The Primal Hunter

She had to ask herself if maybe she was the one who had something wrong with her. Yeah, maybe it was her? Miranda just couldn’t see any other way for everything to make sense. Because if it wasn’t her, then what the hell was wrong with everyone Jake introduced to her or made friends with?

They had spent over a month in the Grand Mangrove River by now, and things had been mostly fine. Emphasis on mostly. Because the Alabaster Crimsoneye Snake was far more peculiar than Miranda had initially estimated. She had to admit that she was originally afraid of the snake girl and had to constantly be on guard and act confident. Facing a C-grade, especially a mid-tier C-grade, was no easy task for her, but she had to endure it for her comrades.

That was a month ago. After spending a month with the snake?

“No, you can’t just eat one of their arms to teach them a lesson. That is not how humans learn at all,” she said with exasperation as the C-grade snake sat on her knees, attentively listening.

“But big sis, what if they are being really bad? Like, at least eat the hand, right? It grows back, so it isn’t that bad, is it?” the snake girl argued.

“It is still a no,” Miranda said with a sigh. “If you want to be a good ruler, do not use fear as your only tool. That is what idiots do, and you aren’t an idiot.”

“Okay…” the C-grade said as she seemed to reconsider what kind of teaching methods would be good for humans. Ah, but not human adults, mind you. The snake girl seemed to be under the impression that the best way to teach human kids was corporal punishment. Some idiot had mentioned to her that kids sometimes had to touch a hot stove to learn it was hot, so the brilliant snake naturally interpreted that as the best way to teach a kid about heat is to smash their faces onto a stove repeatedly until they were deathly afraid of kitchen appliances.

As for why the snake cared so much about learning “how to human,” as she put it? Because she was clearly obsessed with Jake and proving herself useful to him. Miranda was not even sure how to interpret the snake’s emotions… love? Infatuation? Neither felt right. Obsession was truly the only word she thought fit.

One good thing about this obsession was that she wanted to do all she could to make Miranda happy and her level of respect for the City Lord was through the roof as she seemed to view Miranda as a “senior” in the Jake fan club.

Her respect for Miranda was good, though… because the snake girl had a lot to learn before Miranda would dare unleash her on the wider society. She had done a lot of questionable things, and Miranda would be far more frightened of the C-grade if she didn’t have the demeanor of an unknowing teenager. One area she had really messed up was in her recruitment methods.

At first, Miranda had assumed the snakes had maybe helped or rescued people who had been trying to cross the Grand Mangrove River and found themselves in trouble. Nope, it turned out that the snakes were the trouble. They swooped up any humans they came across and forced them back to the center of the mangrove, and had them construct the small settlement that could now be found there.

If this wasn’t bad enough, then the Alabaster Crimsoneye Snake’s method of studying the human body had been to literally study the body. She had initially consumed several women and girls to learn about human physiology, and once she felt more familiar with the form, she forced women to help her refine it. This was partly done by her investigating how the human women’s bodies looked and having them explain things… which included cutting them open with a healer on standby.

It was only after this she began to learn a bit about humans were supposed to act she stopped. No one had ever even mentioned to her what she did was wrong by human standards because who the hell would dare tell a C-grade when she was out of line? Who would dare claim her actions were wrong and that what she did would be morally reprehensible by any reasonable moral standard? Well, that person ended up being Miranda.

Things in the settlement had improved after their arrival, and the mood had relaxed after Miranda had effectively taken charge. She still vividly remembered when a dozen or so humans had seen her tell off the Alabaster snake in public and their looks of utter horror for what was about to happen – because, yes, the snake girl’s usual response to dissent was just to kill whoever disagreed.

People were dumbfounded when they saw that the snake girl just nodded enthusiastically and asked what she was then supposed to do. From that point on, they were all incredibly friendly whenever Miranda was around, and the fact that the snakes no longer killed people who messed up was a huge improvement. The young snake still needed to learn that simply attacking people wasn’t in any way constructive.

told what she was doing wrong for the umpteen time that

Miranda said in a soothing tone to the snake. “Also… I have a surprise

and tilted

surprise from the

girl instantly lit up as she jumped to her feet.

at the nervous and excited girl.

It made her question that if Jake ever had a kid, he would name him or her Humany or something else dumb like that… alas, at

parts of the Alabaster Crimsoneye Snake’s race name or physical attributes. Miranda personally thought that using parts of the race name for the naming scheme was moronic, as when the beast evolved, the

though, as Jake could not seriously just take the first word of a creature’s race name and slap on an “ie” or “y,” right? Yeah, that was too much for even him… even if he had kind of done that with Sylphie.

names ending in “ie” or “y”. Both of these were at least real names, and both were short and sweet. Even if the snake ended up

girl gaped. “Me, named by the Chosen?

and Miranda had to admit she looked rather cute. If she hadn’t seen the girl rip the head off a

not actually that comfortable just naming another person herself. She wanted them to

girl said, practically jumping

It is a powerful name. Some also think it a violent name, something that is fitting for your rather

if you wish to have a longer, more formal-sounding name, you can

both of them!” the girl instantly said as

smile. “Just think carefully about it. A name is important

fell into deep thought as she seemed to think very deeply about what name she wanted. Doing something that Jake should maybe do once in his damn life as

probably doing something reckless and stupid at that very

taken advantage of. That is the fate that befell Jake after he argued with the Cosmic Genesis Worm. He had fallen

he was not afraid of

under the water for a little bit and maybe fight a few D-grades or something, right? He just had to avoid any C-grades. Heck, he could even practice stealth a little and sneak his way down there and find whatever it was he was

the hell had he ended up in his

the water itself tried to stop him and slow him down long enough to be devoured by the

–

fucking coral reef that the shark protected and seemed to use to create some natural formation. Jake had gone there after being told by Sandy it looked like a great spot to find valuable things, and since he wasn’t a chicken, he could totally go there and get some herbs, right? There were indeed good herbs there, no way around

the water, Jake took out his bow and charged an Arcane Powershot. The water fought against him as always, but he managed