The Primal Hunter

Poisons? Now, Poisons were easy mode. That’s where Jake quickly found his footing and created some cool stuff right away. It felt natural to him, and he had so many skills to make it easier. Sure, there were many things he couldn’t make, but he was pretty confident in his abilities.

Potions? Still kind of easy. Especially mana potions. Heck, all the three fundamentals potions weren’t that complicated, and Jake had that shit down to a science by now. At least he felt like he did, as his improvements were only marginal, and it would take him a long time to begin seeing tangible improvements.

Transmutations? Jake found a way to be a dirty little cheater with those. He had no idea how to do a proper transmutation. He just pulled a fast one with his arcane-affinity and made that affinity eat up enchantments on stuff to make the items more suitable for himself while making them useless for everyone else.

Besides that, he had done some other more minor things. He had made a Beastorb, made weird concoctions to corrode a moon, turning a moon shard into a small nuclear bomb of corruption and light. Also known as small things that are fun for the entire family.

Which all led to his next objective. Elixirs, the staple of D-grade alchemists. It was one of the reasons D-grade alchemists were far more sought after, besides, of course, the better potions. Few professions could take natural stat-increasing treasures and improve or change them, but alchemists could. Well, cooks and some other professions could too, but alchemists tended to be the go-to profession for it.

It had been around two weeks since Sultan joined Haven, and Jake hadn’t heard much from the man beside him sending the stalker-slave woman with a delivery of herbs he had acquired from another merchant. Jake hadn’t even requested it, but he was happy to take the goods.

The woman had seemed oddly content with her situation, and Jake really didn’t want to question it. He had no idea what Miranda had done with that Gabi lady and didn’t care about her either way. Right now, he wanted to focus solely on making elixirs.

Elixirs were quite a bit different from anything he had created before. Potions and poisons were far more - how could one put it – temporary in nature. They were once and done kinds of things. Their energy only had to do their work for a brief period before fizzling out. Of course, there were poisons and likely also potions with more long-lasting effects, but nothing to the level of an elixir.

Elixirs had a strong feeling of permanence. A permanent effect on the Records of a person. A permanent increase in stats. For many other goods, Jake could infuse far more of himself into his creations, and it would be fine, but for elixirs, he needed a sense of separation. He needed to allow the ingredients to truly shine, with himself only being a facilitator of the process.

While that didn’t sound that hard or complicated, it sure as hell was. Because not only could Jake not come in and be a dominating force in the process, the ingredients also had to be nice to each other and mesh. With many poisons, he could pretty much force them together with his will, but that wouldn’t work here.

Jake did have some advantages going into it, though. He had the eagle eye absorbed with Palate and was slowly learning about that, and a benefit of eating some of the bananas had been that he had gained a bit of understanding from those too.

Ultimately, this resulted in Jake making some damn solid progress. Jake burning through materials like he had no cares in the world also meant he didn’t have to waste much time considering things. He could just impulsively give it a go, and if it failed… tough luck. He could just try again. Also, snacking on ingredients was always a good time, even if some of the stuff tasted a bit weird.

Two weeks wasn’t a long time, but it wasn’t short either. In the beginning, Jake struggled over if he should start with agility or vitality-enhancing elixirs but eventually decided on agility. Ultimately, he didn’t really wanna consume those for vitality but would happily chug down agility elixirs. After that, he would make ones for perception.

So even with difficulty, this meant that after two weeks of experimenting, three profession, and two race-levels, he was confident in his first success. While it was difficult and a new challenge, Jake wasn’t an inexperienced alchemist anymore.

And, as much as he hated to admit it, his arcane-affinity kinda did come to be of assistance again. At least it helped him more easily tune into the permanence part of the creations by considering the stability inherent to his affinity. It wasn’t anything significant, just a nice nudge.

As for what ingredients he used? Well, to begin with, he stuck to those he had plenty of. In the last two days, he had moved on to also implementing those he had a bit fewer of. Tri-Lighttail Monkey Beastcores. Not that Jake lacked those… he had gone on a bit of a monkey-genocide after all, and even if he hadn’t taken corpses, he had gathered every single core.

Along with many other common-rarity and a few uncommon-rarity ingredients, he splurged a bit to increase his chance of success.

The crafting process itself went relatively easily. Jake used the core as the center as he slowly melted it using his flames within the cauldron. Next, he added a few berries that were too weak to increase agility by themselves but still contained the energy. After that, a bit of grass, a small piece of bark, and many leaves also went in. All of it was melted and pushed into the residue from the core.

Jake didn’t tell the core what to do, as the core residue was aligned towards agility already and the parts of the core not aligned towards agility were quickly realigned by the ingredients. Jake had only failed three crafts using this method before, and the last time had been close. This time it wasn’t close – it was a success.

*You have successfully crafted [Celerita Elixir (Common)] – A new kind of creation has been made. Bonus experience earned*

*’ DING!’ Profession: [Heretic-Chosen Alchemist of the Malefic Viper] has reached level 112 - Stat points allocated, +10 free points*

Jake inspected the brew and nodded at the result. He barely noticed the level-up notifications and hadn’t bothered with them for these last two weeks. He probably should have, considering some of the implications they had.

[Celerita Elixir (Common)] – An elixir created from a mix of common ingredients, along with a few uncommon ones and a D-grade Beastcore of a Tri-Lighttail Monkey. Allows any who drink this elixir to receive some of the innate power of the materials, enhancing one’s Agility. +3 Agility upon consumption

Requirements: D-rank or higher.

He saw that this first batch only had enough for two elixirs. While that seemed terrible, then it was the worth of two bananas. Not that his elixirs were as good as the bananas. There was one significant distinction – the requirement.

Anyone could eat a banana, while you had to be D-grade to get any use of the elixir. Jake knew a lot of the difficulty around elixirs was to allow those weaker, especially those below D-grade, to be able to benefit from them. Jake still had a ways to go before he could successfully craft those. Not that he was working towards it.

No, Jake would instead push directly for uncommon-rarity elixirs and finally a rare version before the Treasure Hunt.

He would use the eye and a few other items he hoped Sultan could procure in time for the rare version. Then, hopefully, he could also make a rare vitality elixir with the Lifecore and the Lifevines from the blue fungus. But to do that, he would have to keep grinding.

As for what else was going on during this time? Well, Jake had been relegated to his porch as the construction underground had really taken off. Jake had also learned that the reason Hank had delayed construction wasn’t that he had better things to do; it was because he had been close to his own profession-evolution.

He had gained a new profession called General Foreman of Haven. Apparently, the profession was quite awesome and gave nearly as many stats as Miranda’s, which placed it well in the upper-echelon of professions overall. The man wasn’t close to D-grade, though, having neglected his class entirely ever since he came to Haven. He had said he was done fighting, and while Jake didn’t understand it, he still chose to respect the man’s decision.

Anyway, after he evolved, Hank came back, and Jake’s underground complex was making swift progress. Naturally, the alchemist who would own it had also been down to give some input. Jake himself didn’t interfere anymore after that but just sat up at the pond with his cauldron, only spying through his sphere once in a while.

Being up there also allowed him to count whenever a new banana spawned on the tree, and Mystie’s automatic banana retrieval system captured one. Jake counted eleven right now. That’s right; he had managed to convince Sylphie not to eat them on sight, primarily through bribery and coaxing.

As for where the bird was these days? He really didn’t know. He hoped she was having fun, though, as she got closer and closer to becoming a fully-fledged D-grade hawk. The cute little bugger was probably out playing in the forest.

They grow up so fast…

The world was inherently unfair. The races struggled as they did everything they could to survive, but some had it harder than others. For example, if the leaders of a certain species fell, they would have to struggle to survive and rebuild, hoping a powerful alpha would not come by and claim their territory. This was rare but could happen if the one who came to slay their leader consumed or took away the natural treasure they had originally gathered around.

This particular race’s leader had fallen, but their nest and hope for the next generation had been left untouched. A single of their Matriarchs survived to rebuild with the hidden young, as she had been far below ground with them as the predator came through and annihilated all in his path. They fast grew, and before long, D-grades entered the forest to try and reclaim their territory.

No other beast had claimed it as their Natural Treasure was gone. This didn’t mean that the territory was useless, though. On the contrary, there was an air of ancientness and the concept of time was more prominent there, making it an excellent place for these monkeys to live.

At least… it should be.

The Tri-Lighttail Monkey jumped through the trees as it fled from its predator. It had been out with a group of its lesser brethren and had moved too far from the nest. It should have known better, but it hadn’t detected the foe till it was too late. Or, more accurately, it hadn’t recognized it was a foe until it was too late. For the predator had not been subtle.

A tornado had gone through, tearing into the trees. It wasn’t a powerful one, almost as if the summoner didn’t seek to do any damage with it but simply have it up for aesthetic effects. It couldn’t be to hide itself. Surely not. That would be ridiculous.

But as ridiculous as it was, that tornado had turned into a frightening foe. A blast had slain one of the weaker monkeys nearly instantly; a blade of wind cut into another. The Tri-Lighttail had tried to fight back, but it found that its weight magic did not have the effect it should. Nothing it could do worked.

What was ridiculous was that the one hunting it wasn’t a D-grade. It wasn’t meant to be the predator… yet it was. It was too fast, too strong, and its talons, wings, and magic cut into the Tri-Lighttail time and time again as it tried to fight back while fleeing back towards its home and the Matriarch. But deep down… it knew it wouldn’t make it.

Despite its small green form, the hawk was an utter monster.

Stupid monkey was mega bad at playing tag and super weak even if it was like mom and dad. Sylphie had managed to sneak up on it super stealthily and attacked with a mighty BAW! and a WHOOSH! and took down the two bad guys with the bigger bad guy.

The big bad tried to do that stuff that made it harder to fly, but Sylphie used Green Shield to make it stop. Green shield was nice. The stupid monkey then tried to throw stuff and hit Sylphie with its behind-ropes, but Sylphie was too fast and too smart for that!

Mom and dad had told her that hunting the big baddies was dangerous, but she had followed them when hunting before, and they weren’t that tough. She could totally handle them! At least this one she could… some of them were still scary.

Sylphie wasn’t stupid. She asked the wind every time before she went for the baddie, and only when the wind said it was okay, she attacked. The wind was everpresent and nearly always answered. It wasn’t like a speaky-thing like Uncle did, but more a whisper-thing like the… well, like the wind.

She kept flying after the monkey for a bit, wooshing it as it ran away with her super winds. It sometimes turned around to throw stuff, and the next time it did so, Sylphie used a super move – she cut the branch it was about to land on.

BUT!

It didn’t fall like it was supposed to! It kept flying forward like it didn’t care, which was super-duper unfair. Why did Sylphie fall down when she didn’t try to fly, and the monkey didn’t? It was probably cheating. It was like how Uncle cheated during tag all the time. Making himself take super long steps and making her snacks not move as they should. Super unfair!

Well, Sylphie always won in the end, because Sylphie never gave up! And she wouldn’t give up now either, but show just how awesome she was. She made herself mega-faster and flew forward as her talons began glowing green.

While Uncle was a bit weak, only really good at running away and playing with his smelly pot, he also tended to be very tough when hit. Mom and dad also said he was. She thought she couldn’t damage him, and he said it was fine, so she wasn’t bad, and it wasn’t her fault when she accidentally… Sylphie still felt bad about it. Uncle got hurt because her glowy-green talon-strike was too strong. She learned to only use that on the bad guys, like the stupid monkey throwing smelly stuff.

Uncle also didn’t like monkeys throwing smelly stuff. Which was weird because uncle liked playing with a smelly pot, but maybe they were different? Different kinds of smelly? Sylphie figured it out. She was so smart.

One thing she had learned was that she had to get strong and defend Uncle so he could keep playing with her and his smelly pot. Sylphie liked Uncle; he was one of her three favorite people in the whole world. So in order to realize her goal, she had to beat up the bad monkey.

She flew close, and the monkey tried to get away, but she made it unable to with her winds. It flailed and tried to hit with its tails but was blocked by the Green Shield. In the end, it had nothing more to use as the talons closed around its head.

As she struck, the talons become larger, and two of her glowing green claws dug into its eye-sockets as it tried to struggle. It failed to get her off as Sylphie dug into its brains and poured more power into her grip. Finally, she hit a tree, making her talons dig in deeper. She kept flying around with the struggling monkey for a bit longer, smashing it into tree after tree until it stopped moving, and she got the good-job-ding.

“Ree!” Sylphie screeched out in joy as she turned around to fly back home.

Hunting bad guys was super tiring, and Uncle had snacks at home. Oh, but she remembered to bring the not-so-tasty-anymore small core-thing from the monkey. Uncle liked those, and Sylphie got happier when Uncle was happy because she was one of the good guys.