The Primal Hunter 15: A LitRPG Adventure, page 39
“I object to the handling of evidence and question the veracity of this so-called recording,” Jake countered. “Unless any physical evidence can be submitted, I seek an immediate dismissal.”
Minaga and Jake both, for some reason, turned to the Sword Saint, who’d been appointed judge. The two of them had likely thought the gag would end there, but the old man ended up shaking his head. “I do not believe I have the jurisdiction to even make a ruling. Even if I do, the crime happened in Nevermore, and unless the Pantheon of Life has an extradition agreement, I question whether any prosecution can ever take place.”
“I win,” Jake said with a smile.
“For now,” Minaga said, crossing his arms. “Just know that should you ever set foot in Nevermore again, we will throw the book at you and go for maximum sentencing. Which is to say nothing, as I’m pretty sure killing things inside of Nevermore isn’t actually illegal.”
“I do think we have an extradition agreement with Nevermore?” Dina said after a time, tilting her head and a bit behind on the joke.
“Either way, I declare diplomatic immunity,” Jake said, shaking his head and smiling. “Anyway, back to the question we originally asked, what have you been up to, Minaga?”
The Unique Lifeform shrugged. “Stuff.”
“More specifically?”
“God stuff.”
“Very enlightening,” Jake said sarcastically.
“Well, thank you,” Minaga said, smiling. “Don’t complain too much about not seeing me enough. You’ve all been busy anyway. I wouldn’t wanna crash in on you and Artemis when you’re busy getting to know one another.”
“How thoughtful of you,” Jake said, only semi-sarcastic with that one.
“I will have some actual work soon, though. I’ve been asked by Yggdrasil to assist in improving some magic formations and whatnot since I’m here anyway, and considering the stuff the Pantheon of Life will donate to me and Nevermore as payment, it should be worth my time.”
“That sounds like actual work,” Jake said, impressed. He wasn’t surprised that they’d asked for help from Minaga, though. Due to his unique circumstances, he borderline didn’t have any skills. That is to say, freeform magic and abilities were all he had. His insight into magic had likely reached a level far beyond that of even those who surpassed his strongest clone. In addition, his perspective very likely also differed from others, as he didn’t have any skills to help with any part of the process when doing magic. Finally, he had so many damn clones that could help with doing mental stuff. He was like a web of supercomputers that could cooperate on any task requiring brainpower.
“Gotta make a living somehow.” Minaga shrugged. “Got a big family to feed, you know.”
Jake shook his head and smiled at Minaga still being Minaga. The god—here, an S-grade clone—didn’t leave immediately, instead sticking around for a little as the five of them chatted. Minaga was especially curious about his fellow Unique Lifeform, the Fallen King, and seemed pretty happy that they were working on getting him back.
Alas, all good things must come to an end, and soon enough, Jake found himself returning to his own residence. The palace felt even bigger and definitely way emptier with Artemis not around, but Jake knew she wouldn’t be that long, so he chose to take this time to do some practice on the meditation front.
After that, it was time for some hunting and archery practice, likely in combination, so he could train archery theory with Artemis before deploying it in practice while hunting. He was already looking forward to it and all the wonderful hunting grounds the Pantheon of Life possessed, but for now, it was meditation time.
And meditation time meant reading time.
Chapter 43
First Archery Lesson
Visualization was key. All skills had Records that represented them, and all Records could be imagined if one understood them well enough. At least, that had always been Jake’s understanding. He needed to fully understand a skill before he could properly visualize it within his Soulspace.
However, that assumption was far from complete. It wasn’t wrong, per se; it was just one of many ways to make a visual representation of something appear in the Soulspace.
The easiest way was one Jake knew, seeing as there were already objects within his Soulspace with physical representations. Absorbing a physical item that turned into pure Records was incredibly easy to visualize and see within the Soulspace. In many instances, it was even unavoidable, as the physical nature of the items was part of their Records in the first place, making them appear within the Soulspace without the owner of the soul even trying to make it so.
Villy’s drop of blood, Eternal Hunger, and the book from the First Sage were all such items. Right below them in terms of visualization simplicity were one’s energies and general Path. The sky of arcane mana, the crystal forest below, and all of what Jake had summoned during his training with the First Sage as he improved his Anomalous Soul were considered easy.
If Jake wanted to heal his own soul and repair Palate of the Malefic Viper, he would have to move up a level of difficulty. Visualizing specific skills was very difficult in comparison to his Path in general. All the skills were part of Jake’s Path, and he would effectively have to isolate a segment of Records and visualize them.
Such visualization wasn’t as rudimentary as merely imagining how a skill would look within the Soulspace. Imagination and interpretation were certainly part of it, but the most important aspect remained comprehension of the skill itself, or the alternative option Jake was now looking into:
Understanding the very concept of skill visualization and, rather than fully comprehending a skill to visualize it, employing the assistance of the system in the matter. To do that, Jake had to be able to “see” the skill, and he could only do that if he could better understand his own Path and all the building blocks that composed it.
Meditate was, in the words of the First Sage, a skill primarily designed to better understand oneself. Jake had spent a lot of time and effort understanding his own body and the pathways of energy going through it. He had even studied the soul with the purpose of creating poisons to destroy it.
This understanding had helped Jake create a very powerful boosting skill and was likely the reason he’d obtained Arcane Supremacy to further strengthen his body. Perhaps most importantly, it let him move the way he wanted to, when he wanted to.
Compared to other fighters, Jake had far fewer moments where he wanted to dodge something but simply wasn’t fast enough. He didn’t miscalculate minute distances but purposefully dodged within a hair’s breadth. His instincts allowed him to know and adapt, but to do that in the first place, he needed to understand the hardware he was working with—something that had also come very naturally to him.
Understanding his own soul was akin to understanding the software. While those hadn’t been the exact words of the First Sage, Jake thought his comparison was rather apt. Using a skill was just knowing how a program worked, while full understanding of a skill was tantamount to understanding the entire codebase. A daunting task, especially if the skill was something as complex as Palate of the Malefic Viper.
However, what if Jake didn’t have to understand the entire code, just how to use the directory system of the software that was his soul? What if all he needed to do was learn how to locate, navigate to, and utilize Palate of the Malefic Viper? What if that was all it took to then spark the system to help create a representation within the Soulspace, with Jake having effectively isolated the Records to a sufficient degree?
Needless to say, this was all still a gross oversimplification, but the concept was there, and Jake remained positive as he progressed toward this goal, using the book left by the First Sage as his guide. By now, he’d already gotten a lot better at many things.
Standing within his Soulspace, Jake raised a hand, and a swirling orb of dark green energy appeared. It began to change shape and morph, wings sprouting as it turned more physical, scales scattered throughout the storm of energy and mixing with several other concepts and powers.
Yet as the swirling mass of Records increased in size, it began to wobble. The spinning orb became erratic, the energies no longer balanced, and the Records' unity was broken. A moment later, the entire swirling mass of Records broke apart, resulting in a massive explosion of malefic light that Jake easily suppressed by encasing it in a barrier of arcane energy.
“Corrupted, huh…” Jake sighed as he once more leaned into the software analogy. What he had just done was summon all the Records related to his Malefic Viper Legacy skills. Since they represented such a big part of his Path, Jake could create that swirling, incomprehensible mess of the nine skills mixed together, but even when he did so, it wouldn’t last long.
Because some of the Records in the swirling mass were broken. Corrupted. Like a memory leak in a program, or some other bug that would inevitably lead to a crash. The Records from the broken Palate of the Malefic Viper affected the balance between all the Legacy skills, and Jake came to better understand how disastrous it would be if he evolved with a broken skill. Assuming he could even evolve it in the first place.
Seeing as a full system reinstall wasn’t an option, Jake would have to repair that one broken program and fix the corruption. He would have to locate the files that had been corrupted when he’d failed to forcefully upgrade his Palate of the Malefic Viper and personally replace them with new ones that were uncorrupted. In other words, he would have to get new Records and get rid of some of the old ones.
I’m getting closer, Jake thought as he turned back toward the book and kept reading, knowing another chapter would soon be unlocked. By now, with all he had learned and could do, Jake was confident that if he decided to try and upgrade his Meditate skill at that moment, it would be legendary rarity, and not even a bad legendary-rarity skill at that.
But he still hesitated, as he wanted his upgrade to be “perfect.” He didn’t want it to just be good enough. Maybe it was possible that if he upgraded the Meditate skill now, he would be able to use it to repair Palate, but that wasn’t all Jake wanted the upgraded Legacy Skill of the First Sage to be capable of.
Jake was greedy. Of that, there was no doubt, and so far, he was happy with his progress… even if he did feel like he was frying his brain as he got further into the tome left by the First Sage. Jake had no idea how many chapters it had in total, but so far, he’d gotten through seven, nearly unlocking the eighth, and he got the feeling that when he was done with chapter ten, it would be time to upgrade the Meditate skill.
It had been about three weeks since he reunited with Dina, and during this time, he had just been cooped up and meditating in his own residence, working on understanding the tome. After four days of this, he got word that Artemis would also be back after roughly three weeks, so now, he was just waiting for her return.
Another fourteen hours ended up passing before the palace got a whole lot less lonely.
She didn’t even bother to knock—not that she had to. Jake had given her permission to come and go as she wanted and whitelisted her on all the barriers, after all. He’d vaguely felt her observing him beforehand, and a figure now appeared within the chamber where he sat in meditation.
Jake smiled and, within his Soulspace, closed the tome of the First Sage before opening his eyes to see Artemis standing in front of him. She, in turn, observed him, her expression a bit weird, as if she’d seen or felt something she definitely hadn’t expected to.
“What were you doing?” Artemis asked, looking at him with a mix of astonishment, respect, and plain-old confusion.
“Meditating,” Jake answered casually as he acclimated to the world outside of his Soulspace. Having spent over a week in constant meditation, he did feel a bit out of it and needed a moment to fully return to the real world.
“You were doing more than that... I felt something odd. A presence, almost. Ancient. Powerful.”
“I was reading within my Soulspace,” Jake explained, not seeing any reason to avoid an honest answer. He couldn’t actually share what he’d been doing even if he wanted to, after all.
“Reading, you say... what exactly could you have been reading that would produce that kind of effect? I didn’t get the notion it was something related to the Legacy of the Malefic One, but something else.” Artemis was clearly fishing for an explanation to soothe her curiosity.
Jake shook his head. “I sadly can’t tell you.”
Artemis sighed. “I understand. Everyone has their own secrets.”
“No, I literally can’t tell you,” Jake said, smirking as he did something Villy had done to him several times before. “It’s related to Forbidden Knowledge. The book I’m reading is Forbidden Knowledge made material.”
“You have a book full of Forbidden Knowledge within your Soulspace?” Artemis asked.
Jake gave a cheeky smile. “Yep. With knowledge not even the Viper knows about.”
“And you can’t even give me a hint who this book was made by? I must assume it’s a Primordial, or at least an individual with power approaching one.”
“The creator is already dead,” Jake said as he shook his head, wanting to convince her it was hopeless to even guess the creator.
However, it seemed that explanation wouldn’t fly, as Artemis just kept looking at him before frowning. “You just said something considered Forbidden Knowledge, didn’t you?”
“I did,” Jake confirmed, unaware that it was considered Forbidden Knowledge in this context to admit the First Sage had died.
“I see...” Artemis let out a loud sigh as she looked at Jake closely. “You really are hiding a lot of secrets, aren’t you?”
“Come on, who doesn’t like someone with a flair of mystery?” Jake said in a teasing voice. “I wouldn’t even say this one is my top secret.”
“I reckon that one is related to your Bloodline somehow,” Artemis said.
“I can neither confirm nor deny,” Jake said, genuinely not knowing if that would be considered his biggest secret anymore after what had happened in Nevermore. There was probably more to be revealed, but even that remained a secret to Jake. At least for now.
“Keep your secrets.” Artemis smiled and shook her head. “I’ve cleared my schedule for a good while and will have avatars handling my daily matters. I also heard that your comrades have left the city to explore the territory of the Pantheon of Life on their own, and I can only guess you want to do the same.”
“That, I can confirm,” Jake said, nodding. “I want to hone my archery a bit before I go hunting, though. In that way, my leveling can double as practice for what I want to improve. I’m confident I could already do well if I decided to just go now and try to improve on my own, but some good feedback would definitely go a long way.”
Artemis nodded, having already expected this from their prior discussions. “I would be glad to help. I’m not going to really be teaching you anything, though. I saw the recording of my image in Nevermore, and from that, it’s clear that you’re not the type of person to learn from pure theory. You need to experience something firsthand and reach an understanding on your own.”
“The Malefic Viper has said something very similar in the past,” Jake said, nodding in complete agreement.
“That being the case, I believe the best approach would be for you to experience archery at a higher level directly,” Artemis said as she smiled. “Plus, it should be at least a little nostalgic for you, while for me, it will be a chance to experience something I’ve only seen recordings of myself doing.”
“I see great minds think alike.” Jake already knew where Artemis was going with this.
Seeing as Artemis was so much stronger than Jake, it was hard for her to show him anything he could learn from. That was why they needed a way to level the playing field and not make sheer power the limiter... and Jake had just the thing for it. Something Artemis already knew all about.
Taking out the item he hadn’t used since his duel with Carmen, he and Artemis both used Identify on instinct.
[Emblem of the Grand Champion (Mythical)] – An emblem infused with the powers and concepts of the Colosseum of Mortals, given only to those deemed worthy. This Emblem can create a replica of the Colosseum of Mortals arena within a virtual space for individuals to duel one another. Allows the user to choose two targets who must consent to take part in a duel within the virtual space. Those entering will leave their true bodies defenseless during the duel period. All levels and stats of those entering will be normalized. Most skills and abilities will also be restricted. Dying within the virtual space will have no negative consequences. As the owner, you can always observe the inside of the Emblem of the Grand Champion. Cooldown period: 1 hour.
Requirements: Soulbound.
This was likely the perfect item for this exact kind of situation, and Jake didn’t doubt the creator of the item had known that when giving it out in Nevermore. What’s more, because Jake’s actual archery skill wouldn’t exist within the Colosseum of Mortals, he wouldn’t get any of the system’s passive benefits and would have to consciously think about using it.
The same was true for Artemis, so it would truly be a difference in competence that separated them.
“We should enter right away,” Artemis said. “There is an hour cooldown between each use, after all. Might as well get that running.”
“You think I’ll go down that quickly?” Jake said with a cheeky smile.
“Yes,” Artemis said without a moment’s hesitation.
“I guess we’ll see,” Jake said as he used the Emblem. Artemis didn’t resist, and moments later, they found themselves standing across from one another within the familiar Colosseum of Mortals.
They each stood behind their respective gates that had yet to be lowered. All the equipment one could ever want was available, yet the two of them decided to just wield bows and don the basic starting armor, which offered no real protection.
