The Primal Hunter

The curse energy within the underground room kept increasing with every passing second. The former freedom fighters stood catatonically as their bodies still burned, and Jake felt that their souls had already mostly been extinguished. They were being reduced to nothing more than the hatred within their hearts.

Plague energy also slowly began to emerge, infecting the mostly dead people. Jake realized now it had come from the dagger Temlat had used to stab himself with. The half-elf had changed it to somehow inhabit a nascent plague of some sort. It wasn’t a true plague yet, though. Temlat was far from being capable of making something like that, but it had the fundamental building blocks.

Building blocks Temlat had merged into himself right as he evolved.

Jake remained an observer as he waited for nearly a minute, the curse energy in the room continuing to rise. It was feeding into the evolution as far as Jake could tell, affecting Temlat’s evolution just as he had wanted it to.

He didn’t know what would emerge once the evolution was complete. However, he didn’t have a good feeling it would be something… acceptable. Curses and plagues were both less-than-fondly looked upon in the multiverse, and a merge of the two could only end in disaster. Especially with what Temlat had done right as he evolved. He had purposefully damaged parts of his own soul, as far as Jake could tell.

Which meant he didn’t plan on emerging as anything even close to a normal person anymore.

Soon, the energy reached a crescendo. Jake felt the Sin Curse within his own Soulspace rumble to life as curse energy tried to infect Jake, Eternal Hunger gladly eating it all up. Jake breathed in through his nose as Palate faintly activated, eliminating the traces of a plague that attempted to infect him.

Then, out of nothingness, a figure appeared. A cloaked being that looked surrounded by darkness, its form not entirely corporeal. It looked vaguely like Temlat had with his hood up… but Jake barely felt the familiar aura of his student. Instead, he felt only a bubbling mass of anger, and with a deep breath, he analyzed the being in front of him.

[Cursed Plague Remnant of Wrath – lvl 200]

The former freedom fighters all turned to black energy as they fed the Plague Remnant, the magic circle beneath him fading right after, having done its job. Jake considered what to do, genuinely unsure what his next actions should be.

He knew what Plague Spirits were. They were the premier example of beings that should be killed on sight if anyone encountered one. Mostly, they appeared when powerful death-affinity energy gathered in an area and was nothing more than mindless elemental-like beings who lived only according to their instinct to spread their plague and consume all life.

Jake also knew of another creature called Curse Remnants. These were very similar to Plague Spirits, but instead of a plague, they spread their curse energy far and wide, cursing anything and everything. As with Plague Spirits, these were also simply mindless creatures with nothing more than an instinct to spread their namesake to the world.

Both were considered living calamities. Beings to destroy. However… Jake didn’t remember ever coming across anything called a Plague Remnant. Much less a Plague Remnant of Wrath, indicating Temlat managed to finally evolve his curse of hatred into the Sin Curse of Wrath.

The easy explanation was that Temlat had truly managed to fuse the two into one. To create a cursed plague… which actually didn’t seem that weird. The two concepts mixed well, both being highly infectious magical ailments that could infect from one person to another without needing the original source to get involved.

One thing was clear: the being before him was a living calamity. Even if Jake didn’t recognize it, he knew it was dangerous. What’s more, the aura it gave off wasn’t meek by any standards. It was still only a C-grade, but Jake knew that it was a powerful variant.

easiest example; his Path making it so he couldn’t get any experience from

of him began to slowly move as it turned into a dark smoke that quickly sought outside the underground chamber. As the Remnant left, Jake knew what would happen if he did so. He knew that everything around him would be infected and a chain reaction would start.

trying to constantly affect him, Palate quickly gave him an understanding. If he killed Temlat here and now, everything would end. The world would

the smoke stopped just before the exit of the

you for allowing me to finally spread true justice upon this filthy world and for granting me the power to do so. If you are still here… witness as I expunge my Wrath. Witness as a wrong is made right.

ability to perceive Jake after he evolved and quickly made it so Temlat could see him and

Jake was both happy and conflicted,

had also once been a Curse Remnant, but as it ran out of targets to infect, it died and was reborn into the shade it had been when Jake encountered it. Even

psyche of such beings was very rarely just that of one person or in any way cohesive, which nearly always made Curse Remnants act illogical and on instinct as

with every death, the choir of voices would grow. The faint curse energy released upon

with Temlat in the middle, slowly spreading out. It was barely noticeable due to the usual constant smog that hung in the lower parts of the megacity, and it took people a

massive, with a population density absolutely insane. Hundreds of billions, if not trillions, lived on the planet, and due to how crammed they lived to one another, there was no escaping the Cursed Plague Remnant

has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it

the damn rock. This earned them an angry foreman who screamed at them… only for the miners to all turn as they charged the one

a cause for conflict as

simply a lot less emotional by default. They fled, afraid as they got attacked by others, going to somewhere the conflict had not broken out yet… bringing

was not without cause. Students killed teachers, miners killed foremen, children their parents or disciplinarians, and workers killed managers…

every death, no, even just every infected person, fed Temlat, the source

Jake could probably find a recording if he wanted to, but this was vastly different than merely watching something unfold. It was closer to

this entire world was ”fake,” he never liked to think of them as such. To these people, they were as real as Jake himself, and they had full lives.

exact same scenario played out? Jake wanted to tell himself he would have advised Temlat

didn’t want to tell someone what to do or give them unsolicited advice. From the

he had a rare compatibility with curses, but he lacked ambition. His goal had always just been to get revenge, which was such a weak motivation. But… for Jake, who knew he only had a few years in the House of the Architect at max, this goal was good enough. In many ways, he had just taken advantage of Temlat’s short-term goal to

kept watching Temlat. He kept watching, even as the first megastructure began to tumble and the people charged toward the sky and the mansions up there. Only a few hours had passed at this point, and when Jake looked down and saw

of Wrath –

was an empty cup that was just slowly getting filled with shitty muddy water. The curse energy that made up the Plague Remnant was getting contaminated by all the beings that were consumed along the way, and it would take a long time for him to properly consolidate himself

the emotion of caring much longer as the curse energy from all the infected and dead people mixed with his own. At least Jake thought so, but to his surprise, he still sensed