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]

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 not for their entire allotted time,

as he saw them fight the wyvern. Individually, none of them stood a chance, but fighting against forty opponents could be very difficult, especially for larger creatures who had more surface area to protect. For Jake, fighting more people wasn’t as big of a problem as someone like

the edge. After a minute or so of back and forth, he believed there was a turning of the tides when the wyvern unleashed its breath, hitting a party of five

them. Jake was about to shake his head, as he assumed they must have taken 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

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

chosen their prey well from a matchup perspective. They were resistant to the wyvern’s attacks, while their primarily blood magic

reunion with the Northpeak Wyvern, but it 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 anything, as that

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

few of them doing any damage as a layer of frost covered the large flying creature’s body. Its eyes were glowing blue as it repeatedly unleashed magic, making the ground itself tremble as ice

aware that it has been stolen. Please report 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 the wyvern had better

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 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

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

Oops, the first death.

its wing, sent a

warrior even managed to use the opening to plunge a spear into the other wing of the wyvern. The five with chains also made their move but were rebuffed as the wyvern

to attack using the perceived opening as the wyvern snapped its head around and chomped down. It ate the woman whole, and a second later, an explosion of blood erupted within the wyvern’s mouth, as she seemed to

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

side, nearly cutting off one

“But they should have gone for the

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 hit with back then had just been a casual one, and so were the earlier ones in this fight… but this breath was

second, the world flashed a whitish blue as the breath destroyed all the barriers that tried 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 apart,

unleashed a large attack himself, as his party members also unleashed a coordinated assault,

appeared in the sky, enveloping all the vampires. Without

decision to try and split the group to ruin their coordination,”

due to their numerical advantage and teamwork, so if the wyvern could address that, this fight would turn into a one-sided slaughter. The vampire side also clearly knew this, as they

shards fell upon the grouped-up vampires as the wyvern flew over them. The harsh, cold winds of the

as the archer shot arrows made of blood toward the wyvern, with the two gun-wielding vampires also going fully on the offensive. While their attacks didn’t do much damage, the three of them targeted one of the wyvern’s wings, ripping holes in the thin

the constant attacks of the wyvern. However, before it broke, the vampires made their move again.