The Primal Hunter Chapter 1253 - Rising Tide

The drive toward B-grade dominated the current era throughout Earth and numerous multiverse factions. Beings from the fresh universe neared their evolutions, though only a select handful had managed to complete theirs already.

This synchronized moment wasn't just random chance or due to everyone requiring similar time for advancement. Rather, it reflected the influence of Records spanning the multiverse. Like a rising tide elevating every vessel, the surge of Records from those ascending to B-grade impacted others, aiding their own evolutions too. These influences stayed subtle and often went undetected, yet the phenomenon was thoroughly recorded multiverse-wide, with leading factions exploiting it fully.

Moreover, as certain individuals evolved, it spurred others to exert that final effort. Factions observed their competitors assembling squads of fresh B-grades and thus initiated their own drives for the same. This held especially true in the present age, where the risks loomed larger than ever.

Every faction aimed to vie for the Seat of the Exalted Prima. Although some frontrunners held clear edges that all acknowledged, this failed to deter major or even smaller factions from joining the fray.

The exact mechanics of the World Wonder remained unknown to all. Whether one might seize a portion, a dominant stake, or if a single entity would ultimately command it entirely stayed unclear. Even assuming just one ultimate winner, participation opened doors for bargaining. It offered a chance to yield and secure some form of sway or access to the World Wonder in exchange.

Even in the direst outcome, where a faction gained zero command, sway, or anything remotely similar, engaging in the contest proved valuable for the participants themselves. Ample Records awaited harvest in such grand events, even among the defeated, so factions aware they merely filled spots still eagerly participated.

Precisely when the Seat of the Exalted Prima contest would resume in earnest lingered as a mystery, but the leading idea suggested that sufficient Administrator Candidates needed to attain B-grade first. Others guessed that only a handful of elite challengers had to evolve. This roster featured high-rankers from the new universe in Nevermore... a roster that obviously encompassed the leading figure: Jake Thayne.

A person presently reveling in peak enjoyment, who, per Minaga's account, tackled the new universe's grandest dungeon—one so immense that the World Wonder paled in comparison, seeming trivial.

A claim Jake might not wholly endorse.

--

“Okay, we know for sure now he’s being an asshole on purpose, right?” Jake asked while breathing heavily, having just escaped inside yet another construction hole.

“I knew that for sure about twelve Jones Orbs ago,” Casper said, shaking his head. “But hey, I got an upgrade to my movement skill, so I’m not too mad about it.”

“The mere fact you more or less needed an upgrade not to find yourself annihilated by the Jones Orb should tell you something,” Jake muttered.

About ten days had passed since Jake and Casper eliminated the initial Formation Master, and afterward, they navigated the Grand Labyrinth in their standard fashion. They dispatched every foe in their route and, blending their abilities, charted their course forward.

Over time, their pace quickened, and they embraced greater hazards. They even separated briefly a couple of times to explore separate paths, relying on stealth to pinpoint the correct route more swiftly.

This boosted velocity and bolder strategies ensured that, in merely ten days, they had slain the ultimate Formation Master before stepping through another teleporter and facing off against yet another lethal rolling orb.

The more Jones Orbs the duo faced, the clearer it grew that Minaga had tossed them in purely to torment Casper and Jake. Those cursed spheres had accelerated progressively through the dungeon, and as Jake noted, Casper might have faced disaster earlier without a timely skill enhancement.

For the remaining three Formation Masters, the clashes mirrored the debut one, albeit with minor tweaks. Each boasted Elite Guards and a Guard Captain, yet the guards' and captains' compositions differed, their armaments varied, and so forth. Consequently, the summoned golems in that segment differed too... though Jake and Casper bypassed those segments entirely. The Formation Masters proved rather fragile, and a strategic deployment of Event Horizon let Jake and Casper essentially bypass a whole phase of the fight.

A key variation emerged post the fourth and last Formation Master's demise. The prior three had lamented Jake and Casper's tardiness, but this final one bellowed that they arrived precisely in time to halt his complete mission.

Thus, the whole "racing against time" element amounted to mere bluff and ploy, engineered to fabricate tension. A textbook case of ludonarrative dissonance, indeed. Or perhaps not—Jake actually lacked full grasp of the phrase; he merely flung it out to appear clever, much like countless others.

“Think positively; we’re soon done with the dungeon,” Casper said comfortingly with a smile. “My skills are also telling me the final boss is near, and going by Minaga’s narrative, it must be that shadowy figure who kept leaving messages for his subordinates. On that note, he really should have been stricter about them remembering to destroy those damn envelopes.”

“True,” Jake nodded and let out a sigh of relief. When it came to the final boss, they didn’t know much yet, aside from him being male, as one of the Formation Masters referred to the mysterious final boss as a “he” once.

“You ready to move on, or do you need a few hours to recover?” Jake asked cheekily.

“Hours? With my pathetic meditation skill, I need at least a few days!” Casper shot back.

“Understandable,” Jake nodded, speaking with a serious tone. “Guess I’ll have to clear the rest of the dungeon by myself.”

“If you can find the teleporters, that is,” Casper said, being a little cheeky himself.

“I’ll just bank on there not being any more teleporters,” Jake shrugged. “Or, who knows, maybe if you’re not around, I’ll just randomly stumble into one.”

“Sure, I wouldn’t be surprised if your Bloodline has some hidden luck function boiled into it,” Casper muttered with a defeatist attitude.

“Nah, just overpowered intuition and instincts,” Jake waved him off. “Which, when you think about it, kind of is like a good-luck ability.”

“Talking with you is a fast track to depression,” Casper sighed. “I can’t even lord over you that I have a girlfriend anymore.”

“Hey, don’t be too sad. I admire you two and the undying love you have,” Jake said with a grin. “Get it? Undying love?”

“I should have let that damn orb roll over me,” Casper cursed his existence. “Let’s just go find that boss already and put a bow on this place. Get it?”

A case of content theft: this narrative is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

“That was bad.”

“I don’t care.”

The two of them started moving without anymore banter, both at impressive speeds as Jake continuously scanned the area ahead to make sure they wouldn’t stumble into any enemies.

Once Jake spotted some, he motioned with his hand, making Casper use his stealth skill as Jake did the same with his Unseen Hunter. Jake wasn’t sure which of them had the best stealth skill, but just the fact that he wasn’t sure was proof that Casper had a pretty damn good one. Unsurprisingly, considering his Path.

When they finally went around a bend in the Grand Labyrinth, they spotted two Aginians walking side by side. They looked different from any of those prior, with one carrying a large rifle and several other guns of different kinds, while the second had a large tower shield and a lance or spear with a nozzle at its end.

Using Identify on them, he confirmed the second one indeed had a lance. And a gun, apparently.

Seeing these and estimating their relative power compared to what they had faced prior, it was clear there had been a step-up in difficulty. All the Formation Masters had been roughly equally powerful, with them growing only one level each time they killed one.

“Are they strong?” Casper asked, knowing that of the two of them, Jake’s ability to estimate the power of foes was second-to-none.

“Define strong,” Jake said with a smile. “Weaker than the Formation Masters, though definitely far sturdier. Overall, though... no, they’re not strong.”

“Great,” Casper said. “I’ll handle the Gunlancer – cool name, by the way; point to Minaga for that one – while you take down the Marksman. Then, when I’ve failed to do any meaningful damage and you’ve killed your opponent, we gang up on the Gunlancer.”

“Sounds totally unethical and effective,” Jake smiled. “Let’s go. I’ll do my opening attack; you get in position.”

Casper nodded as he slipped away toward their enemies, using his boosting skill right away to turn his body ethereal. He phased into the ground and snuck up on them while Jake found a good position up in the air and took aim.

At this point in the dungeon, Jake no longer held anything back for fights. He instantly fully activated Arcane Awakening and nocked a Protean Arrow with Eternal Hunger as the arrowhead as he took aim.

Arcane Powershot channeled while Jake focused on the sensation of the skill as the energies revolved around him and through his body. During these days, Jake had also worked on upgrading other skills, but hadn’t truly pushed for anything yet; instead, he just found himself satisfied with deepening his understanding a little.

The same was true for his deepened understanding of using curses, which had mostly manifested itself in Jake having some ideas for better poisons using his Arcane Curse Manifestation skill. He also had a few ideas for Piercing Fang, but not enough to push for an upgrade there.

Feeling his Arcane Powershot reach the zenith of its power, Jake released his attack. As expected, the Gunlancer and Marksman weren’t ready at all, but they did at least respond well once they noticed the incoming attack.

The Gunlancer desperately tried to move and block the attack, but it was too fast, and he was too slow. Meanwhile, the Marksman started activating some movement skill, but Jake was too quick with Primal Gaze, freezing the B-grade’s body in place.

Right then, the ground also erupted, black chains shooting upwards as a magic circle formed beneath the two of them. The arrow struck the Marksman, who barely still managed to move at the end to angle his body, resulting in only his left side suffering damage as he lost an arm.

Black cursed chains caught the blown-off arm in mid-air and dragged it to the ground alongside the Gunlancer and Marksman, who were also affected. Jake saw Casper slightly lessen the effect on the Marksman, allowing him to escape from the field of chains as he used his remaining hand to point his rifle up toward Jake.

Rather than a bullet, a thin beam of pure energy shot out from the rifle. The attack was powerful enough to get a response from Jake’s danger sense as he dodged it by a hair’s breadth, purposefully minimizing his own movements as he nocked another arrow. Immediately, a second shot came, the Marksman proving himself worthy of the name as he released a barrage of well-aimed attacks, with the follow-ups even trying to predict where Jake would dodge.

Jake released a counterattack, and the Marksman was finally able to activate his boosting skill as his entire body was wrapped in energy, and he warped a dozen meters away without even changing his firing stance.

Elsewhere, the Gunlancer also tried to aim its gunlance toward Jake, but a ghostly Casper shot up from the ground, holding two cursed stakes in his hands, which he promptly slammed into the B-grade’s shoulders before he could react.

The Gunlancer yelled, releasing a shockwave of mana in an attempt to push Casper away, but the Risen was persistent and swept his hand upwards, making the ground erupt with cursed stakes that attempted to penetrate the armor of the Gunlancer. They failed to do so, but they did make the B-grade stumble, allowing Casper to unleash another magic ritual as cursed energy wrapped itself around the Gunlancer, forming an all-black cube around him.

Back in the competition between ranged combatants, Jake slowly got the advantage as he mixed up curved arrows and exploding arrow rains to catch out the Marksman. His opponent also tried different things and even switched to shooting bullets between his beams, most of which exploded with interesting effects, including one that released a cloud of poison gas. Jake thought that one was pretty funny.

The B-grade also had grenades from what Jake could see, but he never got a good chance to use them, as throwing one at Casper would also risk hitting the Gunlancer, and Jake was too far away and had proven himself capable of easily dodging bullets, so grenades didn’t have a chance to do anything.

Casper continued to do a good job isolating and effectively sealing away the Gunlancer as Jake began landing several arrows on the Marksman. Due to the injuries from Jake’s opening attack, the B-grade was already weakened and unable to fully utilize his powers. At least Jake reckoned that if he had both hands, he would have been using the other hand for something, maybe the smaller guns he wielded around his waist.

Unfortunately for the Marksman, he only had one hand, and in a ranged battle, he was simply inferior. It took a bit longer than Jake had expected it to, but in the end, the victor was clear. Jake purposefully took a shot to the chest to ensure he would land a quickly charged Arcane Powershot of his own. This exchange resulted in Jake getting a small hole in his body and the Marksman getting an arrow through his right eye, ending his life as the B-grade fell backwards onto the ground.

With one enemy down, Jake turned his attention to the Gunlancer. The B-grade had managed to free itself from the cursed seal before, only to find himself wrapped in chains from top to bottom, all of them anchored in empty space. Casper tried to attack using cursed stakes and whatnot, but the armor of the Gunlancer proved itself too durable, meaning all Casper could do was slowly whittle away at his foe with curse and death energy.

However, Jake could see that Casper couldn’t keep this up for much longer, and by his assessment, if the Gunlancer and Risen truly had a one-on-one duel, Jake couldn’t confidently say his friend would win. Not without pulling out a serious trump card.

Of course, with Jake added to the equation, it was a whole other story. Seeing as he had the opportunity, Jake summoned a second Protean Arrow he had begun preparing right after shooting the first one. With ample time as the Risen and Gunlancer fought, Jake fully channeled yet another Arcane Powershot, which he promptly released toward the B-grade.

Realizing this attack was more than capable of doing massive damage, the Gunlancer turned and raised his shield, but Casper and Lyra quickly stepped in to help, the two of them striking the B-grade in the side, making him drop his guard for just a moment.

Jake followed up with a Primal Gaze, allowing his Protean Arrow to slip past the guard of the Gunlancer and into his chest. Fragments of armor were sent flying as the B-grade was blasted back, heavily injured.

While Casper hadn’t done much damage, his curses had weakened the armor and defenses of the Gunlancer, allowing Jake to do more damage than usual. With the Gunlancer injured, Jake expected the rest of the fight to be quick and easy, but surprisingly, it turned out to be a prolonged endeavor as the damn B-grade was far too tanky for his own good.

Naturally, they still got him in the end, but it was a good reminder that in this final stretch of the dungeon, things would be a bit harder than before, no doubt also due to the increased levels of their enemies.

The increased levels and variety of foes weren’t all bad, though.

Jake had gained another level, meaning he now only had two class levels remaining before he would see his evolution quest. With tougher enemies ahead and a final boss that Minaga was doubtful Jake would even be able to beat... yeah, there was a pretty decent chance Jake would max out his class during this dungeon.