The Primal Hunter

Nevermore was a place where the publicly available information was far from scarce, yet there were still some unknowns.

Nobody knew exactly how many floors there even were in the C-grade version – or those who did couldn’t or wouldn’t tell – meaning for most of the individuals fighting for spots on the Leaderboards, it was just assumed they would never hit a limit. At least not a limit of floors.

The only limit they would hit was the limit of their own abilities and the 50-year time limit. A time limit that many had tried to circumvent through the ages but was upheld by one simple design choice:

It just counted the age of your Truesoul using dungeon-fuckery.

This meant that should one enter Nevermore in C-grade, be in there for ten years, and then leave again, the time wouldn’t stop ticking for the Leaderboard positions.

Now, this is where one truly had to separate the early C-grades that all entered below level 210 and aimed for positions on the Leaderboards and those who were simply in C-grade and did the mega-dungeon at whatever level or pace they so desired.

The people that aimed for the Leaderboards would do best if they spent all of their time within Nevermore, never leaving for fifty years. For the people that didn’t care about the Leaderboards, they truly had no reason to stay the entire duration in one go.

It was also well-known that only the top few percent of the Leaderboards would get any rewards. This meant many gave up after realizing they were falling too far behind and just left Nevermore for a time to do something else.

The total time one could stay in Nevermore remained the same, but every second spent outside of the dungeon was a year wasted when it came to competing on the leaderboards. To those who didn’t care, it didn’t matter. They could be in Nevermore for ten years, leave for twenty, and then do the remaining forty years if they so desired.

If someone competing on the Leaderboards did that, they would do Nevermore for ten years, leave for twenty, and then once they came back, they would only have twenty more years to rack up Nevermore Points. After that, they would still have twenty more years to just do floors, gain levels, do Challenge Dungeons, and whatnot, but they would have already had their final Leaderboards evaluation.

One couldn’t cheat with time dilation either, even if they wanted. You couldn’t enter Nevermore, do ten years, and then leave for another ten years in Realtime, where you actually spent two-hundred years in a time chamber. The cut-off was based on your own personal time, not Realtime or Nevermore’s time.

In many ways, the most important thing for those aiming for high spots on the Leaderboards was time. Optimizing time meant more floors could be done. Of course, in order to do more floors, one also needed the power to actually complete them, even as things would begin to get more dangerous. Naturally, the levels one gained doing the lower floors would also help one go further, meaning leveling speed was also considered semi-important.

However, one often-forgotten power on the scale of importance was the ability to cheese stuff. The ability to totally ruin how a floor was supposed to proceed to the advantage of the Nevermore attendees.

Jake’s party was in a very unique situation, for they had everything. Especially the ability to cheese stuff, which they happily used whenever they could, and they were all eager to proceed after doing floor forty-five faster than any floor prior.

The city floor after floor forty-five was quite a bustling place, but Jake and company quickly moved through after checking the Leaderboards, where they saw they had once more lost the top spot but were only a few thousand points behind the point leader.

Proceeding to floor forty-six, they found themselves on yet another open-ended floor taking place on a large planet. However, this time there was no lesson to be found, and their job was as simple as could be: Slay the Four Beast Kings. Four powerful C-grade beasts each ruled a part of the planet. To do this, they would choose to enlist the help of the large kingdom they initially spawned within, with a bonus objective given pushing them towards enlisting in the military and influencing them to mobilize and take down the Beast Kings.

This was the long solution.

Jake and company picked the fast one.

They split up into two groups, each headed toward a territory ruled by a Beast King. These territories were filled with countless beasts serving their king, and many powerful ones served as mini-bosses that aimed to impede them on their paths toward the lair of the Beast King. All four Beast Kings were apparently in the process of consuming powerful treasures that were the source of their powers and didn’t wish to be disturbed.

They got disturbed.

Group one consisted of Dina, the Sword Saint, and Fallen King, while Sylphie and Jake acted as the second group. The power between the two groups turned out to be rather equal, and not just because of Jake, who was particularly well-suited against high-level beasts, but because of the little hawk with him. She was the highest-leveled one in their group, after all.

did end up needing help, Jake could always summon the Fallen

that didn’t turn out to be necessary,

to get in their way, they finally made it to the lair of the first Beast King on their list. Despite being the northern part of the planet, the place was a huge mud-filled

the North

the back above the surface, forcing Jake to strain his eyes a bit to see its full form beneath the muddy water. It looked to be more than

and Sylphie seemed excited to attack when Jake stopped

I have been waiting for a chance like this for over a year,” he said in

a

“Thank you,” Jake smiled.

Sylphie were floating far up in the air, and when Jake got permission, they flew even further up. They went above several layers of clouds before Jake stopped, feeling the mana in the air begin to act up as they were getting too close to what he assumed was

hand. A thin string of conceptual energy gathered, forming the faint outline of an arrow as a stable film of arcane energy surrounding

everything was as it should, he hardened the stable energy further and picked his poison. Because Jake wasn’t going to pour destructive arcane energy into the second layer of this Protean Arrow this time… he

didn’t wanna test any of his curse-aligned poisons, so he

beast. While it wasn’t as good

as she looked at the

within it. Something Jake had learned quite a bit

final product a good coating. A coating of

he carefully observed the Beast King. He felt the conceptual energy slowly build up as he found a weak spot without any scales on the

it was honest work and definitely worth

see what this bad boy can do,” Jake smiled as he took the arrow. He had poured in more than ten percent of his mana and just over twenty percent of his total stamina into this one arrow. He had

a deep breath as he unleashed

he pulled back the string, and his body exploded

meters around Jake took on a pink-purple hue as energy crackled in the air. Arcane Powershot charged slowly as the energy built up

He knew that

explosion of arcane energy, he loosed the

arrow as it fell limply to his side, but he only gritted his teeth from

destruction as a vacuum of energy was left in its wake

Arcane Awakening.

Arcane Powershot.

Big Game Hunter.

Superior Stealth Attack.

Hunter’s Mark.

and of course, his newly obtained Arcane Supremacy just boosting everything even further. All poured into a single

Arrow of Avaricious

broke through the final cloud layer, scattering the entire cloud in the process. This finally

King reacted as its eyes opened wide… though Jake

the

flew up to block the impending arrow. The Beast King

arrow struck right between two large plates of scales. It pierced straight through the tough hide of the hippo-like beast as the entire swamp exploded, sending water splashing up several kilometers as a