The Primal Hunter

Jake felt pretty good about having one submission down, with only nine more to go. His written plans were already entirely off just from him deciding to submit a damn conversation as a Creation, but Jake didn’t regret it at all. In fact, he believed it was a great move.

He wasn’t blind to his own uniqueness, and he got the feeling being unique counted even more than the attendant let on, but this wasn’t the only reason he submitted the encounter. While Jake had gone over the things that mattered for Creations, it could all be boiled down to one thing: Records.

The Records infused into an object were the only true determiner. More quality Records would mean higher quality and rarity, with the Architect giving an even higher evaluation if it was solely your Records. However, the final product – its overall Records – still mattered. And where could Jake get more Records than from a Bound God with power that surpassed even Primordials? From a being that was the living personification of the most known World Wonder in the entire multiverse? Not that his own Records were anything to look down on either.

So, yeah. Jake was wholly satisfied with his first submission. Also, it was entirely different from anything else Jake could possibly submit, meaning that even if it ended up being a bit of a dud, it wouldn’t drag down the overall evaluation much compared to if Jake had just submitted another kind of poison or some inferior product.

Having exited the room with the Architect, Jake also felt that the livestream was back on. He briefly looked up and waved as he went to check out some of the other interesting places in the House of the Architect. Being on the top floor, he decided to just go down and check what was on every floor. Or, at the very least, check what the signs there said.

Flying down one floor, Jake saw only a single door once more. Curious, Jake went close as he entered it, and the moment he did, he felt the livestream getting cut off again. Frowning, Jake felt space around him expand as he found himself standing in a nearly entirely white room with a single attendant right by the door and a number of portals floating all around him. In total, he counted nine portals.

“Welcome to the portal room, Creator. Is there anything I can help you with?” the male attendant, who looked like a butler with his slightly altered uniform, asked.

“Could you tell me a bit about this room?”

“Most certainly. The portal room allows you to travel to several worlds to acquire certain types of materials you may require. This includes people you may need for your creative processes or certain limited ingredients for your more regular crafts. Do be aware that these worlds are uniquely created by the Architect herself and will not have many of the usual ingredients you may experience from a natural world. Instead, they will only serve as catalysts or objectives for certain merit missions,” the attendant politely explained.

“When you say people, do you also mean people to potentially teach if I want to submit an improved student as a Creation?” Jake asked, also biting onto the last part about merit missions but putting off that topic for now. He would go visit the merit place later to figure out how all of that worked.

“Most certainly,” the attendant answered with a smile. “Do you want me to explain the properties of each world?”

Jake didn’t hesitate as he agreed, allowing the attendant to do his thing. It wasn’t a waste of time either. Jake learned that each world was widely different, with varying properties, cultures, and whatnot. One of the worlds he instantly wrote off as it was an entirely underwater world, making Jake question if the Architect knew how to design dungeons properly. It was a bit embarrassing, really, considering she literally was a dungeon. Then again, it wasn’t like he had to go there, so maybe he could consider it barely forgivable to have an optional water level.

As for the other eight worlds, Jake quickly narrowed it down to three he definitely had to visit. One was a vast planet that was pure wilderness, the other was a highly established metropolis, while the third was your regular medieval setting with different factions and whatnot. His plan for these worlds was to primarily look for people he could potentially teach.

Jake had never seen himself as much of a teacher, but considering the nature of this Challenge Dungeon and that he had not just a legendary teaching skill but was a human with his teaching-related race skills, Jake decided he should at least give it a shot. If not, he would learn not to waste time doing something like that later in his life.

Leaving the portal room, Jake checked out more floors and quickly got an understanding of the place. All the different floors had varying crafting rooms and themes. Entire floors were dedicated to alchemy, others to smithing, tailoring, engineering, and woodworking… the number of rooms was almost endless. Plus, Jake had a strong feeling that should someone with a really unique profession come along, the Architect would accommodate them and make a suitable room.

He also learned that whenever Jake entered one of these many rooms, the livestream would be cut off. Jake reckoned this was to stop even the Wyrmgod from gathering too much information, or maybe it was just the Architect being petty and wanting to show off that this was her Challenge Dungeon and for others to stop snooping. In either case, Jake liked knowing he could do whatever he wanted without worrying. He wasn’t afraid of the Architect leaking anything, as she already knew far more than she should and hadn’t shared it yet.

After checking out all the rooms, he went to the final thing he wanted to check out: the Merit Points Exchange. It was on the ground floor and prominently displayed. The exchange itself was a huge building, and walking inside, Jake saw hundreds of attendants who all looked busy at work. Jake felt pretty weird about it, considering he was the only one who would ever visit the place, and most of the work they did just seemed like they were trying to look busy.

Trying to ignore it, Jake went to the main counter within the exchange to talk to one of five attendants who manned the counter… again, why the hell were there five when this was a damn Challenge Dungeon only one person could enter at a time?

I help you?” the attendant asked, mirroring the speech pattern of

me some general

Merit Points Exchange was exactly as Jake predicted. You could get missions or turn in stuff to get Merit Points and then spend these Merit Points on ingredients for crafting. Jake also quickly realized the

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these ten concoctions for more than he used the materials on. A lot more. In fact, they would even buy

Points to purchase even more materials. So, while it seemed like Jake had

Points to get the entire loop started. Looking through the different

Point Mission: Collect

Progress: Remonotous Fruits collected

Reward: 750 Merit Points

before in the portal room. The second mission he also prepared to pick up was one that took

12 letters

Letters delivered

Reward: 500 Merit Points

the third one… where he had to quite literally return lost pets. But at least this one rewarded more than the

lost

Progress: Pets

Reward: 1000 Merit Points

world at a time, so that did suck a bit. Jake always liked it in games when he could pick up several quests in the same area and do them all at once. Made him feel like he was being clever and more efficient than the game expected, despite knowing deep down the developers designed it to be

the attendant and handed him the three papers. Because, yes, despite there being a system menu,

attendant said with his perfect customer service smile. “Are there any other missions you would

I would if I had any,” Jake joked back, the friendly yet deadpan

5000 Merit Points,” the attendant just said instead, Jake needing

said. “So you start with

the Creator to keep

gamed the system even more than he first thought with

Jake quickly decide to get away from the creepy, perfect-acting attendants. Despite not necessarily having to do the missions as he did have some points, Jake still decided to give them a go, as he wanted to explore those three worlds no matter what, and doing

the portal room and into this world. The moment he stepped through, he appeared standing atop a large cliff, staring

prompt popped up in front of him a second or so later, displaying his current mission for the world, which included a picture of the fruit he had to go collect a whole bunch of. Playing a bit with the system, Jake was surprised to see he had no way to bring up how many Merit

the same way the Colosseum Points had. Yeah, that was definitely a question to ask one of those attendants once he got back, assuming they would

world in front of him, Jake summoned his wings. Stretching them a bit, it felt good to fully spread them out and be

plenty of plant lifeforms also sitting here and there.