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.”

just smiled. She’d asked for it.

he pulled out an arrow and nocked

how to improve his archery for a good while. At first, he had just gone 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 all archery, after all, and someplace Jake

dove into it. A slight misplacement of a finger or the most minor twist could make an arrow entirely miss, especially for someone like Jake, who didn’t

Sure, that would allow you to shoot a pretty

while in flight, even if it was incredibly minor 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

talents came in. Perception was a stat that not only helped you understand your surroundings better but even your

reduced stats, Jake could consistently hit the same exact spot dozens of times in a row, even when curving arrows. In other words, his accuracy was utterly

improved some small subtleties here and there and just optimized the process, but it was nothing really groundbreaking. At least

focus on one thing, and one thing

Speed.

Overwhelming speed.

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

instantly got nullified by the next aspect he had infused. Even before he entered the Challenge Dungeon, Jake had infused plenty of mana into every single arrow he released, but he had been slacking when it came to

slower than arrows, so one would think that Jake making the arrows fly even

And it did.

released the arrow. Making curved arrows was already one aspect of doing this, but he wanted to introduce more nuance and make the flight

turn. It always had to have a semi-consistent curve to its flight, like if one threw a ball with a spin. Jake’s new way would be more equivalent to throwing a ball with a spin that also had a small bomb with a timer attached to it that would go off at

stats, all these improvements couldn’t show their full power yet. Ultimately, the Challenge Dungeon was just a minor event, and all

0 archery was something Gudrun could

surged through Jake’s body and weapon as he loosed the first arrow. Gudrun, who had already taken out a shield looked smug... right up to the moment the arrow curved around her shield and hit

as she summoned a second shield, but before the second one had even fully appeared, a second arrow came from the other side, hitting her in her other shoulder. Each

Jake smirking as he sent a mental

blood and broken armor flying. Gudrun’s shields momentarily faltered as an arrow struck her in the stomach, making her tumble back. She barely managed to get out of the way of the fourth arrow while the fifth hit her in her

the problems with her strategy was that the top of the mound didn’t really have any space to dodge. Her own plan had turned on her in an instant, as Gudrun had made

also clearly realized this as she rapidly retreated down the other side of the mound as the formation stopped working. In an instant, the sand turned

found himself unable to. She had done something to block it, Jake reckoned, though he wasn’t sure how she did it. It felt like he just couldn’t “find” his own arrows somehow, despite clearly seeing them

managed to block all of them except one that flew by and left a cut on her already exposed forearm. She got behind one of the pillars, and right as she breathed a

arrow she still managed to block, if barely. Jake had expected her to raise her shield in time, so he made it explode right in

immediately after that, and the reason for that was quite obvious… Jake only had five left. This was one of the clear downsides of his current

option either. Jake had spent more than fifty mana on every single one of the arrows and had spent a few minutes on each. He had effectively created twenty-four small