The Primal Hunter

Jake had a lot he wanted to test on the next floor, but sadly, he wasn’t really able to. At least not right away.

The forty-third floor was indeed another “lesson” from the Wyrmgod, but this one wasn’t as much about any hard rules as it was about a norm and something that was generally frowned upon. It was a message that if they decided to act in a way that many wouldn’t find acceptable, they could put themselves in a bad situation and make enemies unintentionally.

When they appeared on floor forty-three, they were on board a spaceship traveling toward a large asteroid belt, where each asteroid may as well have been a small planet. The story was that they were mercenaries in a vessel stranded in space after a battle with space pirates – yes, there were pirates on this floor again – and during this fight, the ship had gotten damaged.

Their job was to scour this asteroid belt for natural treasures that could be used to repair the ship, but after they arrived, they discovered that dangerous wanted people were also hiding out on these asteroids among the natives.

To further complicate things, these planets were filled to the brim with people of all sorts of races. Tens, if not hundreds of Billions of humans, beastfolk, demons, monsters, elves, dwarves… all sorts of races lived on these asteroids. The most powerful of which was only in D-grade. Outside of the criminals, that is, all of whom were firmly in C-grade.

Calling them criminals was honestly a bit… wrong? They were people who had pissed off major factions in a myriad of ways, some of which Jake deemed legitimate, others he found bullshit. For example, one of the criminals had purposefully created cursed weapons and armor and spread them to unsuspecting people, driving them insane and wiping out a huge kingdom by proxy. That guy was clearly an asshole, and Jake was all fine with stomping him.

However, there were also cases where the big bad criminal had done some rather basic stuff, just to the wrong people. One of them had killed someone with a Divine Blessing in self-defense and was now marked a heretic to be hunted down and killed on sight, and another had taken and consumed a natural treasure some kingdom totally had their eyes on first.

Now, this is where a bit of important context should be added… the spaceship wasn’t really one made for C-grades. In fact, the one controlling it was a mid-tier B-grade automata that had merged itself with the ship and, despite being damaged, could still harness the full weapons system of the ship.

This is to say, it had the ability to blow up smaller planets, or at least these asteroids.

The B-grade automata captain decided instantly that they should also investigate and eliminate the criminals, along with retrieving the items needed to repair the ship. Luckily they didn’t have to fully search the asteroids as the ship had a mobile scanner they could bring with them when going down on each asteroid.

So, to fully summarize, Jake and company had the job of investigating the asteroids for treasures to repair the ship using a scanner while at the same time identifying the C-grade criminals hidden there and eliminating them all. Locating these criminals was the hard part, and all they had to do to beat the floor was collect the treasures, and figuring out if a planet had any treasures wouldn’t take more than a few days for each.

Once it was decided there were no treasures, they could then decide to go back to the ship… and, to “optimize” their points per day, do a little bit of lying by telling the automata that the asteroid was filled with really bad criminals and to blow it up. That way, they could kill all the criminals there without bothering to find each one individually, only at the sacrifice of a few billion F, E, and D-grades.

This was one part of the moral lesson. Because while it was made clear that this was an option, it was also made clear this could be frowned upon. Killing billions to just take out a handful of potential targets wasn’t something any laws directly prohibited, but doing so wasn’t exactly looked kindly on either.

Not to say that actually eliminating the criminals on the asteroids was simple if one wanted to avoid collateral damage, even after they had identified them. A genius-level C-grade and a mid-tier C-grade fighting could wreak a lot of damage, something Jake had been a witness to during his visions of the Malefic Viper, so deciding to kill them also had to be done with caution to avoid widespread destruction.

wholesale slaughter of the “weak” was so frowned upon wasn’t entirely due to some altruistic intent from the multiverse’s major factions. Sure, there probably was a bit of moral thinking in there somewhere,

in kind but with more force to not appear weak. So they would send a few B-grades and blow up even more planets… only

of C-grades after another group of C-grades. Then they could fight, and the only “fair” retaliation would be something similar, making it far less of a slaughter and more like a competition. It also meant that the higher-ups wouldn’t move, as

were fucking cowards. They didn’t dare to fight others around their own level of power but instead preferred to settle matters through proxies. Rather than two gods fighting, they would rather compete in some other fashion, like setting up a tournament with A-grades or a war with C-grades, all while setting rules to make it a “fair” fight. This did also have

A-grade had once been born there or maybe some god had recently just come by

that they could freely listen to while traveling between asteroids. One of the examples that struck Jake was about a late-tier god who had arrived on a planet and really liked a certain lake. He had settled down there for a long time and meditated, finally breaking free from his worries which allowed him to pass the final step and become a Godking. Two thousand years later, two S-grades were fighting and ended up

because they had ruined a nice

be done haphazardly, or you could piss someone off unintentionally.

utterly cheese the floors. Jake had his wonderful Pulse

damn forest that had existed for tens of thousands of years about stuff, and it would know, while sometimes even

time spent flying between each of them. Jake got some good alchemy during this time and was gleefully experimenting with Curse Fragments whenever they had downtime. Sadly, there wasn’t a single time he had to go all-out during the entire floor, as the one time they did find a small asteroid just filled with criminals, Jake and Dina had already been sent off to

they pretty easily did floor forty-three while learning the lesson that going full murderhobo on a bunch of E and D-grades

to expect. What more rules and norms

ended up feeling kind of… personal for Jake. For many of

how valued large groups of weaker people were and how one should leave

islands spread all throughout. Both below the water, on the water, and floating up in the sky. Each island had its own little ecosystem and was covered by some kind of barrier keeping all the creatures inside. New monster variants had begun appearing within these

senses, was actually far more powerful than that. Not quite a god, but

value to the multiverse as they represented new and growing Records. A single powerful variant appearing on a planet – or a dome, in this case

was a bit like what happened with Earth, partly because of Jake. So many powerful people appearing there resulted in massive growth potential even for the average Earthling. People who could never

similar species but different variants having a child would lead to a merge of their Records, and sometimes a more powerful variant than both of them would emerge. Adding new variants thus mattered a lot to some factions, even to the gods. This was naturally something Jake was very well aware of,

trying to get extra points or achievements by making a variant on floor forty-four. The Primal Juice or whatever was far too valuable and not something to squirt

variants for no reason. It was generally considered customary that if you, as a C-grade, saw a lower-grade variant running around, you would leave it alone. If you did want to get rid of it, one could always just send someone around their own level, at least allowing the person who kills it to

kilometers in diameter and categorizing variants and taking notes, with the Researcher then deciding if the observed beast or monster was

that, or just killing them outright,

lesson of this floor wasn’t just to respect variants and the Records they represented but to be aware that some creature variants were to be killed on sight. These types of creatures were