Primal Hunter Volume 6

Previously in The Primal Hunter

Ah, Nevermore. Sweet, sweet, Nevermore. An arc that totally turned out to be the exact intended length, something I’m sure we all appreciate. I have heard rumors claiming the opposite, all of which I will firmly deny, and will consider taking any measures possible, including occult rituals, against all who keep ferrying around this false narrative.

With that out of the way, let’s revisit the start of Nevermore as Jake and his party members entered the first floor. For a little party member recap, we first have Jake, our main character, who I really hope you remember by now. If not, you have bigger problems and should seek medical attention; assuming you’ve read the prior ten books.

Second, we have the Sword Saint, Jake’s fellow human from Earth and one of the people who’s ever gotten really close to killing Jake during the Treasure Hunt event. As his name implies, he uses a sword as a weapon, along with a mixture of time and rain magic, and before the system, he was already a really old man, giving him that old man wisdom.

Third, is someone else who’s gotten really close to killing Jake in the past: the Fallen King. Well, alright, he was known as the King of the Forest back then, but through the powers of being a Unique Lifeform, he changed his name. The Fallen King has unique powers due to being a Unique Lifeform, focusing on force and soul magic primarily, while also being a really durable tree-looking guy.

Fourth, is the heart of the party—Sylphie, alias Best Birb. Despite her needing no introduction, for the sake of consistency, I will nevertheless introduce her. Sylphie’s a hawk who does wind magic, flies really fast, likes tasty stuff, is afraid of smelly pots, and sleeps best on top of her Uncle Jake’s head.

Fifth, and finally, is Dina, a dryad druid (yes, the entire start of her character design was because I thought this sounded like a fun combination to say). Dina is, as mentioned, a druid and the designated healer of the party, as well as a pretty competent combatant with her plant and life magic. As a descendant of Nature’s Attendant, she also possesses a variant of his Bloodline, allowing her to communicate with plants, who always tend to be rather helpful. Oh, and she has living armor called Bobo.

With the gang assembled, the five of them begin to take on floor after floor, where they, in the beginning, try to get a feel for what the others are capable of, each getting a chance to show off their skills.

Something they have plenty of leeway to do, as the floors are quite honestly rather boring to Jake and his party. They are far too powerful to be properly challenged in the early parts of Nevermore. In a showcase of my supreme skill as an author, I even managed to have this feeling of boredom bleed through the pages, effectively boring a large part of the readership reading said chapters. Truly an ingenious move. Anyway, this results in Jake and company pretty much speedrunning stuff while maximizing Nevermore Points gained—because, as a reminder, the entire purpose of Nevermore except getting levels is getting those sweet Nevermore Points for a better position on the Leaderboards.

While Jake and friends are tackling the boring floors, we’re also introduced to other parties entering Nevermore. They are sprinkled throughout, with Jake’s friends from Earth going with Nevermore parties put together by their factions. Quite a few notable participants here, including Arnold, the mad scientist who occasionally helps Jake, and is going with a bunch of other C-grades blessed by Void Gods.

Eron, Jake’s fellow Bloodline Patriarch, goes with the Dao Sect, another pinnacle faction of the multiverse. Others go with the expected, such as Carmen with Valhal, Jacob with the Holy Church, Caleb with the Court of Shadows, Casper with the Risen, and so on and so forth. Also, listing out character names like this, it’s quite evident I really like making up names starting with “Ca,” huh?

Moving on! The most important other person entering Nevermore is naturally Ell’Hakan, the only one besides Jake that many believe contends for the top spot on the Nevermore Leaderboards, especially seeing as his Patron was the one who claimed the top spot in the previous era. Ell’Hakan enters the World Wonder with a party of elites, most of them young geniuses blessed by powerful gods who back Yip of Yore, but to many people’s surprise, there is also a Saintess from the Holy Church with him, serving as his party’s healer.

Every single one of these parties entering the World Wonder goes through the early piss-easy floors for way too long until, finally, things begin to spice up a bit when they enter the wonderful world of Minaga’s Labyrinth.

This section of Nevermore spanned from the thirty-first floor to the fortieth and was the first time there wasn’t only a step-up in the design of each floor but also the difficulty. At least, it would soon get quite a bit harder.

As for why this section was called Minaga’s Labyrinth, well, it’s because it was designed by a guy called Minaga. What is Minaga? Good question, Minaga is Minaga and a fanatic when it comes to making dungeons. He also really likes to get personally involved in the experience of those doing his dungeons by providing live commentary and really feeling like a sixth member of the party. In the eyes of many, he could also be seen as an overly meddling dungeon master who really wanted to railroad the members of the group into doing particular things, while begrudgingly acknowledging when they broke a scenario.

Oh, and did Jake end up breaking things. It probably shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone besides poor Minaga, but Jake is quite good at solving puzzles and navigating a labyrinth. Seeing as he possesses a Bloodline which gives him an overpowered intuition and a massive Sphere of Perception, allowing him to immediately find the path, despite every method Minaga put in place to limit the use of skills that made navigation easier.

So, while even the Augur, Jacob, found it impossible to properly divine the correct path through the labyrinth filled with demons, Jake and his party breezed through until finally reaching the thirty-fifth floor, where they faced the evil Demon Lord Gubrothas to conclude their quest. All this coming after battling demons for some reason, infiltrating the harem of the demon lord, where they discovered the Sword Saint had quite the past, and a lot of other hijinks you can read about in the last book if you want to know more.

The evil Demon Lord Gubrothas turns out to be a classic multi-phase boss fight that totally wasn’t inspired by the author having played WoW for way too many years. In the end, Jake and friends win the first truly challenging fight of the World Wonder thus far, taking down the big bad guy. They then prepare to enter the second part of Minaga’s Labyrinth.

This fight against the Demon Lord also becomes the first time in the Leaderboards competition where a difference begins to be shown. Seeing as winning the fight in the hardest fashion possible awarded a special Grand Achievement giving a percentage amplifier to all Nevermore Points at the end of the fifty years they would spend in the World Wonder, it would naturally prove highly impactful down the line, so missing out on it didn’t bode well.

While people such as Jake, Ell’Hakan, Arnold, and many others win the fight without any losses, others aren’t as lucky, having to rely on their factions to replace members on the upcoming City Floor.

Oh yeah, City Floors are a thing in Nevermore. I should probably mention those. In my defense, they haven’t really been relevant until now, as they are just temporary rest zones that effectively serve as checkpoints one can teleport back into even if one left Nevermore to not lose too much progress. Also, to clarify here, leaving Nevermore while competing on the Leaderboards is not a thing, as the fifty-year time limit would keep ticking while outside.

Anyhow, as with the rest of Minaga’s section of floors, his City Floor is also different, and not somewhere Jake and his gang can just pass through while checking the current status of the Leaderboards.

They have to actually craft stuff and “sell” it to what are effectively NPCs in order to advance to the next floor. This entire thing ended up taking way too long, but hey, it was a great chance to get some profession levels done. During his time on the floor, Jake also has meetings with old friends and allies, catching up and getting updates on how everyone else is doing. Most noteworthy is a conversation with Eron, where the guy talks about his plans to help people avoid death… by effectively wanting to find a method to turn mortals into immortals despite not being gods. So, yeah, that’s definitely a major thing that will be further explored in a dozen books or something!

For a slight change of pace, back on Earth, stuff is naturally also happening while Jake and many others are away. The effects of Jake’s Chosen Ceremony in book 9 are finally felt, as Miranda is busy dealing with all the stuff coming from an influx of migrants, most of whom are slaves gifted to Jake during the ceremony.

Slaves she promptly frees and tries to integrate into society, but needless to say, things aren’t easy, even if some of these freed slaves prove competent and helpful. One thing is for sure, Jake is happy he fled to Nevermore and didn’t have to handle all that stuff himself, while Miranda can only begrudgingly do her best and find solace in the levels she would at least gain. Seeing as she had no plans to try and compete on the Leaderboards, she didn’t care about going above 210 for the cutoff to compete, though she will go to Nevermore later just for the levels.

Back with Jake, he and the others finally get done with the City Floor, only behind Ell’Hakan by a bit over two years, as that’s how long it took Jake and his party to pass the floor. Meanwhile, Ell’Hakan was just a dirty cheater who used his Bloodline to manipulate the NPCs to believe any crap he offered was worth enough for him and all his party members to pass the floor in one go. Truly despicable behavior from a dirty cheater…

Anyway, Jake and friends proceed to cheat their way through every puzzle and labyrinth they possibly can. In this section of Minaga’s Labyrinth, they can even pick their own way forward with different challenges based on their choices, varying in difficulty. In truth, this just meant they defaulted to the highest difficulty for more points with Jake directing them to take the shortest path possible, but hey, it was nice to at least have the illusion of choice.

These choices also end up being the right ones, as on the final floor of Minaga’s Labyrinth, Jake and company get the “true ending” because of their performance, allowing them to face the real final boss of Minaga’s Labyrinth: Minaga himself.

A battle that is quite a bit different compared to any other, as Minaga isn’t exactly a normal opponent. One of the special things in this fight is that no one can actually die during the fight. A system-imposed restriction, because if Minaga wanted them all dead for real and wasn’t after offering a good over-the-top boss fight… everyone would totally die.

Alright, I’m gonna assume most people reading this recap remember Minaga from the last book as he is considered quite memorable, but as a reminder, he is a—to put it politely—fucking overpowered Unique Lifeform capable of creating true clones of himself. Clones that can all share memories, yet are entirely distinct when it comes to Truesouls and karma, making him effectively the hardest god in the entire multiverse to kill for good and an eternal nightmare should anyone make him an enemy.

Of course, the version Jake and everyone else getting the true ending fights is just a C-grade clone of Minaga with heavily nerfed abilities, but that doesn’t mean the fight is easy. Quite the opposite, as it’s a seven or so chapters long boss battle with multiple phases, including a hidden final phase for good measure. Truly, Mianga wouldn’t have it any other way.

In the end, Jake and the others barely come out with a win, not even losing anyone in the process, getting a big Grand Achievement, and the best loot of the system event so far. Everyone walks away with some good stuff, with Jake snagging a mythical item called Cradle of Soul’s Kindling that can help him make a Soulflame… another thing that will happen in later books, so I’m not even going to explain more here.

Now, it’s also revealed that during all of these shenanigans, a certain livestream is going on, hosted by the Wyrmgod. Alright, it isn’t actually a livestream, but a recording played back shortly after being taken to trick Jake’s ability to know if multiple people were observing him, but it’s still effectively a livestream, so it’s gonna be referred to as a livestream both here and in the book.

Anyhow, the Minaga fight becomes another major differentiator between the top parties who have a chance to compete for the top spots on the Leaderboards and those merely hoping to get some good levels out of the event.

Sadly for everyone involved, after defeating Minaga, it’s back to more regular Nevermore programming… except not really. The next five floors turn out to be what are essentially multiversal lessons in generally accepted laws and societal norms.

The first of these floors has Jake and friends encountering something called a Karmic Plague, a certifiable fucked-up creation that, if you make it, will result in gods wanting to hunt you down. A Karmic Plague is a plague which spreads through karma, independent of the creator. What’s more, there’s no real cure, meaning Jake and friends’ objective on the floor is to effectively destroy all life on the planet there.

At least until they dive toward the core of the planet, where they end up facing the floor boss, someone called the Dark Witch. After a pretty tough battle, they subdue her, and through the power of Jake doing bullshit things, he ends up saving the Dark Witch from the Karmic Plague while also avoiding destroying the entire planet, earning him and the others a nice little bonus Grand Achievement from the Wyrmgod. Oh, and equally as important, Jake gets a few sweet skill upgrades, truly rewarding good behavior.

Floors forty-two to forty-five are, as mentioned, more general lessons and best practices about how to act in the multiverse. Forty-two focused on the Bloodline Accord, dictating that kidnapping people with Bloodline for the intent of “breeding” them is strictly forbidden and will lead to a swift execution and destruction of whatever faction took part, with even Primordials happily getting involved to enforce the accord.

Forty-three taught them that usually, it’s only acceptable to send people of roughly equal power to fight one another. In other words, to fight a bunch of mid-tier C-grades, it’s frowned upon if a faction sends a bunch of B-grades instead. This could also easily lead to escalation, resulting in A-grades then killing the B-grades, S-grades killing the A-grades, and soon enough, gods would be involved, which no one wants to see happen.

Moving on, floor forty-four was all about teaching the Nevermore Attendee about different variant monsters and the effect of Records on ecosystems and whatnot. This naturally hit close to home for Jake and his Primeval Origins powers from his Bloodline that helped create unique variants, like Sylphie and Sandy. This was only the first part of this floor’s lesson, though, as the second was about variants one was actively encouraged to kill on sight.

It mentioned creatures like Curse Remnants, Plague Spirits, and all such monsters that were effectively natural disasters given souls. Jake also found himself heavily vindicated upon learning there were quite a few fungi considered kill-on-sight; though, of course, to Jake, any fungi was kill-on-sight by default.

Finally, the forty-fifth floor concerns perhaps the most important law of all: to respect divine authority. This turned out to be the easiest floor of them all, as surely the Chosen of the Malefic Viper couldn’t possibly fail to understand such a simple concept, right? Thus, the images of the gods in charge of this floor promptly allowed Jake and company to be on their merry way, Jake having learned his lesson to always be subservient and faithful to all divine beings, never to display even a hint of blasphemy ever again…

From this floor on, not much interesting really happened in Nevermore as they were back to grinding levels, and while I know it surely must have disappointed many of my readers, I decided this was a great spot for a time skip, with this book starting right after that time skip! I could have written them all out, adding another book to the Nevermore arc, but alas, I made an executive decision, something I’m certain will disappoint many.

Now, before getting back to Jake in this book, we checked in with Meira—the former elven slave Villy had forced upon Jake right as he got to the Order at the end of the last one. While Jake is away, she has truly been making progress on her own, successfully evolving to C-grade, and with the help of Duskleaf, she even became a High Elf.

Duskleaf also further surprises her by offering Meira to become his Chosen, at which point she is given the last name Dawnleaf to truly communicate she is officially his disciple.

In a display of her newfound status, Meira returns to her home village for the first time since she was kidnapped by the Order of the Malefic Viper after the fall of the Brimstone Hegemon.

There, she reunites with her family and effectively claims the clan’s entire area as her own dominion, making use of the clout afforded to her by Duskleaf. So, yeah, things are going quite well on her end.

And… there we are. As with every other recap, I definitely forgot a bunch of stuff in this one, but luckily, I took precautions and released a longer recap a few months ago called “The Primal Hunter 10” that you can go back and check out if you want a more thorough reminder!

With all that said, let’s get into book eleven after our little time skip, as it’s finally time to take on the Challenge Dungeons of Nevermore! Woo!