The Primal Hunter

The Courier Dungeon, as Jake had dubbed it, had an extremely simplified and straightforward societal structure. Everything was split into tiers, it seemed, with even the cities being very distinctly separated. The first city Jake arrived in was a smallest-sized city, which meant it had below a certain population threshold. Half a million based on what Jake gathered.

In the hierarchy of cities just ranked above the smallest-sized cities, one found the small-sized ones, which had between half a million and five million. Up from there, mid-sized cities with between five and twenty-five million, then large-sized with twenty-five million to a hundred million. Cities above a hundred million were pretty rare and were classified as giant-sized cities. There was no upper limit to these, and the only giant-sized cities Jake quickly became aware of were the capital cities of some of the many different factions.

Below cities were towns and villages. Anything below fifty thousand was a town, and below five thousand a village. Towns and villages did not have any teleportation circles in them and weren’t connected to the network. Jake found it incredibly dumb they weren’t considering the relatively low investment it would be to connect them and how it would make life for everyone so much easier, but the in-world reason was that it was for safety, as anything that wasn’t a city couldn’t protect the teleportation circle adequately.

It was a pretty dumb reason, as they could just have the circle self-destruct or something if they ever got invaded. Then again, if the infrastructure had been that immaculate, Couriers would have way less work and could just teleport everywhere, so it made sense for the theme of the place.

Back on topic, these towns and villages were all tied to the nearest city, which held governance over them and responsibilities such as tax collection and whatnot.

Now, having this kind of structure within a single faction kind of made sense. If it was something organized from the top down and enforced, Jake could see it appear even outside of Nevermore by someone with a management fetish.

However, it made no bloody sense every single faction in the entire Challenge Dungeon world had decided on the exact same structure. Shit, even if it was just the enlightened factions, Jake could get it, but even the monster-focused factions had the exact same city-town-village structure, even down to the numbers.

On that note, yes, Jake did come to learn there were far more factions than he first expected. Jake had appeared in the human-focused enlightened faction, while several more existed, all in conflict with one another. Other factions were the dwarves, elves, Risen, scalekin, demons, one more with a mix of enlightened ones, and finally, three different monster-focused ones. If there was a common race in the multiverse, Jake was pretty damn certain it could be found in this Challenge Dungeon within one of the ten factions.

Jake also had a theory that other Nevermore Attendees would appear elsewhere based on their race. Someone like Sylphie would likely appear in one of the monster-focused factions, while someone like Irin doing the dungeon would appear in the demon faction. Now, where the Fallen King and someone like Dina would appear was a bit of mystery as neither of them had a race with a faction directly related to them, but Jake reckoned it didn’t really matter either way. As a Courier, race no longer mattered, and from what Jake saw, despite these factions being race-based primarily, there was plenty of diversity everywhere with no discrimination going on.

All of these things Jake had learned shortly after he completed the first Special Courier Job and arrived at the small-sized city with the Space Locator. The trip to the city had taken Jake just a bit over a day and a half, and honestly, it was as uneventful as could be. A few times, Jake encountered what he believed to be pre-scripted ambushes and whatnot, but in every instance, the monsters abandoned their attack the second they detected Jake’s aura. Ah, but he was attacked by bandits once, who all ran away after he killed their leader.

In the small-sized city, Jake had gone to the next Guild and met an elven woman who became his next go-to attendant. He quickly began taking on new jobs, one of which required Jake to collect a number of books and return them to a library. The twist with this job was that – just like in the real world – people sucked ass at returning books. The worst was that one of the people who had to return it was a guy who had accidentally placed it in his own personal library and needed Jake to help look for the damn thing. Sphere helped a bit, but sadly, as he could only see the shape of the book and not read the cover with just spatial perception, he had to actually look at the books himself.

When Jake had returned all the books, he stayed with the librarian for a while and learned some world history and about how the Challenge Dungeon worked. That is where he learned about the cities, got some tidbits about every faction, and was told that as a Courier, he wouldn’t need to worry about anything as he would be welcomed with open arms wherever he went… dependent on the job that is. If he was transporting something for an enemy faction, he could very easily have a target on his back.

After his talk with the librarian, Jake had gone back to the Guild for another job, which he promptly accepted. Even the hard jobs sometimes took place within the far larger, small-sized city. Yes, the name was a bit dumb to call it small, considering it in Jake’s mind was pretty damn big, but in-world, it probably made sense considering the city was several times larger than the smallest-sized one. Many of the jobs naturally also required him to head outside of it to the towns and villages, and these tended to take longer simply due to the travel time.

wasn’t the most socially adept person, in a multiversal context, he was actually pretty damn good. He wasn’t overly naive and trusting, which would definitely be a huge weakness in this Challenge Dungeon. Not being very precise when listening to the language of jobs could also get

groomed and trained from an early age by experts, always viewed and recognized as someone with high status and a genius, definitely wasn’t trained in dealing with a guy arguing

their cool here and there. This was definitely part of the Challenge Dungeon test, too, and truthfully, the most overpowered thing one could have in this dungeon was to have worked a retail or other customer-facing low-wage

young geniuses never really had to deal with stuff like this and would find themselves completely out of their comfort zone. They didn’t ever have to deal with being an employee but were always the ones

been taken without

the worst part about work before the system was the monotony of it all. It was its sheer predictability and lack of challenge in everyday tasks as he got used to them. It was the

the time, there were also good days. The days with something exciting happening. It didn’t even

way to turn off everything. The office had, of course, already been turned into an utter mess at that point, and the rest of the day was

twist after another, and even so many years later, Jake remembered the day so clearly. Especially the end, with Casper and Jake sitting on the

was more like a job where no task was ever straightforward. It wasn’t just delivering

one memorable work day, over and over again. Jake didn’t doubt that the unpredictability of what you would face at every job was frustrating to many, but for Jake, it just made it more engaging and kept him interested. Definitely far more interested than the Test of Character, where Jake was just a passive observer most of the time. At least here, Jake could work on his movement skills while traveling and meet a bunch of insane and interesting characters

Here, you were allowed to bitch-slap the people trying to scam you. It was the most cathartic experience for anyone who had ever had to deal with customers like

say that Jake quite enjoyed this Challenge Dungeon, and that was reflected in his speed of doing jobs. He felt excited to get to the point where the jobs weren’t only interesting but also offered a genuine challenge when he had to fight stuff, so while he

after arriving at the small-sized city, Jake completed job number sixty-five, which surprisingly enough was enough to earn him yet another upgrade. Standing within the even larger Guild in

just the opposite,” the elf said with a bow. ”It was

Jake’s Medallion had rapidly

will hold information related to jobs and can give general directions to your destination if those are provided (may not

Requirements: Soulbound

experienced Courier after only about a month on the job. It was definitely a faster promotion rate than any prior job Jake had ever had, and

Jake asked. ”Got more jobs

of paper from below the desk. For some reason, this paper had a golden outline and wasn’t anything Jake had seen before. She looked almost a bit

isn’t anything you have to do, and it’s a pretty risky one… so before I even present it to you, I need to know if you

he leaned in slightly.

created a bounty reward for anyone who could capture a certain kind of elemental he needed. I didn’t think something like