The Primal Hunter

Jake’s mind went blank for a moment as the realization sunk in. Yet what he had expected to follow next never came. There was no anger or desire for revenge… just a belief that he had to get the fuck away from the moon as fast as humanly possible.

Anything capable of killing Sandy wasn’t something Jake was confident in facing, and just feeling the aura from the thousands of vines extended up from the surface of the moon, Jake knew that this wasn’t just some weak low-tier B-grade. It was already quite a few levels into B-grade and a powerful variant on top of that. The mere fact it had a range extending all the way from the center of the moon to the surface was proof enough of that.

Luckily, it didn’t seem to attack him as he flew away. The eye had also faded away, and all the vines began to retract back into the ground, leaving a battered Lunewood Forest behind. Many rotting spots were left where the vines had shot up from, and hundreds of Lunewood creatures had died. For some reason, the B-grade didn’t seem to care about the forest at all, and it had more or less just been collateral damage while trying to get Jake to leave.

Speeding up his flight, Jake just went further and further into empty space. He didn’t have any particular direction he was flying in, he just wanted to make sure he was out of range from any potential attacks that could reach beyond the moon. Only when he was many thousand kilometers away from the exit of the moon’s exosphere did Jake slow down before he stopped and had a while to think. And the first thought he had was to reach out to someone who had to know what had happened.

“Villy, what the fuck happened to Sandy? I felt the Mark disappear, and I think they died, but-“

“Sandy did die,” the Viper just answered in a casual tone.

Jake’s mind went blank a bit again before he quickly gathered his thoughts. “Then why am I not-“

Suddenly, Jake stopped as he felt his spatial necklace act odd, as if something wanted to break out.

“I think you’ll find the answer is quite obvious,” Villy commented, still clearly unbothered.

Things within the moon had not gone as planned for everyone’s favorite Cosmic Genesis Worm.

Sandy had met their fair share of powerful beings while traveling around the multiverse and eating stuff, and sometimes, one naturally gets into trouble when eating the tasty snacks of others. Yet, this was definitely in the top two for most dangerous situations Sandy had ever gotten themselves into.

The wound on the worm’s side was already rotting, and more vines were closing in as the Ghostvine kept sending those nonsensical telepathic packages, yelling at Sandy to leave while not giving the poor worm any chance to actually do so. Sometimes, a worm had to be decisive, so Sandy steeled themselves and didn’t think twice before doing what had to be done:

“Begin operation clean up and consolidate! Go, go, go!” Sandy yelled to all the people and creatures in their internal worlds – also known as all the different stomachs - as Sandy opened gateways between all of them. They also quickly tried to spit out the Lunewood Meteorite Fragments hoping they were the cause of the aggression, but it didn’t make the attack stop.

A dozen vines closed in as Sandy shifted in space, teleporting out of the way. Entering Sandy’s Sand World wasn’t possible with space this unstable – the place not really made for fleeing either. It was made for traveling, first and foremost.

Sandy did have other defensive means, though.

Hardening the cosmic dust, Sandy slowed down all the vines, going for the worm. At the same time, the wound was rapidly healing as space shifted, launching Sandy toward the tunnel the worm had entered the core chamber from. Vines moved to block the worm, but with Sandy’s intense momentum, they managed to slip through, entering the tunnel.

Yet it wasn’t enough, as more vines just appeared, seemingly out of nowhere. They just popped into existence without any rhyme, reason, or warning. It was as if the entire moon was part of the Ghostvine’s body, which probably wasn’t that far off.

The Ghostvine had integrated itself with the moon’s core, after all.

Sandy kept going through the tunnels, teleporting, dodging, and blocking vines, but they just kept coming. A few managed to slip through, leaving nasty wounds all over the worm’s body and eating away at Sandy’s vital energies.

To escape and do long-range teleports, Sandy needed to get out of the vast tunnel network of the moon and into open space, but

Too far.

to give Tom and the others enough time to get everything prepared. Thus, Sandy did their best, as the wounds got worse

Sandy got the confirmation

“We’re done.”

flew at full speed back toward the core chamber. The Ghostvine wasn’t ready for this, allowing Sandy to get pretty damn close before too many vines impeded their path, and a dozen wrapped

the worm mobilized the rest of

body began to glow in a silvery light until suddenly, the worm was just gone… a faint mark left behind in space-time that even Jake wouldn’t be

realized by now what it was, as the egg that Sandy kept insisting wasn’t an egg

energy that washed over Jake. Space itself shuddered before Jake saw a familiar tail pop out of the bottom of the egg. Then, the entire thing exploded, as a worm only half a meter across appeared before rapidly expanding in size as a full Cosmic Genesis Worm

as the worm wiggled in excitement - a feeling of excitement that quickly died down as the worm turned to look at Jake solemnly. “I think we should postpone moon exploration for

the worm for a moment as he blurbed out the first

“Are you okay?”

in a sad tone. “I feel like crap, and just existing hurts right now. I’m also super weak, so please

dozen seconds, just allowing the worm to wriggle back and forth a bit, getting used

over in space to

Sandy had eaten? More importantly, what happened to the

stomachs? Such as the dietitian?” Jake asked, now back to

fine,” Sandy said

a lot worse if he had inadvertently

it up to two now, but it’s still far from enough! It’s pretty hard to put everything into two stomachs only, especially when each has its own environment that I spent time cultivating. Heck, it’s impossible to do. Now all of those fun biomes are gone, and I have to start over,” Sandy explained in a sad and annoyed tone. “But, together with the people in there, such as Tom and that dietitian that was forced upon me, I can gather everything and everyone important in the two stomachs I keep to at least

but a cheap price to pay for a second life in

what it was. Not to mention the literal pain of having the majority of your stomachs implode. Gotta

long do you reckon it will take?”

replenish my energy, not as long. I have some stuff already in my emergency rations to speed things up, but even if everything goes well, it will take me a few months at least,”

to help,” Jake sighed. He felt pretty damn bad about having dragged Sandy all the way to the moon only for this to happen. From the looks of it, the worm hadn’t even gotten anything out of the trip. Meanwhile, Jake had, at the very least, collected a cool-looking rock to bring back to his nephew... yeah, it had been a sucky

of food. “Because that’s the second thing that sucks right now. I can’t even eat a lot before I full super stuffed, as, you know, the vast majority of my stomachs just imploded. Who would have thought that had an

as he tried to lighten the mood. “You know, now I understand why you said you would be fine no matter what. That skill is the one you got from the True Blessing of the Lord Protector, right? I must say, it makes me a bit jealous that you have a skill that makes you impossible to kill. Meanwhile, I just got a skill primarily

the Malefic Viper interjected,

Boss Hydra did warn me of some potential flaws. Some skills will allow whatever killed me to still track me down while I’m weakened, and certain attacks can leave bad lingering effects even a rebirth can’t fix. Too bad soul damage and curses are two examples of this that the Big Boss pointed out. Then, there is, of course, karmic magic, which can outright block the rebirth or even tap into the power from the skill to attack me even after the fact. There are other means of blocking off my ability to be reborn, too, but they are super rare, and I am working on counters

to share all the weaknesses of what’s arguably your biggest trump card with others? Even if it’s me?” Jake

egg things to do my rebirth trick, so if the final one breaks or is lost or something, I’m screwed. Also, I can’t control which

times I’ve tried it, death indeed has been wholly unpleasant,” Jake answered honestly, remembering the Challenge Dungeons in Nevermore, especially the Colosseum of Mortals

think we should both strive to