The Primal Hunter

“Were you nervous?” the dragon god in humanoid form asked as he looked at the black-scaled god sitting across from him. “Your Chosen did look to be in trouble quite a few times there. He was lucky his teammates were able to assure their victory.”

Vilastromoz looked at the Wyrmgod, who clearly enjoyed watching the recording. Yes, recording. A live feed was all well and good, but Jake knew when they were watching using that. With a recording, he would only know one person was looking while remaining unaware of all those who saw the recorded footage. It was a great workaround the Viper had noticed and begun taking advantage of a long time ago.

“If he hadn’t won, I would have been disappointed, though I do question if perhaps the difficulty has spiked more than in previous years,” Vilas wondered.

“Hey, I was being totally fair and equal!” the third person chimed in, sounding incredibly offended at the notion that he had upped the difficulty.

It was naturally Minaga, the creator of the floors. Though this version of him was of the divine variety.

“I never said you weren’t fair, just that the difficulty has grown,” the Viper shook his head.

“Maybe a bit,” Minaga admitted. “And, alright, you do have a point that not all challenges are equal, but I have to hold myself back too much that total equality is impossible, and slight variations can happen, you know? Or are you telling me to never have fun and do stuff like my little duel with the swordsman?”

The Viper looked at the Wyrmgod. “Have I complained about anything? Have I proposed any changes?”

“No,” his fellow Primordial shook his head. “You just made an observation.”

Minaga looked a bit between them. “Damn, you old guys teaming up against the poor unpaid dungeon engineer.”

“Do you wish to be employed?” the Wyrmgod asked with a raised eyebrow. “That could be arranged, with a proper contract in pla-“

“Figure of speech, figure of speech,” Minaga waved him off. “But hey, your Chosen is fun, if extremely infuriating. Though I guess you already know the suffering. That guy is just kind of crazy with that Bloodline of his.”

The Viper just smiled as he looked at the Unique Lifeform, not bothering to comment on how Minaga was the crazy one. Because in the eyes of many, himself included, Minaga was one of the craziest existences in the multiverse.

Minaga was a mistake born in the middle parts of the third era. At least Vilastromoz firmly believed he was a mistake, and the system seemed to agree based on no creature like him ever appearing again. Furthermore, the fact that the system had so uniquely limited the abilities of the Unique Lifeform meant that the sheer level of power from that one Unique skill was roughly estimated to be equal or superior to every single skill Minaga would have earned from when he was born in C-grade all the way to godhood. The only skills Minaga ever got were certain “earned” skills that were pretty much required, such as some related to godhood. However, he even lacked many basic skills and had things he couldn’t do, including giving Blessings.

However, he was still a Unique Lifeform. Just due to his sheer stats, he was able to overwhelm most foes at equal levels from birth, and even from birth, he could create clones of himself. About a dozen from what Vilastromoz estimated, with the number steadily growing as Minaga grew. By now, being a powerful god, the Viper had no idea how many clones he could have in total. However, if one included just the divine-level clones, he estimated it to be in the thousands.

And… this led to why the Malefic Viper believed Minaga was a mistake. The entire concept behind his existence was too much.

Vilastromoz had told Jake that Aeon was perhaps the hardest god in the multiverse to kill, and he still stood by that… but if he had to say who was the hardest to get rid of permanently, he would say Minaga. Minaga himself was strong, yes, but he was not a pinnacle god. At least Vilastromoz didn’t think so, but it was hard to know how powerful the highest-leveled clone was.

every single clone. There was the benefit that if you killed the currently highest-leveled clone, then Minaga would

had many tools to do so. Eversmile was an example of someone who rarely cared if people had hidden ways to try and survive, even if they

and, through that god, an entire pantheon. A late-tier B-grade ended up killing the Minaga clone, and they thought that was that… until a week later when a new clone appeared and wreaked havoc until it, too, was killed. A few days later, another clone appeared on a nearby planet and attacked the faction again. This kept happening with at least one attack every month. A few times, the Minaga clone did come to talk about maybe making peace, but every time he was killed. What exactly the faction believed they would accomplish, not even

Nineteen thousand years. More than a million Minaga’s killed. Three gods hunting down Minaga for over ten thousand of these years, with their biggest accomplishment being a thousand years of peace after they believed they had killed off the final clone… only for

had been due to someone telling Minaga

machine of the multiverse into overdrive. Many factions approached MInaga, curious gods investigated him, and quite a few even tried to kill him just to see if they could. Vilastromoz had honestly

went on quite a revenge spree. He became a menace that ravaged dozens of pantheons for half an era. This was

individual, even if they could make armies of avatars and whatnot. The reason why the Automata and True

single creature. Many gods could kill a Minaga… but no god could destroy Minaga. No faction dared make him an enemy, as Minaga had never once in history lost a single conflict. He would be a relentless force of destruction that would bear down on you infinitely, impossible to ever get rid of. Not that many worked with him, as he was also known to be an actively infuriating character and refusing to ever do what others told him. Most thus chose to merely ignore his existence entirely, never

so age would have still been his end if he failed to ascend. Now that he was a god, truly killing him wasn’t something the Viper saw happening. Especially not after he

had one… side-effect of his ability. One that was utterly ridiculous from the Viper’s point of view. One of the biggest reasons he firmly believed Minaga was a mistake, even in the eyes of

meant that one could never bring multiple copies or prior versions of an individual out of

Queens used to create spawn or perhaps even

where the

maximum number of clones,

can leave and remain unique, as their

aware of all his clones in dungeons,

clone cap, the clone will die upon exiting a dungeon, but

that Minaga had potentially billions of clones hidden in dungeons throughout the multiverse. No, it was certain he

combined were why the Malefic Viper felt certain that Minaga was the most difficult being to kill off for good in the entire multiverse. Not for lack of trying either, as Minaga’s personality had made him quite an infamous figure. However, there was one being who had managed to forge a mutually

the scope of his powers within a given floor, but I find most solutions will have other unintended consequences. Seeing as his skills are mostly based on intuition, there

trying to address a fundamental bug in a system by introducing more advanced systems to work around it, rather than just removing the bug… or ignoring

the solution indeed,” the Wyrmgod nodded as he seemed

ask, why the deceit about his Bloodline?” Minaga asked the Viper curiously. “That whole aura-resistance thing is a good lie and all, but we both know that the Bloodline is

knew a bit of it. From what he had gathered, they were

potential effects the Bloodline had on his own evolutions, resulting in him being a higher form of human, nor the most shocking part of it: the fact it included a percentage amplifier to a stat. One that was even growing with

in the early days when they learned of your ability? The many pantheons who wanted you to

annoying, but Jake is already part of your social club, so I can’t see that being a

may not try to recruit him outright… but that doesn’t mean they can’t become major pains in the ass,” Vilastromoz

having him join them directly: through the act of procreation. Suppose they succeed in getting him sufficiently attached to a member of their faction. In that case, there is also a chance they might eventually recruit