The Primal Hunter

The submissions of Jake’s two latest Creations went as smoothly as always, with no real surprises. The Architect was good at forcing him to leave once the job was done, not giving him any way to glean more details than she allowed.

Jake was fully aware both the transmuted Spirit Orb and the ritual itself weren’t that good Creations, at least not by the standards of Jake being a Chosen. Sure, they were okay Creations and many would be proud of them, but nothing to write home about. In some ways, Jake had chosen to submit them not just because he wanted some diversity with his submissions but because he wanted to improve both those aspects of his current alchemy. Especially the two of them in conjunction with one another.

It would effectively allow Jake to set up far larger rituals to corrupt things. The ritual would naturally also work with his arcane affinity, and he could totally see himself laying that down for large-scale transmutation projects down the line.

Anyway, with the ritual and transmutation-based Creation submitted, Jake had four more overall but only needed to come up with two more. Temlat and his “normal” poison were both work-in-progress, and he had already semi-counted them.

With that in mind, Jake had a significantly shortened list remaining, with only three topics to work on… though he may have to come up with more.

1. Skill-related thing. Based on magic and mana.

2. Origin-related Creation. This may be done during one of the prior Creations.

3. Something weird Bloodline-related?

It was a very short list, and it really put into perspective how difficult it was for someone to submit ten sufficiently different and valuable Creations. Even if you could include intangible things like skills, it took a lot of imagination to guess what a good Creation would be. Would it be considered good to submit a Creation that was just Jake wiping out all life in the different worlds? Or would it instead be good to maybe submit one where he made peace between all the races in that medieval world? That was the kind of stuff Jake could definitely see someone like Jacob or even the Fallen King doing. Though their methods would differ quite noticeably.

These worlds added so many layers and possibilities. However, Jake still believed the best Creations came in the form of items. If he had to guess, then the Grimoire was probably Jake’s best Creation so far, with the Unseen Arcane Hunter skill a pretty close second despite its intangible nature.

Temlat had a good chance to take the top spot, but Jake felt like he needed one or maybe even two more real bangers to ensure he got a great overall evaluation. However, with Jake’s remaining list, he wasn’t sure how to do just that.

The most obvious choice would be to just improve another skill… the problem here was that Jake didn’t have any he wanted to do that with. Sure, he did have an inferior-rarity Alchemist’s Purification, but honestly, that skill was just fodder for his Malefic Viper Legacy skills at this point. Even if he did improve it, Jake had no idea how to do it in a satisfactory way that didn’t also risk messing up any potential fusions down the line.

He had confidence in getting it to maybe epic rarity just by infusing concepts he was already familiar with from his arcane affinity. However, that wouldn’t even make for a good submission as it didn’t require learning anything new, and besides, it would mess up fusing it later on. No, If he wanted to somehow make it a good one, it would just take way too much time, as Jake would have to learn a lot of new stuff. Something he didn’t want to spend the time and effort on

Now, there was one other cheat-like option to get an upgrade Jake had purposefully been avoiding: Path of the Heretic-Chosen. In fact, Jake had kind of ignored using the skill during his entire time in C-grade as he felt he didn’t want to waste it. He was up to two charges now and damn close to another. Even so, he wasn’t sure if it was worth using, even if it helped get him a better evaluation in the Challenge Dungeon.

Jake felt very unsure how exactly it would interact with Nevermore and the Challenge Dungeon rules. His main question was… were any Records and improvements he gained during the vision considered as having been achieved within the Challenge Dungeon? The wording on the skill wasn’t

connection as a Chosen and the mentality of a heretic. Focusing on any core skill, event, or entity related to the Malefic Viper’s Legacy will allow you to peer into the True Records of the past as you journey through time, space,

what others had said, Jake would also disappear whenever he used the skill with even his physical body leaving. An anchor of sorts would remain, sure, but did this anchor count as Jake still being within the House of the Architect?

these doubts and even asked the Architect… only to get the answer that she wouldn’t answer that but for Jake to just give it a try and see, and then she would gladly accept the result as a

had of Valdemar. That vision had been far more valuable than any other but also consumed two charges at once. If he didn’t have two back during the fight with baby Snappy, Jake likely wouldn’t have gotten such a good vision. This begged the question, what would Jake see if he consumed even more charges at once? One could argue that there probably weren’t any individuals who warranted taking three charges to get a vision

The First Sage.

Hence why Jake didn’t want to risk using Path of the Heretic-Chosen just to get some more Nevermore Points. Jake genuinely believed the visions he got would have an impact far beyond just this mega-dungeon, not to mention the Challenge Dungeon

skill-upgrade candidates, Jake moved on to something entirely different. He chose to instead use what he

couldn’t make anything that required a living being, as anything with a Truesoul couldn’t be a submission in

to submit one? In either case, Jake had decided to go with something

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integrate his Jake Juice into a Creation. He also wanted something that would show off his skills in manipulating mana. Even if Jake had shown off a lot of his skills related to mana during many of his prior Creations – most of them, in fact – he still wanted to do one that was just pure freeform mana manipulation. Put a bit of that practice from his Puzzle Box of the Seeker into use in a

as he split his time between Temlat, the poison he was working on, and this mana creation. He quickly got on something he wanted to show off regarding his mana manipulation, and if everything worked out as he hoped,

fast, Jake knew he was improving his skills at a rapid pace. He also volunteered to go do combat practice

sense this Creation would take the longest. Jake was trying to make a poison that he was happy to put on nearly all his arrows and katars going forward, so it was only natural he took his time to make

be the first one to finish. Jake studied quite a bit regarding what kind of mana construct he wanted to create, but moreso, he worked on exploring to see if what he wanted to do with his Jake

experiment with willy-nilly. He had one shot, and if he

so, there was a limit to how much Jake could learn without just saying “fuck it” and giving it a go. So, one day, when everything just

regenerated and made sure he had full mana. Then,

He needed no skills or anything like that. Everything would just be purely mana and his Jake Juice. Yet Jake wanted to create an item… which usually wouldn’t be possible. But Jake had confidence as he began to summon monstrous levels

as he pumped out arcane mana and filled the room. At the same time, he began to gather it between his hands as he sat in a lotus position and focused on

was formed. More and more mana was released from his body every second as soon, over a hundred thousand mana filled the room without any signs of stopping. This was another reason why Jake didn’t want Temlat to enter on accident… this kind of environment definitely wasn’t healthy for a

with the ball rapidly also growing in size. Energy began to spin around the ball as Jake kept it in

of his body in an orb through a process that was far from fast, efficient, or generally considered useful. Hours went by as Jake had to slow down to remain in control, but once he gathered his mana in the maelstrom around the orb, he could keep it calm and

sure he wouldn’t run out. He used a lot more mana than he gathered as