The Primal Hunter

Jake seriously questioned the validity of what Gudrun had just done. No, not how the magic worked or if the strategy was good, but how the hell she had even pulled it off. The massive sand mound she had summoned had to cost a shitload of mana, and what’s more, the sand was still running down its sides like water, making it borderline impossible to climb. That had to have a constant mana upkeep, right?

Yet, upon scanning her, it looked like she had barely touched her own mana pool.

Looking at the mound through his sphere, he soon spotted how it worked. Within the sand were two spears she had stabbed into it, both pumping out mana and feeding the entire formation. Rather than supplying anything herself, she instead used them as catalysts and batteries.

That is when Jake came up with a theory…

The announcer said that Gudrun did not participate in these matches very often but had taken her time, yet he also knew that she did a Show Match every single week. This begged the question… what was she using all the Colosseum Points she earned for? Unlike Jake, these natives of the Challenge Dungeon only had one use for their points, and that was to buy equipment for their fights.

So what if Gudrun saved up for long periods in preparation for these fights and bought an arsenal of weapons and tools to win? Ones prepared explicitly for every opponent she met in the Paragon rank? If that was the case, Jake could see how she had managed to pull it off. The magical items one could buy did hold much inherent mana, and if she had a way to tap into that… yeah, that would explain a lot. The fact she had just exploded her shield and even that spear he had grabbed, along with all the javelins now at her feet, supported this theory.

To summarize, Gudrun was a fucking pay-to-win character. She was the type to just spend exorbitant amounts of Colosseum Points on every fight to make sure she would come out victorious.

Returning his attention to the fight, Jake didn’t make any immediate moves. Looking at the flowing mound, he was pretty damn sure he had no way to ever climb that. Due to the sand constantly being replaced, stabilizing it using his arcane mana to climb up was out of the question, and while he could try to use one of the pillars to jump, that would put him in quite a perilous situation while in mid-air. Also, if he didn’t hit the mound, he would be fucked.

He also had to consider that Gudrun likely had countermeasures prepared for every obvious solution he could think of on the fly. For now, she did seem happy with not making any moves as she just stood there with a javelin in hand, staring down at Jake. She probably knew that he would dodge anything she could throw at him… at least for now.

Because time was on her side.

The formation was subtly expanding below the sand, growing a few centimeters every second. Within two minutes, the entire arena would be one big fluidized bed, with the only safe spot on top of the mound. He did consider if just waiting out the formation to run out of power was an option, but by the time those two spears were out of mana, the entire arena would already have been fully covered for several minutes.

As Jake was acknowledging her strategy, Gudrun finally made a move to attack. Probably to distract him from trying to think up any countermeasures of his own, but also because her energy infusion into all the javelins was complete. Throwing one of her weapons, Jake jumped out of the way pretty easily as the javelin embedded itself in the ground before exploding with golden light, sending out more of her golden lightning and leaving an area of weird, electrified sand.

She is shrinking my area of movement even further.

It wasn’t even close to hitting him, but it still kept him on his toes as she threw another, clearly to just buy time for the arena to shrink further as more areas of golden lightning appeared around him. Jake kept dodging a bit longer before he made a big leap to get some distance.

I guess it’s about time,Jake thought. In all honesty… he had hoped not to have to do this before becoming the Champion, but alas, Gudrun had indeed near-flawlessly countered Jake’s usual fighting style.

Holding out his hand, a bow appeared. His action seemingly took Gudrun by surprise as she paused her attack and yelled down from her sand mound.

“I will admit, I thought for a good while that quiver was just for show. Turns out you do have a bow, huh?” Gudrun said, still full of confidence. “I would very much like to learn if you actually know how to use that thing.”

smiled. She’d asked for

one swift movement, he pulled out

back to the basics. He had focused on every subtle movement that came with drawing the string, activating the right muscles, and naturally aiming. It was the foundation of

A slight misplacement of a finger or the most minor twist could make an arrow entirely miss, especially for someone

not simply “pull as hard as you can and let go when you can’t pull the string back any longer.” Sure, that would allow you to shoot a pretty powerful arrow, but it was not even necessarily the most powerful arrow one could shoot and definitely not the most

over short distances. Usually, it wasn’t something Jake had to worry about; however, this concept was reintroduced with full force when one began to use curved arrows. Based on how much power one put in, the arrow would curve more or less than one desired, and hitting the same target consistently quickly got

helped you understand your surroundings better but even your own body. And Jake had

exact spot dozens of times in a row, even when curving arrows. In other words, his accuracy was utterly ridiculous

much Jake could really improve on. He improved some small subtleties here and there and just optimized the process, but it was nothing really groundbreaking. At least not when it came to the purely physical aspect of

Jake began to focus on one thing, and one thing

Speed.

Overwhelming speed.

single time Jake drew the bow, arcane mana surged into its body and the string. The second he released, so did he activate this energy, and for the briefest moment, he turned the bow

got nullified by the next aspect he had infused. Even before he entered the Challenge Dungeon, Jake had

slower than arrows, so one

And it did.

them mid-flight quite yet. Instead, he controlled their flight before he even released the arrow. Making curved

if one threw a ball with a spin. Jake’s new way would be more equivalent to throwing a ball with

with shitty stats, all these improvements couldn’t show their full power yet. Ultimately, the Challenge Dungeon was just a minor event, and all upgrades he aimed for were

Jake’s level 0 archery was something Gudrun could easily

arrow. Gudrun, who had already taken out a shield looked smug... right up to the moment the arrow curved around

had even fully appeared, a second arrow came from the other side, hitting her in her

by Jake smirking as he sent

momentarily faltered as an arrow struck her in the stomach, making

plan had turned on her in an instant, as Gudrun had made one major miscalculation… Jake was far superior in ranged combat compared to

instant, the sand turned from

though he wasn’t sure how she did it. It felt like he just couldn’t “find” his

the pillars, and right as she breathed a sigh of relief, an arrow descended from right above her. Jake had aimed for

raise her shield in time, so he made it explode right in front of her, making the explosion hit her shield and knock her back

Jake only had five left. This was one of the clear downsides

than fifty mana on every single one of the arrows and had spent a few minutes on