The Primal Hunter

Jake barely managed to drag himself out of the arena. Nearly every one of his ribs were broken, and he had enough internal damage to kill most people. If he was not a system-changed creature, he would have been dead already.

After stumbling out of the arena, medical staff came. Sadly for Jake, they only checked if he would live, and while Jake was in a horrid condition, his life was not in danger. Seeing no other real choice, Jake bought a healing potion from one of the staff members for 100 Colosseum Points to try and at least recover a little. Instinctively, he identified it when the medical staff happily sold it.

[Colosseum of Mortals Recovery Potion (Unique)] – a potion from the Colosseum of Mortals. This potion will restore a small amount of health to stabilize the condition of anyone who consumes it while boosting the natural recovery rate of all resources for a day (24 hours). This effect only works out of combat. You can only consume one recovery potion a day.

It was a potion that was clearly made just for this Challenge Dungeon, and with it, he would maybe be able to fight the next day. Hopefully.

After drinking the potion, Jake sat down on a bench and stared into thin air for a while. He hurt all over, had a visible imprint of a palm on his chest, and he felt like shit. Jake had “won” the fight, sure, but it sure as hell didn’t feel like a victory.

If it had been a fight to the death, Jake would likely have lost his first life. Maybe he would have been able to drag out the time for a tie, but as he was currently, he didn’t see any path to victory. Not with the tools he had entered the arena with.

Magic wouldn’t have been an option, either. It was too slow to cast and use. Everything would be telegraphed, and the monk would have easily blocked it.

Despite being called it all the time, Jake was not a martial artist. He was no unarmed fighter. Every single hit from the monk left Jake reeling even when he blocked as the soul-affecting part of his strikes still went through. Meanwhile, Jake did far less damage even with his arcane energy, as, quite frankly, punches and kicks were not a good way to deliver arcane destruction. His entire fighting style was also created with the assumption that his counterattacks would be deadly stabs from katars and not just a damn punch.

This meant Jake had to dodge rather than block nearly all the time. That was his fighting style, but a dodge took way more energy and effort than blocking something. Usually, dodging would then at least allow you to take advantage of an opening as you didn’t use an arm or a leg to block and could strike with it, but what did that help if the attack you could land barely did anything?

No… he would need weapons if he wanted to stand a chance.

Gritting his teeth, Jake just sat there, partly to let the potion do some of its work and partly because he didn’t feel like getting up.

“Hey, Veteran Gladiator,” he heard as he looked up and saw the Battlemaster had walked over. “You look like shit, but I guess you won anyway. Congratulations on that and keeping your streak going. Now, you strike me as rather preoccupied, so I’ll leave you be. Get healed up, yeah? And keep up the good work; I doubt you will meet another monster like that any time soon.”

Jake slowly nodded. “Thanks, I guess…”

The Battlemaster gave him a tap on his shoulder, making Jake wince a bit in pain. He had rolled a lot of punches off his shoulder, and it was still sore as hell, with it feeling like half the muscles within were ravaged. Didn’t help that he had overstrained them with arcane energy, either.

The Battlemaster walked away as Jake stayed sitting, leaning back against the wall as leaning forward sure as hell wasn’t an option with the current state of his ribs.

With a sigh, and to try and distract himself, he decided to check the damn system message he had gotten after the Battlemaster came and talked to him. It didn’t really make him feel better.

Congratulations! You have reached the Veteran Gladiator rank, truly cementing yourself as a regular of the Colosseum of Mortals. As your notoriety and fame grow, so does the strength of your opponents, and you have begun to catch the eye of some of the more powerful entities involved with the Colosseum of Mortals.

As a Veteran Gladiator, you are still limited to one fight a week against another Veteran Gladiator.

will now have better equipment

have far looser rules and regulations than regular arena fights. The possible opponents one can face in Show Matches are decided daily. Winning Show Matches reward Colosseum Points based on the opponents fought. Show Matches and battles against other Veteran

all Show Match

single time or losing any lives, you are rewarded an

the Benevolent Monk, you are rewarded an extra

you prove yourself the strongest mortal! Become the Champion! Or, perhaps,

Gladiator, with some wording changes here and there. The only new things were the mention of Show Match options having their difficulty increased and the final part with the very

at the 5000 points for reaching Veteran Gladiator without losing, and especially the 10000 points from ”defeating” the Benevolent Monk, left him with a sour taste in his

been way too easy for too long. He had fought every single day for more than ten weeks and had yet to face a single battle that made him feel actually threatened. One where he didn’t always know, in the back of his mind, that he

the difficulty spike had been too sudden,

spike like this to be against someone literally called a Benevolent Monk? Someone who didn’t want to kill his

to come. A reminder there were other monsters out there who possessed power defying the limitations of stats. People who were able to control concepts beyond what any F-grade

and based on what Villy had said, with the Path he was walking,

basic understanding. Based on the Primordial, concepts came in two forms. The “logical” and the “nomological.” It was a bit

appeared, to truly try and comprehend something was a lifetime goal, even for gods. It was like there was always more to

concepts simply had no truly logical aspect to them. One could try to do a logical analysis of how everything related to a nomological concept worked and its

of how it worked; it simply was. Even if someone made a skill like that, they would have no way to properly explain how it worked. They could say how they did it, the effects

mix of the logical and nomological, though some did lean far more in one direction than the other. This did result in two people being able

way, he still kind of did. He understood how they felt to use, the experience of having a certain kind of energy running through his body. He could experience them. In the same vein, when he saw a concept used, he could understand what it did

aspect of all these concepts even working

connected him to the Dao Sect – or at least a similar place – and the Dao thing sure as hell wasn’t an institution rooted in logic. Instead, it was about meditating

was a mix of receiving a genuine epiphany of understanding and the system then coming in to assist by filling in the gaps, even with things not necessarily related to skills. It wasn’t just understanding the fundamental truths of the universe, but instead getting an idea

Where their epiphany went beyond the confines of the system, and rather than help, all it could

make it sharper. This meant that should he

the concept you infused into a skill improved enough… that’s what skill upgrades were for. Sure, there could

way to run yourself out of mana or stamina. Usually, you also wanted your skills to be better than what a regular attack only infused with conceptual understanding did.

Jake running around with a high conceptual understanding of his arcane affinity meant that every single kick or punch he threw

just someone created by the system and the Wyrmgod or if he was an image of a real person. Perhaps a mix of both. But if he was indeed a real person who had that kind of power as a G-grade… no, that wouldn’t be possible. Jake was positive about that. He would have gotten levels

be an image of a real person, he

had to

tried to comfort himself a bit with the thought, but it didn’t really help much. Fact still was Jake had his ass handed to him, and not just because his opponent was monstrously powerful, but because he had been a reckless and

even fucking warned me, he scolded himself, shaking his head. He just hadn’t taken

no reason to dwell on

passed by now since Jake had fought his battle, and through his sphere, he saw Polly and Owen walking over with hurried steps. Still sitting on the