The Primal Hunter 10: A LitRPG Adventure

Previously in The Primal Hunter

First of all, we’re really up to ten books? And we’re only going to enter C-grade in this one? Oh boy…

Anyway, on to the recap. Where we last left off, Jake had some final things he wanted done before he evolved to C-grade, including fully merging with Sim-Jake (the simulacrum Jake ended up storing in his soul after the Myriad Paths system event in… I wanna say book 7?), while hopefully also getting a good skill upgrade out of it.

To do this, he entered a long training session to fully become one with his other self, all done within heavy time dilation facilitated by the Malefic Viper. This training was done by constantly fighting Sim-Jake until they were fully synced up, which ended up taking around forty years from Jake’s point of view, though in reality, it was only fifty-five days and change in the real world. Time magic shenanigans for the win!

The result of Jake’s training was the transformation of Sim-Jake as the simulacrum fully merged with his mythical cursed weapon, Eternal Hunger, and the creation of the skill Eternal Shadow by upgrading his Shadow Vault of Umbra skill.

To test out this skill, Jake had a rematch with the D-grade version of Snappy in the trial dungeon of the Order of the Malefic Viper and naturally ended up winning in the end by deploying his new skill, which effectively creates a second version of himself that can land attacks and switch position and even reality with Jake. Complicated skill, that one.

The new skill also gives Jake an upgrade to his Legendary Prodigy title, now making him an even more prodigious prodigy. A mythical prodigy, in fact.

With the final item off his C-grade preparations checklist, it was time to return to Earth and actually evolve. Of course, to evolve, he would need some sweet experience. Upon return, he promptly headed off into the forest near Haven to get, after only a brief distraction due to being forced to do some minor politicking by Miranda, the City Lord employed by Jake and, in the eyes of many, effectively his babysitter when it came to political stuff.

In the forest, Jake finally goes to explore its center, where he finds a big tree fighting some bears, all of them C-grade. Jake proceeds to murder the bears and chop down the weird tree after it tries to trick him, getting that final chunk of experience needed for Jake to evolve to C-grade.

Naturally, he also needed to complete his evolution quests, but considering Jake’s performance in D-grade, he’d already completed his class and profession ones. However, when he saw the newly unlocked evolution quest for his race, Jake encountered a peculiar situation… as he didn’t get one. The objective simply said N/A.

This prompted a talk with Villy, during which he learned that this isn’t really abnormal; it just only happens for monsters who are naturally a higher grade from birth, such as Sylphie. So for Jake to get it as a human was very much not normal, and after some more talks, Jake concludes it must be his Bloodline doing stuff. That, in reality, his human race was naturally a higher grade than should be possible, and Villy promptly made it extremely clear Jake should not talk about any of this with anyone, ever, as this was unprecedented in the history of the multiverse as far as he knew. When Jake did ultimately evolve, he also got a message he was a variant evolution, and all other future variant evolutions were blocked due to to Origin. Exactly why how this all happened… well, gotta leave some mystery for the later books!

As a final act of vanity before his evolution and to get the final small amount of race experience – and to prove he could - Jake ends up one-shotting an innocent, unsuspecting C-grade, just minding its own business. This proves to be enough as Jake finally evolves.

This evolution was a bit different this time around, primarily due to two new elements. The first one was that Jake had to pick a Path as a human, with the pick resulting in some extra stats to specialize him further, and after a super difficult selecion process, he picked the Path of the Hunter. Huge shocker to everyone.

The second new thing was the horrors of skill rarity adjustment, resulting in many of Jake’s skills falling in rarity. A sad day indeed for Jake… but an excellent day for me as the author, as it allows me to have more skill upgrades without having to make up a bunch of stupid-sounding new rarities. Plus, it kind of makes sense that a C-grade legendary skill wouldn’t be the same as a D-grade one.

Moving on, it was time to evolve his profession, where Jake stuck with a direct upgrade, remaining a Heretic-Chosen Alchemist of the Malefic Viper. He did have one very interesting offer, though, named Harbinger of Primeval Origins. A profession that was ranked ”higher” than his current profession in that it reached the theoretical maximum stats one could get from a profession. However, Jake ended up skipping it, as there were some ominous things in the description, and Jake didn’t want to bail on his buddy Villy like that. That just wouldn’t be cool.

With this evolution to his profession, Jake naturally got some more stats, skills, an even better Blessing, and a message that he wouldn’t be able to get a new Blessing even if the Malefic Viper died unless he purges himself of all Records related to his snake buddy. So let’s hope the Viper doesn’t end up falling using the age-old trope of the mentor archetype getting killed off to push the main character forward, eh?

Next up, Jake evolved his class, turning into an Arcane Hunter of Horizon’s Edge. The class was pretty much about endlessly chasing for more power and more challenging targets by always moving forward, and Jake believed it fit him pretty damn well.

Now a C-grade, the first thing Jake decided to do was have a sparring match with Sylphie (official Best Birb), who had also evolved. After destroying a few cloud islands and causing much panic in all nearby human settlements, much to the chagrin of poor Miranda, the two of them chill a bit.

With the evolution done and dusted and now more familiar with his newfound power, Jake returned to the Order of the Malefic Viper in part to fetch some stuff he had promised to deliver to Arnold – resident engineer void god enthusiast – a good while ago.

Oh, but not without forgetting to stop by and tell Arnold to get fucked as his mythical skill ended up downgrading when he evolved, something Jake’s didn’t, leaving the poor scientist bemused (yes, I know how to use this word correctly because people constantly talk about people not using the word correctly, which I find quite amusing).

While back in the Order, Jake did some classic slice-of-life stuff and talked with Meira – the elf slave who now studied under Dusleaf, the godly disciple of the Viper – but he also started getting to work on a ritual to finally make himself a cool bee gardener (something that totally went according to plan). However, for the ritual, Jake would need more cores from insect monsters… so it was time to once more dive into the termite hive, where he could also get a rematch with the Hive King, who nearly killed him during his first visit.

After a quick visit to talk with some dragons who were suspicious of Jake being the Chosen of the Malefic Viper to hopefully get them off his back by redirecting them to Draskil – the Malefic Dragonkin with a Divine Blessing – instead, Jake headed back to Earth.

First things first, he delivered the materials to Arnold and got a cool new katar in return named the Blackpoint Nanoblade. With it in hand, he headed out to kill termites. A lot of termites.

Diving deeper and deeper into the hive, Jake slaughtered termite after termite, soon encountering C-grades only. Continuing further, he meets and kills a C-grade Hive Queen, which triggers something that tries to brand him a heretic… so that was kind of funny.

Soon after, Jake makes it down to the deepest chambers of the termite hive and encounters the top Hive Queen, who proves to be a lot more intelligent than the ones prior. Not very wise, though, as she first tried to effectively enslave Jake and all of humanity in the name of the divine faction known as the Endless Empire.

Negotiations surprisingly broke down, and Jake ended up fighting this Hive Queen, who was supported by the Hive King. A pretty damn tough battle followed, where Jake had to pull out everything, including his new Eternal Shadow skill, to finally eke out a victory over the termite hive. After killing the king and queen, he also realized the hive was far more extensive than he thought and continued downward… but for now, he was done there and headed back topside, naturally with the bounties from his kills and enough cores for the ritual back at the Order.

A ritual that turned out to be a way fucking bigger deal than Jake had initially intended. Here he was, just wanting a good gardener bee that he probably didn’t even need in the first place, and what did he end up with? Some ancient variant version of insect queen, known as a True Royal.

What is a True Royal, you might ask? Based on Jake’s understanding, they were the cream of the crop in the ectognamorph (eusocial insects) race and the absolute rulers of their entire Lineage. In total, a hundred versions of these True Royals existed… at least, they used to, but a few Lineages had died off during the last many eras.

The Vespernat Linage was one of them, and Jake just happened to have accidentally created a Vespernat Hive Queen, which wasn’t even the race Jake had gone for, as he ended up with a wasp and not a bee. Now, a bit of a lesson in biology from your author who brought you facts about bananas not coming from trees but musas: bees actually evolved from wasps over a hundred million years ago. Who would have known? Well, me, after googling it while writing the book, and now you, because you decided to read a recap in a book about a guy going around shooting stuff with a bow that, for some god-forsaken reason, decided to include entomology facts.

Anyway, a True Royal, eh? That was quite something! In fact, it was so much quite something that it became a problem.

All True Royals belonged to the Endless Empire, one of the most powerful factions in the multiverse. Powerful enough to have ways to find out that a True Royal Lineage had been reborn in the multiverse and begin to make waves to find the Vespernat Hive Queen.

Vesperia – the self-adopted name of the Vespernat Hive Queen – also turned out to be quite a bit different from the two other creatures Jake had helped transform or give birth to. She was born with vast innate knowledge of not only herself but the multiverse and already intended to make contact with the Endless Empire. Her relationship with Jake was a bit more complicated, but nothing a good talk and few head pats couldn’t fix. While her creation had been an accident, it was a happy little accident.

Either way, the entire Vesperia situation was big enough that Jake decided that hiding his identity as the Chosen with the Malefic Viper was too complicated and too annoying to do anymore. However, rather than be allowed to just send out a quick message announcing he was the Chosen, Villy gleefully told him that wasn’t how things work: he was to have a full-on Chosen Ceremony, inviting all the major factions willing to attend, and it was definitely going to be a massive thing.

It would take some time to get ready, though, so Jake had some more time to do slice-of-life stuff.

Jake goes on a shopping trip with Irin – the succubus from the Order of the Malefic Viper serving a bit like Jake’s liaison and guide – where he gets some new equipment for the upcoming very long Nevermore trip. After that, he went to eat with some friends, and Villy decided to have fun and include himself to fuck with those present and even give out a bit of punishment to a particularly annoying fellow due to his lack of humor.

After this meeting and a bit more shopping to get a cool new and totally not ominous cloak, Jake finally agrees to her request and visits a hotel with Irin to help her get some levels and progress her Path as a succubus. With that enjoyable favor given, Jake heads off to do his final bit of preparation equipment-wise by getting his bow upgraded and a new set of gloves.

Finally, with all that settled, Jake had some alone time to do some alchemy and whatnot. However, before he could even get started, he noticed something written on his boots he hadn’t seen before. A message from a curious admirer, likely having appeared there during the last upgrade… so that was super mysterious, right? It’s not relevant in this book, though, so moving on.

With not long to go before the big Chosen Ceremony, Jake has a meeting with Izil – Meira’s friend from the Altmar Empire – where he talks with her a bit about the elven supremacy faction and learns they are super bigoted towards anyone who isn’t an elf, but he also gets to tell her that he would very much like an upgrade to his ring he got in the Altmar Census Golem dungeon back in D-grade.

Jake also learns that behind the scenes, many factions are struggling to figure out what to give the C-grade Chosen of the Malefic Viper during his ceremony, as bringing gifts is naturally customary. Hopefully, he would be gifted nothing weird. Spoiler: he would be given a lot of unwanted and weird gifts.

As a final thing before the big reveal, Jake headed back to Earth to fetch those who would take part in the ceremony, with some of them also going to Nevermore from there. He also learned that Sandy would come along and reveal themselves as the Chosen of the Boundless Hydra – also known as Snappy, the Lord Protector of the Order. So the ceremony would be a two-for-one, with Jake naturally the main attraction being the Chosen of a Primordial and all.

On the way to the Order with their big group from Earth, Jake, of course, jinxes them, and they have a nice little encounter with a few Void Gods who leave people vomiting and disorientated, but Jake is also given a gift by Oras along the way, seemingly capable of giving near-limitless Perception as long as Jake repeatedly licked it… so that was nice?

Moving on.

After some final planning, the big-time ceremony began, having drawn quite the audience.

The ceremony was naturally a huge spectacle, the Viper going all out as Jake was introduced in front of an absolutely massive crowd, and the entire thing was broadcast across the multiverse. Jake also showed off his aura as an introduction before Villy finally made a dramatic entrance and a speech, wherein he clarified Jake’s powers to give birth to creatures like Vesperia is not something the Primordial will influence but entirely Jake’s prerogative.

All information shared was naturally heavily limited and selectively chosen to be given out, allowing Jake to keep most of his secrets. During this ceremony, Vesperia was also introduced to quite the fanfare, and everything was going oh so well until Yip of Yore – the overconfident storyteller who thinks himself a future Primordial Slayer – decided to crash the party.

Yip of Yore and the Viper had a talk and a bit of a dick-measuring contest until Eversmile revealed himself from the crowd and interfered, eventually leaving alongside Yip of Yore. But not before Yip made some announcements and claims, such as implying how he was working with Valhal and whatnot. What’s more, Yip learned that Jake’s faith in the Malefic Viper may not be as strong as one would expect from a Chosen. Something he could perhaps exploit, the sweet summer child unaware Jake had already gone full heretic a long time ago.

That entire interruption put a damper on things, but Jake learned from a quick meeting with the Viper after that things were not as they seemed, and all this scheming stuff going on behind the scenes was way more complicated than Jake even wanted to try and understand. Better to just focus his efforts and brain power on Nevemore.

Jake also learned during this meeting that Eversmile was a shapeshifter and the best at hiding in the multiverse… which did make it a bit weird that Jake had instantly spotted him in the crowd, but oh well, overpowered Bloodline be overpowered.

Not allowing such a rude interruption to ruin the party, they soon got back to things. The next portion of the ceremony was a lead-up to Nevermore, where Jake’s party members were introduced. After much deliberation, Jake decided he would go with three others:

First was Sylphie, the best birb in the multiverse. Her inclusion was naturally a given.

Next up was the Fallen King. As a Unique Lifeform and a creature bound closely to Jake, he was also a great inclusion, and his high durability and strong powerset as a mid-range fighter would be very valuable. Plus, Unique Lifeforms tended to be pretty damn strong.

Finally was the Sword Saint. An old man whose inclusion wouldn’t only add a powerful fighter with a Transcendent skill but also a wise head when making decisions and dealing with things that weren’t just solved by fighting.

With four people in the party, they naturally needed one more member, which this ceremony was also used to recruit. With a bunch of damage dealers and one semi-tank in the Fallen King, the group was naturally in heavy need of a healer, which was what they hoped to recruit. Jake had considered asking Eron, the overpowered healer and fellow Bloodline Patriarch from Earth, but that guy had ended up joining the Dao Sect, a large multiversal faction, and would go with a party from there.

After this open role call for a healer, the most important part of this entire ceremony began: the gifting.

And oh boy, did Jake get gifts, some good, some bad, and some extremely unwanted. For the good, Jake got stuff like alchemical ingredients of extremely high value from places like the Risen, and he even got this super cool puzzle cube made by a god known as the Seeker. For Earth, he was even gifted assistance in the form of projections of experts and stuff to help further his planet’s development, something Miranda would definitely like.

What neither Jake nor Miranda liked was another very popular gift item. Because what did Earth need to further populate itself and develop in the eyes of many factions? That’s right, slaves, or as Jake saw it, refugees for Miranda to deal with as he ran off to Nevermore for a few years while she dealt with integration challenges.

However, the absolutely worst gift was a monstrosity known as The Vision of the Malefic Viper’s Chosen, a mythical rarity statue created by the sculptor and fanatical believer in the Primordial Church, Felix, from Earth. The only even partly acceptable aspect of this statue was the fact that Jake used it to get a drop of venom from it that allows him to forcibly trigger Malefic Viper’s Poison once to upgrade a poison in power and rarity… something that will definitely become relevant in this book. Maybe.

Following this, Jake had a meeting with representatives from the Automata Legion and Endless Empire – two factions in a bitter war – discussing the impacts of Jake having created a True Royal. In summary, some people didn’t like what Jake could do, while others did, but all recognized the value of Jake’s abilities, and a few gods even gave him some gifts to make friends.

Perhaps the most valuable “gift” Jake ended up getting during this meeting was from a god known as Nature’s Attendant. The right-hand man of Yggdrasil, another Primordial, and the father-in-law of the Malefic Viper. He proposed Jake take his granddaughter to Nevermore with him, a dryad druid named Dina. Someone with a powerful Bloodline and healing abilities, and definitely a person more than qualified enough to join.

During this meeting that Jake has with some gods, the Sword Saint and others are testing for potential new party members while also getting challenged and tested themselves, as people want to fight the Sword Saint and try to claim his spot. They all failed, but hey, they tried, and sometimes that’s worth something. Not this time around, but sometimes.

With everything done and dusted with the Chosen Ceremony, it was time to head off to Nevermore. With Dina joining Jake’s party, they head there as a group of five alongside many others from the Order, including those who had traveled from Earth and would enter the mega-dungeon World Wonder with groups from their own factions.

Arriving at the entrance to Nevermore – a massive city known as Nevermore City – Jake and company explored it a bit and checked out things like the Leaderboards, a massive feature of the World Wonder for C-grades.

C-grades could compete if they were below level 210 once entering and had 50 from the moment they entered to build up Nevermore Points to place higher on the Leaderboards. Placing high wasn’t only about prestige but actual rewards.

On the top spot on the Leaderboards for the previous era is Yip of Yore, proving that he was indeed the peak genius of the prior era. A feat his Chosen, Ell’Hakan, clearly seeks to recreate himself.

Speaking of Ell’Hakan, Jake did end up meeting him once before entering the World Wonder, and for the first time, Jake gets one over the manipulative orange bastard and leaves with the last say. With good vibes and after fetching the rest of the party, who had gone off to explore Nevermore City a bit, Jake and company finally enter Nevermore, marking the beginning of this book and the longest arc of this novel. So far, that is!

Anyway, recap over. But one last thing. I can admit when I make a mistake. Looking back, I now realize that perhaps asking people to “let me know if they liked the recaps” could result in people actually letting me know if they liked the recaps.

But in my defense, I did not expect to get several hundred, if not over a thousand, “thanks for the recap” messages on Discord, email, Reddit, and even bloody Facebook on an author account I never use. Not to mention my publisher, who was very confused getting random emails just saying: “thanks for the recap,” even if it’s also really funny.

Alas, you live, and you learn.

No matter what, I still want to say thanks for the thanks for the recaps, everyone. It was flattering if a bit overwhelming, and now I kind of feel forced to keep including these damn things, which may also be why this one ended up so damn long.

Enough rambling… on to the actual story.

It’s Nevermore time!