The Primal Hunter

The rest of the thirty-sixth floor proved relatively trivial as Jake and company soon completed the entire thing and entered the in-between room. There had indeed only been six rooms and their accompanying labyrinths, but when they arrived at the break room, he was a bit disappointed at seeing they had only managed to get three achievements along with the usual completion bonus.

At least he was disappointed until he saw the achievements in question.

Thirty-sixth floor completed. 360 Nevermore Points earned.

Achievement earned: Complete the thirty-sixth floor within one day (24 hours). 750 Nevermore Points earned.

Achievement earned: Complete the thirty-sixth floor while selecting the highest difficulty at every room. 600 Nevermore Points earned.

Achievement earned: Complete the thirty-sixth floor without straying from the shortest possible path by any more than 10% of the total distance. 900 Nevermore Points earned.

That was a whopping 2250 Nevermore Points from achievements alone. Counting in the Bonus Objective and the floor completion, they had earned 3110 points from this floor alone. Sure, it wasn’t incredible compared to the Demon Lord, but it was pretty damn solid.

“These are all sliding-scale achievements, right?” Jake asked as he went over to the usual bar in Minaga’s in-between room and poured himself a drink.

“They are indeed,” Minaga answered instantly, ready to jump into the conversation.

“Nice. So…”

“Yeah, you got the best ones. Won’t say if you missed any other achievements, though. Maybe you did, maybe you didn’t.”

“Eh, it’ll be fine,” Jake shrugged as he chugged the beer-like liquid he had poured. It was okay, but not as good as what Villy usually brought.

“Do we need a recovery period?” the Fallen King questioned.

“I do not believe we do,” the Sword Saint answered.

Dina and Sylphie both seemed fine with just getting a move on immediately, so without further ado, they continued and moved onto the thirty-seventh floor, Jake quickly rushing after them while finishing his drink. As Minaga had already mentioned, the next floor was practically identical to the one on the thirty-sixth, though there were a few extra things added here and there.

The traps differed, and one especially nasty trap they ran into would teleport whoever stepped on it to a random place elsewhere in the labyrinth. At least Jake called it nasty until he got an idea. They sent Dina’s vine soldiers through a particular trap, and after seeing it actually put them closer to the exit, they all activated it together and skipped a good forty-five minutes of walking. Sadly not all of the traps could be repeatedly activated like this, with most only working on individuals before dispersing.

Room-wise, it was also much of the same, and Jake would say they got kind of lucky with what rooms had the highest difficulties. Of the seven rooms on the thirty-seventh floor – because yes, there were seven on the floor – they had combat in three of them, collection in two, and another had traps before they got the most interesting option of them all on the final room. It even had a never-before-seen new highest difficulty.

1. Crafting (Hard)

2. Boss (Harder)

3. Combat (Medium)

4. Random (Hard)

Jake just had one note when he saw the difficulty:

“Really? You named the difficulty after hard, harder?” Jake made fun of the dungeon master.

it? Super hard? Mega hard? Or do you want me to use an entirely different word, like insane or impossible? Seriously, what is wrong with using harder? It perfectly communicates

kind of lame. You could have made up your own word or something, too. It is ultimately your choice. Just… at least don’t tell me there is a difficulty

professional dungeon master here, I see no reason to listen to your ridiculous critique. You try and make your own dungeon and then come at me with that kind of “feedback.” Forever the critic, never the creator. How would

you actually named it hardest?” Jake wanted to

to threaten you again?” Minaga said as he made the

smiled as he waved the Unique Lifeform off and infused energy into the rune to select

as he joined Jake. “Prioritizing practicality and making the

revise my complaint letter to

wall, revealing a room with mountainous terrain. Rather than the usual rock color, the entire place looked orange, primarily filled with sand and mudstone based on what Jake could see. It was not an overly large room, only about fifty kilometers across and with

over thirty kilometers in diameter, and with the large boss in the middle, it did look like the creature in question was the source

an elemental, lizard, and scorpion. It had eight legs and a stinger like a scorpion, but its entire body was covered in

saw its level was at

–

the source of the impact?” Jake muttered, a bit surprised. Seeing the beast was above even the Demon Lord in level was also really

clearly already aware of what kind of monster it was. “It is part of the Lineage known as Cosmic Beasts and considered a middle of the pack variant. This particular kind comes to be by their parents laying a single egg within a meteor and then directing it towards a cluster of planets where it will then land on one. Upon impact, the egg will shatter, and the newborn Meteorborn Beast will absorb a lot of the energy released from the impact and even some of the matter kicked up

education about the multiverse

weaknesses or things we should be

based on this environment, I reckon this version is also good at earth magic,” Dina answered. “But its overall power level should not be overly impressive, so I think we will be fine. They

old man nodded.

we will need to,” Dina shook her head. “Unless the dungeon

smiled as he took out his bow. The Fallen King had also floated forward as he began to gather power, and Sylphie let out a low screech as she ascended into the sky, ready

to stride into the crater. Dina followed behind him with her staff in hand. The Meteorborn Beast soon took notice of the two people approaching as it awoke. After seeing them, it also noticed Sylphie above. As for Jake and

medium range and blasted it with repeated waves of force. The Sword Saint dove into melee range as he began to

the back foot. It responded by using the exact two types of magic Dina had mentioned. Spheres of condensed space were summoned all around it, making Jake’s next arrows miss as it was thrown off-course,

itself as the beast lifted up thousands of tons of soil and sand at once. It pressed all of this together, making incredibly durable weapons it could then control with its gravity magic. Getting

and company at quite an unfortunate time in their lives. See, they had finally been given a good fight after so long on that damn city floor, making

was as expected. The beast’s eyes were blinded by arrows within thirty seconds of the battle starting, and despite its durable natural armor, the Meteorborn Beast had its defenses ripped and cut apart within

had no need for strategizing. With Sylphie landing the finishing blow by creating another smaller impact crater

lvl 285] – Bonus experience earned for

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

straightforward, more so than he would have expected. Jake did also notice why. They had all grown in levels during the time on the city floor – Jake and the Sword Saint more than anyone else – but more importantly, they had all just gotten… better. The only one without any big improvements was Dina,

they had both gotten more refined at using all their magic. The Brokers who asked for assistance with tasks had all required them to push themselves over and over again, leading to subtle improvements

brief period he had spent with the Puzzle Box he hadn’t even solved a single percent of yet. But

came to his Free Points. This was partly spurred on by actually talking to Dina while on the city floor, as she had some more experience with the multiverse and stuff. She had said heretical things, like how just sinking all your Free Points into Perception could become a problem for him later on, and despite Jake obviously knowing that couldn’t be the case, he decided to

points right there, which Jake

had undergone quite the growth. That meant that after entering the next in-between room and licking his orb while placing the Free Points Jake just got, he took status as the others took a

the changes since he entered Nevermore to get an idea of how much he had gained so far… and it was honestly a lot

Status

Name: Jake Thayne

–

Edge –