The Primal Hunter

The fourth floor. Jake and his party entered and were all met by a very different environment than the one they had just been in. Pure darkness roamed, and the air smelled of soil and death. The environmental mana affinity matched this as it was an odd mix of earth, death, and dark. Shortly after they were all there, the dungeon informed them of their objectives for this floor.

Welcome to the fourth floor of Nevermore: Darkrock Caverns.

Main objective: Defeat the Darkrock Revenant Lord.

Bonus objectives: Smelt and create at least 200 Darkrock Ingots using Darkrock Ore.

Current progress: Darkrock Revenant Lord (0/1), Darkrock Ingots (0/200).

Note: More hidden events, achievements, or objectives may be hidden on the floor.

Current Nevermore Points: 120

Instantly, they encountered one pretty major issue:

Jake was the only one who could see properly.

The dark mana was intense, and it appeared that Jake was the only one who possessed a natural affinity to it. Even the Fallen King was significantly affected by the dark mana, which reminded Jake of how well his dark mana had also worked on the King back when he was known as the King of the Forest. He had managed to blind the Unique Lifeform back then with his weak dark affinity mana, so for it to be a weakness of his made sense.

Sylphie still managed to adapt by using a domain of wind that was barely detectable. It was only as if a slight breeze appeared all around them, but it allowed the bird to know everything going on in the area. Dina adapted by quickly growing some odd flower on top of her head that could apparently see for her without any problems and warn her of dangers.

This still left the Sword Saint and the Fallen King as the most affected individuals. The Sword Saint truly had no good tools to see in the darkness but did have skills that allowed him to fight quite effectively nonetheless. The same was true for the King, who did have a skill to sense souls in his vicinity even through the darkness, but this wasn’t very useful when it came to the primary challenge of this floor:

Navigating the caverns. Oh, and avoiding the traps that were placed bloody everywhere. It really took Jake back to his Forgotten Sewers days in the Tutorial, except the enemies here were not rats but a mix of earth affinity creatures and – as indicated by the death mana in the air – a whole lot of undead.

If the second floor had been Dina’s time to shine and the third Sylphie’s, then this floor was Jake’s. Collect ores to form ingots for the bonus objective? Sphere of Perception. Avoid traps and find their way through the labyrinthian cavern network? Sphere of Perception. Locate hidden “vaults” of sorts hidden deep beneath the earth? Well, okay, the sphere wasn’t quite big enough to reach these in its passive state, but the occasional Pulse of Perception had that covered.

The Darkrock Ore was quite easy to discern from the other rock around it due to its highly-increased mana density, so Jake spent quite a lot of time directing the others where to blast cavern walls apart or where to dig. His party members did slowly adapt to the environment more as time went by, but it honestly wasn’t even needed.

There was only one problem Jake had seen, and that was how to change the ore into ingots. He considered if he could melt it himself using Alchemical Flame or maybe even try to summon an actual fire affinity flame, but that turned out to be a non-issue. In one of the secret vaults, they found an entire damn forge that one just had to pour the ore into, and ingots would be spat out shortly after. By the time they found this vault, they had more than enough ore and quickly made the 200 ingots and moved on.

Less than half an hour later, Jake spotted a large being that seemed to be made of pure energy through his sphere. It was also in a large cavern surrounded by other smaller variants of itself, and it didn’t take much brainpower to know this was the boss. After getting there, Jake finally saw this Darkrock Revenant Lord. It looked like hundreds of corpses fused into stone, mixed with a shitload of dark affinity mana. It was a mix of an elemental and a ghost, making it quite an interesting opponent. Not that any of them cared, as this abomination was rapidly ripped apart. After that, they found a large smelter pot to throw all the ingots they had formed into, with the result being an epic rarity breastplate and a pair of legguards that none of them needed.

From there, they moved on and quickly located the exit and moved on to the next floor, having finished this one in less than a day.

Current Nevermore Points: 234

the bonus objective, and then a bunch of achievements. These achievements included one for finding more than half of the hidden vaults,

from the in-between room was once more useless, so they moved on to

a theory they had discussed was pretty much confirmed. The moment they stepped out of the gateway, they were met with vast open skies and found

he had seen on Earth. The theory they had confirmed was that

pure water, followed by a dark cavern with death, with the final floor in the sky surrounded by wind mana. Each floor had a theme. Perhaps this was why the design at times felt

called the design lazy… upon reading the description of the fifth floor, it did appear there was more

to the fifth floor of Nevermore:

Lord of Clouds, and

24 Cloudspring Spirits before they escape

Wind, Lord of Clouds, Lord of Lightning (0/3). Caught

achievements, or objectives may

Current Nevermore Points: 234

first city floor. After every fifth floor, there would be an intermitting floor that didn’t actually count as a true

in one other way. All of the prior floors had either been an unfavorable environment to at least a few people in their group or, at the very least, not a beneficial one. Dina had been advantaged in the second floor, and

advantage, they all knew that this level was theirs to utterly dominate. It wasn’t like the King and Dina were disadvantaged either. They set out with great gusto, and quickly it became clear

Sylphie to know where everything was, meaning that within a minute, she already had a rough idea of where the three Lords were. The bonus objective of wanting them to capture at least 24 Cloudspring Spirits was also one they wanted to tackle, and it didn’t take them long to find their first spirit. These spirits were small fairy-like creatures that all moved incredibly fast and were quite elusive. Their group discussed how to capture them and even laid out plans that included the King creating small cages and Jake weaving stable arcane mana nets, which made their first encounter with one incredibly

Sylphie screeched loudly the second they

it flew straight towards them before

progress: Capture

Spirits really liked Sylphie. As in, after the first one was “captured,” they kind of all just came flying as they traveled through the floor toward the three bosses. They weren’t even a quarter

Completed: Capture at least 24 Cloudspring Spirits. 20 Nevermore

same area on three massive cloud islands. It turned out that a reward for collecting the spirits – outside of the points – was information, and damn were the spirits all chatterboxes. They told them all about the secrets they could find on different islands, warned them of what the three bosses were capable of, and once they had captured all twenty-four, they had then been told where the three bosses were. Something they already knew, but

to opponents on this floor, they came in the form of birds, elementals, and even some pterodactyl-looking monsters that breathed lightning. None were

bit less than halfway to the bosses, Sylphie was

earned: Capture more than 50 Cloudspring

the achievement came more information. They were informed that if they crushed the orbs dropped from all three Lords instead of bringing them to the exit of the dungeon for an extra reward, they

Floor Bosses, Sylphie was drowned in spirits, and when just one more

Capture all 100 Cloudspring Spirits. 30 Nevermore Points

Queen. The Cloudspring Spirit Queen was only slightly larger than the

seemed ecstatic, and her body began

bothered to question the hawk. Instead, they split up to take down the three bosses. The Lords were all relatively close together, but there were still

a long strip, growing larger as one traveled, with the final four Islands being the largest by far. It was one massive island in the middle with

for one boss, the Sword Saint another, and Sylphie a third, with the Fallen King and Dina going toward the

Lord of Winds, the Sword Saint the Lord of Clouds, and Jake the Lord of