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.

Alchemist of the Malefic Viper] has reached level 207 - Stat

…

the Malefic Viper] has reached level 210

alchemy outside of when they had downtime and him primarily

with a party, there had been little that could challenge them so far. Due to that, they got fewer levels. Still, he

has reached level 204 - Stat

…

Horizon’s Edge] has reached level 209

with that had naturally also come the race

Race: [Human (C)] has reached level 205 - Stat points

…

Race: [Human (C)] has reached level 209

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

– lvl

Hawk– lvl

[Dryad – lvl 212]

[Human – lvl 211]

to her still “growing” as she was only a juvenile. That, coupled with all the treasures she had consumed

the King was far more fastidious and only consumed very specific items, and the items he did want were

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

came to the old man, he just didn’t have the same demerits as Jake’s class, even if he did express that he got more out of duels rather

it was made up for by reaching the city layer after the thirtieth floor, where they once

The growth in this department had been quite

Nevermore Points: 14622

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

objectives, achievements, events, or anything like that. 1400 was nearly as many as they had made on floors 1-10

to

Points (Floor

indeed just the average. He did wonder when

Jake felt better about his level after seeing the Leaderboards… well, it was due to the final one. Had they taken the top spot yet? No,

Points Record

party from the current record-holders. One good achievement or

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 company had already burned through a year and three months. No one knew what kind of levels they would encounter later on that potentially had mandatory waiting periods like the arena. Floors 11-30 had all been relatively simple, all just big worlds with different objectives

the Leaderboards,

it?” the

front of the large

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

it peculiar the difference

far more so than even the ones after

are only that many C-grades from the new universe, right?” Dina said. “If they are good enough to

guess that is possible,”