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.

they also included giving something up or having severe restrictions. Jake’s class was the easiest example; his Path making it so he couldn’t get any experience from anything lower level than himself. Temlat’s Path had

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. A snowball of

and analyzed the plague energy trying to constantly affect him, Palate quickly gave him an understanding. If he killed Temlat here and now, everything would

the exit of the chamber and took on the form of a hooded figure once

for allowing me to finally spread true justice upon this filthy world and for granting me the power to do so. If

young half-elf had lost his ability to perceive Jake after he evolved and quickly made it so Temlat could

quickly turned back into his remnant form. Jake was both happy and conflicted, knowing that Temlat’s psyche persisted, though it probably

that creature had also once been a Curse Remnant, but as it ran out of targets to infect,

not to the level of being fully sapient, but at least sentience was required. Of course, the 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 the only thing all the different psyches could agree on was their one

death, the choir of voices would grow. The faint curse energy released upon their deaths would become one with Temlat, empowering him and becoming one with

noticeable due to the usual constant smog that hung in the lower parts of the megacity, and it took people a while to notice anything was even wrong… by the time they did,

lived on the planet, and due to how

unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it

widely when the annoying ore refused to get free from the damn rock. This earned them an angry foreman who screamed at them… only for the miners to all turn as they

Any small inconvenience became a cause for conflict as fights broke out. This was also where the truly insidious aspects of

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 with them the Cursed Plague of

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

even just every infected person, fed Temlat, the source of everything. Minutes turned to hours

like this wasn’t something anyone could just do. Sure, Jake could probably find a recording if he wanted to, but this was vastly different

such. To

the question… what would Jake have done if Temlat had been a student Jake had taken outside of Nevermore? What if this exact same scenario played out? Jake wanted to tell himself he would have advised Temlat against researching plagues,

teacher, more a sparring partner or external advisor. Jake didn’t want to tell someone what to do or give them unsolicited advice. From the very beginning, he wanted Temlat to find his own Path. To decide what he

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

Jake reflected on his entire approach, he 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 the ever-growing Cursed Plague Remnant of Wrath still within the warehouse,

Remnant of

looks of it, things were barely slowing down. At least not yet. Jake knew he 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

from all the infected and dead people mixed with his own. At least Jake thought so, but to his surprise, he still sensed Temlat. He saw that he still maintained his humanoid figure