The Primal Hunter

If you stood before a rail with a switch in front of you, that could change the path of an oncoming train onto another path, with five people tied to the train’s original path and only one on the…

Okay, everyone knows the trolley problem. Apparently, the Wyrmgod did, too, as Jake was presented with one that was pretty much a magical carbon copy where he could choose who to teleport away from an incoming monster horde. As for Jake’s choice?

Why not just kill the monsters?

Which is what he did.

Jake didn’t know if the system didn’t like that or something, as, in the very next story, Jake was represented with a very similar scenario. However, this time, he was on a whole other planet operating a teleporter where he could either choose to let the story run its course or teleport a bigger group if he personally intervened.

As for Jake’s choice? He did nothing.

See, he didn’t really see this as a legitimate trolley problem, the same as back on Earth. He felt It was more like one of those modified ones, where you got told that the one person you killed to save five actually had the cure to cancer in their head, and you were now a monster who had doomed millions to die due to your decision. Of course, Jake didn’t know this was the case, but he also didn’t know it wasn’t, so he just let the character who was in charge of teleporting do his thing, assuming he knew better.

Ultimately, Jake didn’t really see why he should care much which group was saved either way. He didn’t know who they were, and if he was to make a purely utilitarian judgment call, he lacked the information to do that. What if the smaller group he saved were all C-grades with good future prospects, while the larger group was filled with F and E-grades who had a better chance of randomly becoming Transcendents than reaching D-grade?

So, with all that in mind, Jake remained passive when he couldn’t directly interfere to change the situation to something he thought was better. If he could reveal his true power to save people, he saw no reason not to, but if he had to make these weird moral choices, he chose not to engage. He was aware that in itself was a choice, but it was one he stuck to.

There was one of these trolley-problem stories where Jake did choose what to do. It was one where he was riding a space shuttle that was crashing toward a star, and he had to decide who could evacuate in escape pods. Jake himself was the captain in this one and the person who had been flying the spaceship when he had fucked up and hit an asteroid before Jake entered the story.

With only a total of fifteen escape pods but twenty-five people on board, ten people had to stay and die. During the story, he had gotten to know all the other crew members as they tried to repair the spaceship before it was too late, and when the final choice of who to escape appeared, Jake knew what to do as he took control.

“Well, to say we’re fucked is an understatement… only fifteen of us are getting out of here, which means ten will have to say. So, let me first ask first… any volunteers for dying?” Jake questioned before he did something none of the crew members had expected as he raised his hand.

Jake had learned something during this story he genuinely hadn’t known. That entire thing where the captain goes down with his ship was not a thing in the multiverse. In fact, it tended to be the opposite. Seeing as the captain was often the person with the highest level, he would often be evacuated first as he held more value. A high-level captain could have more value than the entire spaceship itself, so to lose both was just unnecessary in the eyes of most.

However, Jake didn’t agree with this. In his eyes, the captain – himself - in this case, had been the one who had fucked up. He had hit an asteroid due to his own incompetence and gotten at least nine others killed, so of course, he had to take responsibility or at least stay on the spaceship till the very end and try to fix the situation he had created.

Anyway, Jake volunteering to go down with the ship also made five others decide to stay behind. As they did this, Jake suddenly got an odd feeling as he stared at one of the crew members who had decided to leave. He got the feeling she needed to stay… so he made that happen.

“The remaining four who stay will be decided by chance to make it fair,” Jake said, as he proceeded to use his Bloodline to entirely rig the game of chance to make that one specific woman stay with him and the other volunteers. She looked devastated when she realized she had lost, but still accepted the result as fifteen people took the escape pods, leaving ten of them in a spaceship that couldn’t fly, barreling toward a star. They still had a bit less than two days till impact, but things were definitely less than stellar.

to keep the female crew member who was one of the engineers. With excitement, she ran to him and said she had found a potential solution to allow them to survive. By blowing up one of the engines, they could take advantage of a storm of space mana that was approaching, pushing them just enough to enter orbit around the

power didn’t do shit. Something he had noticed was a general theme. Either power didn’t matter at all, as everything else was just

the engineer’s plan turned out to work, and in the epilogue, Jake saw his captain character and the rest of the crew miraculously survive. It did also show his character getting scolded by his superiors for not escaping in a pod, but ultimately, he was still hailed as a hero along with the engineer for

from this test was to always trust his gut and that rigging a game of chance was acceptable as long as it was for the greater good.

genuinely interesting due to the setting, his attention span was waning. Most of them just weren’t that engaging or interesting to him, and he felt like he was wasting time. Moreover, most stories took over

felt slower and slower. Soon Jake had done sixty, then seventy, eighty, ninety… Jake had no idea when it would end until finally, he reached story number one hundred. This story in itself didn’t have anything hugely enjoyable about

and the princess was not saved from a dragon that just turned out to have a massive crush on her, he

these kinds of

the Test of

Evaluation performance…

just the setup for another story or something. Jake was sure happy to finally be out and was

aware that it

evaluation. One that he had to admit he was kind of nervous about. It had to be reiterated, but Jake had no idea how he had done or what he

lack of dedication to certain Paths and a lack of interest in understanding stories, even when doing so could prove beneficial to you personally. Throughout

dedication toward something that he really didn’t like doing? Sure, it said he didn’t display interest even when doing so could have benefitted him, but it wasn’t like missing some benefits here and there would ruin him. He could always just make up for

kind of hated the Challenge Dungeon was simply due to how “complicated” it was. He liked to keep things simple, and some grand social experiment mixed with a personality test wasn’t something he

some more Nevermore Points and another multiplier, so that was nice to see. With this, he got his points above

Nevermore Points: 907.602

time around, and from the looks of it, there were no levels either. This did make him question if any of these Challenge Dungeons

Especially not when he got the other reward from the Challenge Dungeon

At first, Jake was confused, but when he used

Records of a skill into the storybook page. Ripping a page infused with the Records of a skill will grant you an opportunity to upgrade the skill. The effect is lower the higher the rarity

Requirements: C-grade. Soulbound

the multiverse and would allow

wish to exit the Test of

be taken within this Challenge

sighed, happy he was finally done with the damn Test of Character Challenge Dungeon. Looking up, he stared straight at where he

then you are just doing chores. Definitely one to go back to the drawing board with. And if you say that my not liking it is proof I shouldn’t have gotten a better evaluation,

to do a damn live documentary of his life, he should at least have the right to get a