The Primal Hunter

Jake really had to restrain himself every time he visited Arnold. Mainly by suppressing his desire to see if he could break through the big dome of metal that guarded his workshop. It looked and felt damn sturdy, but he should have a good shot with enough destructive arcane mana. If not, then surely Touch of the Malefic could do it.

Alas, he was not there to break stuff.

He had already gone to see Arnold before he went on holiday, so he was a bit interested in why Arnold had asked for him to stop by. Interested in what kind of thing the madman had made that he wanted to show Jake and potentially hand him. Or maybe he wanted a favor this time around?

As expected, then he was let straight in, Arnold aware Jake was back. The workshop had expanded once more, this time primarily downwards, it seemed. From Jake’s sphere, he also saw some weird robot-looking things digging even further, making it clear the scientist was still expanding.

It didn’t take long to locate Arnold, who was working inside a laboratory with a familiar cube. The one Jake had brought from the Void God, Oras.

“Good, you are here,” Arnold stated when Jake entered without even turning around.

Jake was a bit surprised, not by what he was doing, but by the response when he used Identify on the man.

[Human – lvl 199]

The bastard has surpassed Jake in level. As for if he was working on getting his Perfect Evolution or still had evolution quests to finish, Jake didn’t know, but he had still surpassed Jake. Holidays were truly detrimental to growth.

“So, what did you want?” Jake asked bluntly.

“I have been made aware you will soon return to the Order of the Malefic Viper,” Arnold stated. “I would ask of you to procure some materials when you are there. Compensation shall naturally follow. Further discussion as to the form of compensation beyond Credits is possible.”

“Oh?” Jake asked, a bit surprised, but he quickly got it. Arnold was probably running low on high-level materials. The guy had stockpiled when the system store was around and made ample use of the Holy Church and all other merchant groups… but by now, he had outgrown them. That, or they were gone off the planet.

He maybe even needed them for his evolution quest.

“Sure, we can figure something out,” Jake agreed.

Arnold nodded and took out a tablet from his spatial storage, and handed it to Jake. “All details are within. A list has been made and ordered based on priority. Will a deposit of funds for the purchase be necessary?”

“Nah, I should be able to front the cash,” Jake shrugged as he took the tablet and opened it to see the… list.

scrolling.

many items are

the quantity of each item specified individually,” Arnold

could only think as

I don’t want a deposit now… maybe we can talk about what

use by C-grades. Based on the assumption that you are close to evolution, I predict any items would be more useful for you then. Moreover, the items requested will, in high likelihood, include the materials required for these projects. Before knowing what is possible to acquire, I cannot give

Jake said. He would need a lot of new stuff after his evolution, wouldn’t he? “But, give me a sneak peek anyway,

a moment before nodding. “Continued research has gone into improving many weapons.

a wall, Arnold activated some magic as barriers were rapidly removed. Jake had already seen the hidden room behind the wall and also knew that he had no fucking way to enter it. The way

also simple but effective. The door of sorts required one to open it correctly, or a massive wall of steel would fall and block the entrance, and from the looks of it, Arnold had placed bombs on the inside to blow it the hell up if anyone broke in. The dude was very

Jake saw a few

In a tank filled with murky water, the Census Golem floated, nearly all the destruction on it restored, though by other types of metal. If it was functional, Jake didn’t know, but

things in cases. Or, well, calling them blasters was probably more accurate. Jake had no way to properly evaluate those, but they looked fancy. Besides that, there were many different kinds of

he led Jake to the one item Jake would likely care about. It was just a thin long piece of metal, but Jake recognized

of the nanoblade are in progress, the durability, sharpness, and mana conductivity improving continuously. Seeing your recent switch to the use of katars, time will be needed to optimize the internal structure to support thrusting over slashing attacks. Moreover, from your explanations of Fangs of the Malefic Viper, the nanoblade can be further optimized to better facilitate and make use of the skill. I assume you are still interested

right now, he knew the bone weapon was only temporary. When sim-Jake fully merged with him, it would lose much of its Records and power, making it effectively useless. By then, he would

down this answer. “Finally, I recall you are planning on visiting the Grand Mangrove River. If possible, please

the size of a person. Jake saw that on the inside, it was filled with mechanisms, and Jake could

mana within the Grand Mangrove River has interesting properties. I would like to analyze it to assist in another project of mine. From my initial tests, while a satellite is easily doable, proper drones for

nodded and took the

stealth concept, but then again, maybe it was a mix of space and stealth. Either way, what it truly was

it placed?” He asked to

“Simply place it somewhere and infuse

there, he couldn’t help but notice the many robots flying everywhere within his sphere within the workshop, especially those that seemed to do some rather complicated work like analyzing what looked like circuit boards. So he couldn’t help

yours? Even back in the Treasure Hunt, you had so many flying around. Are they all programmed? Some kind of artificial intelligence?” he asked. It was a bit rude to ask about someone’s secrets like that, but considering how much Jake had shared with the man, he thought

in no way offended. No, it was the exact opposite… he seemed elated that Jake had asked, giving Jake a bad feeling. A feeling that

which made me switch to a more unorthodox approach by applying scripts and runes of the eldritch variety. The skill I received from Oras allows me to more easily split my attention between different tasks, and by augmenting the concepts within, I managed to implement soul constructs faintly mimicking my own, which then also allows me to temporarily fully immerse a part of my conscious within a given model. Do note that I do not need to use this functionality as the artificial soul construct will already act based on pre-programmed instructions and can be updated remotely through the eldritch scripts. Finally, all information from every drone is fed to me continuously, which required me to develop skills and methods to filter, archive, and in other ways, sort through all data gathered. Models of machine learning are being applied here, which do require further development and improvement of skills, but the prospects are promising. If you are interested

good,” Jake cut him off. Okay, he had gotten way more than he had bitten off, and it did sound interesting, but more the kind of interesting that Casper would be excited about. Sure, Jake understood what Arnold meant, but he also understood that what Arnold was doing some something others simply couldn’t. From how he understood it, Arnold effectively split his mind into segments and had each handle different things. At least partly. Of course, this wasn’t really anything special, and, in fact,

was a risk. Especially as he was dealing with someone using the Legacy of a Void God. Eldritch

“No,” Arnold simply answered.