The Primal Hunter

When he only had five lives remaining, Jake fully confirmed that Valdemar had indeed entirely transcended the limitations of a G-grade human body. For Jake, in his current state, having a kneecap broken or his tendons severed would make him unable to move properly, even if he could force some movement using his internal energy. The action would be stilted and far slower than usual, though.

Valdemar did not have these same limitations. During this life, Jake had managed to fully destroy his one kneecap during a borderline suicidal attack, only to see Valdemar continue running toward him, the entirely crushed knee somehow just holding up due to the golden aura. Ultimately, he concluded the only way to limit Valdemar’s range of movement was to cut off a limb entirely… or some-fucking-how kill him outright.

As for how Jake could accomplish that one? Well, he had hoped that his big arrow could be a solution… so when he had four lives remaining, Jake stayed at his own entrance area as he took out his quasi-Protean Arrow and began charging his skilless Arcane Powershot before Valdemar even entered the arena.

It was a bit scummy, but he had to at least give it a go. Valdemar had walked up to the arena as Jake finished charging the attack. Without hesitation, he had let it go, only for Valdemar to laugh loudly as he took it head-on. Axe met arrow as a massive explosion rocked the arena, sending destructive shards of arcane mana flying everywhere as the large arrow fragmented like a grenade.

When the dust settled, Valdemar still walked out of the cloud of dust, small wounds covering his chest, but otherwise completely unharmed, his body burning with golden aura. So, in conclusion, Valdemar swinging his axe really hard was roughly equivalent to Jake’s strongest attack…

That life had ended pretty quickly after that, as Jake had caused some self-damage with his quasi-Powershot, making him a tiny bit slower than before, which naturally resulted in a rapid demise. Jake did get a bit more experimentation in during that life, though… because he had noticed one thing already several lives ago.

While Valdemar’s stats were through the roof, he was lacking in Perception. The arrow Jake had shot up that hit him in the collarbone hadn’t been a one-off… so that was where Jake could focus. He would exploit the one weakness he had found to land meaningful blows and hopefully pull out a victory that way, if possible.

When he had three lives remaining, Jake began to implement some level of proper strategy as he also finally did something he should have done far earlier. While Jake wanted to figure out how the hell Valdemar’s Transcendence worked and had done many things to test it, there was one thing he had neglected to try:

Just asking the guy.

After a few clashes, Jake found himself on the backfoot but also managed to land some hits. So far, the fight hadn’t gone terribly, and Jake finally questioned the Primordial.

”How does that golden aura of yours even work? It’s a Transcendence, right?” Jake asked, in all honesty, not really expecting any answer. It was actually pretty dumb of him to even ask. Why would someone like a Primordial just tell some random mortal something like tha-

”System does sure call it a Transcendence,” Valdemar nodded as he looked to really rack his brain for a moment. ”As for how it works… well, it just does.”

”It.. just works?” Jake questioned the pretty empty statement with a deadpan expression.

”Oh, look at you judging! Then tell me, how does that weird mana of yours work!” Valdemar asked, crossing his arms.

”Well, it’s an arcane affinity, so it’s pretty normal that I don’t know exactly how it works,” Jake answered promptly.

”So you don’t know how it works,” Valdemar stated with confidence.

”I do know what it does,” Jake mumbled. ”I can make it stable and destructive, making it either incredibly durable and practically a physical object, while the destructive variant deals incredible damage.”

”That just sounds like normal mana,” Valdemar scratched his beard. ”Ya sure ya didn’t just accidentally color your mana purple or something?”

”Pretty sure I didn’t,” Jake sighed. ”And it’s inspired by normal mana, it’s just… more.”

Valdemar just smiled, his facial expression full of satisfaction as if he had just won some major argument. ”As I said… ya don’t know.”

Jake felt kind of defeated arguing against a guy who didn’t rely on logic, as he countered. ”Well, I answered you, so at least tell me what your odd golden aura does. To me, it just looks like it somehow makes you stronger.”

”It’s my fighting aura! It’s from my fighting spirit!” Valdemar grinned widely. ”At least that’s what I call it.”

”Fighting spirit?” Jake asked. That just sounded so… vague? Undefined. Jake also had fighting spirit – a lot of it – but that didn’t make him glow like some golden god who could display insane levels of power. It couldn’t be that simple…

”Yep, my fighting spirit,” the Primordial laughed as he raised his axe high. ”The spirit of a legend! A hero! A warlord!”

His golden aura erupted again as he was firing himself up as he looked straight at Jake. ”A warrior.”

Surprisingly enough, he didn’t attack but just looked at Jake for a moment, almost waiting for him to do something. When he didn’t, Valdemar just shook his head.

”You’re still waiting for the right time, aren’t ya?” he asked. ”Still got some lives left to spare?”

Jake frowned slightly as Valdemar seemed to know something. In the end, Jake only subtly nodded as Valdemar nodded in turn, recognizing the situation. He seemed almost saddened as he looked at Jake.

”Ya know, that’s the real problem with these Challenge Dungeons and events where you can’t really die. It’s all so damn fake,” Valdemar shook his head as he looked Jake straight in the eye. ”Without putting our lives on the line, how can we feel truly excited!? How can we give it our all if we know we are safe! Only with a blade to their neck can a true warrior show their full power!”

His golden aura fluctuated as he said this, though it didn’t seem to weaken in the slightest.

”People tell me I have a good nose for these things… and looking at ya, I can see ya got something in here,” Valdemar said as he pounded the left side of his chest. ”But why pull it out when your life isn’t even on the line? Why fight with desperation when you are not truly desperate!?”

The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement.

Jake was taken aback by the passionate words of the Primordial, who seemed almost angry at the very existence of the dungeon. But… he could also only agree. Jake had just died several times without really caring. Instinctually, he understood that death in the Challenge Dungeon was not true death. It didn’t trigger the depths of his survival instincts, even if it had come close the first time he had died against the Necromancer.

If this was the real world and Jake found himself facing Valdemar at a similar level… he would not have fought as he did in the Colosseum. He would have fought with true desperation and pulled out everything he had… he would have fought with his life on the line, as he had when he faced the King of the Forest. He would, at the very least, have gone for mutual destruction.

“I can see from the look in your eyes you understand,” Valdemar said in an elated voice. “Ya still got some lives… but when ya have only one attempt left, properly challenge me. Challenge me to a duel of the ages! Challenge me to create the ultimate Legend of the Colosseum! If ya do that, I shall face ya with the respect such a challenge requires. Ah, but be careful… I may get a little excited at the prospect.”

“I will keep that in mind,” Jake nodded solemnly. “Now, let’s finish this attempt.”

“I hope ya learn something!” Valdemar laughed. “Should make the true duel far more entertaining!”

With those words, the Primordial charged, and Jake faced him for nearly six minutes before he finally fell.

Two lives remained.

After his talk with Valdemar, he realized that during their final duel, he would have to not hesitate in the slightest but do all he could. While it was possible for Jake to just go back to the save point before he issued the challenge and spend a year practicing, he never considered it. Instead, he turned toward something he had written off as not an option a long time ago:

Boosting skills.

Jake had already touched on it against the Lightning Monarch, but for a level 0, having a consistently active boosting skill just wasn’t viable. Instead, Jake had switched to using short, controllable bursts of arcane energy while fighting to help himself, but the increase was far from the insane 60% Arcane Awakening could provide at full power.

If Jake did use the full Arcane Awakening… well, he couldn’t. Boosting skills were skills for a very good reason. They were borderline required to be skills, as consciously controlling the extreme flow of energy through your body while fighting was pretty much impossible, and the only reason why boosting skills were widespread was that the system handled everything.

However… even if Jake did call it pretty much impossible, it wasn’t entirely impossible. The Lightning Monarch had an arcane affinity extremely well-fitted to boosting yourself, which also meant that in a situation where he lost control, it wouldn’t damage him too much. For Jake, if he was running arcane energy through his body and lost total control, his entire body would disintegrate or explode.

Learning to safely emulate a boosting skill without the skill part would likely take Jake years. So, he decided not to do that but just accepted the downside of an uncontrollable boosting skill. Accept that death would be the inevitable conclusion after he activated the boost.

His second-to-last death was one Jake committed solely to making sure he didn’t kill himself too fast during his last fight with Valdemar.

When he entered the arena, Jake had begun to boost his body early on. He had felt the burning sensation of pure destructive energy coursing through his veins, slowly destroying him from within with the promise of power in return. A power that it delivered as Jake got more powerful in every aspect as he engaged the Primordial.

For the first time, Jake truly kept up and fought back with vigor. He landed several devastating blows, nearly ripping off Valdemar’s arm at one point, even if he lost his own in the exchange, and successfully stabbed him a few dozen times. All that coming after he landed quite a few arrows. For a while, it looked like he could truly fight equally with the Primordial - a while being a good fifty seconds, in this case, before he reached his limits. His resources began to run out, and his body could no longer take the forceful circulation of destructive energy as it began to fall apart. He didn’t even have the time to die to his own skill, though, as Valdemar’s axe finished the job before nature had the chance to take its course.

One life remaining.

Jake chose to return to the day he issued the challenge when he revived. Not because he needed the extra prep time but because he wanted to spend the time getting in the best mental state he could while also enjoying his remaining two weeks with Artemis, Owen, Polly, and even chatting with the Battlemaster. No matter what, the next fight would be the last.

After two weeks of relaxation, Jake was back in the Colosseum. During this period, he had tried not to think too much about the fight… but as he walked down the tunnel toward the arena, he felt his own heartbeat begin to speed up. This time, there was no trace of fear or trepidation but only pure excitement.

Jake was down to his final attempt. A final duel with the most powerful level 0 human alive… or, hopefully, the soon-to-be second-most powerful level 0 human alive.

It was time to find the one true Grand Champion of the Colosseum of Mortals… no, the true Grand Champion of humanity.

The level 0 G-grade version of humanity, anyway.

“That last match was impressive,” the Wyrmgod commented. “Better than I expected… but not quite enough. Not against Valdemar.”

“Yeah,” Minaga nodded. “We did kind of overdo it with this Grand Champion, didn’t we? Even if we did try to even the playing field by not necessarily requiring them to kill him and giving him his memories.”

Vilastromoz stayed silent as he just observed. He didn’t really have any questions about why they had done as they had with him retaining his memories and all. There was zero risk of him showing favor to people from his faction or other humans. Valdemar would never surrender just to give someone a free win… his honor simply wouldn’t allow it. In fact, it was potentially the only way to allow anyone to beat him.

“Say, Vilas… do you think Jake can win?” Minaga asked, clearly not that confident himself. “I would have said yes under normal circumstances… but Valdemar’s Transcendence is… yeah.”

The Viper thought for a moment before smiling and waving off the question. “It will be tough no matter what, but wouldn’t I be a horrible Patron if I didn’t even believe in my Chosen?”

He said that, but in truth… Vilastromoz had no idea. It was two people full of unknowns fighting, and based on their talk during Jake’s third-to-last life, he got the feeling anything could happen. Jake had his Bloodline that could do something ridiculous, while Valdemar had his Transcendence. Something that the Viper also had to admit he didn’t comprehend.

Transcendent skills came in many forms. Jake already knew of his swordsman pal, who had an interesting one he could activate to temporarily experience a change. The Undying General was a person who could activate his Transcendence to make himself impossible to kill for a period, while the Transcendence of Eversmile was a skill that could be activated to completely destroy someone, effectively erasing them from the Records of the multiverse. Or, as a final example, Aeon who could activate his to truly stop the very concept of time for a period.

And while these were all incredibly powerful, they all had one keyword attached: activate. They needed to be used. One needed to trigger them, with every use having some associated cost. Often something extremely valuable or even an antithesis to what the skill did. They were all skills no one would use haphazardly but always saved as their final ace.

Even the Holyland created by the Holy Mother had a great cost associated with it. Not only did keeping the skill active cost a lot of the faith energy she absorbed, but Vilastromoz also knew she had to pay an astronomical cost when she first established it, and should the Holyland ever get damaged or be destroyed entirely, remaking it would prove extremely difficulty and costly, to the level of his fellow Primordial potentially considering it impossible.

However… to this date, Vilastromoz had no idea what the hell the cost of Valdemar’s Transcendence was. At first, he had thought if maybe the cost was a permanent sacrifice in intelligence and wisdom – and not the stats – but the man had proven uncharacteristically smart and wise at times.

He had come up with many more theories and even tested them. Was his simple fighting style a requirement? Was it some hidden special resource? Vilastromoz had even considered that he had entirely transformed his stamina and mana resource polls into a special new Transcendent resource… but none of them proved accurate.

The worst part was that Valdemar himself also clearly didn’t know. He wasn’t even sure when he got the Transcendence, making the Viper think it was potentially from before the system had even arrived. He just had it, and he used it all the time. This is where it truly stood out, and the Viper had realized something:

His Transcendence didn’t need to be activated. It was a passive skill. Vilastromoz had, in all honesty, not considered that Transcendent skills could even be passive before he met Valdemar, but the man had proven him and everyone else wrong. All while just shrugging it off like it was no big deal.

But… at the same time, the Viper also didn’t understand Jake’s Bloodline. Nor did he even fully understand his arcane affinity. It was two humans that truly puzzled him fighting, so the Viper couldn’t help but look forward to the outcome. To see what Jake could pull out of his ass this time around… or if Valdemar’s eternal bullshit once more proved superior.

“Since you said you believe in him, are you willing to bet on your Chosen?” Minaga said, the forever-opportunist. “I like Jake… but I vote on Valdemar winning the duel. I’ll even give you good odds.”

The Viper considered for a while as he looked at Jake walking down the tunnel. In the recording, he saw him walk with steady steps as the Viper saw the look in Jake’s eyes and just smiled.

“You’re on.”