The Primal Hunter

Jake’s first time traveling to Skyggen had taken quite a few days of constant travel. After the Ell’Hakan incident, he made the trip again a lot faster. Now that he had reached well into mid-tier C-grade, he was practically zooming across the landscape, the entire trip only taking a few hours at most, and that was partly due to Jake checking things out on his way.

Of course, Jake didn’t count his one planned stop in the travel time. The giant mountain was still among the largest Jake had seen on Earth, towering extremely far into the sky, so far that it easily entered the layers of the sky C-grades could occupy. One had to remember that C-grades and even D-grades, to some extent, were still restricted from entering the area designated as human lands. Jake was pretty damn certain this restriction would disappear with the arrival of the Prima Guardian, but for now, it was still in place.

Flying up the mountain, Jake rapidly felt the temperature drop. When he was there last, it was already cold as hell, but now it was even worse. While it maybe wasn’t quite needed yet, Jake covered his body in a faint layer of arcane mana to defend himself from the environment.

If it was this cold when I was here last, I wouldn’t even have made it to the wyvern, Jake mentally noted.

Continuing upwards, elementals began to appear in great numbers. None of them were strong enough to pose any kind of threat, but he still Identified them.

[Ice Elemental – lvl 264]

[Snow Elemental – lvl 259]

Now, this did pose the great question of what the difference between a snow and an ice elemental was, outside of their difference in appearance. The snow elementals looked like badly built snowmen more than anything, while the ice elementals were partly see-through and a lot more angular. In fact, the main difference between the two was that one looked spiky and hard, while the other one looked round and soft.

Ignoring them just as they ignored Jake, he soon was close to the peak of the mountain. Jake was looking forward to seeing if the wyvern was still there and had purposefully held back on using Pulse to not spoil himself, but when he got closer and heard sounds of fighting, he couldn’t help himself.

What he saw was a battle in the sky above the peak, with the expected wyvern in the midst of it. Jake had expected it to maybe be fighting ice elementals or monsters, which was why the opponents surprised him. It was a large group of humans, forty people in total. What’s more, he saw many of them use a kind of familiar magic he hadn’t seen since Yalsten, making him quickly realize who they were. They weren’t humans but vampires.

Members of the Noboru clan? Jake quickly assumed. He knew the Sword Saint had the divine artifact of Sanguine given after the defeat of the Monarch of Blood, allowing him to turn others into vampires using it. He knew that some had chosen this Path, and from the looks of it, they were doing pretty well for themselves.

Jake kept watch as he decided to activate his stealth skill to get closer without them noticing him. Flying into the air, he soon saw the fight that was honestly quite intense. Concentrated blue beams of frost shot through the sky as layers upon layers of magic barriers tried to block the attacks. At the same time, over a dozen vampires attacked the wyvern from all sides, five of them carrying large chains as they tried to immobilize the wyvern.

Using Identify, he first focused on the wyvern.

[Northpeak Wyvern – lvl 271 – Greater Blessing of the Everfrost Dragon God]

Back when Jake first encountered the wyvern, it hadn’t quite been in mid-tier C-grade yet, while now it most-certainly was. It had definitely grown significantly stronger, and it had even snagged itself a Blessing. Or maybe it always had the Blessing; he really had no way of knowing as his Identify didn’t allow him to see Blessings back then.

As for the vampires, Jake was also quite impressed when he saw their levels after just checking out a few.

[Vampire – lvl 255]

[Vampire – lvl 259]

[Vampire – lvl 253]

as he could tell. This did raise some questions of how the hell they had leveled so fast without Nevermore… or, wait, had they leveled without Nevermore? Jake was one of the first people to enter in this generation and also one of the first to go out as far as he knew, but maybe it was possible they had gone anyway? If

were all pretty damn strong, as he saw them fight the wyvern. Individually, none of them stood a chance, but fighting against forty opponents could be very difficult, especially

a minute or so of back and forth, he believed there was a

too serious damage to continue fighting, but to his surprise, the five of them had come out of it with only severe frostbite and one of them

resistant to frost magic. Of course, as stereotypes would dictate, the sun affinity was also incredibly powerful against them. It wasn’t as

vampires had chosen their prey well from a matchup perspective. They were resistant to the wyvern’s attacks, while their primarily blood magic and physical attacks worked fine

was already preoccupied. Jake also didn’t want to just barge in and interrupt that fight, as that was just rude. After thinking for a while, Jake just lifted his legs and sat with his legs crossed in mid-air as he decided to watch how the battle would unfold and then talk with the eventual winner. Not to attack them or

on the battle, it was clear the vampires had great coordination. With forty of them total, they had enough members to fill every role, with several healers and mages focusing solely on defense. A few mages also worked their offensive magic, and Jake even saw an archer in the group, along with two

attacks rained down on the wyvern, few of them doing any damage as a layer of frost covered the large flying creature’s body. Its eyes were glowing

be aware that it has

decision by both parties. It allowed the vampires to attack from all sides, including below, while the wyvern got more space to dodge and unleash its magic. It was also clear that

had his eyes on one party within the vampire raid team more than any other. It was led by a middle-aged man wielding an axe and a shield, while his party members broke the holy trinity entirely by being two women and two men who wielded different light weapons, including shortswords and daggers, with no healer or ranged attackers in

highest-leveled person in the entire raid, and he proved that by repeatedly blocking the claws of the wyvern and creating openings for his party members to attack, as they left several lacerations on the wyvern, cutting through the ice

afar, Jake heard the man also yell several things, though it made little sense to him. He just yelled out numbers and what Jake assumed to

Oops, the first death.

slow to react, as the wyvern dodged out of the way of a blow and, with a beat of its wing, sent a slicing blue wind toward him, cutting him in two with a web of cutting cold winds following, freezing and turning his

a warrior even managed to use the opening to plunge a spear into the other wing of the wyvern. The five with

It ate the woman whole, and a second later, an explosion of blood erupted within the wyvern’s mouth,

chains to finally get their chance as the wyvern’s feet were wrapped up, disrupting the flight of the wyvern. Right as it was clear the wyvern was temporarily halted, a ritual spell was unleashed as

through the sky, the wyvern unable to dodge as it was struck, a massive flesh wound getting inflicted on its side, nearly cutting off one of its

himself. “But they should

it roared loudly, releasing a freezing wave of energy that pushed all the melee fighters away. With its maws open, energy gathered as it unleashed a breath. A proper one this time around. The one Jake had been

to block it and hit the eight mages who had cast the ritual spell. They didn’t even have a chance to fight back as their bodies froze and were blasted

a coordinated assault, but the wyvern’s entire body

to revolve around the creature as a blizzard appeared in the sky, enveloping all the vampires. Without any warning, the wyvern flew

to try and split the group

into a one-sided slaughter. The vampire side also clearly knew this, as they moved to group up and take a defensive position, as

The harsh, cold winds of the blizzard also bore down on the vampires, who quickly summoned a large red barrier around

going fully on the offensive. While their

mages who weren’t focused on the barrier also tried to attack, as Jake saw faint cracks begin to form on the barrier from the constant attacks of the wyvern. However, before it broke, the vampires made their move again. Over a