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.

thing Jake worked hard on was 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, or

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

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. It was so much easier when he used a cauldron as Jake had an almost innate feeling for everything

his body? So Jake tried to do just that as he attempted to pour in some of his soul energy. At 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 a minor flaw that led to a bottleneck in the energy transfers within, which was what currently

so, Jake had a thought and decided to just give it a go. Perception was his most powerful stat by far, and in all honesty, perhaps this was overdue, so Jake finally consolidated all of his

he would immerse his senses in the craft, and when he held a cauldron, it was as if it merged with

he had gone through. He had even made several improvements to the skill already, even if it hadn’t

had ways of hiding themselves or had defenders that helped hide them. While Sense could sometimes get around this, there were also

Sphere of Perception and Pulse of Perception would still pick it up. Before evolving to C-grade, everything within his sphere would also be more than close enough for him to feel it using Sense of the Malefic Viper, but after evolving, that had changed, especially when introducing

about it, he quickly adapted Sense of the Malefic Viper to even work with things he only ”saw” using Pulse. It wasn’t as good

Jake wondered if all of this would be enough, but after only a little bit of pushing, the skill gave way as a notification popped up in front of

narrative has been taken

you have inflicted and its effects on any 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 similar crafting device. 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 3 Perception per level in Alchemist of the Malefic Viper. May your gaze scour the multiverse

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to discover all the world has to offer ceaseless. Gives a passive ability to detect alchemical ingredients and gain an innate understanding of their properties, no matter the detection method used to uncover them. Allows the alchemist 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

least expected, and this was definitely one of those cases. Jake had not entered this Challenge Dungeon thinking

been enough for an upgrade, which was why the improvement to its base detection was

an innate understanding of their properties, no matter the detection method used

wonder if this would have other implications down the line and how exactly the skill interacted with his intuition when searching for

had 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 something like his new Unseen

submit were the two things he promptly used

even more smoothly. Jake had already semi-cheated by merging with weapons using Fang of

of the Malefic Viper improvement till he was ready to make the final push

that was nearly thirty meters in diameter as a giant orb pulsed in the middle, having surrendered to Jake. The multi-colored orb was nearly five meters in radius and it looked

of the instinctual wills of when the elementals were still alive, making the Spirit Orb incredibly challenging to work with. Contains a mix of highly concentrated