Primal Hunter Volume 4

Back from the Treasure Hunt, Jake was reminded by his brother Caleb that he is a kind of shitty son for never visiting his parents since the integration. Having no real argument against that – besides not wanting to make the long trip, but seriously, that’s a weak excuse to not visit your parents for such a long period – he finally gets his shit together and goes on a road trip.

Arriving in Skyggen, where his parents and brother had settled down, Jake spent two weeks of quality time with his family before it was time to participate in the Auction event that would directly follow the Treasure Hunt. An event that would once more gather all the influential individuals of Earth.

The auction turns out to be very much a mixed bag, with more disappointments than pleasant surprises. At least initially. That is how auctions tend to work, after all. The bad stuff comes first, with the best saved for last, and even if Jake did buy a few of the lower-rarity items, he primarily sold the things he had obtained in the Treasure Hunt, raking in the big bucks.

Luckily, despite the utterly boring auction of low-level crap, Jake still does something productive with his time: alchemy. He also sadly did have to talk with a few people, but he pretty much delegated all work to Miranda and Sultan – the City Lord of his city, Haven, and Haven’s resident shady merchant.

When the good stuff arrived, Jake bought a few items of note. The most important of which was a quiver and bow, a nice vest for Sylphie that doubled as a spatial storage, and finally, an item called Soul Renewal with the ability to fully heal any soul it’s used on, no matter the damage.

This item was clearly designed with the Sword Saint in mind to heal him up after using his Transcendence at the end of the Treasure Hunt, but due to the stubbornness of the old man and Jake really wanting the Soul Renewal for something that was totally a good idea, Jake ends up getting it.

As for his brilliant idea?

To revive the King of the Forest that nearly killed him as the final boss of the Tutorial, because what could possibly go wrong? Well, Jake at least had the foresight to not do it inside a major city but out in the middle of nowhere.

The revival proves to be a great success, and after discussing the logistics of Jake effectively “owning” the Unique Lifeform due to their peculiar connection, they do what any two normal people do after one has revived the other and have a fight that destroys most of the local landscape.

After that, the King of the Forest, who has now chosen to be called the Fallen King, goes his own way as Jake proceeds with his own plan: to make a new cool melee weapon with some of all the cool shit he’d picked up recently.

During the Treasure Hunt, Jake obtained the item known as the Root of Eternal Resentment, an artifact filled with insane quantities of curse energy, as well as a Chimeric weapon made from combining all the vampire boss weapons. Jake, being the smart boy he is, decides that taking all this curse energy and jamming it into his already existing curse weapon – the Scimitar of Hunger - while also combining it with the Chimeric weapon and a bunch of other high-rarity things is a great idea, and nothing could possibly go wrong, right?

From there, things went wrong.

It turns out there was a bit more curse energy than Jake was capable of handling… actually, scratch that, more than Earth was capable of handling. From his semi-failed ritual to create his new weapon, curse energy emanated and affected the entire planet with a curse of hunger, making the restaurant industry boom while making Casper, the only person on Earth who actually knew shit about curses, facepalm an unhealthy number of times.

Meanwhile, as the rest of the world was experiencing a global crisis, Jake was underground in a large termite hive, not entirely in a stable mental state, desperately trying to sate his own hunger by constantly slaughtering monsters to absorb their energies. Descending deeper and deeper, Jake killed anything in his path, as he did all he could to feed the cursed monstrosity he had created by throwing nearly every single valuable thing he owned into the hungering cursed weapon to try and sate it. This served both as a great way to clean out his inventory as well as a way to make the cursed weapon of pure hunger a little less likely to realize that eating Jake to death was a valid option.

After a long time and many dead termites, Jake finally succeeds in merging his cursed scimitar, the Chimera weapon, and the curse energy in the Root of Eternal Resentment, creating a mythical weapon named Eternal Hunger – the first item on Earth above legendary rarity ever created. This gave him not only a new title that makes it easier to craft similar high-rarity items in the future but also a damn sweet new weapon that can change its shape as Jake desires while stealing resources from anything it hits, and should he kill anything, he would even absorb its soul. A definitely-not ominous weapon that Villy thought suited him nicely as the totally-not-evil Chosen of the Malefic Viper.

Diving deeper and wanting to feed the still-hungry Eternal Hunger – hence the name - Jake proceeded to slaughter more and more termites. The further he descended, the more powerful foes he encountered, until soon he found himself facing peak D-grade opponents. Jake, feeling like a big, strong boy after making his new weapon, decides that now is a great time to have his first encounter with a C-grade in the wild. Breaking into the Termite Hive Queen’s, well, hive, Jake began his plans of fumigating the place. The Hive Queen proved an annoying foe due to her durability and healing skills, but Jake has confidence that he will win given enough time.

Now, this is where Jake discovered a super funny fact that most people don’t know. Most eusocial (insects that make big hives that work as one large entity) usually only have a queen and then a bunch of drones, soldiers, etc., but termites are pretty unique in the insect world in that they also have kings. A termite king will mate with the Queen throughout his life and is considered the second-most important member of any colony. Termite kings are larger than other termites and tend to have a dark color, and when one exterminates a hive, it is important to kill both the king and the Queen.

In the post-system world, the hive also happened to have both a king and a queen… resulting in Jake being in a very precarious situation. While the Queen had a path focused on healing and reproduction, the Termite King was the exact opposite. It was a being that existed only to protect the hive, and with a level even higher than the Queen, Jake had no choice but to try and get away and hide. Especially after he fails to penetrate the exoskeleton of this termite, nearly losing his life in the process.

Barely escaping by upgrading his stealth skill and bunkering down within a tunnel, Jake only gets away because the C-grade cannot ascend above ground due to system restriction and because it has matters to attend to deep beneath the earth. As for what it had to attend to? Well, that will be revealed in a later book.

Anyway, after Jake screwed up Earth enough by making a potentially cataclysmic cursed weapon and barely avoiding getting killed by an insect, he was happy to hear that a monument that would allow him to tap into his identity as the Chosen of the Malefic Viper had been built. This would give him the opportunity to teleport away from not just Earth but the 93rd universe, straight to the Order of the Malefic Viper.

Before going there, he does a quick pit-stop at Villy’s to practice controlling his Shroud of the Primordial a bit – the legendary skill he received when the Malefic Viper blessed him. After spending just fourteen years in time-dilation learning the magical version of creating a fake ID, Jake is ready to go to the Order, where he can surely keep his identity as the Chosen of the Malefic Viper hidden for at least that long, right?

…right?

After a quick trip back to Earth to pick up some people he wants to bring along to the Order, such as Reika and a few alchemists from the Noboru Clan the Sword Saint is the leader of, Jake heads off to the Order.

However, before he was even allowed to join this super exclusive club his buddy was the leader of, Jake had to do an entry test. Well, alright, if he wasn’t so damn steadfast on keeping his identity as Villy’s Chosen a secret, he would have just waltzed in there on a red carpet, but where would the fun in that be? No, doing the same entrance test everyone else would do was definitely the way to go.

What followed was Jake doing different tests while being told in only slightly kinder words that he was pretty good at some things when it came to alchemy but was shit in most areas. His general knowledge of how to alchemy was utterly lacking, with his foundation shaky at best. Good thing he had come to join an academy that taught alchemy then, right?

After completing all of the tests that are actually related to alchemy, he just has one more. Because what good alchemy academy doesn’t have a combat test? In fact, what teaching institution worth its salt doesn’t have a combat test?

This combat test required Jake to beat progressively harder opponents with difficulty scaled to his own level, which resulted in it being a complete cakewalk. That is until he gets to the final challenge, where he faces an image of the Lord Protector himself. Of course, he only actually faces a D-grade version back when the Lord Protector was only a dumb Two-Headed Hydra. That doesn’t mean the fight is easy, though, as the Hydra eats all his arrows and gives Jake a good beating until he suddenly has a flash of enlightenment.

Using that enlightenment, he triggers a vision with Path of the Heretic-Chosen by consuming two of its use-charges. In the vision, Jake sees the Malefic Viper as an S-grade fight against another S-grade human. Throughout the fight, the Viper is arrogant and believes himself superior as he beats down the human, who Jake learns is the future Primordial known as Valdemar. Yet no matter how many times Valdemar is beaten down, he gets back up and eventually turns the tables as he rips out a fang from the Viper’s draconic mouth and declares his weapon the “fang of man,” as he nearly kills the Viper and forces him to retreat.

Jake, being inspired by the absolute badassery of his fellow man, is inspired and forms his own Fang of Man skill, making his melee fighting prowess far superior. With renewed vigor, he faces the Hydra once more, and with great confidence, the timer of the test expires, and Jake fails to slay his foe.

Ah, but don’t worry, he’ll have his rematch in… not this book. Maybe book 8? Anyway, moving on.

Having successfully joined the academy belonging to the Order of the Malefic Viper, Jake receives not only a cool new mansion and a token Villy has rigged to have infinite Academy Credits so he can take any lessons he wants to, but he even gets an elf slave!

Yeah, Jake is not a fan of that one and has a heated discussion with the Viper. Jake is put between a rock and a hard place where he feels like there are no good choices but ultimately decides that the best course of action is to have his first – and the only one he will ever have – slave become strong enough to join the Order on her own merits so he can safely set her free.

Meira, his new slave, has quite a hard time adapting to this weird new master of hers, especially with Jake being very adamant she is not allowed to ever call him master or anything like that. However, Jake has confidence that she will learn not only independence but that Meira can become her entirely own person given enough time. As the author, I can confirm Jake will eventually be proven correct.

With all that slave business hopefully handled, Jake tried to enjoy his school life. He goes to a few lessons and learns about Soulflames – a way to enhance your Alchemical Flame – general alchemy stuff, is hit on by dragon ladies, meets new people, and does all the other usual school stuff one would expect.

He even tries to enjoy his school life while beginning to shore up many of his weaknesses as an alchemist. Too bad he still had to deal with actually being social at the Order, even if he tries his best not to.

Anyway, book 6 was a long one, and I sure hope I didn’t miss anything important! Not that this book is that much shorter…

Now! Back to Jake and his evil snake order school shenanigans!