The Primal Hunter

Chapter 1027: Jake Thayne vs Ell'Hakan (4) Jake had to react quickly to the attacks arriving both from above and right in front of him. Rather than try to retreat as Ell’Hakan would probably expect, Jake dove toward the trident that was stabbing for his chest, narrowly avoiding it while getting out of the way of the sunbeam.

This put him in an awkward position, allowing Ell’Hakan to unleash an inferno blast straight to his front, sending him tumbling back from the impact, his clothes now even more burnt than before. Right as he stabilized himself, the next attack arrived from the sun above as it unleashed yet another powerful beam Jake barely had time to react to while also dealing with the hyper-offensive Ell’Hakan, leaving him with yet more burns.

With the sun having reached its zenith, the momentum of battle had changed entirely, Jake now finding himself constantly on the defensive as he tried to slowly acclimate to the extreme heat while barely holding off Ell’Hakan’s constant assault. The fire spells that before were only a little dangerous had been empowered to new levels by the environment, and were quite frankly far more powerful than just casual spells had any right to be.

However, despite being on the back foot, Jake didn’t panic or even push himself further with his boosting skill quite yet. Sure, things were looking rough right now, but Jake was looking at the fight from a more long-term perspective and seeing the massive sun in the sky and the fact that Ell’Hakan created such a massive and powerful domain...

How long can he keep this up?

The energy consumption had to be utterly insane. Jake had talked to the Sword Saint and Dina quite a lot during their time in Nevermore, seeing as both of them used massive-scale skills at times, and they were always very vocal about the equally massive energy consumption of such skills. Not to mention the consumed mental energy from keeping something of such a large scale active.

All of this is to say that Ell’Hakan had to be draining his resources at an astonishing speed while keeping the domain active. Combined with all the other attacks he kept releasing... yeah, it was only a question of time before he wouldn’t be able to keep up this kind of momentum.

Jake had these thoughts while being hypervigilant if they were truly his own conclusions, but as the logic tracked without any obvious involvement of emotions, Jake chose to go with it. That’s why he was fine being so passive for now, as he felt confident that with every passing moment, Ell’Hakan was slowly burning himself dry like the sun above.

Ell’Hakan also acted as if Jake’s conclusion was correct as he upped the tempo even more. Jake dodged attack after attack without even daring to counter, his scales in a constant state of destruction and regeneration from the fiery assault. He tried to act as cold-headed as possible, but if he kept not attacking, he would-

No.

Annoying emotions kept creeping in from the obvious manipulation of his opponent, but Jake suppressed them to not get baited into doing something dumb. He also quickly began to suspect something else as he looked at the sun above and noticed something.

Despite the skill seemingly having reached its peak of power, the sun kept growing brighter and hotter. It wasn’t by a lot and incredibly subtle, but something was definitely happening, which was when Jake reached a quite obvious conclusion:

No day lasts forever.

At some point, the sun would have to set, and the skill come to an end. The skill relied on powerful concepts, concepts far too much for Ell’Hakan to properly control. Him trying to make the sun not act like the sun was like a water mage trying not to make things splashed with water get wet or a wind mage trying to make the wind sturdy and solid like a rock. It simply wasn’t in the realm of C-grades to oppose the natural law of affinities and concepts.

It was with this thought Jake kept engaging Ell’Hakan as Jake tried to keep his distance at all times, defending and dodging when neccecary. As the sun grew more and more intense, Ell’Hakan also kept growing in power, and Jake was forced to keep up with his own boosting skill as he’d long pushed it to a mid-point between the stable 30% and the extreme 60% boost. Arcane Supremacy had raised his resistance to the skill immensely, and by now, he could reach around a 50% boost before the demerits of the boosting skill began to really show themselves.

Minutes kept ticking by, Jake taking more and more damage as he couldn’t dodge everything, but he remained fine with the status quo. Ell’Hakan’s attacks turned more and more desperate, but Jake refused to take any baits and avoided inadvertently opening himself up to taking more damage than he needed to by going on the offensive. Why would he need to when time was on his side?

dumb when

Going really well...

Too well.

did, Ell’Hakan smiled as the sun above flashed for a moment, an utterly massive sunbeam descending toward Jake as Ell’Hakan unleashed over a hundred torrents of flames that

a giant magic circle appeared above him as he raised his trident. “Why would this scenario be advantageous to you? Did you

in the newly formed crater he’d been thrown into, Jake pulled out his

believe something so natural would come at a cost?” Ell’Hakan grinned, a spiral of flames forming above him as nine

obvious emotional fuckery done by Ell’Hakan. When Ell’Hakan first

had seemingly entirely forgotten about it until now, having dismissed it as just another aspect of Yip of Yore’s powers and not something he wanted to or had time to understand. He hadn’t been wrong about it being

Faith energy.

didn’t mean others couldn’t use it or that it didn’t exist even where there was nobody around to control it. False Gods like the Desolate Child of Loss could be born from faith energy alone, and in many ways, the entire Path of Yip of Yore relied on a variant of faith energy, as he required people to

case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see

skill, relying on what he’d just said before: the belief in him as

lesson that relying on logic to reach a conclusion didn’t mean that it was completely free of emotional manipulation. It was still entirely possible the data he’d used

intensifying sun above, he remained relatively calm. While most of his conclusions had been wrong, no amount of emotional fuckery could change the fact that Ell’Hakan couldn’t defeat the laws of

his body burning with power. To meet the rapidly descending hydras

stopped them briefly, but it was enough for Jake to unleash the second assault. Pride of the Malefic Viper activated as Jake’s own semi-domain skill covered the area

“Break.”

active, Jake could also more easily control the mana in the area around him, allowing him to slightly push off the heat as he summoned a number of powerful barriers of arcane mana to meet

right as he lifted his trident to unleash a scorching beam, an arrow flew out of the blazing inferno below, striking him in the shoulder

one as it still sent him reeling back from the impact, and he didn’t hesitate to retreat as Jake slowly floated

resummoned them again and again as he kept the flames at bay using Pride. He infused the skill with more mana than ever before to impose his

in the slightest when it came to longevity. He had an utterly massive mana pool, rivaling even genius peak C-grade mages due to his Anomalous Soul and Mask of the Fallen King both giving him 25% extra to his total mana pool,

from his body alone was pressuring Jake as he broke through the barriers swiftly, but with Pride active and liberal use

in the stomach with the other using Piercing Fang, penetrating to the handle with his Void Katar. The Usurper quickly attacked to get Jake away, but not before a pulse of arcane energy was released, sending a shockwave of pure destruction through the nahoom’s internals and

opponent, soon enough getting another major chance. With one hand, he caught the handle of the trident

despite having Jake’s hand halfway buried in his chest. Chains of flames erupted from thin air all around them as these chains wrapped around Ell’Hakan and Jake, effectively tying them together.