The Primal Hunter

Floors 1 to 5 had pretty clear goals in mind: determine the dungeon divers’ ability to adapt to different environments and handle different enemy types. It also included a good deal of exploration, with a major part of each floor being about finding the exit.

Floors 6 to 10, on the other hand, had none of this. There was no difficult environment to adapt to, no mystery about where one had to go, and no doubts about the objective. These five floors were all about one thing and one thing only: combat. At least on the surface.

Jake and the four others had appeared within the entrance area to a giant colosseum. Giant, in this case, was honestly not enough to describe the sheer size of the place, as it looked more like an entire city constructed in a donut shape with a large open area in the middle. Entering the colosseum, their party was met by a guide who introduced them to the place and, along with the system message about the floor, told them all they had to know.

In order to move on to the next floor, they simply had to win ten battles and thus advance to the next rank. Contrary to earlier floors, floors 6 through 10 were connected, and all shared the same arena theme. In fact, the guide would be the same throughout all these floors as they moved on to larger arenas and colosseums every time they climbed a floor.

This setup did make earning bonus points harder as there weren’t as many opportunities for achievements and bonus objectives. On floor six, the bonus objective required them to collect an adequate amount of in-depth information on at least five of their opponents, which was another aspect these floors had that the others didn’t: the opportunity to prepare.

It was possible to research your foes before entering the arena with them. They could discover facts about these opponents and their abilities, and as they decided to do the bonus objective on the sixth floor, they got a good idea of the scope. It was so in-depth that they even learned one of their opponents – a giant Kraken-like land monster – had an existing injury caused by a curse that they would be able to exploit. One of the battles was also against a party of five like their own. There the Sword Saint ended up learning two of the party members used to be in a relationship. Without the girl knowing, the guy cheated with the other girl in the party and broke it off, so if they revealed this to them before the fight, it would likely make them fight worse during the actual bout as they were pissed at each other due to relationship drama.

So… yeah. That was a thing. Anyway, Jake and the others didn’t really need any of this information and only gathered it for the bonus objective. The floor was also made more annoying by the fact that one could only fight in the arena once a day, and before winning a fight, Jake and the others would have no idea who their next opponent was and who to collect information on. All this resulted in it taking them a bit over a month to do the floor as they had to wait for information brokers and stalk people. All in all, it wasn’t a good time. Especially not when they didn’t need what they learned at all, as every single fight on the sixth floor was utterly one-sided.

The only interesting thing was the achievements. On the sixth floor, they would get a bonus of between 1 and 6 Nevermore Points every fight based on how much the audience liked it, and from what they learned, this would be the same on floors seven, eight, nine, and ten. This meant one could double the reward for passing every floor just by being entertaining.

Jake and co ended up earning 45 points total for audience satisfaction, which was still pretty good. It turned out that a lot of people loved overpowered people doing overpowered stuff to utterly dominate their foes.

Floors seven, eight, nine, and ten were just more of the same, with the arenas getting bigger, the audience growing, and more points on the line. Floor seven had the same bonus objective of collecting information as floor six, but this time they didn’t bother to do the bonus objective but just did their fights as fast as they could, meaning they completed their ten fights and, thus, the seventh floor in only ten days. Potential bonus points per battle had gone from 6 to 7, with Jake and the others doing even better than the sixth floor.

They also learned that there was an achievement that gave the exact same points as the bonus objective for fighting without gathering any information and another for completing the floor in ten days, meaning they had lost points by doing the information gathering on the sixth floor. So, yeah, they weren’t gonna do that again.

On floor eight, they decided to test a bit and did the fights solo rather than as a group. No fight so far had been harder than the Monarch of the Skies, so they all easily swept through the battles one by one, completing this floor in only ten days too. They got 78/80 points for audience satisfaction, with the Fallen King and Dina being the only ones to lose points during their solo fights.

The two were – naturally so – bullied for this as they moved on to the ninth floor. Mostly the same as before, with them once more doing the fights solo for extra entertainment value. The only fight of interest here from Jake’s point of view was when he faced a party that had pretty interesting synergy and used mixes of water, lightning, and earth magic to lock down and kill him. Not because Jake was in any real danger but because it was his first time trying an instantly-summoned lightning bath.

had ten battles to finish. However, once they had done the tenth battle, they unlocked the option to do a final event round, the same as on the fifth floor. This final battle would be against the current ”champions” of the arena and consisted of a

chances are it would take a while, and nobody wanted to wait around before moving

Saint enjoyed taking his time working on his profession by painting in between fights, and Jake learned that Dina had a special spatial storage with

could do was meditate or work on skills if they wanted to stay productive. Sylphie especially found this downtime difficult, as at least the King had lived for long enough for the wait to not feel that bad, while Sylphie was used to constantly having something to do. Ultimately, she ended up sleeping most of the time while digesting the natural

as a gift at the Chosen ceremony, he held off on playing with that as he feared he would find it too entertaining. Jake felt confident later floors would have even more downtime or quiet periods considering they had fifty entire years, so he would

to their second city layer

Nevermore Points: 1512

had done far more achievements than on the prior floors, as the only true judgment here was how well one fought. There were far fewer hidden points to be found, which was also reflected when they reached the Leaderboards on this floor and compared

Points Record

had been 88 behind on floor five, they were now only 138 behind, which means they only lost 50 additional compared to the top team. As

Points

first one by quite a margin. There was simply no reason to stay there,

harder floors as fast as possible. And with that mentality, they truly picked up

Lillian as they talked within a large

I would assume it can be forgiven

the map on the table in front of her, she felt pretty damn stressed.

after returning from the Chosen ceremony, Miranda had finally chosen to evolve, and damn was she glad she had waited because she had a strong

at least seemed to indicate

influential leader is a court wizard offering advice – or in your case, a court witch. As the foremost confidant of Jake Thayne, the Chosen of the Malefic Viper and Harbinger of Primeval Origins, you have taken upon yourself the task of operating as his liaison and right hand. Be it managing his territory, exerting his will upon the world, or simply interpreting and acting out his intent, you will find yourself well-equipped through your diverse set of skills. As your Records blend together with the Chosen and you continue to walk your Path, so shall success follow as you bathe in the shadow

aspects of who Miranda herself was. Just the fact that it was called Court Witch meant it was truly based on her and felt more personal. It had also gone beyond simply being about

for some reason, barely felt she even had to. He cared for so little of what she did as long as she acted within his moral compass and didn’t do things to piss him off… heck, she had a feeling she could decide to dedicate the entire budget of the World Council to constructing a base on the moon, and all he would do was shrug and say “cool,”

the fact that everyone knew it now made the sheer level of Records matter so much more. This detail for the description was one of the reasons she felt confident that evolving after the ceremony counted, as she doubted she would have gotten a profession offering 200 stats per level – only 40 below the theoretical maximum –

her class, well, she wouldn’t complain about

of the coven’s sisterhood, the Verdant Witches truly view you as one of their own, and your connection to the Verdant Lagoon is more powerful than ever, allowing you to pull on powers from the ethereal domain. As a Verdant Witch, you are a spellcaster focusing on magic rituals and intricate spells, making preparation your key to victory. All who dare intrude upon your domain should tread carefully lest they find themselves swallowed by the Lagoon. Beware that should you lose the trust of the

260 stats per level was considered really good, even