The Primal Hunter

Jake had been prepared this time around. He had steeled himself and done all he could to limit his senses to not experience sensory overload. His control since he became D-grade had increased significantly, and Jake had far more confidence this time around when he was teleported back to the bed in his lodge.

The moment he appeared, he was still hit hard. Thousands of smells, extremely loud sounds and so much information from his Sphere got fed straight into his brain. He imagined colors he didn’t even know existed, impossible sounds, and the mana in the air felt suffocating.

Gritting his teeth, the cracking sound from some of them breaking was deafening, but it allowed him to focus on that one sound. He kept grinding his teeth, the sound echoing within his head like he was living inside a drumset, and he focused solely on this noise as he tried to filter everything else away. Not opening his eyes had been a godsend, and for a few moments, he even considered just stabbing something into both of his eardrums.

Minutes passed by, and slowly, he felt some calm. The sounds were now more muted, and his body and mind adapted to all this new sensory information. Increases in senses like this from evolutions were completely normal, and everyone felt these heightened senses, but usually, the system helped in advance. It did still help Jake, but only with the same level of assistance it would give everyone else. This is to say, it was far from enough.

The smells were still bothering him, primarily because he could not distinguish or place them. It was just a huge mass of different scents, some of them nice, some of them foul, but all mixed together in this amalgamation of pure stench.

Muting these smells took a while as Jake began to breathe heavily, taking in some of the atmospheric mana.

Throughout it all, Jake had managed to restrain the worst offender when it came to sensory overload: his Sphere of Perception. Even then, it had still grown to nearly five hundred meters, and Jake knew this was due to his suppression of it. The level of detail throughout the Sphere remained mostly the same, but he detected more energy now compared to before. For a few moments, it had felt like he was back in the Forgotten Sewers dungeon filled with dark mana, blinding him entirely. Luckily, his instinctual filtering quickly kicked in and helped.

Choosing to shelve the issue of the Sphere for now, Jake opened his eyes and, surprisingly enough, felt fine. He was confused for a moment until it clicked. Jake was used to using his eyes a lot and straining them to the utmost, while he usually didn’t actively practice and use his sense of smell and improved hearing as those two were more obstacles than beneficial outside of tracking.

It was a bit the same with many of his other senses. His sense of touch, the sensation of pain, and other senses like that were something Jake was used to and, in many ways, desensitized to. They also just didn’t feel as overwhelming as the auxiliary senses.

Jake, to do a test, took out one of his hated enemies from his inventory: a mushroom. He stared at it for a moment before throwing it into his mouth and chewing.

“Still tastes like shit,” he muttered as he gulped down the necrotic toxins within the fungi. Nothing seemed to have really changed with his sense of taste, so that was good, at least. There were still many other tests left, but Jake returned to his Sphere once more.

Focusing, Jake slightly released it, feeling it spread out. Six hundred meters, seven hundred, eight hundred. The added area covered for every meter it extended was larger than the one before, making the pressure on his psyche only grow. After it reached a kilometer, Jake had to stop and forcefully pull it back into around the four-hundred to five-hundred meters range where it felt the most manageable.

The maximum limit is… a lot higher.

He had already limited it in D-grade, but now he had to limit it even more. It annoyed him as he felt like he was wasting potential, but on the other hand, he knew processing so much information was too much for him. Even at a few hundred meters, he didn’t truly process everything at once, but it felt more like certain things happening within triggered instinctual responses making him notice it.

Even so… Jake wanted to see how far it could truly go. Was it risky? Yes, but he was also far more durable now, and even if there were some issues, he believed in his own ability to recover. It should be fine. Definitely.

I can take it… right?

Yeah, he should be able to.

Oh well, nothing ventured, nothing gained.

Closing his eyes and cutting off all other senses, Jake let go for but a fraction of a second. It was as if a pulse was released that went outwards and took a snapshot of everything it encountered on the way before finally being cut off, leaving Jake with just an image in his head – and a splitting headache.

As for the range… Jake felt it as the pulse spread and scanned everything.

A kilometer, twelve-hundred meters, fifteen hundred meters, two kilometers… three… five… ten… twenty… fifty… a hundred… two….

Jake saw Arnold in his workshop at the Fort. He saw Miranda in her office, a party around a hundred kilometers out in the forest, every single home at the Fort, every single person living there, every single thing…

Jake was overwhelmed as the mental picture faded before he could process even a fraction of it, and he opened his eyes as he felt the blood drip down onto his shirt, coming out of his nose. He just stared a bit into the wall as he frowned.

A bit over two hundred and fifty kilometers. That was the actual range of Jake’s Sphere of Perception if it was fully released. It was so large there was simply no way to process all this information… it was just not possible for a C-grade. At least not Jake. Maybe someone like Arnold could, with some of his special skills and his fucked up mind that had probably been warped by eldritch influence.

However, while Jake could not process all this information, that didn’t make it useless. Closing his eyes once more, Jake repeated his action, releasing another pulse. It swept out, and this time Jake did it with a purpose. His instinct guided him, and as the snapshot faded, he still felt something.

Over a hundred kilometers away, a Mark had been placed on Arnold’s assistant. A smile crept on Jake’s lips. “The possibilities…”

Jake was turning into a living, walking, surveillance state. At least some of the time. Just releasing a few of these pulses made him feel drained, and he knew he was straining himself whenever he did it, making it a limited technique only to be used sparingly.

Shaking his head, Jake moved on to another thing he had dreaded facing nearly as much as the outcome of his Bloodline evolution:

Skill rarity adjustment.

All newly evolved C-grades would experience this horror, and Jake chose not to needlessly delay his suffering. He had already been spammed with messages and dove straight into it.

Skill Rarity Adjustment Initiated.

As your power grows, so do your Records. What may have been an achievement before is now only to be expected, and what may have seemed rare before may now merely be uncommon. Thus, an adjustment must be made to represent your progress.

All skills will be adjusted to your current grade, resulting in potential downgrades in rarity. All functionalities of the skills will remain unchanged. Some skills may be adjusted without having their rarities affected. This may or may not result in increased difficulty of further rarity upgrades.

Even if the description said the skills wouldn’t get nerfed and be worse, that didn’t really make Jake feel that much better. It still sucked to see the rarities decreasing. It felt like taking a step back on one’s progress.

It also mentioned that some skills were downgraded without losing their current rarity. Every rarity was a spectrum, so if a skill was at the peak of legendary and close to reaching mythical rarity, it would likely stay the same. Some skills also just wouldn’t ever downgrade due to how they worked. Brew Potion and Concoct Poison were two examples of this.

Speaking of those skills, Jake already knew that the massacre would be worse with his class than his profession, so he started with the gentler of the two.

Profession Skills:

Note that some skills that did not experience a downgrade in rarity did have their relative rarity lowered.

Rarity Adjusted:

[Alchemist’s Purification (Common)] --> [Alchemist’s Purification (Inferior)]

[Alchemical Flame (Uncommon)] --> [Alchemical Flame (Common)]

[Cultivate Toxin (Uncommon)] --> [Cultivate Toxin (Common)]

[Soul Ritualism of the Heretic-Chosen Alchemist (Ancient)] --> [Soul Ritualism of the Heretic-Chosen Alchemist (Epic)]

[Advanced Core Manipulation (Ancient)] --> [Advanced Core Manipulation (Epic)]

--

Five skills were downgraded… that wasn’t terrible, actually. It still hurt, but some of them were expected. Then again, he felt pretty damn called out for never really using something like Purification by the skill now being Inferior-rarity. It wasn’t Jake’s fault he didn’t really need the skill.

Alchemical Flame downgrading was a bit sad, and as for the others, it was expected. While Jake had used all of the skills, he hadn’t used them a lot and had not really worked on actively improving them. Core Manipulation and Soul Ritualism were both skills he had used for the Bee Queen ritual, and he planned on getting them up to speed when he got back to that project too.

As for the others… time would tell.

Finally, he had the profession skills that did not experience a change in rarity.

Rarity Unchanged:

[Path of the Heretic-Chosen (Unique)], [Brew Potion (Common)], [Craft Elixir (Uncommon)], [Concoct Poison (Rare)], [Malefic Viper’s Poison (Epic)], [Blood of the Malefic Viper (Legendary)], [Sagacity of the Malefic Viper (Legendary)], [Sense of the Malefic Viper (Legendary)], [Wings of the Malefic Viper (Legendary)], [Touch of the Malefic Viper (Legendary)], [Legacy Teachings of the Heretic-Chosen Alchemist (Legendary)], [Palate of the Malefic Viper (Legendary)], [Pride of the Malefic Viper (Legendary)], [Scales of the Malefic Viper (Legendary)], [Fangs of the Malefic Viper (Legendary)], [Anomalous Soul of the Heretic-Chosen (Legendary)]

--

Jake had already predicted all of the Legacy skills would stay the same, and he had been proven right. Honestly, looking at the list, he only saw one skill he was surprised had remained at its rarity. He did not remember using Legacy Teachings much, and yet it remained at legendary rarity. Actually, it was pretty much entirely passive, so perhaps he did use it unknowingly? Hard to tell.

Anyway, overall, the profession skills had gone as expected, and there were no nasty surprises. Jake still looked forward to seeing what would happen to Path of the Heretic-Chosen, but that would have to wait for his profession’s evolution.

For now, Jake moved on to what he had dreaded far more. His class.

Class Skills:

Note that some skills that did not experience a downgrade in rarity did have their relative rarity lowered.

Yeah, yeah, same as last time. It couldn’t be that bad with the downgrades, right?

Rarity Adjusted:

[Traditional Hunter’s Tracking (Rare)] --> [Traditional Hunter’s Tracking (Uncommon)]

[Splitting Arrow Rain (Epic)] --> [Splitting Arrow Rain (Rare)]

[Arrow of the Ambitious Hunter (Epic)] --> [Arrow of the Ambitious Hunter (Rare)]

[Descending Dark Arcane Fang (Epic)] --> [Descending Dark Arcane Fang (Rare)]

[Mark of the Avaricious Arcane Hunter (Ancient)] --> [Mark of the Avaricious Arcane Hunter (Epic)]

[Avaricious Arcane Hunter’s Arrows (Ancient)] -->[Avaricious Arcane Hunter’s Arrows (Epic)]

[Arcane Powershot (Ancient)] --> [Arcane Powershot (Epic)]

[Steady Aim of the Apex Hunter (Legendary)] --> [Steady Aim of the Apex Hunter (Ancient)]

[Arcane Awakening (Legendary)] --> [Arcane Awakening (Ancient)]

[One Step, Thousand Miles (Legendary)] --> [One Step, Thousand Miles (Ancient)]

--

It was as bad as he had feared.

Ten skills were downgraded, Three of them legendary and three of them ancient. Jake nearly felt physical pain just looking at it, seeing nearly all of his core skills reduced. Some of them he understood, like Descending Dark Arcane Fang and probably also Arcane Powershot, but for Arrow of Ambitious Hunter to downgrade was a surprise. Then again, the skill had been given at level 90 and had not been upgraded since. He really needed to work on it.

Arcane Awakening downgrading also hurt, especially as Jake now instinctively knew the skill had gotten quite a bit harder to use now. Before, he could keep it up for a long time and even be in the fully activated state for a long time, but with the evolution and the percentage boost staying the same, that had changed. Activating it above the safe 30% was now something he had to do with forethought.

Or whenever he felt like it while just taking the bigger backlash that would follow. This was not due to the downgrade in rarity but simply because he had just reached C-grade and gotten a lot of stats, making a 60% boost utterly massive.

On a side note, One Step, Thousand Miles downgrading was completely expected. This skill was so widely known that the fact it would downgrade was something Jake had already read about. Now, Steady Aim downgrading also wasn’t that big of a surprise, but it still sucked. He liked having a lot of legendary skills.

At least there was one pleasant surprise. Jake had expected his two stealth skills to downgrade, but somehow Arcane Stealth and Superior Stealth Attack had retained their rarity. He wondered if they had actually been close to upgrading or if there was some other reason behind it.

Luckily, even if it felt like he had just been punched in the face from these downgrades, some skills had not betrayed him.

Rarity Unchanged:

[Arcane Stealth (Rare)], [Superior Stealth Attack (Rare)], [Big Game Arcane Hunter (Epic)], [Archery of Expanding Horizons (Epic)], [Fangs of Man (Ancient)], [Moment of the Primal Hunter (Legendary)], [Gaze of the Apex Hunter (Legendary)], [Relentless Hunt of the Avaricious Arcane Hunter (Legendary)], [Eternal Shadow of the Primal Hunter (Mythical)]

--

Needless to say, Jake was the happiest about seeing Eternal Shadow of the Primal Hunter still a mythical skill. His archery skill staying was also nice, and Fangs of Man not downgrading was a bit surprising. Moment and Gaze, he totally understood, and Relentless Hunt felt so damn powerful to Jake he didn’t question it either.

It still bore repeating how much it sucked to have skills downgraded. Fifteen skills in total had fallen in rarity, most of them the core skills Jake used all the time. Trying to look a bit on the bright side, it offered him a chance to upgrade them once more. Having created one mythical skill, Jake also felt more confident in making more, and if he understood the system properly, having created one made getting more far, far easier.

Knowing there was nothing he could do to change reality, Jake moved on, and he instantly had a thought. And a smile appeared.

As Jake was finally done going over all these horrible downgrades, he had something he needed to do. During the pulses of Sphere, he had seen Arnold and knew the man had reached C-grade, which meant Jake had something extremely important to do before he could continue with all of his evolutions.

Getting off the bed, Jake rushed out and enjoyed his increased speed. He was faster, stronger. His speed had increased to a whole new level, and Jake beat his record of traveling from Haven to the Fort by nearly three times. Once he got there, he beelined for Arnold’s metal dome, and he was let in without question. Arnold was in his workshop, looking just the same as before despite his evolution.

“Hey, Arnold, did your mythical skill downgrade to legendary after you evolved!?” Jake quickly asked the mad scientist as he stormed into the workshop.

“Yes, but I should be able to-“

“Get fucked; mine didn’t!” Jake said in return before swiftly making his exit, leaving a very confused Arnold behind. With glee, Jake flew back to Haven to continue his evolution after completing this imperative objective and getting a good ego boost.

Now the question was… profession or class evolution first?