The Primal Hunter

Poison came in many shapes and forms. Jake usually relied on the classic poison in liquid form that he coated his weapons with, but powdered poison was just as normal. Powder had the great properties of being dissolved in water or even burned to create a mist or smoke with toxic properties. If this powder was dissolved in purified water, one could even have a do-it-yourself poison kit.

Jake felt like he could quite easily make a powder, and this was one of the things he considered as his final Creation. It didn’t take much more than putting in certain catalysts and then boiling a mixture long enough for all the water to evaporate. Getting a working method down shouldn’t take more than a month or two. Jake found a few use cases for a powder, but ultimately, it wasn’t something he thought worthy of submitting, so he didn’t bother getting more familiar with the craft.

However, as he briefly studied these powder poisons and worked on crafting his Hemonecrotic Poison, he came across another form of poison Jake had neglected for a long time. A form of poison Jake had encountered before, and he kind of questioned if it should even be called a poison.

It was something many other professions also used. Jewelers and blacksmiths used it to remove impurities when crafting, weaponsmiths while tempering arms, and Jake had even seen Arnold use some that he had acquired from who-knows-where.

He was naturally talking about the wonderful world of acids. Alright, calling it a wonderful world was probably overdoing it, as dying to an acid was probably one of the worst ways to go. Jake should know. One of his first really close encounters with death was that time in Villy’s Challenge Dungeon, where he barely touched some acid and nearly had his entire body corroded and melted away.

The poison back then had been of the necrotic kind and made to dissolve anything alive. That’s also why there could be an entire basin of it, as it wouldn’t do anything to anything non-living… and this was actually where one of the big differences between poisons and acids appeared.

If Jake opened a poison bottle and poured it into a bowl, the bowl would begin to take heavy damage as the energies within the toxins would leak into it. Even if it was a poison made to kill flesh and blood lifeforms, the antagonistic mana within was simply too reactive with anything it was in contact with.

This was also the reason why poison lost its effects pretty quickly when out of the bottle. If Jake didn’t have Malefic Viper’s Poison, it would last minutes, not hours, when he coated a weapon and had it out in the open. Another reason why his quiver was also a godsend at it allowed Jake to have poisoned arrows in there for way longer without losing potency.

Acids, on the other hand, were far more stable unless they came in contact with what they were made to corrode. Jake could leave an open barrel of acid just sitting there for years without it losing much, if any, potency as long as no one consumed any of the energy within by dissolving anything.

Jake had never really worked on acids, as, in many ways, they were just worse than the poisons he used. Splashing a few drops of Necrotic Poison on an open wound would corrode an arm away, while a few drops of acid with necrotic properties would only melt away a tiny bit of flesh where the liquid hit.

The mention of open wounds here was quite important because this was where acids differed quite a lot from regular poisons again.

While throwing a bottle of poison on someone did do some level of damage and would act slightly accidic, it was very inefficient. Nearly all of Jake’s poisons worked through injection with sharp objects like arrows or katars. He needed to personally deliver the poison to the inside of the Soulshape, or it would have little to no effect.

Acids you could just throw at people. It didn’t really matter; as long as someone was hit, it would do its thing. Sure, an open wound would be nice, but it was secondary to just splashing someone with plenty of it. And Jake did mean plenty of it because just throwing small bottles of acid would rarely do much unless it was really potent acid.

Now, the ultimate question was why Jake suddenly got so damn interested in acids. In truth, Jake didn’t really need to learn how to craft it. Combat-wise, it wouldn’t even do that much for him. However, there were some instances where acids were just straight-up better than any kind of poison Jake could craft.

He still vividly remembered his fight with the Altmar Census Golem. That damn thing had been entirely immune to all his poisons, and sharp weapons didn’t really work. The only way he had eked out a victory had been through Touch of the Malefic Viper, which managed to corrode through the Golem’s defenses. Back then, the energy Jake had released may as well just have been him making his hands into acid due to the nature of the toxins released.

In one of the books, Jake actually read an interesting analogy. It said that if the usual poisons were the swords, daggers, and spears of toxins, then acid was the hammers, maces, and staffs. The blunt weapon of the toxic world. This was mainly because of the targets it was considered good against and how a blunt weapon would hit a large area with far more overall force, especially effective when sharp weapons just wouldn’t get the job done, while at the same time recognizing that when a sharp weapon did work, it tended to be a lot more effective.

Jake liked that analogy quite a lot, and right now, he didn’t really have any blunt weapons. His closest thing was arcane explosions, and that wasn’t really a blunt weapon, now was it? So, there would likely be some combat applications if Jake made a good acid.

As for how acids worked a bit more in-depth… well, there were a few ways. Acids had to be targeted against something specific, the same as regular poisons, but in a far more deliberate way. Mixing different acids to corrode more things also didn’t really work, and honestly, why would you even want that in most cases? The acids you could mix also had to be in the same ballpark, or they were utterly incompatible. At least they were to someone like Jake, who was still working on his very first acid.

Choosing what you wanted to corrode wasn’t that much different from before the system, but instead of targeting certain chemical compounds, you targeted affinities and even concepts. All metals partly shared an affinity, and they all had the same conceptual Records of being metal. So, if Jake made a metal-melting acid, it would work on all metals, at least somewhat.

If you find this story on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the infringement.

The same was true if Jake made something that was just a mana-melting acid. As for what acids could target, the more narrow it was, the more potent the acid tended to be against that specific thing. So, if Jake made an acid targeting earth-affinity mana, it would be much more effective than one generally targeting mana. What’s more, it could target only that one thing while ignoring everything else around it, not wasting any energy on what Jake didn’t want to get rid of.

There was one other big reason Jake thought creating his very first acid would be a good idea. Jake had nine Creations he had planned to submit, and while all of them used his arcane affinity… none of them really made any use of the destructive aspects of his affinity. They had all been about the stable elements, especially the small marble he submitted – though that entire thing had more to do with Jake Juice than anything else, his arcane energy just the packaging to show off the energy.

Jake did use his destructive arcane affinity when doing alchemy. He used it to eliminate things he didn’t want or need during crafting. To break apart certain ingredients. Something that was extremely similar to how acids worked.

Using his destructive arcane energy was incredibly difficult in his usual poisons due to its… well, destructive tendencies. It liked to destroy anything that wasn’t stable arcane energy and coupled with volatile poison that also wanted to kill stuff, the two of them went for each other the second Jake wasn’t holding the reins.

Acids were a lot more stable. It wouldn’t fight back as long as the acid wasn’t made to corrode Jake’s arcane affinity. This meant Jake only had to address the destructive arcane energy to make it calm down. A task that wasn’t as difficult as one would expect as long as it wasn’t actively being attacked. Jake’s arcane affinity was a lot about balance, so all Jake needed to do was stabilize the destructive arcane energy just enough to not want to consume itself along with the acid. He would put it in sync with the acid and do so his arcane affinity would work in tandem with it, helping with the corrosion. Make it so that when the acid became aggressive, so would the arcane energy.

It also wasn’t like acid wouldn’t have uses outside of combat, especially not if he infused his arcane energy. There would be many instances where he could use it together with transmutation to corrode away unwanted parts of an item he planned to transmute, and the experience of learning how to make a good acid and how exactly acids worked would surely prove useful. Especially if one considered how an acid could target very specific things to corrode.

Finally, Jake had one more reason he wanted to learn acids… one many probably wouldn’t expect:

Blood of the Malefic Viper.

Jake had noted before how his blood was pretty much acid in its own right, even if it was a pretty weak one, and he knew that a part of the Path of the Malefic Viper revolved around acids. He also highly suspected that either Palate – due to stomach acid, though that may be a stretch – and/or Blood of the Malefic Viper were skills more directly related to it.

If Jake actually learned how to make acids and even consumed a lot of it, his blood would also get more potent acidic properties which would also help when he used his blood as a crafting ingredient. Considering how damn much blood Jake could spill these days, he could see that prove very potent. So, yeah, one of the reasons Jake wanted to learn how to make acids was because he thought it would be part of upgrading Legacy of the Malefic Viper skills and because he wanted to make his own blood more acidic.

Anyway, these were all the many reasons and thoughts Jake had in regard to making an acid. As for the Hemonecrotic Poison Jake was also working on? Well, he only had all this time to work on his acid because he was already done with that one:

[Potent Hemonecrotic Poison (Rare)] – Mixing potent Hemotoxin and Necrotic Poisons, a Hemonecrotic Poison has been made, capable of rotting your foe from the inside. If injected, this poison will bind itself to your foe’s vital energies and blood, using it as a vehicle to spread necrotic toxins. Wounds caused by necrotic poison are extremely difficult to heal. Cleansing the Hemonecrotic Poison vital energy is extremely difficult.

Alright, it wasn’t really right to say he was done, but he had made one. Reading its description, it did exactly what Jake had wanted it to. It had the good properties of both Necrotic Poison and Hemotoxins, making it an extremely difficult poison to deal with for anyone unlucky enough to get it into their system.

The entire crafting process had been precisely as Jake expected. It was just a lot of work to make the two poisons properly mix while checking books whenever something didn’t work, and if the books didn’t have any answers, to just keep trying until he eventually found the problem himself.

This poison was probably Jake’s strongest yet against other humanoids or beasts. It would deal a lot more damage than his usual poisons, for sure. So, Jake had done the only logical thing he could and promptly went to the Merit Exchange Store and sold his very first Hemonecrotic Poison.

What? Jake wasn’t going to actually submit this one. Jake had checked the time and out of all the Challenge Dungeons, he would definitely spend the most time in this one. As he had been pretty damn fast in Minaga’s Labyrinth despite clearing so many Sections, he was even ahead of schedule. Two years had been allocated for all the Challenge Dungeons, and Jake hadn’t even spent that long in any of them so far. It had gotten close with the Colosseum of Mortals and Test of Character Challenge Dungeons, but it hadn’t taken quite that long.

This meant Jake was fine with spending a bit longer in the House of the Architect as long as he saved two years for the Endless Journey.

He also had to consider Temlat. The half-elf was improving, yes, but Jake didn’t want to pressure him and put him on a timer, and who knows when he would evolve? He sure as hell wouldn’t tell his student he had to evolve just because Jake got tired of waiting. That would go against any kind of teaching style Jake would ever want to be associated with.

Plus, Jake had kind of forgotten that Evolution Quests were a thing, and Temlat had come to him a few days prior and said he still needed to do those. So, yeah, that added a bit to the time Jake thought he would originally take to evolve.

That’s why Jake settled on just letting Temlat decide when Jake would be done with the House of the Architect. He wouldn’t rush himself to complete the Hemonecrotic Poison. He would only submit one to the Architect after Temlat was also ”submitted.”

If not, all Jake would be doing was making himself impatient, waiting for Temlat to get done.

As for the acid, Jake decided that he would be fine submitting that even before Temlat had reached his final form. Even if he did want to make a good acid, the regular poison was still his biggest priority, so that would be the final thing he submitted. It did kind of go against the notion of waiting with the best till last, but the Architect had never mentioned that was a thing, so Jake should be fine.

Time quickly passed as the usual routine continued. Jake had more time to focus on Temlat as his poison and acid project didn’t take up all his time, especially the poison, as he was just reiterating and improving on the current poison at this point while making a few small improvements.

Finally, one day, Temlat approached him…

”Lord Thayne,” he said in his usual semi-respectful voice.

His body looked a lot different than when Jake first met him. He had a dark aura around him and had begun to wear a cloak at all times, with shadowy energy hiding him due to his stealth skill. His eyes looked full of determination, and Jake could feel a faint bloodlust within him. A suppressed anger.

[Half-elf – lvl 199]

Seeing his level, Jake had a good idea why he was there.

”You got your race evolution quest?” he asked.

”Yes,” Temlat answered in a solemn and serious tone, making Jake frown a bit.

”What do you need to do?”

”It asks me to reaffirm… or reject the source of my hatred…”

Jake wasn’t sure what it meant but quickly got a good idea as he sighed. ”Well, it seems like it’s time for you to finally visit your homeworld again.”

Because, surely, nothing could go wrong there, right?