The Primal Hunter 8: A LitRPG Adventure, page 69
With those words, Villy disappeared, though Jake could feel he still observed him. Jake felt grateful, as he was still a bit apprehensive with this time stuff, but with a Primordial keeping an eye on him, it should be fine.
Closing his eyes, Jake entered his Soulspace. Within, sim-Jake was already waiting for him so they could begin. As for what they planned on actually doing? Well, that was a bit… complicated.
To create a mythical skill, they needed it to both be powerful and rely on high concepts. They had already agreed on one major aspect—more specifically, the fact that sim-Jake was, well, sim-Jake. A simulation of a separate version of Jake himself. This in itself was already a major thing, and something that would be moronic not to leverage.
Next up was Eternal Hunger. The weapon was mythical already, proving it, too, relied on incredibly high-level concepts. Jake had done some weird shit when he created the weapon and had been a bit delirious throughout most of the crafting process, but he did know it had absorbed a lot of so-called Jake Juice—or Jake Records—from him. Coupled with the sheer quantity of curse energy and the ability to keep growing, it lived up to its rarity.
Throughout the past months, sim-Jake had also been feeding the weapon through its cursed beast manifestation in his Soulspace. Feeding it with his own Records. Those separate from Jake himself. Sim-Jake had fed the beast with memories and experiences Jake had never had, and all that made up sim-Jake that wasn’t already identical or merged with the real Jake already. The ultimate goal? For sim-Jake to merge with the weapon, hopefully retaining some semblances of self.
Of course, for this to be possible, sim-Jake had to have more Records than the cursed weapon. This was perhaps the biggest gamble, as no one could be sure. Sim-Jake and real Jake already guessed that it would not simply spawn a cursed version of sim-Jake that was still "him," but something entirely different. One had to remember that the cursed weapon was a Sin weapon, after all. A cursed weapon that relied on a strong, singular desire. There was no way for sim-Jake to replace this, only become part of it.
This was the first aspect of the plan. For sim-Jake to merge with Eternal Hunger. This would add both conceptual and actual power to the new skill they would create. Jake was not sure how it would work exactly, considering Eternal Hunger was a weapon and the energy within it linked to a weapon. Was it even possible to create a skill relying on a specific weapon? Or would it somehow affect the weapon to make it "more" than just a weapon?
All very exciting things for sim-Jake and Jake to discover together.
The second aspect of the plan was the skill itself. With the fuel determined, they needed to know what it would actually do. First of all, it would rely on the Basic Shadow Vault of Umbra skill. That was a given. The big question was just how much of the skill they wanted.
Basic Shadow Vault of Umbra was a movement skill—something Jake didn’t really need that much. This desired upgraded skill would still include movement, but exactly how it would work, neither of them knew quite yet. Sim-Jake had worked a lot on upgrading the skill already, and if all they wanted to do was create an ancient-rarity Shadow Vault, they could within a week’s time. But this was not what they wanted, obviously.
However, this did not mean this time working on upgrading Shadow Vault was wasted. Far from it. Through practice, sim-Jake had managed to not only learn more of the skill, but also align himself far more with the shadow affinity. An affinity that was quite a bit more complicated than Jake had initially expected.
The shadow affinity was heavily tied to the dark affinity, but they were not the same. The shadow affinity was a rank of concept above mere darkness. It was, to simplify, that which existed within the darkness left when light was obscured. As if it was a second layer of reality itself. Not to be confused with a layer of space, but something… different. In fact, the shadow affinity and space affinity had no concrete connection, as shadows seemed to entirely circumvent the concept.
That was why the Court of Shadows had become so powerful. They could use the shadows far more than anyone else. They’d learned to enter and exit the realm of shadows, allowing them to strike from anywhere at any time. Those powerful enough could travel through shadows, jumping even from planet to planet if they so desired. Of course, while shadow magic was potent, there were also restrictions.
One still had to pass through the shadow realm, as many called it. On a 2D scale, using regular shadows was a lot simpler, and one could avoid many things, but interacting with the real world from the shadows was near impossible.
Shadow Vault did not interact with the 2D shadows, but instead temporarily made one "attuned" to the shadow realm. One did not truly enter it, but, as the description said, simply embraced the shadows to temporarily become one with them. It was a gross oversimplification of what Jake assumed to be the true Shadow Vault of Umbra.
In its true form, it was more like a mix of stealth, teleportation, and a rapid movement skill. Sim-Jake and Jake theorized that this true version would allow one to fully merge with the shadows and travel within a 3D version of the shadow realm. How exactly this would work was a mystery, but it would no doubt be damn overpowered.
Anyway, sim-Jake had learned a lot, and they would still rely on the concepts of shadows from sim-Jake. Sim-Jake even had the idea to use the remnant Records of what had once been his Blessing from Umbra to upgrade the skill. They still wanted to make it separate from Umbra entirely, but from how they understood the workings of the simulated world, everything sim-Jake brought with him was considered his Records alone. It had been his world, after all.
As for the details of this entire shadow part of the skill, Jake was still a bit unclear. On purpose, too. Because the final part of the skill relied on their separateness. It relied on them not being the exact same person with the same understandings and thoughts. Yet they also needed to fully understand each other… at least when it came to fighting.
So they had reached one conclusion to make it happen.
"Are you ready?" sim-Jake asked.
"I should ask you the same," Jake answered with a smirk.
Two katars appeared in the hands of sim-Jake. Jake himself summoned a bow as the two of them stood across from each other.
Naturally, they had concluded that the best course of action would be to fight. Fight until they could each perfectly read and mimic each other, harmonizing their instincts. They would still take breaks for sim-Jake to keep merging with Eternal Hunger and for Jake to learn what he had to about Shadow Vault, but ninety-nine percent of their time would be spent fighting.
Both of them had infinite resources within the Soulspace. Neither had to ever rest. Neither could truly die or take damage. Both would only use the power of the current Jake, copying his stats for their duel.
"Then here I come," sim-Jake said as he leaned forward and turned into a shadowy form.
Jake took a step and teleported back as his other self chased.
Thus began the longest fight Jake had ever had, if not the longest he would ever have.
The story continues in The Primal Hunter 9!
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