The Primal Hunter

Jake had done the impossible. Accomplished something that surely deserved a 25% bonus to Nevermore Points simply due to this momentous achievement. As for what kind of miracle Jake had pulled off?

He had managed to actually stick to a plan.

Three Creations had been planned, and Jake had worked on them without any distractions or random things stealing away his attention. He didn’t even go fuck around in any of the worlds but just hunkered down and did his alchemy, with any expedition he did make highly focused on his goal.

For the transmutation, Jake wanted to pull out an old method from the Order that Jake had never really learned. Jake’s Touch of the Malefic Viper had begun to integrate parts of his arcane affinity in the transmutation process early on, which had certainly led to many advantages, but there were also drawbacks.

Jake’s arcane affinity had powerful innate concepts, but so did the original Touch of the Malefic Viper skill. The Path of the Malefic Viper was a Path that had led to the pinnacle and allowed a lowly snake to ascend all the way to godhood. Yet Jake didn’t really use many of these Records in any of his transmutation efforts. This was a ”weakness” Jake sought to address as he wanted to also be able to use a way of transmutation the Viper was incredibly well known for:

Corruption.

This wasn’t anything new to Jake. He had corrupted many things before but recently had kind of stopped. Now, he only corrupted stuff using his curse energy, and he wouldn’t even call what he did with his arcane energy corruption.

Jake recalled his fight against the Great White Stag, where he corrupted a ritual using his poison and Touch. He recalled when he infused the Quintessence with dark and poison energy down in the lake during the final dungeon in the Tutorial. Those times were far more classic cases of corruption where Jake infused concepts innate to toxins into objects or magical constructs to corrupt them.

Mind you, none of this would be an attempt to upgrade his Touch of the Malefic Viper. He wasn’t trying to do anything the skill didn’t already explicitly allow, but instead, something he had neglected properly learning how to do.

In some ways, one could view transmuting something through corruption to be akin to permanently poisoning an object.

Now, the process of learning – or perhaps relearning just at a higher conceptual level – was quite simple. Jake would just go around and corrupt whatever items he could find. Jake was kind of lucky that the factions in the many worlds did have items, even if they all tended to suck and never reached above epic rarity while at the same time barely being for C-grades. Alas, they were good enough when it came to learning how to corrupt things.

Ah, that was another thing. The prior times Jake corrupted stuff, he had kind of just rolled with it. He had no real control or end goal but had just poured in whatever toxic energy he could, hoping things would work out. He had focused too much on merely making an object toxic to its surroundings and never thought about controlling the corruption.

The reason why the Malefic Viper was so feared in the multiverse wasn’t just because of his ability to spread corruption… it was his ability to meticulously control it. To change an entity into something it was never meant to be, his every action made with intent behind it. In fact, his name itself came from his ability to corrupt things. It was the basis of the malefic-affinity, after all.

So… to summarize, Jake wanted to learn how to control the malefic concept infused through Touch of the Malefic Viper. At least the aspects of the concept he needed to transmute things. It was a pretty slow and arduous process, but with enough trial and error, Jake quickly got it down as he looted the armories of most of the factions in the medieval world – everyone still too distracted by the fact some maniac had blown up all their castle roofs to notice the sneaky thief who stole all their weapons.

his ritual, which he managed to complete a lot faster than he had ever expected. Perhaps he had set the bar too low for what he wanted to accomplish,

plan, that didn’t mean unexpected gains couldn’t appear. During the last many years, and even recently with his Unseen Arcane Hunter skill, Jake had truly pushed his Perception to the limit. During all this crafting, Jake poured in all his focus and attention as he scanned and kept an eye on everything during the crafting

he felt especially frustrated while trying to make his ritual work, Jake did everything to try and find the flaw. Kneeling down, Jake put both his hands on the magic circle as he poured in energy to try and identify what he was doing wrong, but he found nothing. At that moment, he was annoyed.

first, it didn’t work at all, but after a bit of pushing, he found an opening, and ever-so-slowly it slipped inside. Jake began to feel the entire magic circle far more intimately, and through that also discovered

go. Perception was his most powerful stat by far, and in all honesty, perhaps this was overdue, so Jake finally consolidated

those skills Jake rarely thought about but always used. Whenever he did any kind of alchemy, he would immerse his senses in the craft, and when he held a cauldron, it was as if it merged with his soul, allowing him to far more easily keep track – and thus

the many different floors he had gone through. He had even made several improvements to the skill already, even if it hadn’t gotten him an upgrade.

of hiding themselves or had defenders that helped hide them. While Sense could sometimes get around

would still pick it up. Before evolving to C-grade, everything within his sphere would

the floors, Jake often had to forage for his own ingredients, and using Pulse had proven invaluable there. Without even thinking about it, he quickly adapted Sense of the Malefic Viper to even work with things he

description itself. Jake wondered if all of this would be enough, but after only a little bit of pushing, the skill gave way as a notification

been taken without permission.

inflicted entities. Allows you to temporarily merge a part of your soul into a Soulbound cauldron or similar crafting device, making it effectively act as part of your body. Even without fully merging your soul, you will still receive all sensory benefits from using a Soulbound cauldron or

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to far more easily detect affinities in the environment and detect areas optimal for cultivating herbs. Massively improves your ability to sense all energies you have inflicted other entities with. Allows you to temporarily merge a part of your soul into objects and magical constructs you are in physical contact with during crafting, effectively making it a part of your body. Adds an increase to the effectiveness of Sense of the Malefic Viper based on Perception. All effects of Sense of the Malefic Viper are further improved within the body of the alchemist. Passively provides 9 Perception per level

expected, and this was definitely one of those cases. Jake had not entered this Challenge Dungeon thinking he would improve any of

that simply expanding the ability to infuse parts of his soul into more than a cauldron or a crafting device would have been enough for an upgrade, which was why the improvement to its base detection was more than welcome. It was more of a formality to add it, even if it did have some interesting implications. The wording had also changed quite a bit, with

to detect alchemical ingredients and gain an innate understanding of their properties, no matter the detection method used

through Bloodline stuff. He couldn’t help but wonder if this would have other implications down the line and how exactly the skill interacted with

no interest in submitting this skill improvement at all, primarily because nearly all of the improvements had been gained outside of the House of the Architect. Plus, it was still an in-rarity upgrade, making it far worse than

what he would submit were the two things he promptly used his newly improved

projects went even more smoothly. Jake had already semi-cheated by merging with weapons using Fang of Man when holding them to better feel the energies moving within, but

of the Malefic Viper improvement till he was ready to make the final push for these two submissions –

as a giant orb pulsed in the middle, having surrendered to Jake. The

deaths. The elemental energies within retain some of the instinctual wills of when