The Primal Hunter

Floors forty-one to forty-five were a bit special in that they never truly changed between the eras. Every single iteration of Nevermore had these floors, and while they did vary, all had the same intent behind them:

Inform the denizens of the multiverse about some of the multiversally agreed-upon rules and best practices.

The choice of placing it so “late” into the dungeon wasn’t a coincidence either, neither was it accidental it had been placed on the C-grade floors. C-grade was when one usually began to explore beyond one’s own planets and began to interact with other factions and cultures.

Cultures which often had very different ways of handling things. Some had very well-defined castes and societal structures that effectively made certain people be born into slavery and others into opulence, while most simply segregated populations based on power, where all those weaker were heavily controlled by the powerful.

No one truly cared about forces that were too weak to interact with the rest of the multiverse, but those that did would be expected to follow certain codes of conduct. Nevermore was effectively a way to avoid factions coming up with the excuse that they didn’t know about certain rules – made it so that a B-grade could not forcefully have a Bloodline Patriarch join his faction and then claim ignorance. This had led to it truly becoming common knowledge, enough so that few even dared to try and circumvent them.

Even the Holy Church had heavily adapted how they approached individuals with Bloodlines. In the first few eras, it was normal for the Holy Church to effectively arrange marriages between those with Bloodlines with the expectations of them having a lot of children and hopefully even a variant Bloodline or two in there. Even if they didn’t have anyone else with a Bloodline to pair someone with, they would instead just throw them at a powerful person to instead lean on their Records.

Now, whenever a member with a Bloodline was born or joined, their level of control over said individual would be heavily limited, and they would be treated as unique entities with different stations than regular members. This was even true for those with useless Bloodlines. The fact that those with Bloodlines couldn’t enter the Holyland was also a major factor in this different level of treatment, but not the biggest one, as just the insinuation that the Holy Church forcefully coupled those with Bloodlines would lead to severe consequences, even for a faction often referred to as the most powerful in the multiverse.

Mind you, this didn’t mean far more subtle means weren’t still being deployed. The way the Emberflight tried to entice Jake into joining them was considered an acceptable method of trying to recruit someone with a Bloodline, and so was trying to pair them up with someone in the hope that something would come from that. The problem only arose when force was applied. This even applied to societal force, which was why the Holy Church was so careful in how it approached things.

The laws about Bloodlines had taken a lot longer to get accepted than those related to plagues but were now far more well-known. Some factions did still use plagues, but it was in heavily controlled settings and with lots of oversight, with some forms of plagues – such as Karmic Plagues – entirely banned. Plagues could also only be created by a set number of powerful factions, with only a few forces walking Paths that facilitated the creation of plagues. However, Bloodlines could be found everywhere. That is to say, limiting the use of plagues only negatively impacted a few factions for the betterment of the multiverse, while the rules around Bloodlines impacted everyone – or had the possibility to impact everyone.

This did mean some factions or people within factions didn’t quite agree with the rules related to Bloodlines… and floor forty-two had been an example of one such faction.

In retrospect, the story of floor forty-two was kind of cliché. At least, Jake thought so.

A kid had been born into a lower-level noble family, with seemingly nothing special about him. Yet his body housed a grand secret, a hidden power: he had a Bloodline. He was a special boy who was bound for greatness, even if no one knew it yet.

Until the fire pirates attacked.

The day after Jake and company arrived on the floor, a giant spaceship broke through the clouds as a sea of fire descended upon the city. This fire somehow didn’t damage anyone but swept them up and forcefully brought them into the spaceship of the pirates, everything happening in mere seconds.

Jake and the others managed to avoid the flames but were unable to really do anything. It took a total of ten seconds from the ship appearing to it taking off again. It was a fast operation… but not fast enough. A beam of light shot out from somewhere so far away even Jake couldn’t see it, as an object slammed into the side of the spaceship.

The pirates didn’t stand a chance as this object turned out to be an A-grade human who, with a single strike, tore the entire spaceship in two and saved the people who had just been kidnapped. Everything had gone so damn fast, and within an hour, everyone was back in the city, safe and sound.

All of this just seemed like one big showpiece, and Jake was unsure what exactly the purpose of everything was… until the very end of this scenario. The A-grade was a human wearing golden metal armor, and right before he took off, his eyes lingered on the boy with the Bloodline.

Three days later, a C-grade “inspector” from the Empire came. She claimed to be a healer there to make sure there were no lingering issues after the kidnapping attempt and focused primarily on the children. The thing is, this was clearly one big ruse, as the woman had a Bloodline, and she was capable of identifying the kid had one too.

Funnily enough, despite Jake and the others having snuck into the city and gotten close to the Lunevile family through some subtle social engineering from the Sword Saint, she didn’t bat an eye toward Jake and Dina, as if their Bloodlines were entirely invisible. It was odd, but on second thought, the floor would probably be impossible if anyone with a Bloodline attracted the same level of attention as the natives.

Anyway… to make a long story short, the inspector turned out to be a higher-ranked noble from the Empire, and she wanted to adopt the kid with a Bloodline, but the Lunevile noble family refused as he was their only child and the heir. The noblewoman didn’t take this kindly, and shit went south quick when she decided to just kidnap the kid, something the C-grade patriarch of the Lunevile family wasn’t a fan of.

A small skirmish began, and the Lunevile Patriarch ended up injuring the noblewoman before she fled. This put the Lunevile family in a difficult situation as they found out during this skirmish that the kid had a Bloodline, but also that this noblewoman was the niece of the Grand Marshal of the Empire – the very same A-grade who had torn the pirate ship down.

another, and Jake’s party accepted escorting the kid to the capital of the Aloft Empire to seek help from the royal family. This seemed like a simple escort mission at first, but they soon realized there was one tiny little problem… the capital was on another

just happened to live on

a lot of hoops to actually get an audience with the royal family while avoiding spies and agents coming after them. Their status could not be used on this floor at all, and same as everyone ignored the

were in C-grade, most of them early and mid-tier C-grade. This was excused by everyone in B-grade and above being heavily kept track of by the royal family and military, but Jake honestly wrote it off as bad justification for why a random B-grade didn’t just descend to smack their skulls in before kidnapping the

planning a coup for a while and had one of the crown princes in cahoots with him. It was an entire thing that was honestly just background scenery to Jake and company having to flee through a hidden passage… but oh no, the very first noblewoman they

out the other side of the hidden passage. All while defending a damn E-grade kid who they had to make sure didn’t get squashed into paste by a

many months of travel where they split up, and someone managed to steal the kid right under the Fallen King’s mask – something he had

was heavily themed around stealth and social engineering, which made the entire thing not super interesting most of the time. Until the final battle, that is, where it was incredibly obvious the Wyrmgod really wanted to hammer home

play out right as they came out of the hidden passage, something that

challenging,” Jake commented as they approached the exit of the

factored

Sylphie screeched, making Jake

sure trivialized

currently walking at the back of the group carrying the kid with a vine. Jake had knocked him out

has a name, you know,”

I am glad that the floor is soon over and that I

“Yeah…” Jake sighed.

indication of what it is like,” the

that was another added layer of difficulty… the kid was downright horrible. He got kidnapped because he ran off on his

first many months,

mental trial to see if the party would snap and just kill him. Something that was surely a viable way to pass the floor… alas,

were forced to start over halfway through, it would be difficult to stop the Fallen King

Dina managed to handle the child somewhat okay. She had way more patience than anyone else in their group, that was for

plains surrounding the capital. Even if he saw nothing with Pulse, it was better to be safe than sorry. “Alright, just ahead, and we are out of here… be prepared for another damn plot

any of the fallout, as a large

tunnel and oriented themself when suddenly everything seemed to stop. The deep rumbling ceased, the flashing stopped... and then the pressure

of handling the pressure, and even Dina, the Fallen King, and Sword Saint slightly buckled their knees. Jake instantly

the fuck is a god

other the Emperor, and the final figure was a young man who looked barely twenty wearing what looked like jeans and

standing like statues, entirely frozen and unable to move as the divine being looked over Jake and his party before his eyes finally landed on the unconscious

point as he looked at the Emperor,

I sought to confront my

attention to the Grand Marshal, who was also unfrozen and

didn’t care about who ruled the Aloft Empire… why…” the Grand Marshal said as he knelt

said

“Then wh-“

kid has a Bloodline, you

I know, so I thought that-“ the Grand Marshal tried as he stopped mid-sentence,

thought some more now, shouldn’t you?” the god sighed as he finally looked at Jake’s party. “I take it you five are the