The Primal Hunter

So, there were a few things to address.

First of all, the second Twin Emperor turned out to be quite a bit different from the first one. Rather than carrying around a staff and wearing robes, he had on durable metal armor and carried around a massive two-handed sword on his back at all times. While Jake avoided the guy, he was confident that this second half of the Twin Emperor was a far more physical fighter.

Secondly, this entire war was indeed a plot by the Twinhead Ogre. In traditional Nevermore fashion, information could be found just out in the open within the main residence of the second Twinhead Emperor, which Jake had managed to sneak successfully into after the boss left the capital – likely to meet up with his other counterpart.

In the home of the boss, Jake found written records, as well as some books and even communications from the other Twin Emperor, where they discussed what they were doing. To summarize, the Twinhead Ogre wasn’t natively from the Vast Plateau but had ended up there after his own homeworld was invaded, and he used an ancient teleportation circle to try and get away. After arriving on the Plateau, he quickly came to realize there was a severe lack of enemies that would allow him to continue progressing and reach B-grade.

Without evolving, the Twinhead Ogre believed he had a low chance of being able to leave the Plateau to explore the rest of the multiverse, so the two heads hatched a plan of using all the enlightened life in the Vast Plains to fuel their own evolution. At that time, they had clearly been unified in their goal, but when Jake read the notes of the Twin Emperor now, he saw that things had changed.

Jake had been off when he theorized the ritual was to permanently split up. That had never been the plan at all. However, after the split, the Twin Emperors both experienced independence for the first time in their lives, and it turns out they both quite liked it. At least the warrior Twin Emperor also suspected the mage variant also preferred their split state.

Researching more, Jake discovered that even if the warrior variant looked like a pure warrior, he was more akin to a death knight. He was capable of quite powerful death magic, and the bone spheres had been created back when the two of them were still merged into one body, using both of their powers.

Meanwhile, the mage variant was something called a hex shaman. He was capable of using shamanistic magic along with hexes, wherein curses were a sub-category. So, one head focused on physical combat and death magic, while the other focused on shamanistic magic and hexes. A pretty damn strong combo when combined, Jake would reckon.

The problem now was that the two of them didn’t want to fully recombine, which was a bit of a problem if their party wanted to fight a recombined version. Jake even found evidence of the warrior making plans to use his death magic to ”kill” off his counterpart when they did the grand ritual to re-merge and hopefully gain enough Records to reach B-grade. At the same time, Jake didn’t doubt the mage was making similar plans to also get rid of the warrior in a similar fashion, something this warrior version already suspected.

So, yeah, things were a bit of a mess, which spelled problems for Jake and company. If the event boss was the re-merged version of the Twinhead Ogre, they couldn’t make do with one of them ”dying” during the re-merging, as that would undoubtedly weaken the final product. Something this Twin Emperor also fully recognized, but his desire to remain independent made the lower overall power worth it in his head.

Interestingly enough, Jake also found out that the two ogres recognized the presence of Jake and company. There were several correspondences related to their party and how a third party had appeared, but so far, the two Twin Emperors did not seem overly concerned. In fact, they were almost thankful that their party sped up the process of killing everyone, doing such a good job on every battlefield by leaving no one alive. For some reason, the two ogres also felt the need to insult their party for not realizing they were just helping the ritual along, but Jake wasn’t going to get angry about that. He would get even in time.

Jake ended up spending half a day or so going through all the information the warrior Twinhead Ogre had just left spread throughout his home. Some of it was sealed away and hidden, sure, but Jake easily found everything using Sphere.

One could ask why all of these plans and correspondences between the two Twin Emperors were just left all around the place and not destroyed once the warrior had memorized everything, but Jake wasn’t going to question the flawless logic of a Nevermore floor. It hadn’t made sense on any of the prior floors either, so why suddenly get all up in arms over this one?

He managed to sneak out of the second Twin Emperor’s residence before anyone caught him, as Jake moved to meet up with his other party members once more. Sylphie had already rejoined them after helping Jake get most of the way to this other capital, and the four of them were busy making a mess on more of the battlefields.

a few months left to finish off this floor and defeat the re-merged Twinhead Ogre. The plan was to fight the strongest

one another fully to stand a chance against the five of us. If all goes well, we will end up with a Twinhead Ogre fully put back together, further empowered by the ritual. It’s risky, and we

definitely going to enjoy this final

under his breath as he looked out at the vast plains in front of him. It did not get better when his party member, the Dungeon Engineer, shook his head as

order to get the best reward, we need to do something with the two

if it’s cultivated. Do we need to finish this cultivation to ensure a perfect victory?” the ghostly bride asked as a few ghosts returned to her, having scouted their immediate

both death and curse energy are gathered. As you said, it’s all happening in a rather artificial fashion, so probably someone that’s

been unlawfully taken from Royal Road; report any instances of this

a certain boosting skill, making her weakened for more than a year afterward.

of the Blightfather,Azal thought. No, hoped. If not, he could potentially lose

considering the situation,

just kill these two Twin Emperors and quickly pass the

objective of the floor again. It says to end the conflict, something I doubt just killing one or both of the two Twin Emperors

Maltrax cursed out loud. ”What then? We got a

opinion, the best way to optimize points would probably be to hunt down at least one of these bosses. While it won’t be as good as clearing the floor, hopefully, it will give us a few

that then,” Azal said with determination. Even if he doubted he would be able to take the top spot of the Leaderboards as his Patron had hoped, he would, at the very least, do his best till the

waited for more members of the Holy Church to come to see him. His former bodyguard and current Guardian had a

with this?” he asked after

this before. ”We can do more good here, helping those who have questions or are beginning to doubt if their

just grunted, not

bond between a Guardian and an Augur, they were still two separate people with their own Truesouls. This meant

many time-consuming steps. Back then, the true difficulty had been in pure navigation and figuring out the floors. Now, the difficulty

and Jacob could pull off some interesting moves, considering Bertram’s near-immortality and ability to be resurrected repeatedly. He could use boosting skills far beyond where one would die and wield powerful weapons such as a

a good warrior. He was skilled for sure and was considered an elite,

by two others from the Holy Church. In fact, the Church had split up their entire party and made one with the five best prospects to go as far as they could during the final decade or so. It would be the very best the

could question why he didn’t try and do some more floors to at least gain a few more levels, but to someone like Jacob,

it best Jacob didn’t take more risks. On floor sixty-eight, he had trigged his One More Light skill, which had resurrected him once after death. The skill gave him one charge per grade, and while he did have one more left as he didn’t die in D-grade, the Church believed it too risky for him to continue. His