The Primal Hunter

The cavern was still, entirely blanketed in silence. There were no plants, no movement, and seemingly no life. Save for one creature.

A large Hive Queen still stood in the middle of the grand cavern, looking tired. As she began moving, a second figure also let itself be known. Cracks spread all over a statue of a smaller termite, the Hive King wrestling itself free from the petrification.

This was naturally to be expected. As the spawn of the Hive Queen, the Hive King was nearly immune to her magic. The fact that a layer of rock had still covered the King’s body was proof of its power. It was a spell the Queen had used to slay many whenever she had delved deeper with the Hive King to conquer more area for the hive. However… it had not been enough.

The Hive Queen sent a mental command to the King to find and kill the human. The lack of notification was proof of life, even if his survival surprised her.

A shame, the Hive Queen thought. The seed of a powerful human such as him would have helped create a far more powerful generation, practically assuring their conquest of the planet. Such a shame indeed that he proved too volatile to control.

Searching the room, the Hive King soon came upon a large ball of stone, one large enough to contain one of her Guards. The Queen frowned upon seeing this. Was it the barriers of the human? The barriers should not have been petrified, but then again, he did have an interesting form of magic the Queen’s innate knowledge did not shed any light on.

“Destroy the rock and the human within. Hold nothing back,” the Queen commanded her King as she assisted by empowering her ward further. If the human was truly trapped within, it would be best to-

*Crack*

The Queen rushed to attack, but it was too late as the sphere of stone exploded, sending rock shards flying everywhere. Normally, these would be of no consequence, but the Queen felt an odd energy within them. As they flew through the air, the rocks slowly dispersed into nothing, and left standing at the epicenter of the explosion was a single human who looked more broken than whole.

Petrification had set in on different spots of his body, and the earth mana had invaded his body deeply… yet she felt it all slowly disappear. Be destroyed. Purple cracks lined his skin, seeping out energy, including the destroyed energy of her attack.

His body was overflowing with power, and the Queen knew it spelled trouble. The King moved, but the human reacted and side-stepped the attack, kicking the Hive King away, displaying more power than at any prior point in the fight.

The human’s gaze then turned towards her as he grinned, his lips cracking and blood flowing out from the act. At that moment, the Queen understood. Understood how he dared delve deep into her nest.

“Nice skill.”

He was insane with enough power to survive his own insanity. He was too dangerous. An eternal threat to the hive if he survived. She knew he had been in the hive before, only a D-grade then, and now he had grown powerful enough to battle her and the King. There was no other choice, he would have to die now, or there would be no future. Even if she died, other Queens lived and could take up the mantle.

All for the hive.

Jake had felt the earth affinity energy invade his body, turning him to stone from the inside as he struggled against it. The energy was powerful and overwhelming, but it still found trouble when it got inside him. It tried to petrify his blood but found the toxic substance resist heavily, his veins serving as purifying streams as the poison killed the energy wherever it passed.

Even then, it would not be enough, and Jake would have found himself unable to move for too long. His Sphere of Perception remained active, and he saw the Queen and Hive King both move towards him, going for the kill. That is when he knew he could not hold anything back.

Energy welled up from within his soul as he flooded his body. Pink-purple sparks appeared in his blood, stability and destruction mixed, and he pushed Arcane Awakening to its full potential. It felt like he set his own body on fire as his skin cracked and began peeling off. He hurt all over as the boost actively harmed him with every passing second, but he also felt what running pure destruction through your own body did to any foreign energy.

Whatever parts of him had been petrified were quickly purified by the baptism of destruction, his arcane energy passively flooding it and overwhelming it. With an internal groan, Jake released his energy outward, blowing up the sphere of stone. The King tried to attack Jake, but he easily kicked it away as he looked toward the Queen and grinned.

“Nice skill.”

powerful skill. The entire cavern now had the same brown color, and the explosion had even gone up the tunnel towards the upper reaches of the hive, turning anything and everything it passed over into stone.

Sadly for her, she was far from skilled enough to do that and probably also lacked the stats to even pull it off. Looking at the Queen, he felt how tired she was after using that skill. It was not the kind of thing she could do twice, and from the looks of it,

humanoid upper body and looked towards him, her

the hive… at all

she did something Jake had not expected. Her eyes glazed over, and her humanoid upper body fell forward, limp. Her presence was entirely gone in the very next moment, as Jake

272] – Bonus experience earned

[Arcane Hunter of Horizon’s Edge] has reached level 202 - Stat points

(C)] has reached level 201 - Stat points allocated, +45

Queen, his mind blank. What

made no bloody sense, and Jake was still utterly flummoxed as he felt something behind him. A towering presence

the Queen, sending spider-web cracks across it. Jake’s mind was still processing what had happened as he felt warm liquid run down

was the Hive King. All traces of external energy were gone. No golden lines marred its body from the Queen’s

whole other beast compared to the Hive King he had

petrification skill affected him, even if it was slowly being cleansed with every passing second. Jake knew he needed to buy some time, but the Queen had been decisive and made her move immediately, resulting in Jake

not give any pause as it leaped

Shi-

as the mandibles tried to crush him, his arms creaking from the pain and his skin cracking open, spewing out blood. He did not have time to brace himself as a leg slammed into his side, sending him flying through the air. Jake wasn’t even allowed to slam into

rolled several more times as the Hive King tried to stomp on him, each stomp sending

Jake could not keep up, and he turned his head towards the termite just as it lifted its leg. Gaze of the Apex Hunter activated, freezing the Hive King long enough for Jake to blast himself up into the King and slam both katars into its underside,

ceiling of the cavern, jumping off it like a spring to launch itself down towards him as it let out a deathly screeching sound Jake had never heard before. For a moment, he thought

get the upper hand again, so he teleported away, trying to buy enough time for the petrification to be properly dispelled. The Hive King chased him, displaying speed far above what it had been capable of before, clearly not holding back an iota of power. He understood why too. The Hive King was already a dead

getting stronger or slightly weaker based on how much damage he did to the Hive Queen. It had to be some kind of berserker-like skill by proxy, not triggered by the Hive King being injured but by the Hive Queen. With the Queen’s death… the full power of

Arcane Awakening. It flooded his system with enough destruction to dispel the earth mana far faster than the Queen could have possibly predicted. It was helped along by Jake summoning new scales that absorbed some of the mana, his blood constantly draining it, and even Palate trying to get involved when his blood mixed with earth mana, turning it into an earth-like poison for him

expected, but for now, he was still on the back foot. The Hive King capitalized fully, its attacks swift and deadly. Spurts of

It pushed Jake further than he felt comfortable with,

back as they exchanged hundreds of blows. He tried to cut the Hive King but found its natural armor had also only grown stronger, so he began aiming for the termite’s joints, finding minor success here and

the fight continued like this, Jake felt certain he would eventually find himself on the losing end. The Hive King was also more than happy with mutual

it, but it promptly resurfaced as he considered it. His guts told him it should be possible… even if it seemed dumb. He had the tools, the concepts

fucking give it

his stance as he dismissed Eternal Hunger. He

stamina his inside. In the distance, the Hive King hit the back wall and, like a bouncy ball,

Jake still didn’t move.

was his moment. An Eternal Shadow appeared, dodging the attack as the real Jake remained unmoving. The arcane energy flooding his body on the inside and outside suddenly changed as Jake shifted it from