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.

help, Jake could always summon the

necessary,

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,

of the North – lvl

had six legs and parts of its body covered in scales. It was half-submerged in the swamp water, with only the back above the surface, forcing Jake to strain his eyes

them, and Sylphie seemed

over a year,” he said in a serious

at him for a moment before nodding

“Thank you,” Jake smiled.

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 the

out his hand. A thin string of conceptual energy gathered, forming the

his poison. Because Jake wasn’t going to pour destructive arcane energy into the second layer of this Protean Arrow this time… he was

the Sleeping Night wasn’t a good idea, and he didn’t wanna test any of his curse-aligned poisons, so he went with some good old Necrotic Poison. That seemed to always get the job done

even adding in a bit of his familiarity with this kind of beast. While it wasn’t as good as if he actually studied the beast, some

as she looked at the

Jake smiled. It was more than a meter and a half long and looked like a mix of black and purple due to the sheer quantity of poison within it. Something Jake had learned quite a bit ago was that his blood did indeed count as a “form of energy”

for now, he would just have to give the final product a good coating. A coating of

felt the conceptual energy slowly build up as he found a weak spot without any scales on the back of the hippo monster he was going

was honest work

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

a deep breath as he unleashed his

as he pulled back the string, and his body exploded with power from a mix of Arcane Awakening and Arcane

a pink-purple hue as energy crackled in the air. Arcane Powershot charged slowly as the energy built up within both Jake and his bow. Soon, ten seconds passed as the crackling in his surroundings became stronger,

their zenith. He knew that soon his arm and shoulder would give out. It was

massive explosion of arcane energy, he loosed

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

arrow’s way was torn apart as a trail of pure destruction as a vacuum of energy was left in its wake as it flew with ever-increasing speed down towards the still-unsuspecting hippo below. It was an arrow that encapsulated everything he

Arcane Awakening.

Arcane Powershot.

Big Game Hunter.

Superior Stealth Attack.

Hunter’s Mark.

his bow, and of course, his newly obtained Arcane Supremacy just boosting everything even further. All

of Avaricious

final cloud layer, scattering the entire cloud in the process. This finally made those

wide… though Jake wasn’t going to make

of the Apex

impending arrow. The Beast King barely had time to create a small barrier as the arrow pierced straight through,

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 crater was formed from