The Primal Hunter Chapter 1235 - Dragon Hunter (4)

Had Jake attempted to confront Yrelstromoz without the aid of Dragonsbane Poison, his certainty of success would have plummeted. It wasn't that he viewed her as inherently superior in strength, but he questioned whether he could outlast a True Dragon possessing a nearly bottomless mana pool and the regenerative capacity to mend her own wounds.

Injecting a sufficient quantity of toxins into his adversary’s biology had taken longer than he anticipated. However, the moment the poison took hold, Jake sensed the shift immediately—and based on her reaction, Yrelstromoz did as well.

While her restorative magic successfully began knitting her mangled claw back together, the process now carried a heavy price. The Dragonsbane reacted violently to her high mana output, inflicting damage that scaled directly with the intensity of the magic she channeled.

Jake observed as Yrelstromoz’s eyes widened, her gaze fixed on him in a state of sheer bewilderment.

“What have you— ”

The thought remained unfinished as Jake refused to squander such a tactical opening. He discharged a rapid Arcane Powershot, the concussive force sending the dragon spiraling backward while adding to her injuries. A volley of arrows trailed the first; two more found their mark while Yrelstromoz was still reeling from her internal agony, though she eventually managed to mount a defense.

Radiant barriers of light manifested to intercept the projectiles, yet the act of summoning them triggered the Dragonsbane once more. This caused Yrelstromoz to waver. She conjured additional shields as she attempted to retreat, but Jake’s arrows banked mid-air, pursuing her and piercing the vulnerable webbing of her wings where scales were absent.

Utilizing his Sense of the Malefic Viper, Jake watched the dragon struggle to identify the toxin coursing through her veins. It was no simple feat. Although Jake hadn't gone out of his way to mask the poison's nature, its epic rarity meant it was woven with high-tier concepts and energies that defied easy analysis.

This divided attention proved to be her undoing, allowing Jake to rain down even more arrows and intensify the dosage. Yrelstromoz grew erratic, her composure crumbling into panic as she faced a phenomenon she couldn't comprehend.

Her lack of genuine combat experience was becoming painfully obvious. Jake suspected she had never been truly pushed to her limits, at least not since ascending to B-grade. Even if she had faced challenges, they were likely sanitized sparring matches where her life was never at stake. The current reality was far grimmer; Jake was intent on her execution, a fact she only now seemed to be fully internalizing.

Pressing his advantage, Jake began preparing his final move, preferring to stay ahead of the curve. Inside his quiver, he started weaving a potent Protean Arrow, intending to utilize Eternal Hunger as the arrowhead when the moment for the kill arrived.

While preparing a finishing blow might have seemed premature, Yrelstromoz’s deteriorating mental state and her failure to counter his relentless barrage suggested the fight would conclude much faster than he had originally projected.

Yrelstromoz fought a losing battle, swiping at arrows and attempting to use healing magic against the Dragonsbane to no avail. The toxin was specifically designed to resist a dragon’s cleansing efforts; in fact, Jake’s unique variant ensured that any mana used to purge it only resulted in further self-inflicted harm. A more skilled healer or one intimately familiar with such poisons might have fared better, but Yrelstromoz was neither.

Dozens of arrows, each saturated with more Dragonsbane, found their mark as the two traversed the planet's surface. The dragon tried to create distance, occasionally flickering with a movement skill that Jake noted had a negligible mana cost, yet she still hesitated. That was when Jake realized the truth.

She wasn't just avoiding magic because of the physical damage. Though the backlash was significant, it wasn't enough to kill her outright if she used her powers normally. It was simply another layer of attrition that made her healing inefficient. The reason Yrelstromoz was holding back was something Jake hadn't even considered a major variable:

Pain.

For someone like Jake, pain was a non-factor. He felt it, and he certainly didn't enjoy it, but it could never dictate his actions. This resilience was shared by almost every genius Jake had encountered. Most monsters who reached the upper echelons through constant bloodshed were well-acquainted with agony and had become desensitized to it.

Yrelstromoz, however, was a hothouse flower. She had never known the brutal indifference of the natural world. Now that she was suddenly submerged in it, her instincts were failing her.

To be fair, the agony produced by Dragonsbane Poison was far beyond a standard wound. It was a toxin that ravaged both the physical form and the soul, and Jake could understand why her gut reaction was to cease the actions causing her such torment. Unfortunately, it was the wrong strategy, and it was leading her straight to the grave.

Jake felt a flicker of disappointment, hoping she had more to offer. Given her rising panic, he began to wonder if his first dragon hunt would end on such an anticlimactic note.

“She really is the bottom of the barrel… or close to it,” the Primordial of Karma remarked with a sigh, shaking his head while watching the recording—which lagged just seconds behind the live event to prevent Jake from sensing his presence.

“Absolutely,” the Viper agreed. “She possesses the raw stats and the body of a dragon, but lacks the spirit. True Dragons are terrifying not just for their power, but for their mastery over it. That is especially true for those specialized in magic, like her.”

“She appears to be a weakling among the elite,” Eversmile remarked.

“And yet…” Vilas trailed off.

“She is still a True Dragon,” Eversmile finished with a grin.

“Indeed,” the snake god replied. He knew she wouldn't fall so easily; her bloodline and heritage simply wouldn't permit such a pathetic end.

--

The relentless stream of arrows continued. Yrelstromoz tried to deflect them, but her efforts were futile. Individually, they didn't do massive damage, but each one delivered more of that agonizing poison that had permeated her entire being. Every attempt to cleanse the toxin resulted in a spike of debilitating pain, forcing her into a state of indecision.

While Yrelstromoz had easily neutralized previous poisons from the Chosen of the Malefic Viper, this one was a different beast entirely. It was overwhelmingly powerful, and every solution she tried only brought more suffering.

She realized this couldn't go on, yet she was paralyzed by the lack of viable options. Her mind raced as she took hit after hit. Every counterattack she considered promised more pain—a level of agony she had never experienced. While the arrows themselves were painful, the sensation was nothing compared to the flare-up caused by the poison reacting to her mana.

At the very least, the pain was manageable when she refrained from using mana or stuck to low-cost spells, but she still sought to avoid the sensation entirely if possible.

Running was her only recourse, hoping the human would tire of the chase. His enhancement skill was remarkably potent, which meant it likely had a finite duration or a heavy cost. If she could just stay ahead of him long enough, perhaps he would be the one forced to retreat.

But as the minutes ticked by, the human showed no signs of slowing down. If anything, his momentum was building, and every subsequent arrow seemed to bite deeper than the last.

That was when a terrifying thought occurred to Yrelstromoz—a possibility she had never even entertained.

The idea of losing to a C-grade had seemed like an impossibility, a fever dream. The disparity between grades was meant to be insurmountable, and her natural draconic resistances should have allowed her to outlast any C-grade's resources. But the reality was shifting. Yrelstromoz was losing… and if she lost…

Death was a concept she had accepted only as a distant conclusion brought by the end of time. She had eons ahead of her. Having only recently reached B-grade, she should have had millennia to enjoy her life and her independence from the Dragonflight and any other meddlers.

Now, the horrifying realization that her future might be cut short began to take hold. This wasn't just a C-grade overstepping his bounds. She was being hunted by a predator truly capable of bringing down a True Dragon.

Internal panic flared. She didn't want the pain, she didn't want the conflict, but most of all, she didn't want to die. She wanted to survive—and the only path to survival was the death of the human hunting her.

With that realization, a cold calm descended upon her. The pain receded into the background. Yrelstromoz felt her pulse steady as something ancient and primal stirred within her. It was a deep-seated knowledge, long-dormant instincts, and the memories of the brutal training meant to forge her into a True Dragon.

As this tranquility washed over her, her perception expanded. She finally acknowledged the human as a genuine threat to her existence. It was now a matter of kill or be killed. In the face of that ultimate truth, trivialities like pain were forgotten. For the first time in her life, Yrelstromoz would fight with everything she had to validate her existence as a True Dragon.

Jake detected the transition instantly. It was as if a switch had been thrown, completely altering Yrelstromoz’s aura. She ceased her desperate flight and pathetic attempts to swat his arrows, coming to a dead halt.

Three arrows were already closing in as she stopped, but they would never reach their target.

An eerie light flickered in Yrelstromoz’s eyes as her form was wreathed in energy. She unleashed a soul-shaking roar saturated with power. The resulting blast wave swatted Jake’s arrows aside and caused the earth to shatter, hurling massive chunks of rock into the sky.

Jake conjured a shield to withstand the pressure, but was still knocked back. He watched warily as Yrelstromoz flared her wings, her scales shimmering with light while arcs of electricity-like energy danced across her body and into the air.

Through his Sense of the Malefic Viper, Jake felt the poison inside her react to her surging energy. The Dragonsbane flared, but the True Dragon no longer flinched at the agony.

Folding her wings and ending her roar, Yrelstromoz locked eyes with Jake. In that moment, he knew the arrogant, cowardly disappointment he had been fighting had vanished.

The atmosphere had shifted, the air thick with the weight of ancient authority. The oppressive presence of a True Dragon fully embracing her nature was unlike anything Jake had felt. His instincts warned him of extreme danger; the hesitant prey was gone, replaced by a predator of pure, unbridled power.

“Rise.”

The single command resonated from the dragon, and the environment obeyed. The shattered earth from her roar launched into the air toward Jake, blinding him and catching him off guard.

An instant later, the ascending debris was sliced through by a needle-thin beam of concentrated light. Jake barely managed to arch his back as the beam hissed past his nose. He felt the searing heat against his skin as the surrounding stone was perfectly bifurcated.

The ray had originated from a sphere of energy gathered between Yrelstromoz’s horns. Before she could fire again, Jake activated Pride once more, blasting away the floating rocks.

“Implode.”

The massive weight of stone surrounding him suddenly reversed direction, rushing toward Jake as if he were a gravitational anchor. Channeling his Pride, Jake spoke his own command to counter the spell.

“Disperse!”

His Words of Power, backed by the Pride of the Malefic Viper, fought to repel the crushing mass. He only managed to slightly delay the rocks, forcing him to blast a path through the stone sea with a beam of destructive arcane energy.

The failure to fully repel the attack confirmed Jake's suspicions.

She was utilizing another legendary draconic trait he hadn't been sure she possessed. She was chanting Words of Power, bolstered by the Draconic Language skill—a feat known to require immense willpower and mental fortitude. For Yrelstromoz to wield it with such proficiency indicated a total psychological transformation.

One thing was certain: her fear of using magic had evaporated.

After escaping the stone trap, Jake dodged another lethal laser beam. He returned fire with a series of arrows that spiraled in chaotic arcs, forcing Yrelstromoz to intercept them with her own barriers.

He noticed she had also begun repairing her scales, closing the gaps he had been exploiting before her awakening.

The tide of battle had turned in a heartbeat, yet the fundamentals remained. Yrelstromoz was still heavily injured and saturated with Dragonsbane Poison—far too much to simply heal away.

Jake knew it, and she clearly did too. They both understood that without her constant use of mana—which triggered the Mana Allergy—she had no hope of winning. Her only path was to endure the self-inflicted damage and hope her spells could kill Jake before the poison killed her.

As for curing herself, they had reached the same conclusion: the poison could not be healed, but it would weaken if the source was eliminated. If Jake died, she could enter a state of deep meditation and let the toxin dissipate naturally over time.

Their eyes met, the unspoken agreement clear. She had to slay Jake before the Dragonsbane ended her life, while Jake had to accelerate her demise before her magic overwhelmed him.

On paper, the situation favored Jake... but as he felt the mana for thousands of kilometers responding to the True Dragon’s command, and watched the sky fill with a hundred thousand shimmering orbs of light, he realized this would be anything but easy.