The Primal Hunter-Novel

Jake still felt extrconfusion when he thought about the First Sage. All Jake really knew was that he was a man from the first universe who died in C-grade while also being the teacher of Villy. Well, and the fact he had apparently been so ridiculously talented it beggared belief, and that he also had a Bloodline, which the Viper had gained many years after his teacher’s death.

However, even taking into consideration his extrtalent, things didn’t really make any sense. How was he capable of leaving messages on boots he had owned trillions of years ago? How was a C-grade even capable of doing that in the first place?

Right as Villy cut the connection, Jake frowned deeply as he muttered out loud. ”To think it worked like that…”

To really play his part, Jake kept looking thoughtful. At least he did it to play the part for a few seconds until he did get thinking about everything they had talked about, especially about the First Sage. Villy clearly suspected things with his teacher weren’t as they seemed, and he didn’t at all seem surprised when Jake said he could potentially interact with him. As if nothing the C-grade could do would ever surprise him. He even recommended for Jake to meet him if he could… which Jake most assuredly would.

Stolen story; please report.

Refocusing on the task at hand, Jake put his mind off all those thoughts of the future and turned his attention toward the now. Taking the mythical boots off the table, Jake quickly put them on. As his foot slid into the first boot, his eyes opened wide.

It was perhaps the most magical aspect of the boots: how damn good they felt to wear. It was truly out of this world, and Jake couldn’t help but smile as he put both on. Oh yeah, the stats and other effects from the mythical item were also good, but if comfort was an enchantment, that would definitely have been their best one by far.

Sadly, Jake couldn’t really test them here and now. He instinctively had sidea about how they had improved, but seeing as the room he was in was sealed off from the outside, he couldn’t even test out the treasure-detecting abilities.

However, he did feel one change. It was incredibly subtle, but when Jake stood up to revel in the feeling of the best boots in the multiverse, it was as if he stood more… stably than before. He tried to move a bit, but nothing really seemed different besides this minor odd feeling. It was as if he would have a harder tslipping and falling or something.

Shrugging, Jake shifted his attention to the second thing he wanted to get done before his party gathered. Taking out the Storybook Page from his inventory, Jake studied it a bit as he considered what skill to use it with. He had a few already in mind, but the nature of the item made things a bit more complicated than just selecting a skill below legendary rarity he wanted upgraded.

The problem was that the item didn’t give a skill upgrade, just the opportunity to get one. As per the description:

“Ripping a page infused with the Records of a skill will grant you an opportunity to upgrade the skill. The effect is lower, the higher the rarity of the skill, and the page will not accept Records of certain skills… Skill upgrades are not guaranteed.”

If this wasn’t the case, Jake would have used the page on Big GHunter without any hesitation. However, while he couldn’t confirm it, Jake felt pretty damn certain that the skill was included in the “not accept Records of certain skills” part. Another thing he felt sure was included was the archery skill, as well as any of his basic crafting skills, as those kinds of skills were always considered a bit special. That being the case, Fang of Man was more likely than not also restricted.

Jake also pretty quickly decided he wanted to upgrade a class skill, as he wanted another boost in combat capabilities. While sitting there, Jake began going through his skills one by one. As this was just an opportunity to upgrade a skill, and seeing as the effectiveness was lower, the higher the rarity of the skill, he decided on going for one of his epic rarity ones.

He also wanted the skill to be one he would find difficult to upgrade on his own without any new inspiration. This meant a skill like Piercing Cursed Arcane Fang was ruled out, along with something like Splitting Arcane Arrow Rain. Jake felt pretty confident about upgrading those on his own if he just worked on it actively.

Among the skills, he ended up with two he heavily considered. The first of which was Avaricious Arcane Hunter’s Arrows. It was the epic skill Jake used to just generate his regular arrows, and seeing this upgraded would lead to a significant damage increase. It was also a skill that was kind of difficult to upgrade, as it had the avaricious tag along with its ability to instantly summon arcane arrows. Both of these added quite a lot of complexity, and he really didn’t want to lose either effect if he tried to upgrade it himself.

The second skill Jake considered also had the avaricious tag, and was even more complicated than the Arrows one. It was one of the core skills Jake used all the tto do more damage than usual and was, in sways, one of the reasons his amazingly high Perception allowed him to do as much damage as he did. It was naturally Mark of the Avaricious Arcane Hunter.

As he considered these two skills, Jake brought up both their descriptions and studied them closely. However, after a while, he closed the Arcane Hunter’s Arrows one. He looked at Mark closer as he was kind of impressed by the many things it did despite only being in epic rarity.

[Mark of the Avaricious Arcane Hunter (Epic)] – Your prey is chosen; the hunt is on. Covertly mark targets, making you aware of their positions at all times until the marks expire or are dispelled. All damage done to marked targets is increased. Arcane damage has its damage amplified further. The extra arcane damage inflicted while the marks are active will be built up in the form of an arcane charge that you can detonate to release all the stored-up energy. Additional bonus experience earned for slaying a marked target above your level (this effect remains even if your target dies to the mark detonating or within a short duration of the detonation). Adds a bonus to the damage inflicted, the duration of the marks, the subtlety, and the number of marks available based on Perception.

The skill did a whopping four things at once. It allowed him to mark and track creatures, deal extra damage to those tracked, store up an arcane charge to explode, and even more experience gained for kills. What’s more, everything was scaled solely with Perception. While Jake wasn’t all clear on the math, he was pretty certain the damage amplification of Mark was responsible for a good percentage of Jake’s total damage output due to this Perception scaling.

Moreover, this was a skill so complicated Jake didn’t really have any good ideas on how to upgrade it while at the stbeing “only” epic rarity, meaning the Storybook Page should have a good effect. It was a bit of a gamble, but unless Jake wanted to rely on another skill selection to get a system-given upgrade, he felt this was the best way.

He could spend a long tthinking up more reasons… but after only a few more justifications for this being the best choice, Jake decided to stop delaying as he held the page and began to infuse it with the Records of the skill. He did this simply by thinking about wanting to do it while holding the page, and he subtly felt energy leaving his body as the page began to glow and fill with runes Jake couldn’t at all recognize.

Once the runes were complete, Jake tore the page in two, and a flash of energy was released as his consciousness shifted.

As Jake was busy being knocked out by the Storybook Page, his party members were quickly getting done with their Challenge Dungeons. This included the Sword Saint and Sylphie, who had already finished theirs and had both returned to the prior floor to do sminor practice by hunting down monsters and sparring a bit.

During their joint hunting efforts, it was also naturally shared how they had done over the last few years – even if communication was a bit strained due to the Sword Saint still not being fluent in the language of Ree.

In the Challenge Dungeons, Sylphie ended up with a pretty good total multiplier of 45%. Her best performance had been Minaga’s Labyrinth, where she got 25%, being the little cheat of a bird she was. The second best was the Colosseum of Mortals, where she had ended up with a 10% multiplier, though admittedly, many would cto claim the version she did was easier. Instead of becoming level 0, she had only beclevel 200. The opponents were mostly the s– even if there were smonster opponents thrown in there - and the arenas had changed to accommodate the fights of larger scope. Also, even if skills were still removed from everyone, Sylphie was pretty lucky in that much of her magic was just innate manipulation which was how she had done as well as she did. A place she had also done okay in was the Test of Character, where Sylphie had ended up with only a 5% multiplier, a feat she repeated in the House of the Architect.

Her personality was simply too flighty, and her Creations cmainly in the form of skill upgrades she decided to work super hard at, along with sother small things she tried to create. These creations included a nest the size of a smaller city created entirely by collecting every single tree and plant occupying a huge part of the jungle world. Finally, to finish out the list of Challenge Dungeons, there was the Endless Journey, where Sylphie didn’t even get a Grand Achievement, meaning she only got sNevermore Points but no multiplier.

She didn’t care much, though. Sylphie had never wanted to compete on those silly Leaderboards when she knew Uncle was going to be the best there anyway. However, Sylphie did notice her current fighting partner seemed to not be all that happy about all the Leaderboards and big score stuff. Even if Sylphie was not the smartest bird when it cto seeing when others felt sad, she could see that the old swordsman she was training with seemed frustrated. Sylphie had gone to this floor because she was bored and wanted to fly around and fight, but the swordsman had cafter all of those big announcements of performances in the Challenge Dungeons. As if he felt like he couldn’t delay his progress for even a second lest he would fall behind.

Again, Sylphie didn’t care about all those scores… but the old swordsman sure seemed like he cared a lot.

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