The Primal Hunter

Chapter 965: Jake the Beta Tester Chapter 965: Jake the Beta Tester

Jake had been looking forward to this day for several months, and now it was finally here. Granted, it was only called a beta test, but Jake still chose to remain excited. He had played enough video games before the system to know that calling something a beta test was just another term for a demo and to convince people to pre-order the product.

It turns out that wasn’t the kind of beta Arnold was talking about… the guy actually used the term correctly, as when Jake arrived at the teleportation circle, it clearly wasn’t fully ready yet. In the room with the teleporter, Jake found Arnold on what looked like a large terminal with wires of mana connected to the teleportation circle, with William writing something on one of the walls in deep concentration and a shrunk-down Sandy chilling in the corner, seemingly asleep, contributing nothing.

”So… how are things progressing? Does the circle work now?” Jake said as he walked in, Arnold not even turning to look at him.

”We completed all the milestones of alpha-testing after a period of twenty-six days and have now entered beta-testing. The teleportation circle now successfully taps into the power inherent in the Prima Vessel, using the star map and our own relative calculations of coordinates of every target planet based on this map. This is further corrected using a scan for mana signatures correspondent with Prima Vessel teleporters to accurately estimate the final teleportation destination,” Arnold briefly explained, Jake nodding along as he glanced at William.

”I noticed no mention of any karmic magic involved,” Jake commented.

”That is part of the elements we are working to implement in the first phases of the beta testing,” Arnold answered, with William still deeply focused on… something. ”It is intended that we will be able to get a general scan of what will be found on each planet to supplement what is provided by the Prima Vessel. More accurately, a method of knowing if notable figures are there that are either best avoided… or pursued. Additionally, karmic considerations are part of the calculations, but due to my own lack of knowledge on the subject, I cannot make effective use of the karmic mage’s knowledge.”

Jake raised an eyebrow, as honestly, the way they wanted to use karmic magic did sound kind of neat. It also didn’t escape Jake how Arnold clearly stood up for William, even raising his gaze from the terminal and giving Jake a look that told him to back off. Jake also instantly realized why.

William was part of the project.

Arnold was the project leader.

Arnold was a good boss who wouldn’t allow his project members to be thrown under the bus.

Jake took the hint and changed the subject as he kept asking about the teleporter: ”What is left to be ironed out before you would say the teleporter is complete?”

”The most substantive challenges right now are the power consumption and relative inaccuracy of every teleport. We are working over long distances with many concepts and factors at play that may disrupt our calculations,” Arnold continued. ”The more entities are teleported, the more inaccurate it will also be. We have done a few tests already with objects or captured low-intelligence beasts with trackers on them, and the results are both encouraging and troubling.”

”How so?” Jake asked, hoping the problems weren’t too bad.

”Let me first clarify that the power of those we teleport only affects energy consumption and not the inaccuracy. During some of our first tests, as we honed in the accuracy of the teleporter with single-entity tests, the outlook was positive. However, the moment we tried to teleport two at once, things proved difficult,” Arnold began as he looked a bit exhausted just talking about it. ”Every subsequent entity added to the teleportation exponentially increases the energy consumption and the inaccuracy. When we teleported two, they appeared five days of Sandy’s full flight speed within subspace from the planet. Three entities were over a month’s worth of travel distance away, four over a year, and with five entities, they appeared too close to the local star to even get any proper readings, indicating a travel distance of more than twenty years if we are conservative. These are just rough estimates, but I hope this clarifies my meaning.”

instead of all at once?” Jake asked,

immediate void membrane around the circle with every activation, we need to give it

out of curiosity, what would happen if we break this void membrane?” Jake asked curiously, as he was interested to know what an

a moot point, but if you are speaking from a purely theoretical standpoint, we would temporarily open a hole to the void and, without the ability to stabilize this gateway, likely end up consuming most of the Milky

capable of breaking it open were people with the power of gods. The thought that gods could poke holes in reality that consumed

do you think this beta testing will last?” Jake asked, having looked forward to teleporting to other places in the galaxy. However, it seemed like he would

as short as the alpha testing, and I cannot make any gaurantees we will even finish everything before the Prima Guardian system event has concluded, if ever. However, that does not mean it isn’t useable. Single-entity teleportation is already stable and accurate enough that I have full confidence in its ability to teleport you or any other singular person within a short distance of any target planet in the database. The reason why I believe you are the best subject is because we have no method

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circle was good enough to work decently, and Jake was the only one who was a World Leader and could

insulting, but it wasn’t like Arnold was wrong, and Villy would definitely laugh his ass off if he

fight or arguments. ”Now, I assume this works on the red-flag planets, right? Does it also work on the

answered. ”That includes the three marked black.

any planet, as that was just what he had hoped for. Thinking about it, these Prima Vessels were all incredibly durable, so they shouldn’t be destroyed by C-grades fighting. Secondly, it wasn’t like the planets that were marked with a

to ensure anyone teleported would appear outside the planet’s atmosphere. Those we tried to teleport inside any atmosphere found themselves destroyed as they teleported through the atmospheric layers, so you will have

I have a few ideas. Now, do you have any particular place in mind

screen was projected onto the wall. Jake instantly recognized it as identical to the one in the Prima Vessel, making

his options. Going to a blue planet was quickly written off. He could go to those without

where he had the highest probability of saving the most people while knowing there was a Prima Guardian there. It was also possible planets marked with a gray flag still had Prima Guardians alive, and there were likely people to save there, too, so those

to head to any of these. Instead, he looked

”I” and the first planet to

nodded. ”I understand. Trying to discover more about the nature

He also desperately wanted to sate his own curiosity. What kind of world had given birth to a creature now just going around destroying worlds? What the hell had

metal, all overflowing with energy, and levitated them over to different focal points of the formation. Batteries

thing Jake felt was space itself, seemingly loosing up all around him,

vibrate and stretch. Small cracks formed in reality, and for a fraction of a moment, Jake felt the presence of the void as Arnold’s unique brand of magic wormed its way in. Intuitively, he knew it was about