The Primal Hunter

For one and a half hours, the termites left him completely alone. In between every few crafts, Jake released a Pulse of Perception to see what was up, only to find them all unmoving. What he did find surprising was that the Queen was no longer in the egg chamber but in a large cavern that had been dug out in front of it. There was only one other entrance into this egg chamber beside the cavern, and that was a path leading down into the depths of the earth.

Being left alone had honestly been nice because it had allowed him to get quite a lot of crafting done, including new health, stamina, and mana potions. Having evolved, his potions had naturally gotten a lot better, but his resource pools had also grown. The first of the potions crafted was naturally the Malefic Health Potion.

[Malefic Health Potion (Common)] - Restores 30200 health when consumed. Will cause damage to anyone besides the creator if consumed.

It now restored 7000-8000 health points more compared to before his evolution, which was a good increase, though not exactly a fantastic one. He knew that with practice, he could make it even better, and he also needed some better materials to properly make it.

On the note of materials, then the herbs still mattered a lot, especially when you jumped between grades. While the primary source of energy was the creator, the herbs still functioned as the cornerstones, and it was best to use herbs that had mana of a certain qualitative level. One that was the same as your current grade. Using herbs grown in an A-grade environment – even common-rarity ones – would be possible but highly detrimental to the crafting process, and in the same vein, then the current herbs Jake had weren’t the best either, as they contained peak D-grade energy. So, yeah, he would need to stock up on new herbs soon.

Even then, he would still be a bit away from the 100.000 health points the potion would need to restore to be of uncommon rarity. With a health pool of a bit over 81000, he really shouldn’t be complaining about a potion restoring roughly forty percent, but he liked to always push himself to be better.

As for mana and stamina potions, they were quite a bit less interesting.

[Stamina Potion (Common)] – Restores 19569 stamina when consumed

[Mana Potion (Common)] – Restores 38420 mana when consumed.

He still admittedly sucked a bit at making stamina potions, but it was also the one he had by far the least practice with. Well, Jake said he sucked, but based on what everyone had told then, he was fine. 19500 would still restore a bit under a fourth of his entire pool, which was about the same as the mana potion percentage-wise.

As for crafting poisons, Jake never quite got to it, as the termites got tired of sitting around and interrupted one of his crafting sessions. Singular individuals or groups of up to four began to attack him occasionally, with it mostly being individuals, making Jake quite sure the Isoptera Queen indeed had a skill to see when one of them died.

Continuing his descent, Jake tried to be smart by not killing a termite that attacked him, but just wrapping it up in mana strings and leaving it behind to not inform the Queen of his locations. However, the moment he fully immobilized the ectogna, it stopped moving before its presence entirely disappeared. It had killed itself just to tell the Queen where he was.

After that, he didn’t try to be fancy but just killed any insect he came across if they were alone, and if groups came that he found too annoying to kill in a short time, he just avoided them and kept running down the long winding tunnels.

Soon, he was close, and the tunnel began to open up. It was now more than fifty meters wide, giving him ample space to move around and fight if It came down to it. And come down to it, it did, as shortly he spotted a large figure blocking his path, surrounded by many smaller termites.

[Isoptera Queen’s Guard – lvl 228]

[Isoptera Warrior – lvl 210]

– lvl

Warrior – lvl

one Queen’s Guard and a dozen warriors, all of them above level 210. He wouldn’t exactly call these the elites of the hive, but it was clearly a group sent

that the Hive Queen had to be above level 230 at least. Probably closer to 240. That meant it had grown quite a lot since his last visit, but there was

Queen a demonstration of what awaited her. He took out

Guard reached him, which was ample time to get a good charge in. While running, a few of the

massive blast of arcane mana that made the entire tunnel network crumble and crack; the termite hit right

himself went for the one on the left, stabbing it in the head with both katars as his Eternal Shadow went for the other, a second katar appearing in its hand identical to the Nanoblade. He knew that it

penetrated deep, leaving festering poison from Fangs of the Malefic Viper behind, ensuring that they would succumb soon. Seeing as they were both poisoned plenty, Jake didn’t bother with them anymore but went for another as his

uninjured, except it looked like it couldn’t move its mandibles anymore. Nevertheless, it charged straight at Jake, making him shake

earth below him rumbled as spikes emerged, the Queen’s Guard switching to using magic, and the remaining warriors jumping at once, just throwing their bodies at Jake. Almost

his foot and stepped down, teleporting towards the Queen’s

to bury him alive. Jake glanced at the Guard and charged his foot with arcane mana as he kicked the termite hard, sending it flying down the tunnel before promptly

took out his bow and shot at the Guard again, blasting it

Pulse of Perception. His eyes went wide as he saw the tunnel leading towards the cavern with the Queen now gone, having

was getting destroyed from both sides

with annoyance as he picked up speed to make it as far in the direction of the Queen as he could before he reached the collapse. A few kilometers later, he saw the dust cloud ahead. Looking back, he saw the collapse speed up. Stopping in the tunnel, he stared at the

mandibles together. In the middle was a massive termite with a huge abdomen. Larger termites guarded closely around this large specimen, making it clear she was the Queen.

if they were waiting for something

it as the Queen let out a screech, putting all of the Royal Guards on guard. Just in time, too, as suddenly a giant pink-purple blast of mana exploded from the wall, making

energy as a figure appeared

too relaxed in the eyes of the Queen. However, only one thing mattered:

to invade earlier and had been pushed back by the Hive King, making the Queen relax. The intruder had nearly died the first time, and there was no need to even call the

it harder for himself by making sure he finished off the Guard

–

this one had a core. One he had seen before, though that had been

Queen’s Guard Ectognacore (C-grade)] - An Ectognacore left behind by a C-grade Isoptera Queen’s Guard, containing remnants of its Records within. Can be used as

even need to use the conceptual advantage of his Alchemical Flame but could just blast his way forward using normal mana. Luckily he “only” had a few kilometers before he

at the edge of his newly created tunnel, Jake got a great overlook of the cavern as he had dug into it quite far up the cavern wall. Scouting out, he saw what he had expected for the most