The Primal Hunter 11, page 64
And the third one… where he had to quite literally return lost pets. But at least this one awarded more than the others.
Merit Point Mission: Return 5 lost pets to their respective owners.
Current Progress: Pets returned (0/5)
Reward: 1000 Merit Points
While they didn’t give a lot of points, Jake wanted them to check out these two worlds anyway. He also ultimately needed some Merit Points. Also, on a side note, one could only select one mission for each world at a time, so that did suck a bit. Jake always liked it in games when he could pick up several quests in the same area and do them all at once. Made him feel like he was being clever and more efficient than the game expected, despite knowing deep down the developers designed it to be done that way.
“I want these three for now,” Jake said to the attendant, handing him the three papers. Because, yes, despite there being a system menu, they also used paper.
“Very well,” the attendant said with his perfect customer-service smile. “Are there any other missions you would like to accept, or would you like to spend your Merit Points?”
“Maybe I would if I had any,” Jake joked back, the friendly yet deadpan expression of the attendant not changing.
“The Creator currently possesses 5000 Merit Points,” the attendant said instead.
Jake did a double-take to ensure he’d heard right. “Oh, damn. So you start with 5000 or something?”
“Each submission rewards Merit Points to allow the Creator to keep up their creative endeavors,” the attendant explained.
“Well, wouldn’t you know…” Jake smiled to himself, feeling like he had gamed the system even more than he first thought with that first submission.
“I would know, indeed,” the attendant said, answering Jake’s rhetorical question.
He quickly decided to get away from the creepy, perfect-acting attendants. Despite not necessarily having to do the missions, as he did have some points, Jake still decided to give them a go, as he wanted to explore those three worlds no matter what, and doing the missions while in there just seemed like the efficient thing to do.
Starting with the jungle world, Jake went straight to the portal room and into this world. The moment he stepped through, he appeared standing atop a large cliff, staring down as an endless jungle stretched out before him.
A system prompt popped up in front of him a second or so later, displaying his current mission for the world, which included a picture of the fruit he had to go collect a whole bunch of. Playing a bit with the system, Jake was surprised to see he had no way to bring up how many Merit Points he currently had, so that was a bit weird and annoying.
Jake also considered for a moment if these Merit Points would be transferred to Nevermore Points in the same way the Colosseum Points had. Yeah, that was definitely a question to ask one of those attendants once he got back, assuming they would even give him an answer.
Focusing on the world in front of him, Jake summoned his wings. Stretching them a bit, it felt good to fully spread them out and be able to do some long-distance flying. Jumping off the cliff, Jake took flight and soared over the tall trees while observing the life beneath them.
He saw many sorts of beasts everywhere, with plenty of plant lifeforms also sitting here and there. Looking at one of the many beasts, Jake identified it.
[Crystalheart Lynx – lvl 200]
It was barely C-grade, and as Jake Identified a few more, he realized all of them were level 200 with not a single exception. It was definitely like this by design, making the danger level practically nonexistent. Jake had no plans to hunt these beasts down, as he simply had no reason to.
As he continued to scan the world around him, he noticed one thing that was very off. Sense of the Malefic Viper usually picked up a lot of things when Jake traveled in wilderness areas, but here it stayed entirely silent. This indicated there were no alchemical ingredients anywhere within his detection range, and as a Perception enthusiast, Jake had quite a high detection range.
Alright, so the attendant was right. No materials to collect here. Flying down, Jake landed on the ground so his boots could touch the undergrowth. Their passive ability to detect natural treasures activated as always but remained just as quiet as his Sense.
It was a bit of a bummer, as Jake had hoped there were some secret hidden items or something the attendant had purposefully not talked about. Alas, this did not appear to be the case.
Continuing to fly around, Jake soon picked up a familiar fruit with a Pulse of Perception. Once he got over there, Jake saw several familiar trees that all had these fruits growing on them. Monkey-like monsters guarded the fruits, and when Jake Identified them, he was somewhat surprised.
[Fruit-gulping Primate – lvl 242]
Level 242 was quite a bit higher than the usual level 200s wandering around. Not that it was any problem for Jake. Not wanting to bother with them, he flew down to collect the fruits. He flew straight up to one to pull it off its stem, but right as he did, the entire fruit exploded, covering him in juices.
“Fucking hell,” Jake cursed to himself as he saw through his sphere that a monkey on the other of the tree successfully took a fruit off a tree, pissing him off even more.
Gritting his teeth, Jake got close to another fruit. A monkey sitting nearby spotted him and jumped to a branch nearby as it screeched at him.
Jake turned his head and looked it in the eye. “You sure you wanna do this?”
The monkey looked at him for a second before taking a step back.
Jake stopped it. “Oh, no. You started this.”
Seemingly realizing it was in trouble, the monkey began hollering loudly, and within a dozen seconds, Jake found himself surrounded by nearly a hundred angry-looking monkeys. Yet none of them ever got within ten meters. Honestly, it was a pretty good situation for Jake.
“Five hundred fruits,” Jake said. “Give me five hundred, and I leave.”
“Uh? Uh uh!” the largest monkey said. Jake instantly got the gist of what it wanted to communicate. He also quickly confirmed this was the leader, making things a lot easier.
[Fruit-gulping Primate Alpha—lvl 250]
“This is not a negotiation,” Jake said as he looked at the monkey, faintly activating Gaze and Pride. “This is a business proposal where you have no leverage whatsoever.”
“Uh!” the monkey leader yelled loudly, and just as Jake thought it was about to attack, it reached over to a fruit next to it and plucked it off the tree in a weird fashion that made it not explode before holding it out toward Jake. “Uh?”
Jake summoned a string of mana to quickly snatch the fruit before putting it in his spatial storage, progressing the quest. “See? Isn’t this easier?”
The big monkey yelled, and about five minutes later, Jake flew off again, having done some great business. He had received five hundred fruits, and the monkeys had avoided dying premature deaths while receiving a free bonus of generational trauma toward winged humans.
Chapter 72
How To Not Find a Pet
Jake had been to enough medieval worlds already, so he found the second mission quite boring. The letter delivery did allow him to explore quite a few places, but nothing really caught his eye. Level-wise, there was a good spread, ranging all the way from F-grade to around level 240 in C-grade.
Race-wise, the diversity was even better. Everything from goblins to high elves lived in the medieval world, with many races having their own small kingdoms. Oh, and when Jake said small, he meant small. Each kingdom was a highly condensed area, with the open area between them only around a hundred meters, meaning Jake could easily jump from one village to another if he wanted to. All this, despite the “lore” of the world dictating they were actually in conflict.
His primary objective was to try and find someone he thought it could be interesting to teach, but he ended up leaving disappointed. While it was true Jake genuinely had no idea what he was looking for when searching for a potential student, he still felt like he would know it when he saw someone.
After delivering all the letters and leaving the world, he went to the final world he wanted to explore. This one truly was the most unique of them all, as it was a kind of world he had never experienced before. Going through the portal, Jake found himself standing on a terrace of sorts, overlooking a vast megacity filled with skyscrapers of metal, glass, and what looked like some kind of ceramic material, many of them several kilometers tall. Lights were everywhere, including billboards and whatnot, as flying vehicles traveled between these many large skyscrapers, all of which had docks for these ships to land on.
On other lanes, Jake saw people flying inside tunnels of light formed to dictate traffic. Closing his eyes for a moment, Jake sent out a Pulse of Perception and felt nearly overwhelmed by the result. The city continued for hundreds of kilometers in all directions, with the number of living beings in the billions just within the area he could see. If this was an entire planet filled with such population density, trillions… no, tens of trillions could be living there.
As he stood there and looked around, he thought it all looked impressive as hell, but after a closer inspection, he finally saw it.
Ah, there are the dystopian elements one would expect of a futuristic megacity, he thought as he saw the ground deep below all the massive skyscrapers. It was naturally the slums, a place for all the undesirables and poor people to be allocated. Down there, he also saw many factory-like constructions and deep holes that led into vast underground mines or other production-related facilities.
Looking upwards, he also saw what flew above even the skyscrapers. Large discs floated up there, some of which had just a single massive mansion on them. These mansions made Earth’s personal residences look like a joke, as these compounds easily had buildings more than a kilometer wide, with so much luxury it had long surpassed the level of being moronic.
This entire world was truly unlike anything Jake had ever seen before, and while he was curious about the place, he also got some very bad vibes. Alas, he was there to do a mission. He had to find five lost pets and return them, which shouldn’t take that long. The mission window even told him where he could find the first pet owner to talk to, which was naturally inside one of the big mansions floating above.
Flying up there, he wondered why this mission gave the most Merit Points out of all of them. It had to have something to do with the difficulty, right? Maybe the pets were actually semi-powerful C-grades or something. That, or creatures who were really good at hiding. Either way, he would find out soon. Jake was quite good at finding stuff, after all.
As he got close to the first floating island, a magic barrier sprang up around it. It was a pretty weak one, but Jake still stopped as he saw a figure flying up toward him. Based on a cursory scan, this was the strongest person in the mansion… not that it was saying much.
[Mansion Security Captain – lvl 212]
“Halt! What is the purpose of your unannounced visit? If you do not have any valid reason for—”
“Something about missing pets,” Jake said, cutting off the captain.
“Ah, you’re here for that,” he said, sounding a bit relieved. “Let me bring you to the lady of the house.”
Being a really shitty security guard, the guy just believed Jake right off the bat and took out a token. Activating it, the guard made a hole in the barrier and invited Jake inside. Following the guard, Jake quickly made his way to the main building, where he saw hundreds of servants milling about doing stuff. They all bowed when they saw the security captain but mostly ignored Jake as if he didn’t exist, while those who did look his way did so with disgust in their eyes. Jake quickly had a guess as to why.
They all wore pristine clothes, while Jake had walked in wearing his usual armor, a mask, and his good-old boots. In their eyes, he probably looked poor, and based on how damn materialistic everyone seemed around here, Jake wasn’t surprised. He did kind of want to point out how Eternal Hunger was probably worth more than the entire world they were living in, but he restrained himself with the hope of just getting things over with.
Walking up the way-too-long staircase, Jake entered a large living room where a single woman was lounging on a couch and watching a massive screen that was playing some soap opera or something, based on how damn dramatic it was.
The woman was a human, similar to most of the beings on this planet. Jake had also seen other enlightened races, but most were humans, especially those of the richer echelon. She was level 201 and looked to be in her early forties, which indicated she had evolved very late in life or was at the later stages of her natural lifespan.
“I heard you’re the one who will bring me back my dearest,” the woman said as she saw Jake and quickly sat up.
“That’s me,” Jake said, rather deadpan, wondering what he had to retrieve. If he had to guess, it was probably gonna be some large fat cat named Mr. Snuggles or something similarly dumb and stereotypical.
“Good! Good! I have been waiting anxiously, and these useless security guards haven’t been any help!” she said in an overly dramatic voice. “He’s been gone for nearly a week now, and I am simply beside myself with worry. I have barely been able to rest at night when he isn’t there. I… I fear he may have fallen into the slums or something! Imagine what they might be doing to him down there, those savages.”
Jake thought she was a bit over the top, and he sure as hell didn’t like her, but he just sighed and wanted to get this over with so he could get his Merit Points. “Just give me a description of your pet.”
“Oh, of course!” she said with a smile as she took out what looked a lot like the type of tablets Arnold used, though hers was definitely much worse. “Here is a picture.” She had the security captain take the tablet from her and give it to Jake.
Jake took it and looked at the picture on the tablet, his facial expression changing dramatically.
What the fuck?
Running down the narrow alleyway, the young man kept looking behind him, as he knew he was being chased. He looked baffled as to how he had gotten found that fast but refused to give up. Continuing to run a bit longer, he soon found himself cornered, and the moment he turned around, he saw the masked figure already standing there.
“I know who you are and why you’re here, and I’m not going back!” the young man yelled as he backed up against the wall, but he still raised his gaze and met Jake’s eyes in defiance. “I would rather die than go back to that… that…”
“Bitch? Horrible piece of shit? Waste of human life?” Jake offered helpfully as he observed the young man. “Come on, I am sure we can make up more.”
The young man’s expression quickly changed from defiant to confused at what Jake was saying. At the same time, Jake also inspected the young man… or should he say, the “lost pet.”
[Half-Elf – lvl 188]
“What… What are you trying to do!?” the half-elf questioned. Jake saw he had taken out a hidden dagger behind his back. “I already told you I know who you are, and—”
“I know one of the servants sent down a message,” Jake interrupted as he began to walk closer. “Not the most subtle form of communication. Pretty sure nobody else could pick up on it, but you really need some better magical encryption if you wanna communicate long-distance like that.”
The young man made a decisive choice when Jake came within a single step. He lowered his head as if he was giving up, only to quickly stab forward with the knife. An odd yet recognizable black energy revolved around the dagger as Jake caught the blade directly, the young man’s eyes opening wide.
“You really do despise her, huh?” Jake said with a smile as he looked at the dagger and felt its energies trying to invade his body. “No… you despise not just her, but the entire system that allows someone like her to exist.”
The energy Jake recognized from the dagger was one he had also used quite a bit himself. It was pure and dense curse energy, born from within the young man himself. Only a high level of natural talent in curse energy and a deep-seated negative emotion could give rise to something like that, similar to how Casper had originally realized he could also wield the power of curses.
In this half-elf’s case, Jake recognized the pure hatred within the curse energy as the source of his power.
“You… You…” the young man stammered. “Why would someone like you serve that disgusting molefucker?”
“Disgusting molefucker? Never heard that one before. As for your question? I am not serving her. No, I believe I am about to do just the opposite.”
The young man was thoroughly confused by now, as Jake had already made his decision. “Say, kid, you ever heard of alchemy?”
“Ye-yes?” he stammered out as his eyes darted to the knife Jake was still holding by the blade in his hand.
“Ever done any?”
“No…”
“Well, better late than never.” Jake grinned as he leaned forward. “You want revenge, right? On her and this world?”
Seemingly having had some time to steel himself and gather his thoughts, the young man didn’t hesitate. “Of course!”
“Great!” Jake said as he tossed the dagger back to the half-elf. “Revenge is a great motivator, and I believe I can help you get it.”
To try to sound more convincing, Jake let his aura leak as he mixed in Pride of the Malefic Viper and a bit of his Bloodline to really seal the deal. He looked down at the young man and grinned beneath his mask. “So, what do you say?”
It took the half-elf a moment before he clenched his fists. Dark smoke emerged as his nails dug into his flesh, and he gritted his teeth. “If I can get revenge, I’ll do anything… You can do anything to me, even if you—”
“Wow, wow, wow, calm your horses,” Jake said, stopping him. “I’m talking about teaching you alchemy and controlling that special energy of yours.”
Merit Point Mission: Return 5 lost pets to their respective owners.
Current Progress: Pets returned (0/5)
Reward: 1000 Merit Points
While they didn’t give a lot of points, Jake wanted them to check out these two worlds anyway. He also ultimately needed some Merit Points. Also, on a side note, one could only select one mission for each world at a time, so that did suck a bit. Jake always liked it in games when he could pick up several quests in the same area and do them all at once. Made him feel like he was being clever and more efficient than the game expected, despite knowing deep down the developers designed it to be done that way.
“I want these three for now,” Jake said to the attendant, handing him the three papers. Because, yes, despite there being a system menu, they also used paper.
“Very well,” the attendant said with his perfect customer-service smile. “Are there any other missions you would like to accept, or would you like to spend your Merit Points?”
“Maybe I would if I had any,” Jake joked back, the friendly yet deadpan expression of the attendant not changing.
“The Creator currently possesses 5000 Merit Points,” the attendant said instead.
Jake did a double-take to ensure he’d heard right. “Oh, damn. So you start with 5000 or something?”
“Each submission rewards Merit Points to allow the Creator to keep up their creative endeavors,” the attendant explained.
“Well, wouldn’t you know…” Jake smiled to himself, feeling like he had gamed the system even more than he first thought with that first submission.
“I would know, indeed,” the attendant said, answering Jake’s rhetorical question.
He quickly decided to get away from the creepy, perfect-acting attendants. Despite not necessarily having to do the missions, as he did have some points, Jake still decided to give them a go, as he wanted to explore those three worlds no matter what, and doing the missions while in there just seemed like the efficient thing to do.
Starting with the jungle world, Jake went straight to the portal room and into this world. The moment he stepped through, he appeared standing atop a large cliff, staring down as an endless jungle stretched out before him.
A system prompt popped up in front of him a second or so later, displaying his current mission for the world, which included a picture of the fruit he had to go collect a whole bunch of. Playing a bit with the system, Jake was surprised to see he had no way to bring up how many Merit Points he currently had, so that was a bit weird and annoying.
Jake also considered for a moment if these Merit Points would be transferred to Nevermore Points in the same way the Colosseum Points had. Yeah, that was definitely a question to ask one of those attendants once he got back, assuming they would even give him an answer.
Focusing on the world in front of him, Jake summoned his wings. Stretching them a bit, it felt good to fully spread them out and be able to do some long-distance flying. Jumping off the cliff, Jake took flight and soared over the tall trees while observing the life beneath them.
He saw many sorts of beasts everywhere, with plenty of plant lifeforms also sitting here and there. Looking at one of the many beasts, Jake identified it.
[Crystalheart Lynx – lvl 200]
It was barely C-grade, and as Jake Identified a few more, he realized all of them were level 200 with not a single exception. It was definitely like this by design, making the danger level practically nonexistent. Jake had no plans to hunt these beasts down, as he simply had no reason to.
As he continued to scan the world around him, he noticed one thing that was very off. Sense of the Malefic Viper usually picked up a lot of things when Jake traveled in wilderness areas, but here it stayed entirely silent. This indicated there were no alchemical ingredients anywhere within his detection range, and as a Perception enthusiast, Jake had quite a high detection range.
Alright, so the attendant was right. No materials to collect here. Flying down, Jake landed on the ground so his boots could touch the undergrowth. Their passive ability to detect natural treasures activated as always but remained just as quiet as his Sense.
It was a bit of a bummer, as Jake had hoped there were some secret hidden items or something the attendant had purposefully not talked about. Alas, this did not appear to be the case.
Continuing to fly around, Jake soon picked up a familiar fruit with a Pulse of Perception. Once he got over there, Jake saw several familiar trees that all had these fruits growing on them. Monkey-like monsters guarded the fruits, and when Jake Identified them, he was somewhat surprised.
[Fruit-gulping Primate – lvl 242]
Level 242 was quite a bit higher than the usual level 200s wandering around. Not that it was any problem for Jake. Not wanting to bother with them, he flew down to collect the fruits. He flew straight up to one to pull it off its stem, but right as he did, the entire fruit exploded, covering him in juices.
“Fucking hell,” Jake cursed to himself as he saw through his sphere that a monkey on the other of the tree successfully took a fruit off a tree, pissing him off even more.
Gritting his teeth, Jake got close to another fruit. A monkey sitting nearby spotted him and jumped to a branch nearby as it screeched at him.
Jake turned his head and looked it in the eye. “You sure you wanna do this?”
The monkey looked at him for a second before taking a step back.
Jake stopped it. “Oh, no. You started this.”
Seemingly realizing it was in trouble, the monkey began hollering loudly, and within a dozen seconds, Jake found himself surrounded by nearly a hundred angry-looking monkeys. Yet none of them ever got within ten meters. Honestly, it was a pretty good situation for Jake.
“Five hundred fruits,” Jake said. “Give me five hundred, and I leave.”
“Uh? Uh uh!” the largest monkey said. Jake instantly got the gist of what it wanted to communicate. He also quickly confirmed this was the leader, making things a lot easier.
[Fruit-gulping Primate Alpha—lvl 250]
“This is not a negotiation,” Jake said as he looked at the monkey, faintly activating Gaze and Pride. “This is a business proposal where you have no leverage whatsoever.”
“Uh!” the monkey leader yelled loudly, and just as Jake thought it was about to attack, it reached over to a fruit next to it and plucked it off the tree in a weird fashion that made it not explode before holding it out toward Jake. “Uh?”
Jake summoned a string of mana to quickly snatch the fruit before putting it in his spatial storage, progressing the quest. “See? Isn’t this easier?”
The big monkey yelled, and about five minutes later, Jake flew off again, having done some great business. He had received five hundred fruits, and the monkeys had avoided dying premature deaths while receiving a free bonus of generational trauma toward winged humans.
Chapter 72
How To Not Find a Pet
Jake had been to enough medieval worlds already, so he found the second mission quite boring. The letter delivery did allow him to explore quite a few places, but nothing really caught his eye. Level-wise, there was a good spread, ranging all the way from F-grade to around level 240 in C-grade.
Race-wise, the diversity was even better. Everything from goblins to high elves lived in the medieval world, with many races having their own small kingdoms. Oh, and when Jake said small, he meant small. Each kingdom was a highly condensed area, with the open area between them only around a hundred meters, meaning Jake could easily jump from one village to another if he wanted to. All this, despite the “lore” of the world dictating they were actually in conflict.
His primary objective was to try and find someone he thought it could be interesting to teach, but he ended up leaving disappointed. While it was true Jake genuinely had no idea what he was looking for when searching for a potential student, he still felt like he would know it when he saw someone.
After delivering all the letters and leaving the world, he went to the final world he wanted to explore. This one truly was the most unique of them all, as it was a kind of world he had never experienced before. Going through the portal, Jake found himself standing on a terrace of sorts, overlooking a vast megacity filled with skyscrapers of metal, glass, and what looked like some kind of ceramic material, many of them several kilometers tall. Lights were everywhere, including billboards and whatnot, as flying vehicles traveled between these many large skyscrapers, all of which had docks for these ships to land on.
On other lanes, Jake saw people flying inside tunnels of light formed to dictate traffic. Closing his eyes for a moment, Jake sent out a Pulse of Perception and felt nearly overwhelmed by the result. The city continued for hundreds of kilometers in all directions, with the number of living beings in the billions just within the area he could see. If this was an entire planet filled with such population density, trillions… no, tens of trillions could be living there.
As he stood there and looked around, he thought it all looked impressive as hell, but after a closer inspection, he finally saw it.
Ah, there are the dystopian elements one would expect of a futuristic megacity, he thought as he saw the ground deep below all the massive skyscrapers. It was naturally the slums, a place for all the undesirables and poor people to be allocated. Down there, he also saw many factory-like constructions and deep holes that led into vast underground mines or other production-related facilities.
Looking upwards, he also saw what flew above even the skyscrapers. Large discs floated up there, some of which had just a single massive mansion on them. These mansions made Earth’s personal residences look like a joke, as these compounds easily had buildings more than a kilometer wide, with so much luxury it had long surpassed the level of being moronic.
This entire world was truly unlike anything Jake had ever seen before, and while he was curious about the place, he also got some very bad vibes. Alas, he was there to do a mission. He had to find five lost pets and return them, which shouldn’t take that long. The mission window even told him where he could find the first pet owner to talk to, which was naturally inside one of the big mansions floating above.
Flying up there, he wondered why this mission gave the most Merit Points out of all of them. It had to have something to do with the difficulty, right? Maybe the pets were actually semi-powerful C-grades or something. That, or creatures who were really good at hiding. Either way, he would find out soon. Jake was quite good at finding stuff, after all.
As he got close to the first floating island, a magic barrier sprang up around it. It was a pretty weak one, but Jake still stopped as he saw a figure flying up toward him. Based on a cursory scan, this was the strongest person in the mansion… not that it was saying much.
[Mansion Security Captain – lvl 212]
“Halt! What is the purpose of your unannounced visit? If you do not have any valid reason for—”
“Something about missing pets,” Jake said, cutting off the captain.
“Ah, you’re here for that,” he said, sounding a bit relieved. “Let me bring you to the lady of the house.”
Being a really shitty security guard, the guy just believed Jake right off the bat and took out a token. Activating it, the guard made a hole in the barrier and invited Jake inside. Following the guard, Jake quickly made his way to the main building, where he saw hundreds of servants milling about doing stuff. They all bowed when they saw the security captain but mostly ignored Jake as if he didn’t exist, while those who did look his way did so with disgust in their eyes. Jake quickly had a guess as to why.
They all wore pristine clothes, while Jake had walked in wearing his usual armor, a mask, and his good-old boots. In their eyes, he probably looked poor, and based on how damn materialistic everyone seemed around here, Jake wasn’t surprised. He did kind of want to point out how Eternal Hunger was probably worth more than the entire world they were living in, but he restrained himself with the hope of just getting things over with.
Walking up the way-too-long staircase, Jake entered a large living room where a single woman was lounging on a couch and watching a massive screen that was playing some soap opera or something, based on how damn dramatic it was.
The woman was a human, similar to most of the beings on this planet. Jake had also seen other enlightened races, but most were humans, especially those of the richer echelon. She was level 201 and looked to be in her early forties, which indicated she had evolved very late in life or was at the later stages of her natural lifespan.
“I heard you’re the one who will bring me back my dearest,” the woman said as she saw Jake and quickly sat up.
“That’s me,” Jake said, rather deadpan, wondering what he had to retrieve. If he had to guess, it was probably gonna be some large fat cat named Mr. Snuggles or something similarly dumb and stereotypical.
“Good! Good! I have been waiting anxiously, and these useless security guards haven’t been any help!” she said in an overly dramatic voice. “He’s been gone for nearly a week now, and I am simply beside myself with worry. I have barely been able to rest at night when he isn’t there. I… I fear he may have fallen into the slums or something! Imagine what they might be doing to him down there, those savages.”
Jake thought she was a bit over the top, and he sure as hell didn’t like her, but he just sighed and wanted to get this over with so he could get his Merit Points. “Just give me a description of your pet.”
“Oh, of course!” she said with a smile as she took out what looked a lot like the type of tablets Arnold used, though hers was definitely much worse. “Here is a picture.” She had the security captain take the tablet from her and give it to Jake.
Jake took it and looked at the picture on the tablet, his facial expression changing dramatically.
What the fuck?
Running down the narrow alleyway, the young man kept looking behind him, as he knew he was being chased. He looked baffled as to how he had gotten found that fast but refused to give up. Continuing to run a bit longer, he soon found himself cornered, and the moment he turned around, he saw the masked figure already standing there.
“I know who you are and why you’re here, and I’m not going back!” the young man yelled as he backed up against the wall, but he still raised his gaze and met Jake’s eyes in defiance. “I would rather die than go back to that… that…”
“Bitch? Horrible piece of shit? Waste of human life?” Jake offered helpfully as he observed the young man. “Come on, I am sure we can make up more.”
The young man’s expression quickly changed from defiant to confused at what Jake was saying. At the same time, Jake also inspected the young man… or should he say, the “lost pet.”
[Half-Elf – lvl 188]
“What… What are you trying to do!?” the half-elf questioned. Jake saw he had taken out a hidden dagger behind his back. “I already told you I know who you are, and—”
“I know one of the servants sent down a message,” Jake interrupted as he began to walk closer. “Not the most subtle form of communication. Pretty sure nobody else could pick up on it, but you really need some better magical encryption if you wanna communicate long-distance like that.”
The young man made a decisive choice when Jake came within a single step. He lowered his head as if he was giving up, only to quickly stab forward with the knife. An odd yet recognizable black energy revolved around the dagger as Jake caught the blade directly, the young man’s eyes opening wide.
“You really do despise her, huh?” Jake said with a smile as he looked at the dagger and felt its energies trying to invade his body. “No… you despise not just her, but the entire system that allows someone like her to exist.”
The energy Jake recognized from the dagger was one he had also used quite a bit himself. It was pure and dense curse energy, born from within the young man himself. Only a high level of natural talent in curse energy and a deep-seated negative emotion could give rise to something like that, similar to how Casper had originally realized he could also wield the power of curses.
In this half-elf’s case, Jake recognized the pure hatred within the curse energy as the source of his power.
“You… You…” the young man stammered. “Why would someone like you serve that disgusting molefucker?”
“Disgusting molefucker? Never heard that one before. As for your question? I am not serving her. No, I believe I am about to do just the opposite.”
The young man was thoroughly confused by now, as Jake had already made his decision. “Say, kid, you ever heard of alchemy?”
“Ye-yes?” he stammered out as his eyes darted to the knife Jake was still holding by the blade in his hand.
“Ever done any?”
“No…”
“Well, better late than never.” Jake grinned as he leaned forward. “You want revenge, right? On her and this world?”
Seemingly having had some time to steel himself and gather his thoughts, the young man didn’t hesitate. “Of course!”
“Great!” Jake said as he tossed the dagger back to the half-elf. “Revenge is a great motivator, and I believe I can help you get it.”
To try to sound more convincing, Jake let his aura leak as he mixed in Pride of the Malefic Viper and a bit of his Bloodline to really seal the deal. He looked down at the young man and grinned beneath his mask. “So, what do you say?”
It took the half-elf a moment before he clenched his fists. Dark smoke emerged as his nails dug into his flesh, and he gritted his teeth. “If I can get revenge, I’ll do anything… You can do anything to me, even if you—”
“Wow, wow, wow, calm your horses,” Jake said, stopping him. “I’m talking about teaching you alchemy and controlling that special energy of yours.”
