The Primal Hunter 8: A LitRPG Adventure, page 4
Her race offered her skills mainly related to subterfuge and illusion magic, as well as other things one would expect of a succubus. Skills that were obviously not usable inside the dungeon, unless Irin wanted to get really freaky with a giant mushroom. And that was a mental image Jake really didn’t need.
Making their way through the cavern, they soon reached the next gate and saw the challenge to pass the eighth floor. Once they read it, Jake nearly wanted to laugh.
Create a Hemotoxin, Necrotic Poison, or neurotoxin of at least uncommon rarity from the materials found on this floor and place it in the cauldron. In order to open the lid of the cauldron, at least eight hundred mushroom men must be slain.
Progress: Mushroom men killed: 78/800. Poison placed in the cauldron: 0/1.
"Quite a spike in difficulty," Irin said after reading it. And she was technically correct. While the seventh floor had also required them to make an uncommon-rarity poison, the materials provided had been far better, as there had even been a few rare-rarity mushrooms they could use. On this floor, based on their initial observations, the best one could get was of uncommon rarity, and mushrooms with any of the required properties would take a good while to find.
However…
"Well, this will be easy," Jake said, smirking as he pulled out two types of mushrooms he had already picked up earlier. "I will need more of these two mushrooms. Also, I need some of that red stalk you picked up earlier, Reika, and to get the cores of those big stabby-arm mushroom men."
They all looked at Jake, who just shrugged. "What? Not my fault the dungeon decided to suddenly get easy. I wanted to gather all this stuff to eat anyway, as I am always looking to improve my Hemotoxins and Necrotic Poison."
Draskil nodded in approval, showing himself a true man of culture. "Good poisons."
With those words, he left to collect what Jake had asked for, and Reika handed him the stalks before going to find more. Jake ate some of the materials he had gathered to absorb some knowledge through Palate, then got to work while the rest of his group killed things. Occasionally they would return with materials as Jake slowly refined the process. He made a common-rarity Hemotoxin in the very first concoction, and less than four and a half hours after entering the eighth floor, he got it.
Jake grinned as Draskil returned with some more materials, only to see Jake toss the poison bottle towards the cauldron. It landed on the lid with a clank as Jake shook his head in an overly dramatic way.
"Man, you guys are sooo slow," Jake failed to hold himself back from saying. He looked at the cauldron, feeling very good about himself.
Progress: Mushroom men killed: 771/800. Poison placed in the cauldron: 0/1.
"Only because we bring you stuff," Draskil scoffed.
"What’s that? Us doing our assigned jobs, with me excelling?" Jake kept laughing as he got up.
Draskil looked slightly annoyed but didn’t complain more. In fact, he looked happy even with all his grumbling, as the floor had gone far faster than expected.
Jake joined the dragonkin as they headed out and got killing. There were around a thousand giant mushroom men on the floor total, and they ended up slaying most while collecting materials. Even if they could have passed the floor within less than five hours, they ended up staying for ten or so more simply to take full advantage of the place. Each floor held mushrooms Jake had never seen or heard of before, just as the dungeon had been described, and it would be foolish not to eat as many as they could for Palate.
Bastilla and Irin were the only ones really working for the last sevenish hours, as Irin was making their food and even mixing some salads using the mushrooms. Bastilla frankly had too many corpses to dismantle and ended up only bothering with those who had Lifecores within. If they had to wait for her to dismantle nearly a thousand corpses—well, realistically nine hundred, as Draskil had taken his frustrations from the water level out on a few—they would have been there for well over a day. Probably longer. This time also allowed Draskil to get back in top condition, as he had expended quite a bit of energy. There had been a lot of them, after all.
"One floor left," Irin said, smiling. They had ended their break and now stood before the passageway to the ninth floor.
"And that C-grade optional boss floor," Jake added.
"Technically, every floor after the fourth is optional," Reika correctly said.
"I feel like I should be paying to be here," Bastilla said self-deprecatingly.
Draskil just grunted as they opened the gate and went through the passageway. Jake dearly hoped the designer hadn’t decided to make the ninth floor a water level, and was relieved when he saw it was just more mushrooms without the water. It was a bit of a mix between the giant stuff on the eighth floor and all the prior mushroom floors with regular-sized foes. Regular-sized being the three-meter-tall mushroom men.
One thing that was different was the sheer number of foes. Just standing at the entrance to the floor, Jake saw thousands of them. Mushroom Man Healers, Mushroom Man Warriors, Mushroom Man Defenders, and Mushroom Man Mages. All kinds of mushroom men. And in the middle of them, standing on a large mushroom, was the boss of the ninth floor.
[Mushroom Man General – lvl 199]
With the General were naturally its commanders, which were just copy-pasted versions of the boss on the fourth floor with a few more levels on top. Four of them.
[Mushroom Man Commander – lvl 195]
"The level of enemy diversity in this dungeon is just utter shit-tier," Jake said, stating facts. Recycling older bosses as semi-regular enemies. Really?
"I must admit, it does seem rather uninspired," Reika agreed.
"I am sure there is a reason it is like this," Irin said, trying to defend the dungeon designer again even if she had to know, deep in her heart, that the dungeon designer had kind of sucked.
"Anyway, let’s get to the gate on the other side and figure out what the objective is this time around," Jake said.
They all agreed and followed, avoiding the central part of the floor to not engage the boss. Not because they thought it was a threat, but because they wanted to avoid killing the boss only to figure out they needed to do something special to reach the next floor.
Only a few mushroom men were killed on the way to the cauldron placed in front of the gate. Another set of instructions was naturally also there, and this time there really was a spike in difficulty.
Create a poison using the Lifecore of the Mushroom Man General and from the materials found on this floor, and then place it in the cauldron. This poison must be at least of uncommon rarity and must primarily contain life-affinity energy. In order to open the lid of the cauldron, at least two thousand mushroom men must be slain.
Progress: Mushroom men killed: 41/2000. Poison placed in the cauldron: 0/1.
"Only one real attempt… a complex affinity to have while still making it a poison…" Jake muttered as he read it.
"Uncommon rarity, too," Reika added with some worry. "We will need to make the life-affinity energy highly volatile—that is for sure. If not, it won’t be recognized as a poison."
"The problem is that the General’s core will likely lean far more towards a very stable and controlled life affinity, considering its Records as a general," Jake pointed out. "We will also need some cores from healers, but that energy is obviously of the healing kind."
It would’ve been fine if Jake were able to add some of his own materials, but he couldn’t. The only thing he seemed allowed to add was his blood, as it was semi-qualified as dungeon material due to parts of it stemming from the dungeon, courtesy of eating a lot of mushrooms.
"Before we decide anything, we need to get a proper understanding of what we have available," Reika said, shaking her head.
"You can do it?" Draskil asked.
"Well, I think so, yeah, but I need to have the core of the General first," Jake said. "Also, the cores of the commanders are likely just lesser versions of the General’s, so we can use them for practice crafts."
"So, the first objective is to collect what this floor has available to get a scope of what we need?" Irin asked clarifyingly.
"And eat a mountain of mushrooms to figure out which ones are best," Jake sighed.
"We go?" Draskil asked.
Jake summoned his wings and looked at Reika and Irin. "You two take the perimeter and hunt the stragglers?"
The two of them nodded as Bastilla added, "Then I will stand and cheerlead uselessly on the side, waiting for them to kill stuff I can dismantle."
He gave her a pity thumbs-up as he and Draskil got to work. Jake and the dragonkin took to the air and flew towards the army of mushroom men. Every floor had grown in size as they progressed, and this one was no different. The large Mushroom Man General sat upon its mushroom uncaringly, unaware of the two monsters on their way to slaughter it.
Nay. Not monsters. Monsters did not act to set the world right by killing abominable existences that should have never existed. These were truly evil beings that deserved only death to make up for the sin of being alive. There was another name for those like Jake and Draskil, who selflessly became arbiters of justice:
Heroes.
Chapter 4
Mushroom Massacre & Friend Visit
It was war. On one side was a general with his four commanders and an army of soldiers willing to fight and die for their leaders. An organized group that worked together and used synergy to become more than what they were individually. There were thousands of them, every single one towards the end of D-grade.
On the other side were two people. A hunter with a bow and a dragonkin who seemed to finally have found an opportunity to let loose. These two were naturally the heroes of this fight. The brave men who would stand against the evil mushrooms.
It was also a display of something else… the disparity of power, even in the same grade and level bracket. Jake was at a lower level than most of his opponents, and Draskil was still lower than a few of them. One would think their numbers would matter, that their synergy would allow them to fight. It didn’t.
Maybe if they’d had actual tactics and not just sometimes tried to take hits for one another, it would’ve mattered. Maybe if they’d had ritual magic or complex formations. Had healers working together to form large barriers. However, as it was, they had none of these things, which made what transpired next only describable by one word:
Massacre.
Two words?
Justified massacre.
Explosions of arcane power lit up the cavern as Jake bombarded his opponents. A dense mist of poison hung thick in the air as Draskil and Jake both pumped it out of their wings. Jake killed primarily using explosive arrows that tore mushroom men apart with ease and followed up with occasional kill shots with stable arrows, while Draskil had a far simpler style.
He was more the rip-and-tear sort of fighter. His entire body was a weapon that none of their opponents could even scratch. His scales offered defenses to nearly all magic, his attacks unstoppable to the mushrooms as he tore their limbs off and ripped up their flesh, leaving rotting wounds behind.
Draskil also showed fighting methods Jake could never even attempt. His tail was like a fifth limb that whipped around and sometimes even impaled his foes. If not, he used it for movement, yanking himself back or pushing himself, even using while he was mid-air as a counterweight to allow him to rapidly reposition.
The dragonkin did not show any magic besides some to strengthen himself. Jake did notice how he also had the Pride skill like Jake, but his version was clearly far more focused on the mental attack aspect and making a domain of intimidation without any of the mana-control amplifying aspects.
Jake was actually pretty certain Draskil had all the of the Malefic Viper skills. He had believed it for a good while, but after the dungeon, it was more obvious. He clearly had Palate, based on all he ate, and Sagacity to properly store the knowledge. Jake did think Sagacity was still at a relatively low rarity, and Draskil did say that he had some bad skills he was working on. Besides that, he clearly had the wings, claws, and scales skills. These were likely unavoidable racial skills for any Malefic Dragonkin.
Sense of the Malefic Viper was also obvious based on how well he found mushrooms. That just left Blood and Touch. Jake was most unsure about Touch, honestly. Draskil also had Blood, based on how he had used some of it as a weapon once, but Jake had yet to see the dragonkin use the familiar glow of Touch of the Malefic Viper. It was possible he had it and just never used it, but it was also possible he didn’t have it or had changed it to a form very different from what Jake used. Like a purely non-combat version or something.
Now, Jake could’ve just asked him, but where was the fun in that? He would rather just try and figure it out himself while slaughtering an army of mushroom men. The human and dragonkin had already killed hundreds before meeting up as Jake turned to Draskil.
"You want the big boss?" Jake asked. "Just remember we need all the Lifecores intact."
Draskil grunted in confirmation before asking, "We need the small ones?"
Jake shrugged. "Some, but not all."
Draskil then grinned. "You wanna see my breath?"
"I guess?" Jake asked. He wasn’t sure what Draskil meant initially, but he soon understood.
The dragonkin took a breath, and for a moment, Jake felt all the mana in the environment stop before getting dragged in like Draskil’s mouth was a vacuum. Intense mana gathered at a level far above anything Jake had ever seen in D-grade.
Then he released it. A green beam was emitted from his mouth that swept across the cavern below. It was only a few meters in diameter when it hit the ground and made a grand sweep from one end of the cavern to the other. Not a single mark was left on the ground where it hit… but everything between the dragonkin and the ground was gone.
A line had been made through the entire dungeon. For a few dozen kilometers, a rotting black line that emanated death and decay had been formed. Everything the breath had touched had decayed to nothingness in an instant. It did not matter if it was a plant or mushroom man over level 180—they had all just ceased to be.
Jake stared at the sight that was both impressive and unimpressive at the same time. It was not an impressive-looking attack. There was no grand explosion, no massive scar left by the breath… just an eerie nothingness. It had simply killed everything it hit, and even more scary was how Jake did not feel a single wisp of mana from where it had hit. It was just… desolation. Jake didn’t know for sure, but he had a feeling no mushroom would grow on that black line for a very long time.
All in all, the breath had killed only about ninety mushroom men that had been hit. Mind you, it didn’t matter where they were hit. As long as a single part of their body had touched the breath, their entire bodies had turned to black sludge in an instant.
One thing was also clear… If Draskil ever used that attack on Jake, he would have to dodge it using his precognition. The beam moved faster than any attack Jake could make, and if he didn’t move before it was released, he would have no way to evade. And if he didn’t dodge in time? Well, Jake was just happy he still had Moment of the Primal Hunter, because that would sure as hell activate.
"Impressive?" Draskil asked with a satisfied grin.
"Definitely wouldn’t wanna be hit by it," Jake agreed. "Ah, but don’t use it on essential foes… It didn’t leave even a single Lifecore behind. Or anything, really."
"Bah," Draskil said, jokingly dismissing his words. "I kill the General. No breath."
Jake motioned for him to go ahead as he instead targeted the commanders. He saw that Reika and Irin were doing fine on their own, too, killing a few here and there themselves. Compared to Jake and Draskil, they barely made a dent, but they were never meant to anyway. This dungeon was made for members of the Order, not just those who were supremely talented. Jake and Draskil were way above the expected power level of anyone expected to do the dungeon, even on the ninth floor, and only the C-grade could potentially offer them a good fight. Shit, this was a dungeon where the alchemy portion was the real challenge, so maybe it was silly for them to expect a good fight to begin with.
But before alchemy, it was always good to get some killing done. Always got Jake in the mood to do some concocting, ya know?
Meira was incredibly nervous as she waited. Master had given her permission, that was true, but she still felt unsure about actually doing it. In the end, she’d agreed to it after she and her friends had completed a lesson together and begun working on an assignment where some of her master’s books could be useful.
The Grand Elder had also made it clear he didn’t care if she invited people over and had told her that he would just not be there if she did. Meira was still perplexed why someone like the Grand Elder even bothered spending time on her, and it made her even more confused when she considered that her master had clearly been the one to make him accept such an arrangement.
She just tried to not think about it too much and instead did her best in everything. Her master clearly had plans, and Meira would do her best to follow his will and try and make them a success. If inviting her friends over was something he had explicitly given her permission to do, and if even the Grand Elder had voiced his lack of concern about doing this, perhaps it was just their way of telling Meira to do it? She wasn’t good at subtle hints and trying to interpret commands, but maybe it was possible he didn’t just allow her to bring people, but wanted her to?
That is why, when she was asked to bring some books, she then spoke up and said she had been allowed to bring them to the library. Meira felt proud of herself for that and was happy that the three of them had agreed to come. The only one a bit reluctant was Izil, but Nella and Utmal had both agreed that it was about time she invited them over. Maybe it was? Meira didn’t know… She had never invited friends over for anything before.
