The Primal Hunter

Exactly how long is this gonna take? Jake wondered as he balanced atop the pole of stable arcane mana, holding his bow ready. It has to have a time limit or something, right?

Staring down, he observed the arena below, mainly using his sphere as the dense miasma covered pretty much everything. Inside this cloud of thick miasma, right smack-center of the arena, lay a torso with only a head attached. Fifteen meters away to one side was a leg, an arm was nailed to the wall in another direction, the second leg was thrown all the way to Jake’s starting area, and the final arm was nailed into another wall directly opposite the first. Well, alright, the limbs weren’t all in complete condition, but the majority of them were spread out like that, with a few fingers and plenty of minor parts just lying about below.

Jake had entered his rematch with the Necromancer, now knowing what kind of foe he would be dealing with. He spent his fifteen days preparing everything he could while replaying the same damn social interactions again with Polly and Owen. Only through sheer struggle did he overcome the urge to bring up future knowledge and attempt to convince them he was actually a time god.

As for the fight itself… there was not much to say. Jake had learned all he needed about the Necromancer’s fighting style during their first fight, and for the second time around, he didn’t bother with some big finishers.

Instead, he quickly moved to get the upper hand by using his special arrow to take off one of the Necromancer’s legs. After that, he promptly separated it from the Necromancer and, one by one, severed his limbs primarily using ranged attacks. With one leg, the Necromancer couldn’t really dodge anything, and using mana strings, Jake was quicker at yanking away limbs than the Necromancer.

Of course, that still meant he had a cloud of miasma to deal with, but Jake also had a way to handle that.

When Jake had entered the fight initially, he had not only brought what he could store in his Ring of Deft Hands but also several poles of stable arcane energy with one end sharpened, making them look almost like spears. Two of these were now used to hold limbs in place; two had gotten destroyed, and Jake was standing on top of one that had been embedded into the top of one of the pillars. There were still a few left in the miasma below, but he didn’t need those anymore.

Once the Necromancer was well and truly cut up, the miasma nearly covered the entire arena, at which point Jake penetrated the pole into the top of one of the pillars and stood on it. The miasma was heavier than air, it seemed, and it never went higher than a little above the pillars, so when Jake stood on a two-meter pole, he was entirely in the clear. It was also a nice way to practice his archery while balancing.

Because even if the Necromancer had lost all his limbs, he still tried to get them back. Jake hadn’t seen it the first time around, even if the Necromancer did mention during their short conversation before the fight he was capable of it, but the dude could summon skeletons. Weak-ass skeletons, but skeletons, nevertheless. He didn’t try to fight Jake with them but used them to retrieve his limbs, so Jake still had to keep an eye out and shoot a skeleton once in a while as the minutes passed.

Standing there, waiting for the Necromancer to just die already, he had plenty of time to fully reflect on his prior loss. It had been his first ”death” ever since the system arrived, even if it wasn’t a true death. Jake would have thought the feeling would have been more upsetting, but he felt oddly fine with it… because he knew that if this had not been a Challenge Dungeon but the real world, he would have just upped and left the second the Necromancer became seemingly immortal.

Jake wasn’t averse to retreating if the situation wasn’t salvageable. He just treated the Challenge Dungeon differently, as he knew dying was just part of the experience. If he treated the real world like the dungeon by just staying moronically in a fight he couldn't win, Jake would have died quite a few times already, such as when he nearly fell to that damn mushroom below Haven when he was still in E-grade or versus the Termite King.

Comparing a true death to one inside a Challenge Dungeon was just idiotic. Besides, many Challenge Dungeons were designed to only end when one died. Maybe the Colosseum of Mortals even worked like that. One also had to remember that these were fights taking place in an unfavorable setting where Jake would avoid fighting if it was a true fight to the death.

The arena was just ridiculously advantageous for someone like the Necromancer. Seriously, it was a small, enclosed arena versus a semi-immortal guy who was all about outlasting his opponent who created a cloud of miasma. A cloud that, under any normal circumstances, Jake could have just stayed away from for the entire duration of the fight, making it a total non-issue.

Finally… if this had been a fight in the real world, Jake would have been willing to risk far more. For if true death was on the table, he would be willing to pull on anything to survive and, at the very least, try to ensure mutual destruction.

Jake was thrown out of his thoughts as he suddenly felt the miasma below start to thin out, signifying something had changed with the Necromancer. For a second, Jake considered if there was a second phase or some shit like that, but when he focused… he felt that the soul of the Necromancer had left his body as his final words echoed out.

”Your victory… well-earned…”

to evaporate instantly, and even the small insignificant smidgens in Jake’s

and hard-fought battle, but the Gauntlet of

that sounded out… and Jake’s suspension of disbelief was seriously beginning to wane. Did nobody in the audience care that the fight had effectively been Jake bisecting his opponent and then waiting on a pole for a good ten minutes for him to die? If Jake had been an audience member, he would have demanded his money back, especially considering you couldn’t

fool’s game. So, rather than waste his time and mental energy, he walked out of the arena, his next

And Jake, after doing some research, had already decided on who he wanted to fight next. Originally, the plan had been the Lord of the Hunt, but during these fifteen days, he happened to encounter a

a Bloodline, after

couldn’t either. While the Archmage and Necromancer had both wanted a full month, the Phoenix Queen made the wait just three days. This did put Jake on a bit of an unexpected

that interesting of

we had to make him a one-trick pony, or the fight would have been impossible,” Minaga said, leaning back. ”And Jake dealt with his one trick and won. Pretty simple, really. Or are you saying we should have given him

the real Undying General would not die to something that simple, and he had plenty of methods to control his miasmic cloud and keep his opponents and allies inside of it, but for the Challenge Dungeon, they had to make him way weaker or he would indeed have been impossible. It was very much the same

four Champions, Vilastromoz would rate two of them as straight-up

be a clash of opposing Bloodlines. A Bloodline rooted in the power of illusions that sought to fool your opponent’s senses and fool reality itself and one that was purely Perception-based. It was a rare opportunity

should not have been surprised by

breathing as she unleashed her magic. Transparent flaming wings sprung from her back, spewing out fire like there was no tomorrow. All in an attempt to

nothing as he loosed the occasional arrow, forcing the Phoenix Queen to try and dodge or block. She had about a seventy-percent chance to avoid getting hit, but with time,

she did seemed to work. Jake was pretty burnt in many places, but the more time passed, the less he

taken a bit longer than he would

to Jake’s Bloodline-powered senses, yet at any moment, they could become real and burn you, with the opposite also being true: very

were real but that you couldn’t feel. These flames could even be ”real” to the body but only illusions to your clothes, making you burn without your equipment getting affected. It was like they

there was no other way for anyone normal. Jake was far

was that… well, it didn’t really work properly on him? At least it didn’t seem

she could change their states, it wasn’t instant, so he had a pretty easy time dodging the fires that actually hurt while they were still transitioning from fake

in a sea of flames by themselves, especially not for a

this mana… as chances are

the same level, the main decider was whose Bloodline was better… and, well, Jake won handily there. If Jake had been level 250 and faced the Phoenix Queen as

with the magic directly but were more something based entirely on himself. His Sphere, though? Yeah, even the level 0 Phoenix Queen’s illusory flames took Jake a moment to