The Primal Hunter

Who hadn’t, at one point or another, dreamed of visiting the moon? Or maybe Jake was just weird, but he sure had wanted to at least try going there at least once. To see the world from an entirely new perspective, and, more important of all, finally confirm that Earth wasn’t flat like a pancake.

Setting off from Skyggen with Sandy, Jake was naturally eaten and entered one of the space worm’s many stomachs. At this point, Jake had no idea how many Sandy had, but he was sure he would figure that out eventually, as he expected the two of them to spend quite a lot of time traveling together over the next months.

Looking around the stomach he had entered, it was more just one large room. The floors were rock-like, with the walls also reminiscent of being inside of a cave, and the rectangular shape made it hard to imagine he was currently inside of a creature.

Inside this room, he spotted a bunch of furniture as the place was set up like an apartment, and when he looked toward the end of the rectangle, he even saw a sealed-off glass cube with a lot of familiar instruments and tools within.

“Is… this an alchemy lab?” Jake said with raised eyebrows.

“Yep, had some people from the Order set it up,” Sandy responded quickly. “Plus, even if you do poison stuff, it won’t be annoying anymore as it’s sealed within the cube, and I added special ventilation!”

“Do I want to know how you exhaust these toxic fumes?” Jake joked.

“Why would I exhaust them? I put them in another stomach where the fumes are absorbed by some toxin-absorbant materials to help them grow,” Sandy responded as if Jake was being an idiot.

“I see,” Jake muttered, sad his fart joke had failed, as he instead turned his attention elsewhere.

One of the walls of the room displayed not just a wall but was entirely see-through so Jake could observe the outside world. Sandy had even placed windows elsewhere, making it seem as if Jake was flying within a big worm-shaped plane. Of course, Jake knew it wasn’t as if these were actually windows. They were more just screens displaying the outside.

As he looked out, he saw they quickly flew into the sky with speed surpassing anything Jake could do. It actually wasn’t that much faster than he was if he continually used One Step, though, but he knew this was far from Sandy’s top speed. Just going by how fast the worm had traveled from Haven to Skyggen, he knew the worm’s top speed was absolutely insane.

The reason Sandy didn’t go full throttle right now was likely due to the way the sky worked. The atmosphere around Earth, and the sky in general, had several layers to it, and traveling through them haphazardly could get quite dangerous. Especially the outer layers of the atmosphere.

B-grade was recognized as the grade in which one could begin to explore space, and that wasn’t only because that was when one rarely could find worthy foes on their home planets, but because that was often when one became able to even enter other planets safely.

Surviving in space wasn’t that hard at all, and even D-grades could exist there. Sure, they would have to exhaust energy to protect themselves from the cold and the semi-vacuum of space, but it wasn’t that bad at all. It was more akin to just being pretty deep underwater. Granted, there were a lot of threats that could kill one out there, such as rampant blasts of energy just flying across the cosmos or small meteors striking you, but technically, one could live in space. It wasn’t recommended, but theoretically possible.

Thing is… you would be kind of stuck there unless someone helped you get back to a planet or you chose to settle down on a large space rock without any proper atmosphere. Going to a place like Earth was out of the question, and Earth wasn’t even a massive planet by multiversal standards.

Jake, even with his current level of power, would have to go all-out if he wanted to reenter Earth again without the assistance of Sandy, with the atmosphere effectively creating a natural barrier protecting the planet from threats. Exiting was quite a lot easier than entering, but even that was pretty hard. Arnold had only managed to send out satellites and whatnot by coating them in special metals with high resistance to the concepts in the atmosphere, something Jake’s body was definitely not made of.

made of this kind

atmosphere. The dense energies and concepts that sought to tear apart anything they encountered washed over Sandy without any issues, and from inside the worm,

were instantly torn apart. It was entirely different forces than before the system that protected planets now, and Jake could only imagine how much stronger the natural defenses of

a reason, and while there certainly still was a lot of mana, the density was incredibly unvaried. The further they got away from any celestial objects, the less mana there would also be, with certain sectors of space nearly entirely

to turn the lookout holes off when

so sure, I’m ready,” Jake smiled. “How long do

had also clearly slowed down a lot and absorbed some energy here and there, while allowing Jake to take in the atmosphere. Traveling through empty space would definitely be faster, especially if Sandy’s Sand World, as the big worm

diameter of Earth and that proportions had been kept roughly the same, Jake reckoned it would

day at most?”

you just

go really fast, so it’s kind of rude to bully me like this. Actually, maybe I should just spit you out

frustrations until it reached a point where he was afraid of

meant that it’s faster than I expected,” Jake said in a calming tone. “From speaking to Arnold, the changes in space have resulted in pre-system space travel no longer being

but he was pretty sure that traveling to the moon hadn’t even taken a week before the

but be a lot faster was great. It boded well for what the giant space worm would be capable

me? In that case, ignore everything I just said and keep recognizing my awesomeness,” Sandy said. “Now get ready; we’re about to enter the sand

he was supposed to

the windows to the outside world disappeared, and Jake felt the shift. Through his sphere that extended outside

Jake as he took in the environment of the subspace. He saw reality itself stretch and contract in impossible ways as concepts such as distance became nothing more than relative terms. Despite the headache, Jake

twice about doing that unless he wanted to knock himself out. He was curious, true, but not curious

bubble Sandy had created for him. Well, alright, that Sandy had people from the Order create for

a year, wouldn’t do much to close the gap, every little bit counted. Seeing as he was good on potions, Jake worked a bit on poisons, and the hours quickly passed as the trip to the moon, which Jake had expected

Sandy said after what had only been ten and a half

the outside world still didn’t make any

“Because I’m smart.”

answer anything… like, what’s the tell?”

you get really close, no two pieces of sand are the same, and sometimes there’s even other stuff mixed in, like

say I do,” Jake just

is like every little sand grain. It varies a bit, and when close to bigger stuff, like planets or the moon in this case, every grain is also a bit different. So, it’s just about feeling for that. When I then know I’m close to where I wanna go, I wiggle out, and boom, I’m right at where I wanna be,” Sandy explained in

nodded, as he was pretty sure he got it, at least partly, even if it still didn’t make that much sense. It was honestly interesting how stuff like this worked. Sandy legitimately saw the world as filled with sand everywhere, and going into subspace like this was just diving into dense sand. Others