The Primal Hunter

Chapter 1022: Bargain & Choice Jake surveyed the core room a while longer to get a proper understanding of the environment. After having done so, he got to work with making a simple set of magic circles to facilitate what was to come.

Now, Jake had long considered how he could fuck with a Planetary Core, and the most obvious answer was the mythical Sin weapon he carried around. Using Eternal Hunger, Jake didn’t doubt he would be able to destroy an entire planet using his current ritual magic skills, but… he wasn’t dealing with a Planetary Core right now.

Cores were unclaimed. Natural. Seeing as they were part of the environment, they didn’t possess any innate will or intent, which made them a lot weaker to outside influence. It was like the difference between a stone wall summoned by a mage to block an attack or a natural wall of stone.

Once the Planetary Core became a Planetary Pylon, its defenses were heightened to an entirely new level. Someone like the Child of Loss wouldn’t be able to do much to a Planetary Pylon as it would passively fight back according to the will of the owner, and that wasn’t a fight any C-grade had a chance of winning.

Jake also knew that Touch of the Malefic Viper wouldn’t be enough. This isn’t to say Jake didn’t have any methods in mind. Given enough time and a complex enough ritual, Jake should be able to slowly influence the Pylon, though, once more, it wouldn’t be any fast endeavor.

Perhaps this was why Ell’Hakan hadn’t bothered much with placing defenses at the Pylon. He didn’t expect anyone to be able to cause it any harm, especially not before he would notice. As the owner, he would naturally be notified the second anyone messed with it, putting into risk any long-term ritual. The only times such rituals were useful tended to be with the World Leader missing or put out of commission, neither of which were true here.

All of this is to say that Jake had planned on just killing Ell’Hakan as his primary goal for a reason. Now, things had changed, and he now had the confidence to take on the Pylon due to a certain new skill.

As a reminder, when Jake reached level 260 in his profession, he got the skill called Chosen’s Offering of the Malefic Viper. A skill he hadn’t touched a single time ever since getting it despite its legendary rarity. The reason for this was because of the other skill he was offered alongside it… one he had now picked after reaching level 290 during his Villy roasting session above Primordial-4.

[Heretic’s Offering of the Malefic Viper (Legendary)] – To infringe upon the domain of the Malefic Viper and rob the Primordial’s Records is a great achievement. Allows the alchemist to make an offer to the Malefic Viper and be granted an Offering Fragment. Based on the value of the innate Records in the offering, you will be rewarded with a better Offering Fragment. The Offering Fragment contains Records and energy related to the Malefic Viper and can help empower other sources of Records and energy related to the Malefic Viper. All offerings must surpass a certain threshold to be submittable, and to hide your heretical actions from the Malefic One, there is an internal cooldown of the skill dependent on the value of the Offering Fragment received.

It was a skill practically identical to Chosen’s Offering of the Malefic Viper, except for some changes in wording and whatnot. What the skill would do was effectively allow Jake to offer stuff to Villy and get a catalyst for alchemy in return. At least, that’s how he read it.

Jake had very purposefully not used the Chosen’s Offering skill because he assumed doing so would mean losing the ability to pick the Heretic’s Offering one. Alright, there was a risk he would cut him off from the other skill merely by picking the first one, but things had gone the way he’d hoped.

Especially after he picked the second one… and what he’d hoped for happened. The two legendary skills that were so damn alike they might as well have been one turned out to indeed be part of a greater whole. Well, Jake assumed they were, based on how they’d instantly merged with one another. This merge of skills had given Jake something he wasn’t sure how worked, but it had to be good based on the fact it was mythical. Right?

[Divine Bargain of the Malefic Viper (Mythical)] – In your eyes, to make an offering is an act of subservience you refuse to take part in. No, to you, the Malefic One is an equal you deem yourself worthy of bargaining with. Allows the Heretic-Chosen to initiate a Divine Bargain using an entity he wishes to use for negotiation, forcibly creating an equal exchange between himself and the Malefic Viper. Upon successfully performing a Divine Bargain, the Heretic-Chosen will, by default, receive a Malefic Bargaining Fragment but may be granted other benefits based on the nature of the Divine Bargain. Malefic Bargaining Fragments contains Records and energy related to the Malefic Viper and can help empower other sources of Records and energy related to the Malefic Viper. Under certain conditions, the Malefic One can actively take part in the Divine Bargaining. Laws of equivalent exchange must be upheld to a certain standard. All bargained entities must surpass a certain threshold of Records to be submittable. This skill has an internal cooldown based on the nature of the Divine Bargain performed.

Right off the bat, it was a really long skill description. Jake did like it a lot more than the previous ones, though. Divine Bargain also sounded a lot more appealing than making an offering, as it was something one did between equals. Well, as equal as a god and mortal could become.

As for the skill itself, it was indeed quite complex, but it had the same concept as the offering ones for the most part. It would allow Jake to give Villy stuff, and Villy would give him a Malefic Bargaining Shard back in return, at least most of the time. With this version, he could also get other benefits, it seemed, with neither the system nor the innate knowledge he’d been granted telling him what these other benefits were.

What the innate knowledge did let him know was how to do a Divine Bargain. More accurately, it let him know how many ways there were to do it. It also included what he could offer and do with the skill. The more he studied the innate knowledge, he also realized that the skill had some rather unbalanced features, in his humble opinion, one of which would become clear once he was done setting up his ritual in the core chamber.

He also felt as if his decision not to use the skill had been good based on the first section of the skill. At least, it would have been very weird if it spoke about not agreeing to give offerings if he had actually used the skill to ever give any. Getting stuck with just the Chosen’s Offering skill would have sucked majorly, and more likely than not, even ended up hurting Jake’s Path as a Heretic-Chosen down the line as merely possessing the skill could be viewed as an act of subservience.

system-imposed and nothing else. Then again, based on all his talks with Villy, the system likely had its reasons for placing such a cooldown on a skill, and he should actually be happy he couldn’t use it constantly, as

still a lot to unpack with the skill, and Jake felt like it would need quite a few uses to fully understand it. For now, he had to

set up proper conditions. The simplest way of doing this was to set up a ritual circle, but other things like having a permanent altar or something

originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the

primarily because he was actually pretty good at rituals by now. Continuing to work on

instinctively he could bargain with it. Of course, it wasn’t as simple as just initiating

it to the Malefic Viper. This would put Ell’Hakan on a timer, with

it was him and the Malefic Viper taking part in the Divine Bargain. So, for Ell’Hakan, his only choice was to either make Jake flee far enough away so that the Divine Bargain would be interrupted – which would require him to force Jake off

the things Jake didn’t really consider was what he could potentially get out of the Divine Bargain in the first place. Neither did he consider that it was pretty crazy for him to offer something that didn’t even belong to him as part of a bargain. What’s more, it

it did take a special kind of mindset and arrogance to believe yourself worthy of dealing with

all those other practical things was the facial expression Ell’Hakan would

no signs of him?” Ell’Hakan asked the gathered mages, all of them looking nervous. He already knew the answer to his

said with a bow. “We’ve scanned the skies and sent out many scouts, but we fear his stealth skills

the armrest of his throne with a finger. This entire scenario was a rather frustrating one. He wanted to just go out there and look himself,

outside of it for large ripples in space. One of the things he and his mages had discovered was that these forced teleportations to planets were

the hunter would flee after his initial attack hadn’t found its mark. Ell’Hakan knew he could teleport back to his own Prima Vessel whenever he wanted using the ring part of the system event, but that ring

the Milky Way Galaxy didn’t help at all. He even considered if the hunter was just trying to keep him there to help

Malefic Viper had gathered around him. He had, in part, gotten lucky by encountering them, but he’d also actively helped create these powerful allies, so maybe he shouldn’t be too envious. He also had to remember he would have plenty of chances to make his own allies in the near future alongside the

to the people he’d spread across the galaxy, the gate

I do not

the Augur said, looking Ell’Hakan directly in

as he raised a hand. “Clear the

few of his closest generals staying. Looking at them, Ell’Hakan shook his head. “Everyone but

they left the room, closing the gate behind them. Doing so also activated the passive seals, hiding the conversation about to

after the ritual… and if you hadn’t, I would have been back around the time the Chosen of the Malefic Viper attacked,” Ell’Hakan said, glaring

human simply

asked, genuinely unsure. He didn’t even know if the Augur doing so had helped or harmed him. It was entirely possible he would have gotten attacked unprepared if he had teleported back

most ideal Paths. For people like you and him, it’s nearly impossible for me to give any advice, but I do have some insights. Going through with the ritual was a good thing for you and will help strengthen your foundation for what’s to come… and