The Primal Hunter

”I rate this floor nine out of ten when it comes to combat but a solid negative one out of ten when it comes to creativity. You just copy-pasted rooms over and over again. Downright shameful,” Jake admonished Minaga out loud as he stood atop a tower identical to four other towers in prior rooms.

“Oh, well, thank you for your expert review of my labyrinth! Do tell me, for how many years have you been making dungeons since you are such a master at it?” Minaga fired back with plenty of snark.

“I don’t need to be an expert in feces to know when I see a piece of crap,” Jake grinned.

“See, while you think you like constant diversity in encounters, you actually don’t. This was meant to be a gauntlet of rooms where you would take breaks in between, strategize, and get better and better at dealing with the demons as time went on. So they have to be similar for your prior experiences in all the earlier rooms to matter.”

“Didn’t I say I rate it nine out of ten for combat? Combat was good,” Jake smiled as he looked at his party members finishing off the last demons in the distance.

The thirty-third floor proved to be far longer than any of the earlier ones. Granted, it was probably meant to take around the same time for the average party, but considering Jake could cheese every single labyrinth they had entered so far, this one became the big time sink.

A total of fifteen rooms had been in their way, with the first five looking like outside areas with camps and villages housing prisoners. As Minaga said, then these five rooms had all been pretty much identical, which meant that their strategy, which had worked perfectly the first two times around, could easily be applied three more times.

This naturally resulted in some damn good points through all the achievements they earned.

Current progress: Prisoners freed (100%).

Achievement earned: Free at least half (50%) of the prisoners. 100 Nevermore Points earned.

Achievement earned: Free at three-quarters (75%) of the prisoners. 200 Nevermore Points earned.

Achievement earned: Free all (100%) of the prisoners. 400 Nevermore Points earned.

900 Nevermore Points total if you include the 200 from just completing the objective of saving twenty-five percent. This was already a massive windfall, but Jake could see how these achievements – especially the last one – could be difficult. An E-grade could easily die from some random shockwave or explosion during a fight, making a 100% completion impossible. It was only because of Dina that they managed to do it perfectly, as she protected them thoroughly with her vine shells.

After the prisoner rooms, there were no more bonus objectives. Just ten more rooms of pure fighting as it thematically was like they entered deeper and deeper into demon territory. The environment began to change from room to room, with lava pits appearing everywhere and more demonic structures popping up. The last five rooms had all been large military cities that all had a big tower in the center, which was the one Jake was currently standing on as his party finished off demons beneath. Could he help them with ranged support? Sure, but when he did that on the last floor, the Fallen King complained, so he didn’t. Besides, splitting up like this rewarded more experience. He had helped right after killing the boss as he could get kills without ruining someone else’s fight, but at this point, it was just cleanup work.

And on the topic of experience… Jake had managed to convince his party to leave the bosses in each room to him. This was not only due to his own vanity but also because he was truly the best person in their party at killing these bosses. Jake had to admit that when it came to killing foes of equal level, the Fallen King had him beat, and the Sword Saint was a close third after him, but against foes 40 to 50 levels above them?

Jake was by far the strongest. He had so many skills that scaled off level disparity between him and his foe, with Big Game Hunter being the biggest one. This meant that Jake had finally gotten in some good fights, but more importantly… he had gotten levels.

*’DING!’ Class: [Arcane Hunter of Horizon’s Edge] has reached level 212 - Stat points allocated, +50 Free Points*

…

*’DING!’ Class: [Arcane Hunter of Horizon’s Edge] has reached level 216 - Stat points allocated, +50 Free Points*

*’DING!’ Race: [Human (C)] has reached level 211 - Stat points allocated, +45 Free Points*

…

level 213 - Stat points allocated,

the one who had gotten the most over this week, including Sylphie. He knew he had a lot of experience to catch up on and plenty of Records,

fights and even did these rooms the most legitimate way, not abusing your Bloodline or anything like that,” Minaga commented. “However, I feel like giving me nine out of ten feels almost insulting. Eight out of ten I would get, but nine just feels like you are rubbing it in that I didn’t get top marks, but I was still damn

it

tell me what a ten out of

in order to win. Maybe the rematch with the Demon King will be a ten out of ten?” Jake teased. He was even being nice to give it a nine, to begin with. Though perhaps he only felt it had been so fun due to how starved of a good fight he had been. Even if he said the fights had

said just as Jake got a

every single demon on the thirty-third floor. 150 Nevermore Points

points here?” Jake asked with a raised

to the end after killing the boss without cleaning up. Most people do stay behind to grind levels, and it isn’t like you can “fail” this achievement like how the prisoners can

be and instead saw the gateway leading to

entered the cozy lounge. “The atmosphere was beginning to

like it

suffocating due to the high heat and constant smoke in the air, and while it hadn’t really impacted their fighting power, it had still been

or so later, the

completed. 330 Nevermore

thirty-third floor in less than a week (7 days). 200

did do the bonus objective achievements related to the prisoners,”

miss some other stuff, too, like finding out more information about the Demon Lord from the demons there and thus learning a few interesting titbits of lore,” Minaga came in. “It wouldn’t have given that

knew that they would need some time to fully recover anyway, so he shrugged as he

originally

to have some drinks while taking care of the garden she had

summoned through a mad sacrifice by some second-born prince who wanted to get power so he worked with the demonic cult, but the Demon Lord couldn’t be controlled and ended up breaking free and summoned an army of demons to

all this made sense considering they were within a labyrinth in a dungeon, Jake wasn’t entirely sure of, but Minaga excused it with them only seeing set areas of each kingdom and such.

their time of relaxation, they moved onto the thirty-fourth floor, not at all sure what to expect. Thematically, they had now entered the inner walls of the Demon Lord’s compound, but Jake assumed they would not meet

be completely and

don’t think uncheeseable

nice attempt to avoid answering my question,” Jake

sure, you probably can cheese a bunch of stuff and cheat a lot, but it won’t be as easy as you think it will! This floor is even more special than any of those prior, and I

as their group went through the gateway and entered the thirty-fourth floor. Once more, they were met with a system message with details of

of

Reach the end of

objectives: Find the three Secret Scrolls

found (0/3).

More hidden events, achievements, or objectives may be