The Primal Hunter

So, Jake actually ran into a bit of a problem with his experimentation. Testing out the effectiveness of his poison and curse shouldn’t be that hard, right? Except who was Jake supposed to test it out on? The defenseless prisoners down in the cellar of the House of the Architect? Random beasts or low-level monsters in one of the worlds? No, all the options were shit, and not just because it would leave a bad taste in Jake’s mouth, but because he wanted to give Eternal Hunger something tasty. Something it actually wanted to eat.

Weak creatures didn’t strike the cursed weapon’s fancy, and Jake wanted a poison that would really help turn the curse energy ravenous when it mattered. There was also the problem that Jake needed similar targets to compare results. Most alchemists achieved this by testing on live targets that they then healed up again, this often even being people who could give feedback on the torture they had to endure – a fate Meira nearly suffered as a slave.

Yeah, Jake wasn’t going to randomly become a torturer. He also wasn’t even sure it would work. The entire point was to turn his curse energy uncontrollable, so it was a foregone conclusion that Jake wouldn’t be in full control. Due to that, he had no way of ensuring he wouldn’t accidentally kill his target. If he did that, any experimentation would be wasted as he needed to start over with a new test subject, which seemed needlessly cruel.

He then considered if he could just use himself, but no matter what he did, his curse energy didn’t hurt him. It was probably because he wasn’t just the user of the curse energy but also the source. Even if the Sin Curse was hungry beyond anything, it still didn’t make any moves to devour Jake himself, which was kind of a new discovery in itself. He did wonder why this was for a while until he quickly reached the conclusion that it was due to Sim-Jake having merged with the curse.

Records of his other self existed within the curse energy, and the curse energy would never try to devour itself. In the same vein, it would now not try to ever devour Jake. At least, that was his best guess. It could also be that Sim-Jake has blessed the Sin Curse with faint instinctual self-preservation that made it aware that killing Jake would also result in it killing itself.

It had to be noted here that Jake was very different compared to Casper and Temlat as a curse user. Both of them created their own curse energy using their souls and resources, while Jake just wielded a weapon with a powerful curse. He didn’t have any inherent curse energy but happened to have sealed and bound an insurmountable amount of curse energy within his own Soulspace. This was also why Jake couldn’t do something like summon curse bolts or whatever by just transforming his energy. If he wanted to do something like that, he would have to channel the energy from the Soulspace.

This also resulted in Jake theoretically having a finite amount of curse energy. The word theoretically being used in this case as Eternal Hunger was pretty damn good at keeping itself fed and even fatting itself up through Jake’s actions.

Anyway, to return from the sidetrack, the reality was that his own katar didn’t want to eat him, requiring Jake to find another unfortunate victim to experiment on.

That is when Jake got a brilliant idea. He needed people to experiment on who would be receptive and not fight back during the experiments while not suffering at the same time. It would have to be someone pretty much immortal and highly helpful. This was usually not a thing – outside of perhaps Eron if Jake could convince him - but here in the House of the Architect, Jake had the perfect candidates.

“Excuse me, could you help me with something?” Jake asked as he went up to one of the many attendants walking around doing nothing in the House of the Architect.

“Most certainly,” the attendant responded with a smile. “How can I assist you?”

“Would you be able to be my test subject regarding a Creation I am working on? Ah, for clarity, I will need you to have near-infinite health points and be immortal during the experimentation while giving me feedback on the results of my tests. Oh, finally, can you make yourself level… let’s just say 320?” Jake asked.

“I will do my utmost, but I must warn you that any energy extracted from my body will not be useable as part of any Creations,” the attendant answered without a moment of hesitation to Jake’s ridiculous request.

“Oh, that’s fine; I just want to test the potency of a mix between a curse and a poison,” Jake said casually.

“I see. I must add further that when it comes to feedback, I will only be able to answer any questions and not volunteer information,” the attendant further elaborated. “More restrictions may also apply. Is this acceptable to the Creator? If not, there are plenty of potential test subjects in the worlds through the portals and the lower floors of the House.”

with a nod. “Ah, finally, can you turn off your own perception of pain to

is what the Creator wants,” the attendant nodded, being very

imagine and quickly got experimenting. The attendant quickly followed him to the lab, where he took off his

attendant gladly helping whenever he could. Having already prepared a few potential

Hunger in hand, Jake started out by doing a few baseline tests by punching the attendant in the stomach while activating the curse energy in the mythical weapon. His katar easily penetrated flesh and drew blood from the male human attendant, yet the man didn’t even react, even as he had a

attendant’s life energy. Alas, Jake felt that only a few seconds later, this energy dispersed, having not truly benefitted the weapon or Jake in any

he had the attendant compare the effectiveness of each attack, and Jake noted down the baseline “damage number” as 100. Each hit Jake made dealt between 97-103 damage on this scale. This number was after Jake factored out the damage done from the stab alone by also doing a few

needed a few of these stabs to establish he could hit pretty much in the exact same way several times in a row if he so wished. Jake had brilliant control and had a good

baseline down, it was time to

he had created prior. It seemed to nearly instantly evaporate, but it, in fact, stuck to the weapon as

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“Prepare yourself,” Jake said.

“Very well.”

and made it come to life. The katar penetrated the attendant’s stomach easily before Jake pulled it out and observed the results. He counted down how long it took for the curse to be eliminated by the attendant’s vital energy and got a feel for the damage as he looked at

lost, Jake frowned. “A 91, huh? But the curse energy dispersed in nearly half

its usual speed. Curses were usually slow burns, much like poisons. They took time to properly take effect. Jake’s Eternal Hunger curse was a bit different as it was usually

Which was, in all honesty, not something Jake was really interested in. Sure, if it worked faster, it was fine, but not at the loss

stabbing the attendant again as he once more evaluated the

had acted slow as fuck, so even if it had done more damage overall, its damage per second was far, far lower, having taken nearly four times

many more concoctions over the next few days, most of which he could sell back for a Merit Point profit after he tested some from each batch. He got different

couldn’t figure out what he was missing and even began looking in the books to see if there was some crucial ingredient that could help him, but nothing

cursed items. It wasn’t even directly related to what Jake was doing, but as he read the

existing curse energy more potent. I should

book talked about how one would often use “bait” to activate certain cursed items to draw out their energy more easily, which got Jake thinking… why didn’t he do that? If there was something he had a lot of, it

ever use or control as a C-grade. It was a bit like how he walked around with a drop of blood from the Malefic Viper that could probably poison a god to death if Jake had any way

using bait. He used some of the ingredients it suggested, which, luckily enough, turned out to primarily be a slightly modified version of the usual healing potion. Jake was very lucky in many ways, as the Sin Curse of Hunger was considered the simplest

later, Jake made his first uncommon rarity version of this poison and quickly tested it with his very