The Primal Hunter

The entire world around Jake began to fade as all concepts in his surroundings were broken down into nothingness, and he shot after the Guardian. When using Wings of the Malefic Viper’s escape function, he couldn’t really do more than change the general direction he was going in, as he sacrificed all accuracy for pure speed and the ability to break through layers of space and anything else that might impede him.

However, this time, he wasn’t just traveling randomly. Instead, he was in hot pursuit of the Prima Guardian as he honed in on the Mark he had left on it. He felt it ahead of him, with the exact distance impossible to determine due to how the skill worked. However, he knew that he wasn’t willing to disengage his own use of Wings before he knew the Guardian had also stopped.

This proved… difficult. Jake was already beaten and battered, and as he chased the Prima Guardian, he felt his wings getting burned away, running out of energy. They were taking the brunt of everything, and it was clear the chimera’s wings were just tougher than Jake’s, likely due to its far higher stats.

Moreover, Jake guessed the Guardian knew he was chasing it. That, or it was just trying to get as far away as it possibly could, likely to recover before returning for a rematch. One that Jake naturally believed they would also win, but he wasn’t about to risk it or give the chimera a longer life than absolutely necessary.

Gritting his teeth, Jake saw the world briefly flicker all around him, the escape skill about to come to an end. He would be thrown out into the real world, the Prima Guardian escaping to who-knows-where. Thinking fast about what to do, Jake tried to make his wings last longer. He actively controlled his vital energies as he sent more and more into them, trying to keep them from collapsing, but he was fighting a losing battle.

Just a bit longer, Jake thought desperately. One could still barely count the time Jake had been using his escape skill in seconds, but he was at the end of his ropes. Jake thought as quickly as he could, as he tried to think up new ways to make the wings last.

He covered them in a layer of stable arcane energy, and when that wasn’t enough, he forcefully poured stable arcane mana into them in heavy supply. This appeared to only speed up their breakdown, but Jake forcefully stabilized all the mana within them, also inadvertently affecting the other energies in the wings. An almost reddish sheen began to cover them as Jake felt a change… one he leaned fully into as he explored it.

The wings had always been considered part of his body, but at the same time also separated due to their phantasmal nature. However, now, he felt a far stronger connection with them, especially when it came to pouring in his arcane energy. Skills had still affected the wings before, such as his boosting skill… yet it felt slightly different now. Like he had unclogged an otherwise blocked vein.

On his back, the reddish sheen finally changed and began to take shape as what looked like scales of arcane energy covered the surface of both wings. The wings also completely “locked” themselves as if they were frozen… but they also remained incredibly stable as Jake continued his pursuit of the Prima Guardian.

A notification popped up in his head, and Jake briefly skimmed it as he dedicated a small part of his consciousness to see what it was about. Especially because with the notification, he felt himself increase in speed ever-so-slightly.

Skill upgraded (rarity unchanged):[Wings of the Malefic Viper (Legendary)] – Sprout wings and take flight, and as the Malefic Viper, refuse to ever find yourself restrained to circumstances against your will. Allows the Alchemist to summon two phantasmal wings to take flight or fight. While active, you can burn the blood within the wings and release potent toxic fumes. The toxicity and effects of the poison are based on Blood of the Malefic Viper. The wings can also be infused with stable arcane energies, using the wings as a medium to create a powerful defensive barrier, benefitting from both your arcane energies and the properties of an empowered Scales of the Malefic Viper. When infused with stable arcane energies, the wings cannot move. The wings count as a phantasmal part of your body and are incredibly receptive to your arcane energies. Allows the Alchemist to further infuse and sacrifice both wings to create an opportunity to escape if in a perilous situation. Doing this makes resummoning the wings impossible for a variable duration, dependent on Agility and the amount of energy infused into the wings upon the sacrifice. Passively provides 9 Agility per level in Heretic-Chosen Alchemist of the Malefic Viper (C-grade variant). May the sight of your wings be the harbinger of death, an impenetrable defense, and instruments of escape to feed another day.

Jake had considered getting a dedicated defensive arcane barrier skill for a long time… and it looked like he had just gotten one. It was pretty much a side-effect of Jake wanting to protect his wings while using the escape function, but he wasn’t going to complain. Chances are he had been pretty close to some kind of upgrade with his wings already, and it was only good to get it now, especially with the increased stats.

With this skill upgrade, Jake had bridged the gap between him and the Prima Guardian, as he was able to continue his pursuit. While he didn’t have the same raw stats to match the durability of its wings, he now had superior wings in the quality department.

Still, it wasn’t like he could keep using the skill forever, and neither could the Prima Guardian. Soon, Jake felt his opponent stop, which also put a stop to Jake dedicating any brainpower to the skill upgrade. Jake disengaged his use of wings a moment later as he emerged in the real world once more, the wings on his back burning away in the process, not to be summoned again for a good while.

He found himself surrounded by darkness, with nothing anywhere close. It wasn’t hard to know where he was, either. The Prima Guardian hadn’t tried to flee to the other side of the planet or anywhere, really… it had just gone straight up. Straight into the emptiness of space, which was where Jake now found himself, the planet pretty damn far beneath him. It wasn’t even like they had flown in the direction of the moon… there was just nothing.

The Prima was a few dozen kilometers away, and Jake saw that it looked just about to enter some form of meditation to recover. However, it immediately noticed his appearance as Jake pulled out a bow and nocked an arrow.

Jake was still on a timer with his boosting skill going strong, but he knew the Prima Guardian wasn’t going well either. While it had regenerated its second arm, it still only had one leg, and none of the wyverns on its back looked like they were gonna get healed.

Shooting his arrow, the chimera was struck as it reeled back. For a moment, it looked like it considered running until it stopped itself. On the back of Jake’s hand, the key to the Planetary Pylon gave off a faint glow, the Guardian giving off a similar aura. It recognized Jake was the Key Holder… and recognized that this was a golden opportunity for it.

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Never had its objective been to kill every powerful fighter on Earth. Just to obtain the second key held by the World Leader. And now that very same World Leader had isolated himself from all his allies in the middle of space, with no help anywhere to be seen.

The option of fleeing seemed to quickly leave the chimera’s mind. It took the staff it had been holding and grasped it with both hands before splitting it in two, the two halves morphing into blades. Likely, it had judged that blunt weapons were no longer optimal for the fight that was to come, and the staff was too cumbersome against Jake.

Jake was also fully aware of the situation he had put himself in. This was indeed the best chance the Prima Guardian would ever get to “beat” Earth. The thing is… as long as its best option included killing Jake, it wouldn’t ever be realistic.

“What’s happening? I repeat, what’s happening?” the Fallen King asked through the Golden Mark, seemingly having asked quite a few times before. Likely while Jake was using wings to chase.

“Fighting the boss in space,” Jake just answered.

“Do you need assistance?”

“Yeah,” Jake answered. “Send Sandy to pick me up for when I’m done here. I’ll contact you when it’s dead.”

With that, Jake cut off the connection with the Golden Mark as he had a fight to attend.

Loosing another barrage of arrows, Jake took shots at the Prima as it flew toward him. Most of his arrows were deflected, but he hit a few before Jake dodged to the side as the Guardian stepped down and appeared right in front of him. He swayed out of the way as he decided to meet the boss in melee just like it wanted, taking out both of his katars.

Facing the boss alone was truly the best decision in Jake’s mind. He did have the possibility of summoning the Fallen King… but all that would do was put the Unique Lifeform in a tough spot. While Jake had confidence in keeping himself alive, he wasn’t confident in protecting the Fallen King in the slightest. Besides, if worst came to worst, Jake wanted to be the only one around for the end of the flight.

With no one else around, Jake could also fully focus only on the Prima Guardian. He didn’t have to dedicate even a smidgen of his attention to keeping others safe or consider if his actions would put others in challenging situations. It was just him, the chimera, and a vast open nothingness as far as the eye could see.

Jake gladly fought the Prima Guardian while the chimera’s two blades moved at incredible speeds as Jake dodged and weaved around them, counterattacking whenever possible. He parried and took advantage of its movements, as even if the chimera was adaptable and could move in unnatural ways, it still had patterns, and Jake could still read it.

The two of them flashed through space as they rapidly switched between who was on the offensive, pushing each other back, Jake landing blow after blow as he couldn’t avoid taking some damage himself. Blood began to fill the emptiness of their environment, along with the skin that flayed off Jake’s body as he truly pushed himself beyond his limits.

Even before he chased the Prima Guardian, he had to consume a stamina potion to keep himself from running out, and now his resources were draining even quicker. If the fight dragged on too long, Jake would more than likely be the first one to fall… so he had to be the one to finish the fight.

Eternal Hunger did help a bit to keep Jake in the game, its energy-stealing effect very effective against the monstrous resource pool of the Guardian. He landed several stabs with it, even if the Voidblade did more raw damage. The weapon from Arnold was honestly ridiculous in how good it was at cutting and stabbing, and it was responsible for many of the injuries marring the Prima Guardian’s body.

Exchanging dozens of blows a second, Jake was waiting for his chance, as he had a trick up his sleeve he wanted to try. After a clash where Jake got a minor cut on his thigh in trade for a deep stab into the chest of the Prima Guardian, Jake initiated the plan. He instantly charged in again as he released a wave of arcane energy mixed with dark mana toward the boss, causing a giant explosion of destructive black mist.

The Prima kept an eye on Jake throughout as the katar-wielding hunter appeared from within the cloud behind the chimera. It responded quickly, turning around and cutting down with both swords… only to find the version of Jake it attacked, dispersing into a mist of cursed energy.

Rapidly turning around, the Prima Guardian looked for Jake, confused, as it released a shockwave of mana to disperse the black mist around it. As the black mist was pushed away, Jake was still nowhere to be seen, making the Prima Guardian respond by sending out crescent waves of water, cutting through space.

One of these waves suddenly struck something… a seemingly solid mass in the middle of the nothingness. The moment it did, and before the Prima Guardian could fully process that it had hit anything, an explosion of magic was released as an Arcane Powershot tore across space toward the Guardian. It wanted to dodge, but Jake used Primal Gaze one final time.

A Protean Arrow, with all of Jake’s Hunting Momentum infused, struck the Prima Guardian right in its chest, piercing deeply into it before exploding. An arm and a leg were shot off into the vastness of space, and the creature was blown apart, blood and gore spread out everywhere.

Jake had done something he had long theorized. Using Eternal Shadow and obscuring the sight of his enemy, he had briefly managed to activate Unseen Hunter in the state where he had to stand still due to the boss losing sight of him. It was an incredibly tight timing, but Jake had a transcendent ability to know when something or someone was looking at him, and the second he noticed the Guardian had shifted its entire attention to the Eternal Shadow, he used the skill and blended into space.

This allowed him to not only buy time to briefly charge an Arcane Powershot using his Protean Arrow but also to benefit from his Stealth Attack skill. If the Prima Guardian hadn’t been swift to release a large area of effect attack to sniff him out, he could have charged the arrow for even longer… but this had to be good enough, right? Because Jake wasn’t sure he had that much more in the tank.

At the same time as the Prima was blown apart, Jake’s eyes cracked, as the irises in both fractured, turning him completely blind. He also felt the impact on his soul, having overdrawn himself far too much, as he felt an insane headache. His consciousness wavered… as something appeared behind him.

With nothing but a small part of its upper body, head, and one arm barely attached to its shoulder, the Prima Guardian had teleported behind Jake. The sword in its hand was gone, but it still struck forward, its hand glowing with the familiar aura of Carmen’s most powerful strike: Fist of Ragnarok.

Jake didn’t have time to think. Instinctively, he began to turn as the fist closed in on his head. Both katars appeared in Jake’s hands as he roared while stabbing forward, the fist growing nearer… as time slowed down. Moment of the Primal Hunter activated, as Jake’s katars were both giving off the aura of Piercing Fang, one aimed for what remained of the Guardian’s chest and the other for the head.

With time on his side, Jake’s attacks would arrive first… a strike that would no doubt be deadly toward the Guardian on its last legs. And in that final moment, the chimera tried to adapt one last time. Time began to bend around it as its own version of Moment of the Primal Hunter activated.

Jake felt his own heartbeat. A single thump of indignance… as the Prima Guardian just stopped. Its glowing fist lost all power, and white glowing fractures covered what was left of its body. The chimera’s skin turned gray and wrinkly before its entire body turned to ashes before Jake’s attack could even land. Time returned to normal, as all that remained was drifting dust that also soon disappeared into nothingness.

Instinctively, he knew… the Prima Guardian had tried to do something it simply shouldn’t and couldn’t do. It had simply faced the consequences of trying to overreach and escape the concept of time for even a moment. Well, the consequences if you didn’t have an overpowered Bloodline, that is.

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