The Primal Hunter

Due to the inability to give out concrete information about the floors of Nevermore, no one even knew how many there were in the C-grade section. Jake and Co naturally also didn’t know, but they could infer based on how slowly the levels of enemies increased. To see the average levels of enemies go up by 1 to 3 per floor was expected, which meant that the “easy” section of Nevermore that they planned on blazing through was much longer than they had initially expected.

Nevertheless, they went through with impressive speed and cleared floor after floor as the levels of their foes slowly increased.

Floor fifteen had a Floor Boss at level 224, with the optional event boss at 235 only.

Floor twenty, level 232 for the Floor Boss, with the event boss only at 240.

Floor twenty-five, Floor Boss level 238, event boss level 245.

Floor thirty, Floor Boss 245, event boss 250.

This seemed like a semi-rapid increase to some, but one had to put it into perspective.

Jake, on his lonesome, had managed to take down the Hive King and Hive Queen, which were both above level 270, so for him to face level 250s, even if they were event bosses, wasn’t too difficult as he had also grown stronger since then. The Fallen King also displayed power equal to Jake, the Sword Saint having not needed to get serious yet, and Sylphie and Dina easily doing their jobs.

Some of the floors they encountered could be cheesed, and the challenge it offered circumvented entirely, but on the majority, they just had to face whatever challenge it provided head-on. As they also began encountering floors more like the first ones where a big part of the task was finding the Floor Boss, Jake finally bit the bullet and did his damn job as the resident hunter of the group:

He started tracking.

While sending out seed soldiers or having Jake fly really high up and scout was effective, it was far from the most efficient approach they could take. With that in mind, Jake took out his old tracking skill and got to work.

The first thing he identified was that all Floor Bosses did indeed have unique advantages in the form of increased resources, which was important for the next part. Because they also all had a particular… trait to their energy signature. Once Jake figured this out, things got a lot easier as he no longer had to search only for powerful energy signatures but one particular aspect of a mana signature.

Jake also began to truly embrace his instinctual nature when tracking. He began to trust his intuition more, relying less on physical evidence and more on faint, nearly undetectable traces of auras left behind. His ability to recognize these auras was something he worked on together with the Fallen King, as the Unique Lifeform could often detect “echoes” of presences, but he had no way to properly differentiate them. Jake could.

By floor thirty, Jake had gone from being a shitty hunter in the tracking department to quite a proficient one, which was also reflected by his new tracking skill.

[Traditional Hunter’s Tracking (Uncommon)] - The hunter does not sit silently in his lodge but actively hunts for his prey. Unlocks proficiency in tracking down prey based on limited clues left behind, including both magical and physical ones. Also allows the hunter to more easily identify characteristics of the game, including mana signatures and aura. Allows the hunter to more easily distinguish and analyze physical tracks. Adds a bonus to the effect of Perception while tracking.

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[Bestial Hunter’s Tracking (Epic)] – A hunter tracks his prey with his mind; the beast tracks through instinct. You use both. Grants high proficiency in tracking down prey as long as you know their basic signatures, be they physical or magical ones. Makes it far easier to distinguish different kinds of tracks. Relying on your instincts, you are capable of picking up tracks and clues about your prey that others may be unable to, and while tracking, all your senses can be focused on the act. Adds a noticeable bonus to the effect of Perception while tracking.

Two skill upgrades later, the Floor Bosses could no longer hide. Not that they tried to, or that if they did, it would have helped, as Jake’s extreme Perception allowed him to track them down even if they made simplistic attempts to obscure their locations.

This ability to track down their targets far quicker sped up the non-linear floors significantly, but even then, it still took them a long time to reach the city floor after floor thirty. Fourteen months and a few days, to be accurate. That was from when they entered Nevermore till they reached floor 30, mind you.

While Jake had not gotten any levels out of the first five floors and only a single level in his profession from the next five, doing twenty more floors with ever-increasing levels over so many months still resulted in some progress.

Jake would not call it fast, considering how long it had taken, but it wasn’t terrible either if one took into account how long it could take to level in C-grade.

For his profession, he had ended up netting 4 levels since entering Nevermore – or a bit more than one every four months.

Viper] has reached level 207 - Stat points allocated, +35

…

reached

had downtime and him primarily

relatively low level of the enemies he faced and the fact he was doing everything with a party, there had been little that could challenge them so far. Due

Class: [Arcane Hunter of Horizon’s Edge] has reached level 204

…

Hunter of Horizon’s Edge] has reached level 209 - Stat points allocated,

naturally also come

205 - Stat

…

(C)] has reached level 209 - Stat points

desite his progress, this still put Jake below the level 210 limit… as

King –

Hawk–

[Dryad – lvl 212]

[Human – lvl 211]

everyone else, with Sylphie leveling up far faster than the others. Jake knew this was partly due to her still “growing” as she was only a juvenile. That, coupled with all the treasures she had consumed throughout their exploration of the many floors, it shouldn’t be

who was also a monster and could consume natural treasures to gain experience. However, compared to Sylphie, the King was far more fastidious and only consumed very specific items, and the items he did want

their Paths. Dina was also part monster, and she could level her race passively, but according to her, it had no impact. As a dryad, her way to level passively included her “taking roots” and sitting still for a few centuries. So, for her

as Jake’s class, even

was a bit miffed at finding himself the lowest-leveled individual, but it was made up for by reaching the city layer after the thirtieth floor, where they once more made their way

this descent was Nevermore Points. The growth in this department

Nevermore Points: 14622

on earlier floors. What truly mattered was completing more floors than anyone else to get high scores; the biggest achievements always seemed to come from doing the hardest challenges. The prevalence of these event bosses on every floor before a city meant that unless a group was good at fighting, they would miss

without any bonus objectives, achievements, events, or anything like that. 1400 was nearly as many as they had made on floors 1-10 total, truly hammering home how much the points on

compared to the average? Well, quite

Nevermore Points

sure what to think about this average. It seemed so unbelievably low, but then again, the average was indeed just the average. He did wonder when they would stop seeing a true average, as there simply weren’t enough

due to the final one. Had they

Record

That was all that separated Jake’s party from the current record-holders. One good achievement or event away

these floors. Chances are that by floor 30, the people who could get a high score and have also already gone so deep this early in the integration were people like Jake and his group that wanted to reach the later levels as fast as possible to get as many points as they possibly could. Fifty years was a long time, but Jake and

at the Leaderboards, the Sword Saint

it?” the old man spoke while looking

massive square in front of the

scouts or something,” Jake shrugged. “All of them are high level too, so

merely find it peculiar the difference is so stark,” the

city after floor twenty-five had been surprisingly populated, far more so than even the

the new universe, right?” Dina said. “If they are good enough to bring to floor thirty, don’t you want those C-grades

is possible,”