The Primal Hunter

Having an itch always sucked, especially when it was somewhere that was hard to reach, such as that particular spot on your back. However, Jake would argue that one of the worst places to have a serious itch was inside your damn eyeballs.

After getting the notification, Jake’s eyes subtly began changing, and with that came the intense itching. It made him want to scratch his own eyes out, but he resisted the urge as seconds that felt like minutes slowly passed. He had closed his eyes the second the change began to happen as his vision completely distorted during the restructuring. He faintly felt every part of his two eyeballs being remade, making him more sure than ever that should anyone ever manage to kill him, they would get some dope eyes as drops, ones that were potentially even at mythical rarity now.

Of course, Jake didn’t have any plans of dying, but occupying his mind with weird thoughts was the best thing he could do to distract himself from clawing out his own eyes. Luckily, the process was soon complete, and Jake opened his eyes again and…

Well, he couldn’t really tell anything had happened. It was not that surprising, considering he hadn’t actively aimed to make his eyesight better, and as he didn’t have any other people to look at, he couldn’t test the ability to look at other people’s souls.

With the evolution of his eyes completely done, he could also finally turn his attention to the skill upgrade itself. Jake stared at the skill for a while but didn’t get longer than the name alone before he had something he bit onto. Primal Gaze. Jake hadn’t expected the skill to necessarily become named “Gaze of the Primal Hunter,” but he sure hadn’t expected it to be Primal Gaze either. What did that even mean?

Clearly, it meant that ”primal” concepts had been infused into the skill, but not to the degree of turning it into a Primal Hunter skill. It felt more like a halfway point before becoming a true Legacy skill for him, and if that was true, wasn’t it still kind of awesome?

Because that would indicate that when he upgraded it to a true Primal Hunter skill, it would be one above mythical rarity.

Another possible part of the explanation why it wasn’t “of the Primal Hunter” was due to the inherent Records of the “of the Apex Hunter” concept being too powerful. Jake was ultimately still only a C-grade, and unless he did something unique to himself, it was difficult to make a skill that could truly be called part of his own budding Legacy, especially if it was built on top of a legendary skill.

Something like the Core Manipulation skill was something unique that relied on Jake’s unique concepts, so it was easy to make the vast majority of the Records in the skill belong wholly to Jake. The same was true with the Moment and Eternal Shadow skills that both came to be due to his Bloodline more or less directly getting involved.

Primal Gaze, on the other hand, was a true mix. It wasn’t truly something Jake had made himself but was instead only filled with Records that very closely aligned with his Bloodline and who he was. Jake did have full confidence that one day it would become a Legacy skill, but for now, he wasn’t going to complain about what he had gotten.

As a final note, the skill did also at least include mentions of who he was, with the nice little sentence: “May your gaze inspire primal fear in all who dare impede the Path of the Primal Hunter.” This pretty much served as confirmation that the skill was well on its way to becoming a Legacy skill.

Now, the actual upgrade to the skill was in the form of pure additions rather than any major changes. It was just Jake adding on “primal” aspects to the existing Gaze of the Apex Hunter, upgrading it without changing any of the fundamentals.

inspire fear in targets he showed hostility toward? That last part of the skill definitely wasn’t something he had intended to add or even expected, but something that seemed

people. At least, he instinctively

it on targets he didn’t wanna risk a direct soul clash against, and secondly, it meant he could use it strategically. What if he used regular Gaze in a fight against someone a time or two, making them adapt by keeping constant energy barriers ready, only for him to unleash a

of catch-up after having spent so long as a level 0 in the Colosseum of Mortals, and if the dungeon hadn’t taken his items, he

in this particular story, also reminding him he was still inside the Test of Character Challenge Dungeon. Jake, with his Sphere of Perception now working properly, had early warning

Jake quickly relinquished control as his character returned to being an unconscious guy without any resources. A few guards arrived shortly after and didn’t notice anything wrong as they

back to just being a spectator. He had been in the isolation cell for about ten days, and during this time, no one had come by to even check on him, though the magic circle meant to keep him trapped did have the ability to

by and made sure he was awake and lucid. Once it was confirmed the character was awake – and very distressed – he was dragged off again toward a large building Jake quickly came to learn was a courthouse of

not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report

that he had no recollection of anything he was accused of and that he had potentially been mind controlled or at least messed with by some soul mage. Pretty much, they were just trying to

story required them to prove a motive before he

a truth-telling skill like Silas anywhere. Jake tended to be pretty good at discerning if people were telling the

continued as Jake spent several days being dragged

out, the investigations into whether the guy had somehow been controlled really got momentum, which

holding cell, the truth was revealed. One of the guards approached the cell, and Jake instantly knew something was off. The guard looked like the regular guard,

Eversmile?

and killed a bunch of people! What’s more, the shapeshifter had done all this as a job for a powerful local bigshot to

sorts at home, where he just slept for a week straight while experiencing weird dreams that made

long, the bigshot decided that assassinating Jake’s character and making it look like a suicide due to guilt would be for the best,

had taken over the guy’s body – which technically wasn’t untrue – the shapeshifter turned on the bigshot, and

have expected, but there was more corruption and more shapeshifters around who also worked for this bigshot. Anyway, to make a long story short, Jake ended up gathering up a crowd of around two dozen shapeshifters and kindly threatened them with very painful deaths. It was only after that things ended in a satisfactory way, though it did also include Jake dismantling several institutions in the judicial system. So,

in stories,

much resigned himself to getting a shit evaluation for doing this Challenge Dungeon. The advice he had gotten from both Villy and the Wyrmgod didn’t really help him much, as both just boiled down to being himself… but hey, maybe that actually meant he was doing super well and was on his way to the best evaluation ever? When you didn’t know the criteria you were being measured by, it was pretty