The Primal Hunter

Choosing skills when there were four shit options and only one skill he wanted was much easier than having multiple skills that appealed to him. If possible, he would have picked at least two of them, as he was honestly fine with missing out on either Penetrating Arcane Arrow or Arcane Arrow Rain, but he really wanted at least one of them.

That entire supercharging effect was just too damn interesting. What’s more, if it truly was something inherent to Jake’s class, would he maybe be able to upgrade other skills with the same effect? Would he become able to make an even better Protean Arrow that he could supercharge? Or, to be extreme… a supercharged Eternal Shadow.

Jake sucked at theoretical stuff, but as long as he felt how the supercharging effect worked just once, he would at least have an idea of how to apply it elsewhere.

But… if he wanted that, he would have to skip Arcane Supremacy. Just the name alone appealed to him as his arcane affinity was indeed the supreme form of magic, but there were cons to picking it. Plus, he had no idea how it would interact with his Malefic Viper Legacy skills or his ability to easily use curse magic. Touch should be fine as that one he had pretty good control over and could easily toss a bit of arcane affinity in there, but what about Scales? Wings? Fangs? Pride? All of them. Shit, just something like Malefic Viper’s Poison that made all his poison better did not have anything to do with his arcane affinity. Would that somehow get negatively impacted, meaning all of his poisons would get worse?

Also, while Arcane Supremacy was cool, so was being able to supercharge skills.

Mentally he had already written off Arcane Arrow Rain while just thinkings this over a bit more, and for two big reasons. One was that it just seemed the least interesting of the three, and two, because it was an upgrade to an existing skill. That meant he could upgrade the skill himself, even if he couldn’t make it as good. Picking one of the other options would add a new skill, and Villy had repeatedly talked about how having more skills tended to be straight-up better.

Jake momentarily considered asking the Sword Saint or one of the others but decided against it. This was his skill selection and his Path. He had complained to the Sword Saint about the mythical Hallowed Shroud, but he hadn’t actually asked for advice as he already knew such a skill didn’t fit him. If he didn’t know his own Path and knew what he wanted to do, how could he expect anyone else to?

Arcane Supremacy does seem best overall, right? he questioned. Yeah, it did. But picking it did mean fully committing to his arcane affinity, akin to picking an Attunement skill. He felt like there were many unknowns with doing that… and what if he discovered an affinity that he also wanted to use at some point? Curse energy wasn’t something he had initially been interested in, but now it was a core part of his Path. What if that happened with some magic affinity he just hadn’t encountered yet? What if there proved to be some fundamental problem with his arcane affinity? What if he faced an enemy who somehow resisted his arcane energy?

What if…

Fuck off, Jake… you gotta commit to things sometimes, he scolded himself as he got his shit together. Logically he knew Arcane Supremacy was the best. He would have to dedicate himself at some time to an affinity, as not doing so was just leaving power on the table. His intuition was also telling him he bloody had to pick it, but he still felt damn insecure. He was bad at commitments and any skills that would “lock out” other options… but there were times one had to do that.

Jake’s arcane affinity was his affinity. There would never be any affinity that could suit him better, as this one was literally created by him and was tied to who he was. If there was any type of magic or affinity to ever commit to, it would be his own. Even if some of his skills didn’t benefit from the skill or were negatively impacted right now, he would fix it in the future.

All he could hope was that the next skill selection didn’t have any interesting options or at least had another skill with the supercharge option because, this time, it had to be Arcane Supremacy. With conviction, he selected the legendary skill.

*New skill gained*: [Arcane Supremacy (Legendary)]

He selected the skill and took a deep breath as he felt something was coming. Seconds passed before a shiver went through his arms as it slowly spread throughout the rest of his body. The shiver was slowly replaced by an odd warm sensation that was on the brink of feeling painful, and in his sphere, he saw a bit of skin slowly begin to flay.

Then, the system truly went into gear. A protective bubble formed around Jake’s entire body, obscuring his form from view from the others waiting in the in-between room as the reforging process began. His skin sped up with flying off as both his arms rapidly began dissolving as if destructive arcane energy had ravaged them, yet the very next second, what was destroyed got rebuilt.

This was not simply his physical body undergoing a metamorphosis, but his entire Soulshape was influenced. The countless pathways that transported innate energy – stamina – throughout his body expanded and seemed to slightly change as the veins responsible for health points – vital energy – underwent rebirth next.

left untouched. The only things he saw the system didn’t influence were his eyes, as trying to reforge them was utterly unnecessary. However, he was surprised when he felt a faint spectral outline behind his back also get influenced until he realized

added more and changed those that were already there. To manually try to do something like this would be akin to changing a living being by going in and affecting every cell individually. Plus, one had to be able to do this change within a very short time span, or the body would be in imbalance and try to “heal” any damage inflicted. Not to mention the fact one had to figure out a way to not just find

expected his Bloodlline to act up or do something during all this, but it was surprisingly silent.

right… more right than it

felt more… natural? At least more so than before being reforged. Like this was how they had always been supposed to look… no… maybe that it was at least closer to it than before? He couldn’t quite put his finger on it, and before he could properly get

took around a minute before the protective shell that had formed around him slowly disappeared. Jake opened his eyes to see four individuals staring down

interesting skill, I take it?” the Sword Saint

me a bit of when I underwent my full Nature Attunement… but

close to an Attunement skill, Dina,” Jake answered the both

to specialize

let a spark of arcane energy jump between his index and thumb. “I guess

worry. “More often than not, that is one of the big hurdles for Attunement skills, as they can create difficulties for crafting. As far as I know, most alchemy is best with pure unattuned mana,

shaking his head. “Nope, alchemy seems unaffected… in fact, it may be better than before. No problems moving pure mana around,

odd, so I won’t ask anything. But it sounds like it was a

back at her. “Now, can I get a bit

will you need, you think?” the Sword

have a strong feeling

The others also went back to doing their own thing and left Jake to do some testing. As much testing as he

energy through his body. He also quickly tried summoning a bit of magic, starting with a

effort, arcane mana manifested all around him, forming a

before, that’s for sure… by

applied pressure until the arcane barrier began to crack and break. He repeated this a

and more than the summoning speed. Maybe thirty

to have a better control group, but he luckily had a pretty good

good at that before, but potency was where things had improved the most. For stable

summoning magic, so he guessed the bonus to that and potency were actually pretty similar. He also had more practice with destructive arcane energies, so Jake guessed the “true” bonus to summoning and potency – not factoring in Jake’s skill - was somewhere around twenty percent for both. In other words, this bonus made his

skills. That one proved to be a bit more tricky to determine. Skills already included system assistance when activating them, and while you could practice and get better, it wasn’t as much as one could with freeform magic. This didn’t mean that skills didn’t benefit, though. Through a quick test, he noticed the

was a bit lower across the board and varied quite a bit based on the skill. Something like his Avaricious Arcane Arrows – the arrows he normally shot – were surprisingly enough nearly twenty-five percent better than before, while the power of

wait with that, as he would rather see the effects in a real fight. Besides, he would probably piss off his party members if he decided to see how far