The Primal Hunter

Jake sat atop a pile of metal as he quickly deciphered the magical seal on the cube he had looted from the dead Tower Guardian lying destroyed beneath him. As he got the cube open, he quickly checked its contents and nodded.

“Yep, I can confirm these towers are all made to terraform the planet in some crazy experiment,” Jake sent through the Golden Mark. They had already kind of known it from other clues, but this was confirmation, which was good enough for the system.

Bonus Objective Completed: Discover the true nature of the nine towers. 3500 Nevermore Points earned.

Bonus Objective Gained: Locate the ones behind the construction of the nine towers.

Jake put the cube away as he jumped off the pile of metal and prepared to head to the top room of the tower he spotted through his sphere. As he walked toward the hidden stairs, he threw the large golem a final look with a smile. Pretty fun fight, even if it was quite a bit weaker than the scalekin metal mage.

His satisfaction with the fight was helped along by the fact that Jake had gained yet another level, far faster than he had expected.

*You have slain [White Tower Guardian – lvl 305] – Bonus experience earned for killing an enemy above your level*

*’DING!’ Class: [Arcane Hunter of Horizon’s Edge] has reached level 258 - Stat points allocated, +50 Free Points*

Jake was the first to reach the top of a tower due to the power of stealth. The others were also quickly doing their thing, and it wouldn’t be that long before five of nine towers were conquered, as he felt confident all of his party members could beat the Guardian on their own if it was as only strong as the one Jake had just taken down.

Reaching the hidden staircase, Jake summoned his Alchemical Flame and burned a hole in the wall as he couldn’t be arsed to try and find the opening mechanism. Walking up the stairs, Jake had already scanned the hidden room, and while there was no one there, it was bloody filled with electronic stuff.

The room below did have a few computer-like things, but Jake had the feeling that it was just a front of sorts, while the real deal was to be found on this hidden top floor. As he reached the top of the stairs, a new achievement popped up for all of them.

Achievement earned: Reach the top of one of the nine towers and uncover the hidden control room. 2000 Nevermore Points earned.

It was pretty easy points, and Jake sure wouldn’t complain. None of the others did either, as Jake found another cube with information and deciphered it. This hidden control room was for advanced forms of terraforming and to control the automatic experiment still in progress. In fact, it was revealed that should anyone mess with the control panels on the floor below, the ones who had set up the experiment in the first place would be alerted.

On this top floor, Jake also found a deactivated teleportation circle, and while Jake didn’t have a good grasp of how these kinds of things worked, he could luckily do the same as the Fallen King and temporarily share his vision. Using that, he learned from Dina that it was a special closed-circuit teleportation circle, with them all guessing this circle connected to corresponding circles in other towers.

Jake spent the next full day or so deciphering all the information he could in the tower, primarily to figure out how to activate the teleportation circle. The magical puzzles to unlock stuff weren’t that complicated, and soon enough, Jake also came to learn that activating any one tower would start a chain reaction, also activating others, the end result being that everyone not currently inside a tower would die. As for what would kill them…

as well as a few thousand satellites, all aimed to scorch the surface of the planet on command,” Jake warned everyone. “The good news is that we are in what’s called a hibernation period right now, where

what they were doing as they quickly deployed countermeasures. Luckily, they couldn’t activate the extermination protocol without entering the towers, but transport ships were sent down, filled with even

tower, he was attacked by a few dozen golems who seemed intent on capturing rather than killing, but Jake was having none of that as he destroyed all of them – after getting agreement from his

made with deadly intent. Jake kept exploring the planet with intermittent fights as he felt himself being observed by satellites far above. About a week later, the Fallen King was also done exploring his tower, too, followed by the three others, also getting done within a few days. As predicted, every time a tower was cleared, they could activate the teleportation

people at all times play defense, teleporting between towers when necessary to keep things defended. This task was designated to the Fallen King and Dina, as Dina was especially well-suited to defend a location as she – quite literally – took root and planted flowers to both forewarn and defend. The Fallen King was just a menace in the smallish hallways, and his soul attacks were especially effective against

Sylphie, and the Sword Saint acted on their own to get the final four towers. Due to the size of their planet, they had to travel a lot while getting harassed by the damn space golems, who seemed to have endless

number of captures to eight of the nine towers. However, the final tower turned out to be quite a bit more difficult to capture than the others, as the researchers had decided to fortify the location. The attacks on the other towers didn’t stop, though, and ultimately, they decided on just having Jake and

had crashed through the atmosphere on a mothership around a year later while fighting a horde of five-meter-tall

begin restoring the planet to its former state while putting an end to the experiment that had periodically killed all life on the planet. The entire point of this experiment had been them trying to manipulate the planet’s innate affinities, and from the looks of it, the researchers had failed horribly despite keeping

warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road.

standing in front of the burning wreckage of what had once been a kilometer-wide mothership that once served to coordinate with

awakened from hibernation by the crash, yet remained entirely undamaged as it had been in a sealed-off control room. Standing over ten meters tall, the robot-like creature reminded Jake of those car-transforming robots from movies and TV, and when it pulled out a sword, Jake feared copyright infringement was taking place right in front of his eyes. Things got a bit better when it activated what was clearly some kind of astral magic, which Jake definitely hadn’t seen in the movies. Oh yeah, it was also definitely a lot stronger than the movie robots… at least it was the strongest thing on this

–

Sword Saint moved toward the robot as Sylphie circled around while Jake made some distance. Dina was the only one who remained roughly in place as

old power generators of the mothership served to amplify this mana, effectively creating a massive domain that helped empower the

a large creature, the Chief Overseer charged at the Sword Saint, who was closest. The old man didn’t react as the huge blade bathed in starlight descended, as two barriers overlapped right before

fragments flying as the robot was pushed back. At

boss from behind, throwing it entirely off balance. The Fallen King also didn’t sit idly back, as while he had made a barrier with one claw, he used his second to attack as a shockwave of force blasted into

another barrage of attacks. It swung

airborne, as another Arcane Powershot blasted it to the side, sending even more metal parts flying. The other three also struck again, forcing

with his party, almost ten kilometers from the boss. This was when they learned the big robot also had some solid ranged weapon options as light erupted from its

vine erupted from the ground and stopped its swinging arm. A shockwave of force sent the robot flying as the Sword Saint, Jake, and Sylphie all unleashed ranged attacks, resulting in the Chief Overseer getting pushed further and further back while trying to

whenever they did cut or blast off large chunks of metal, the Chief Overseer used some kind of self-repair magic. Alas, even if it looked like the robot was barely being damaged, its energy resources were drained at a rapid rate. The large astral domain did

have a lot

into a beam of light, the Chief Overseer returned to the wreckage of the mothership. It stopped, floating just above the pile of metal as it raised its sword toward the sky. The sword rapidly began to transform into an umbrella-like-looking thing, and at the same time, the astral domain also began

was also drained. A dense barrier of powerful mana surrounded the boss as the

Golden Mark as he got the feeling things would get annoying if they didn’t hurry. It didn’t take a genius to figure out the Chief Overseer was communicating with the many satellites they had done nothing about