The Primal Hunter 4, page 1
THE PRIMAL HUNTER 4
©2022 ZOGARTH
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Also by Zogarth
Also in series:
The Primal Hunter 1
The Primal Hunter 2
The Primal Hunter 3
The Primal Hunter 4
The Primal Hunter 5
Contents
Previously on The Primal Hunter
1. A Real Shitfest
2. Enhanced Splitting Arrow
3. Dervish
4. Worthy Opponents
5. Rules of Monkey Hunting
6. Matriarchs
7. City/Monkey Management
8. Monkey Business
9. Enjoyment
10. Fragmented
11. The Calm Before the Politics
12. The World Congress Begins
13. World Congress: Friendly Talks
14. World Congress: Reunion
15. World Congress: A Quick Vote
16. World Congress: "Confrontations"
17. World Congress: On the Flip of a Coin
18. World Congress: System Events
19. World Congress: Challenge
20. World Congress: Master Negotiator
21. World Congress: Final Talks
22. Shopping Spree
23. A Question of Morality
Intermission 8 - William (1/3)
Intermission 8 - William (2/3)
Intermission 8 - William (3/3)
24. A Healthy Diet
25. This Chapter Contains Alchemy
26. Man Cave(s)
27. Nanoblade
28. Evil Incarnate
29. Questionable Choices
30. Golden Mushroom
31. Deepdwellers vs Cave Troll (feat. Jake)
32. The Paragon Option
33. A Distraction
34. Justice From Above
35. To Upgrade Or Not To Upgrade, That Is The Question
36. The Morality of Domination
37. Righteous Crusade
38. Schemes Of An Old Man
39. Heartwarden
40. Assessment
41. Census Taking (Hard Mode)
42. Gravity Is Your Friend
43. Minor Miscalculations
44. Priorities
45. Altmar Signet
46. Stats, Tables, & Gear—All the LitRPG!
47. Something Long Overdue
48. Leatherworkers
49. Personal Improvement
50. Temple & Blessings
51. Servant & Territory
52. Will of the Chosen
53. Jake the Corpse Merchant
54. Taking Advantage of Mistakes
55. Keeping It Friendly
56. Introspection & Self-Control
57. Sultan
58. "I don't like you." - Jake Thayne, Year 1, 93rd Era
59. Executive Decision
60. Concessions Today, Profits in the Future
61. Sultan Has Wares, If You Have Coin
62. Five Lights in the Darkness
63. Stupid Monkeys & Their Many Uses
64. Singular Focus
65. Presence
66. Memories of (Questionable) Past Deeds
67. Skill Choices Are Hard
68. Birds of Prey
69. Beatdown
70. Teaching the Young
71. Sylphie Gets a New friend
72. Union Oath
73. A Higher Power? No Thanks
74. Scorching the Plains
75. Bow & Blade
76. Better Boots
Thank you for reading The Primal Hunter 4
Previously on The Primal Hunter
Finally, out of the Tutorial, Jake is able to actually explore Earth and see what the transformed planet has to offer. And what it has to offer is a giant lightning tree on a massive cloud island he can check out together with his newly-gained hawk friend, which Jake naturally named Hawkie (yes, yes, very original name, but in his defense, it is a hawk).
On the way up to this cloud island, Jake and Hawkie kill a bunch of birds before finally encountering enemies that arrows do not work against: living clouds. Cloud Elementals, to be more exact. Not to worry, though, Jake had not wasted his time on learning mana-manipulation for nothing as he goes full-on mage to beat them. That is until he gets a notification that his Pylon of Civilization is under attack.
Flashing back a few days (because everyone loves flashbacks), we see that at his newly established “city” consisting of four people and a wooden lodge, Miranda, his newly employed City Lord, is figuring out her abilities—until a party of five appears nearby and makes contact. After some conversation, Miranda comes to learn that they are being chased. The group ends up staying, and they begin preparations for the upcoming attack.
The attackers are a group led by two comically evil characters, Abby and Donald, the cousin and uncle of Neil. Abby is a space mage, and Donald is a guy with a cursed sword who literally walks a path of power where he abuses and kills women and traps their souls. Yeah… maybe I overdid that one a bit, but I kind of wanted to show that the system was neutral when it came to morality, and even fucked up Paths were possible. And, hey, exaggeration increases understanding, right?
Anyway, evil attackers arrive, a fight ensues, and the good guys are obviously losing until a very pissed-off Jake returns, thinking Miranda has betrayed him and tried to steal the Pylon. After Jake understands the situation, we have one of those stereotypical face-slapping moments where he beats Abby and Donald, killing both and even stealing the cursed sword. Totally not something he can make into something very useful later.
It also turns into a great opportunity to finally expand the budding settlement further, even getting a space mage to join them. After this whole debacle, Jake flies off again to join his hawk friend and get some more levels. Shortly after returning to the cloud continent, Jake gets his final skill in E-grade and manages to kill his very first D-grade. His prowess impresses Hawkie enough that he invites Jake back to meet his family.
That is how Jake would come to meet a Mystsong Hawk (naturally called Mystie) and the mother of a baby hawk-to-be, as she is guarding an egg within a ritual circle to help strengthen the baby.
Throughout this all, our favorite snake god is also busy doing the usual snake god stuff, like killing gods from factions that refuse to fuck off or become his subordinates and taking over the massive planet the Order of the Malefic Viper is placed on. Good stuff all around on his end.
Back with Jake, the poor guy gets convinced to help with a ritual, and all he needs to do is help kill another D-grade. He does this by acting like human artillery, and he returns to help with the ritual. During the ritual, Jake does “stuff” and ends up influencing it a bit more than initially intended, something her parents sure would be happy for in the future. Jake gets given the egg to him to care for as he carefully carries it back to his lodge, the two hawks deciding to follow along, the presence of a powerful D-grade not at all disturbing to those there.
Not long after, Jake is asked to come along and finally make contact with another human settlement, making him leave Haven for something other than killing stuff… even if every damn reader of this genre knew that this little adventure would lead to killing stuff too.
This other settlement is an old fort that has been taken over by a guy called Phillip and is run by him (there is also a guy named Arnold here who makes drones and stuff. Not an important character at all, barely worth mentioning). The Fort is also under constant attack by angry monster cows, and they are having quite the problems, so of course, Jake steps up to help them with their bovine issues.
They repel the attack. Jake notices sketchy stuff, heads off, and does some actual tracking to figure out what the cause of these attacks is. He finds the source, a D-grade Minotaur Mindchief that has remembered his less-than-pleasant times in captivity and has some legitimate complaints about the farming industry. Sadly for the Minotaur, his hatred had turned into pure hate for humanity as a whole, and even more sadly for the Minotaur, it turned out to be specialized in mental magic. A school of magic, it turns out someone with a Bloodline to act not based thinking is quite good against
Jake ends up killing the Minotaur, but not before it unleashes its entire horde of angry cows upon the Fort. This ends up only being a chance for the D-grade hawk Mystie to show off by defending the Fort with Myst magic by summoning magical beasts and stuff.
After all this, Jake heads back to his settlement again and leaves Miranda and the others to handle the diplomacy stuff. Back there, he does some alchemy, upgrades some stuff, strengthens his hatred of blue mushrooms by nearly getting killed by the one below the settlement as it turns out to be a powerful D-grade, and prepares for the egg to hatch.
Surprising no one, the baby hawk egg hatches as a Sylphian Eyas, a far more powerful variant than either of her parents.
This baby hawk is named Sylphie. That is at least more of a real name than her parents. Jake quickly comes to like this cute and very eloquent baby hawk. Who doesn’t like cute murder birds, right?
With a baby hawk to take care of, Jake chills a bit with the hunting for a while. Chilling in this context meaning more alchemy and preparing to kill the hated mushroom that nearly killed him. But this time, with science!
The guy Arnold I just told you not to worry about comes in here and provides some poison injectors to poison the ground the mushroom is growing in. A bit later, Jake also finally does some transmutations and upgrades Touch of the Malefic Viper by taking the cursed scimitar from earlier that I also told you wouldn’t be important and turning it into something important.
Oh yeah, a bunch of stuff also happens to secondary characters in this book. Carmen, from the intermission I know you all read in book 2, claims a Pylon and most other notable figures on Earth (most of which were introduced in the Intermissions. Read the damn Intermissions) also claims Pylons, and it is announced that soonish the World Congress will begin, finally allowing the scattered Earthlings to meet.
Miranda also ends up getting blessed by the Verdant Witches, allies of the Malefic Viper, making her position as Jake’s de facto assistant (read: babysitter) official. They also decide to name the “city” Haven (yeah, I know, it sounds generic, but a bit of fun trivia here. Haven also means “the garden” in my native language, and I thought it fit, so suck it).
Back with Jake, his plans for the D-grade mushroom end up working out, and he kills the damn thing. With his arch-nemesis killed, it is some to evolve to D-grade himself to truly show the blue bastard who is boss.
The evolution to D-grade turns out to be rather uneventful, at least for his race. When it comes to class, it is a bit more exciting as Jake becomes an Avaricious Arcane Hunter, getting a far better variant of class than what he had in E-grade, as well as some cool skills. He flexes a bit on the hawk family before moving on to the profession.
After upgrading his profession to Heretic-Chosen Alchemist of the Malefic Viper (quite a mouthful, I know), Jake gets a new skill to see Records of the past related to the Malefic Viper. He does this and sees a vision of back when Villy was only C-grade, all with the purpose of letting him experience the Legacy skills of his Patron.
After that, Jake sees it is only five and a half days to the World Congress, but he still decides to head out and learn about his newfound power a bit. Heading out, he—
Oh, wait, this was where I decided to end book 3.
Book 4, go!
Chapter 1
A Real Shitfest
The figure leaped from atop the tree and flew several hundred meters through the air, landing on another crown before swiftly taking off once more. A few beasts below considered attacking, but once they felt the difference in grade and power, they swiftly changed their minds.
It was far over three hundred kilometers from Haven, and the density of trees was only increasing. Furthermore, many of the beasts were now reaching around level 80. It was a bit deeper in than where Mystie and Hawkie had placed their nest back before they relocated to the city.
The figure was naturally Jake, who had decided to ditch the wings and do some tree-hopping instead. Would flying be faster? Most definitely, but making massive leaps from tree to tree just felt awesome.
One Step Mile wasn’t that useable due to the sheer density of trees making it hard to travel in a straight line on the ground. The trunks could be many meters in radius and reach hundreds of meters into the air, reminding him a bit of the outer area of the tutorial.
Thinking about it, perhaps the tutorial forest had been inspired by the true forest here on the reformed planet—or was it the other way around? Maybe a bit of both? Either way, it wasn’t the first time he had noted the familiarity. It was quite certain this wasn’t the same thing, though…
Because sadly, no lockboxes.
Jake wanted some new gear soon. His whole getup was beginning to feel a bit dated, even if it had only been a few months. The only great pieces of gear he really had were his necklace, mask, new scimitar, and, surprisingly enough, boots.
Were those boots the ones with the lowest required level and still only rare rarity? Sure, but they were also still the toughest damn things he had besides his mask, which he still hadn’t managed to put even a slight scratch on.
He doubted he would find anything within this forest, but one could always be hopeful. Even if he couldn’t find a lockbox, maybe he could find some good materials to use in the future.
One might wonder why Jake didn’t use his newly upgraded Touch of the Malefic Viper to transmute his current gear, and the reason for that was quite simple… because he was ninety percent sure it would end up making the majority of his gear worse than it currently was.
Jake’s version had to rely on the existing enchants, and as his many tests had shown, using Touch would ruin what was already placed on the gear. A lot of his gear had stat-giving effects, and Jake honestly had no idea how to replicate that. The only thing he would do was turn those stats into possibly making the armor poison people touching it, or maybe use his arcane affinity to make the armor a lot more durable. Oh, or he could make it self-destruct by transmuting it with a shitload of the destructive part of his arcane mana.
Quite honestly, he would prefer just to have stats over that.
The only item he was considering actually transmuting was his Windsoar Bow. It wasn’t because he didn’t want or like the enchant on it; in fact, he found its ability to remove wind resistance and even turn the wind into an assisting force to be damn good. No, the issue was that he feared it would break if he didn’t.
Arcane Powershot was not a gentle skill. Far from it. While he charged the attack, the bow and his body would both be put under considerable strain, and the bow would be forced to absorb obscene amounts of energy and have the highly destructive mana also coat its exterior.
He could handle his body breaking a bit—that would heal by itself—but he couldn’t handle his weapon suddenly exploding in the middle of a fight. He still vividly remembered how the first Infused Powershot he’d ever used absolutely destroyed the tutorial starting bow.
