The Primal Hunter

*’DING!’ Race: [Human (C)] has reached level 200 - Stat points allocated, +45 Free Points*

The level was gained, and he returned to the real world.

Jake had been prepared this time around. He had steeled himself and done all he could to limit his senses to not experience sensory overload. His control since he became D-grade had increased significantly, and Jake had far more confidence this time around when he was teleported back to the bed in his lodge.

The moment he appeared, he was still hit hard. Thousands of smells, extremely loud sounds and so much information from his Sphere got fed straight into his brain. He imagined colors he didn’t even know existed, impossible sounds, and the mana in the air felt suffocating.

Gritting his teeth, the cracking sound from some of them breaking was deafening, but it allowed him to focus on that one sound. He kept grinding his teeth, the sound echoing within his head like he was living inside a drumset, and he focused solely on this noise as he tried to filter everything else away. Not opening his eyes had been a godsend, and for a few moments, he even considered just stabbing something into both of his eardrums.

Minutes passed by, and slowly, he felt some calm. The sounds were now more muted, and his body and mind adapted to all this new sensory information. Increases in senses like this from evolutions were completely normal, and everyone felt these heightened senses, but usually, the system helped in advance. It did still help Jake, but only with the same level of assistance it would give everyone else. This is to say, it was far from enough.

The smells were still bothering him, primarily because he could not distinguish or place them. It was just a huge mass of different scents, some of them nice, some of them foul, but all mixed together in this amalgamation of pure stench.

Muting these smells took a while as Jake began to breathe heavily, taking in some of the atmospheric mana.

Throughout it all, Jake had managed to restrain the worst offender when it came to sensory overload: his Sphere of Perception. Even then, it had still grown to nearly five hundred meters, and Jake knew this was due to his suppression of it. The level of detail throughout the Sphere remained mostly the same, but he detected more energy now compared to before. For a few moments, it had felt like he was back in the Forgotten Sewers dungeon filled with dark mana, blinding him entirely. Luckily, his instinctual filtering quickly kicked in and helped.

Choosing to shelve the issue of the Sphere for now, Jake opened his eyes and, surprisingly enough, felt fine. He was confused for a moment until it clicked. Jake was used to using his eyes a lot and straining them to the utmost, while he usually didn’t actively practice and use his sense of smell and improved hearing as those two were more obstacles than beneficial outside of tracking.

It was a bit the same with many of his other senses. His sense of touch, the sensation of pain, and other senses like that were something Jake was used to and, in many ways, desensitized to. They also just didn’t feel as overwhelming as the auxiliary senses.

Jake, to do a test, took out one of his hated enemies from his inventory: a mushroom. He stared at it for a moment before throwing it into his mouth and chewing.

“Still tastes like shit,” he muttered as he gulped down the necrotic toxins within the fungi. Nothing seemed to have really changed with his sense of taste, so that was good, at least. There were still many other tests left, but Jake returned to his Sphere once more.

Focusing, Jake slightly released it, feeling it spread out. Six hundred meters, seven hundred, eight hundred. The added area covered for every meter it extended was larger than the one before, making the pressure on his psyche only grow. After it reached a kilometer, Jake had to stop and forcefully pull it back into around the four-hundred to five-hundred meters range where it felt the most manageable.

The maximum limit is… a lot higher.

He had already limited it in D-grade, but now he had to limit it even more. It annoyed him as he felt like he was wasting potential, but on the other hand, he knew processing so much information was too much for him. Even at a few hundred meters, he didn’t truly process everything at once, but it felt more like certain things happening within triggered instinctual responses making him notice it.

Even so… Jake wanted to see how far it could truly go. Was it risky? Yes, but he was also far more durable now, and even if there were some issues, he believed in his own ability to recover. It should be fine. Definitely.

I can take it… right?

Yeah, he should be able to.

Oh well, nothing ventured, nothing gained.

Closing his eyes and cutting off all other senses, Jake let go for but a fraction of a second. It was as if a pulse was released that went outwards and took a snapshot of everything it encountered on the way before finally being cut off, leaving Jake with just an image in his head – and a splitting headache.

As for the range… Jake felt it as the pulse spread and scanned everything.

kilometers… three… five… ten… twenty… fifty…

party around a hundred kilometers out in

mental picture faded before he could process even a fraction of it, and he opened his eyes as he felt the blood drip down onto his shirt, coming out of

two hundred and fifty kilometers. That was the actual range of Jake’s Sphere of Perception if it was fully released. It was so large there was simply no way to process all this information… it was just not possible for a C-grade. At least not Jake. Maybe someone like Arnold

pulse. It swept out, and this time Jake did it with

a hundred kilometers away, a Mark had been placed on

a living, walking, surveillance state. At least some of the time. Just releasing a few of these pulses made him feel drained, and he knew he was straining himself whenever he did

another thing he had dreaded facing nearly as much as the

Skill rarity adjustment.

and Jake chose not to needlessly delay his suffering. He had already been spammed with messages and dove straight into

Skill Rarity Adjustment Initiated.

now only to be expected, and what may have

the skills will remain unchanged. Some skills

didn’t really make Jake feel that much better. It still sucked to see

some skills were downgraded without losing their current rarity. Every rarity was a spectrum, so if a skill was at the peak of legendary and close to reaching mythical

skills, Jake already knew that the massacre would be worse with his class than his profession, so he started with the gentler of

Profession Skills:

some skills that did not experience a downgrade in

Rarity Adjusted:

(Common)] -->

-->

(Uncommon)] --> [Cultivate Toxin

of the Heretic-Chosen Alchemist (Ancient)] --> [Soul Ritualism

Core Manipulation (Ancient)] --> [Advanced Core Manipulation

called out for

he hadn’t used them a lot and had not really worked on actively improving them. Core Manipulation and Soul Ritualism were both skills he had

others… time

the profession skills that did not

Rarity Unchanged:

[Wings of the Malefic Viper (Legendary)], [Touch of the Malefic Viper (Legendary)], [Legacy Teachings of the Heretic-Chosen Alchemist (Legendary)], [Palate of the Malefic Viper (Legendary)], [Pride of the Malefic Viper (Legendary)], [Scales of the Malefic Viper (Legendary)], [Fangs of

surprised had remained at its rarity. He did not remember using Legacy Teachings much, and yet it remained at legendary rarity.

to seeing what would happen to Path of the Heretic-Chosen, but that would have

Jake moved on to what he had dreaded far more.

Class Skills:

some skills that did not experience a downgrade in rarity did have

couldn’t be

Rarity Adjusted:

(Rare)] --> [Traditional Hunter’s Tracking

Rain (Epic)] --> [Splitting Arrow Rain

Hunter (Epic)] --> [Arrow