calling Jake Lord.

“I will be in your care then,” Jake answered with a smile. It was honestly nice having someone just lead you around when shopping, so he didn’t have to go scouring himself and probably end up getting scammed as Jake had no idea what the hell anything was worth. Not that he doubted he would still come out fine. With the exchange rate of Credits from the ninety-third universe and his already massive amount of funds, calling Jake loaded was an understatement.

While alchemists did tend to be on the wealthier side, they rarely got truly rich as they also spent a lot. Buying materials for experiments that led to no useable products was just a pure money-sink but a necessity to progress in your craft. Jake felt very fortunate he had yet to run into any issues in that department as he just gave Meira however many Credits she needed and didn’t think about it much.

It was a bit weird that Jake had worked in finance before the initiation, but after the system really didn’t care much about money. Perhaps that was a testament to how little he actually cared about his job and life before the system. Sim-Jake hadn’t cared about money either but rather preferred jobs that challenged him, indicating that perhaps this sort of apathy towards money was just natural.

To Jake, money was just a means to an end to allow him to do what he wanted. Maybe he would care more if he actually needed money, but as things were, it was an absolute non-issue, and something was also telling him that he could make a lot of money if he truly needed it. If he became absolutely desperate for funds, he could probably just sell the autograph of the Chosen to some fanatical A-grades or something.

Jake was thrown out of his wayward thoughts on the importance of money as they finally reached the store Meira had wanted them to go to. It was a large building that was beautifully decorated with a very gaudy-looking sign in front depicting a cauldron surrounded by mushrooms and plants with dark green mist coming out of the cauldron. It was even magically animated.

Besides the sign that made Jake question the artistic sense of the creator as the idiot had included mushrooms, the building looked nice. He followed Meira inside, where a female scalekin attendant wearing a suit-like uniform greeted them

“Welcome to the Cauldron’s Dream; how may I be of assistance?” the scalekin asked courteously.

Meira looked at Jake as he answered. “I am on the lookout for Endurance-increasing elixirs and, if possible, some ingredients containing ethtoxins or at least ones useful when creating soul poisons. I also just need some natural treasures related to soul magic in general.”

questioned. Primarily to ask why he didn’t just craft them himself, and the reason for that was pretty simple: he didn’t want to. He could; it would just take a lot of time, and making elixirs truthfully wasn’t that stimulating for

are you in need of, and will they be for D-grades like yourself or ones of lower

need enough to add

please follow me so we can look at our stock for the soul items. Please do not hesitate to make me know if anything catches your eye and you have further questions,” she said with a smile as she led Jake and Meira into another room. Meira had explained that it was pretty

type of material you are looking for or products of a certain grade?” the attendant asked once they

but some rare and above would also be welcome,” Jake answered. “As for if I am looking for anything specific…

can do. If desired, I could also ask one of

trusted his own senses more when assessing if he

the pages changed. One page of the open tome depicted an alchemical ingredient with a three-dimensional picture that even gave off a faint aura and scent, while the other page contained written information on the ingredient displayed. As he changed the page, he saw that natural treasure also appeared, and if he wished to, he could open an index. No matter how many pages he turned, the book didn’t change

in this as he began looking through the different offerings and ended up spending nearly two hours looking before he was done and had decided on what he wanted. The attendant

quickly, and it was only after Jake was done browsing he

ingredients, along with a few uncommon ones along with a Beastcore of unknown origin. Allows any who drinks this elixir to receive some of the innate

Requirements: D-rank or higher.

as Jake had expected when he was shown the one hundred and twenty bottles. All of them were exactly the same and clearly mass-produced to sell. All Jake saw when he looked at them was saved time and proceeded to make it clear he would buy all one hundred

rituals with Duskleaf, and secondly, he wanted to work on making a certain kind of poison, and for that, he felt like he needed as many different kinds of ingredients as possible. So, yeah, he had chosen to get a lot of ingredients – around a hundred different kinds – with plenty of stock for each of them. Seventy-one were of uncommon rarity, eighteen rare, six epic, and one ancient rarity natural treasure. The ancient rarity one and most of the epic rarity ones

bit. She looked up

right,”

I have to be

attendant seemed shocked, and Jake was also somewhat surprised. Cheaper than he

billion Credits after the Treasure Hunt auction. But that was Credits from his universe. After exchanging them for Credits used in other universes – all of which had the exact same going rate – he had, in actuality, about four hundred billion with

that seems fine,” Jake just said.

the attendant said, taken aback.

proceeded to use the system-feature-thing to show that he indeed had

and she displayed a massive grin.

a special spatial storage bag which Jake quickly emptied to put it all in his own inventory as the

Meira left after that, and Jake failed to hold back a grin as she saw the attendant dancing with joy inside the