The Primal Hunter

Everything had honestly worked out as Jake had planned. He had slowly weakened the Necromancer with several arrows and limited his mobility enough for him to confidently land a blow that, by all accounts, should have been lethal. There was nothing wrong with anything he had done… the problem was the opponent he had done it to.

From an outsider’s perspective, the fight definitely looked over. Jake was poisoned and had a nasty hole in his shoulder, but was otherwise able to keep fighting, while the Necromancer had a hole that allowed Jake to look straight through his body and out the other side. Yet Jake was the one who found himself pressured as he bombarded the Necromancer with several more arrows, trying to somehow make his opponent fall over.

One of the arrows hit the open hole in the Necromancer and curved upwards as it penetrated his body and exploded. More blood and flesh were sent flying, but it didn’t seem to affect the man much, and Jake soon noticed the main problem.

He apparently didn’t need his flesh and muscles for shit. Every shred of power was embedded within his skeleton, and as long as that remained, he would be able to move around. These bones would naturally be far more difficult to break than flesh, and just a few arcane explosions would not get the job done.

What’s more, the miasma was spreading far, far faster than before. Every drop of blood the Risen had spilled evaporated and turned into even more miasma, filling the arena way more quickly than Jake was comfortable with. He knew something had to change, so he tried all he could.

He isn’t healing… so it should be possible to make him unable to continue fighting? Jake theorized.

The Necromancer’s steps were still heavy and slow due to his heavily injured legs. However, Jake had an issue if he wanted to end the fight quick… he was down to five arrows. Moreover, with his shoulder badly injured and poison spreading out from it, Jake couldn’t shoot powerful arrows anymore, and quasi-Powershots were not an option.

With his remaining arrows, Jake tried to make the Necromancer entirely incapacitated. His knees were already in horrible condition, and Jake wanted to at least take a leg off. If he did that, then he should be able to close in safely and somehow finish the Necromancer off with his katars.

Was it a good plan? No, but it was everything he could come up with immediately, and quite frankly, he didn’t have the time to think up anything more elaborate as the miasma was growing in intensity and density. Despite how much he tried, he couldn’t fully eliminate the toxins in his body either, as he was repeatedly forced to breathe in miasmic fumes.

Using his still far superior speed, Jake got around the Necromancer and, through much struggle, managed to land an arrow on the knee of the Risen. Sadly, his second shot was blocked by a hammer, and even when Jake tried to shoot from an awkward angle, the Necromancer also blocked the third.

With only two arrows remaining, Jake gave it his all. Despite his growing headache, he unleashed a Fear Gaze and, due to that, landed a second arrow in the same knee as the first. The Necromancer was brought to his knee, and right as he wanted to remove it, Jake landed the final one as he rapidly closed in.

Mentally, he commanded the arrows to explode. The resulting explosion heavily damaged the kneecap and left an opening for Jake. Using his bow, he swung it down with one of the sharp ends straight into the knee and, using it almost as a crowbar, tore the entire leg of the Necromancer off.

The strain snapped the sharp tip of the bow, but Jake didn’t have time to even consider it as he had to dodge a swing from the hammer of the now one-legged Necromancer, who was mid-fall.

Jake stumbled back as he coughed up more blood, getting a bit of distance to try and stabilize himself. That is when he realized he had made another mistake.

His opponent pushed himself to stand using his hammer as an odd ethereal chain appeared in his other hand. His movements were oddly calm as he swung it down and wrapped it around the leg that Jake had just severed as he let go of the chain. Before Jake could even react, the falling chain moved by itself in mid-air and wrapped around the thigh of the Necromancer as it yanked the leg and reattached it.

Shifting his weight, the Risen stepped down on the leg that had been severed just moments before as he took a step forward. It was obvious that the leg was stiff as hell, and he seemed unable to bend the knee more than a few degrees… but he could still walk.

Fuck me, Jake cursed.

Out of arrows, Jake did the final thing he could. Running forward with all the strength he had, he had a katar in one hand and his bow in the other. Still being faster, he dodged the first hammer swing as he jammed the bow into the leg with chains keeping it in place. The bow penetrated through the already broken armor from Jake’s relentless attacks and pinned the Necromancer to the ground for a second.

At the same time, a katar stabbed the Necromancer in the shoulder of the arm wielding the hammer. He penetrated through the seams and was bombarded with miasma from the wound as it spewed out as if he had punctured a gas canister.

Jake barely managed to avoid another hammer swing, but his footsteps were uneven due to the miasma as the Necromancer punched him hard in the chest. Groaning, Jake still refused to back down as he stabbed the Risen once more, and this time, he managed to avoid both follow-up attacks.

His objective to literally disarm the Necromancer was close as the Risen forced himself to fully stand once more after getting pinned. Jake cautiously waited for an opening as he dodged several hammer swings before he finally saw it. Using his katars, Jake redirected the hammer into the sand, and as it smashed into it, Jake used the momentum to slide one of his katars up the handle of the hammer. A trail of arcane energy was left behind as Jake swept his weapon upward, four fingers flying up with it. With a swift, arcane-empowered kick, Jake followed up and made the Necromancer stumble back, his hammer still embedded in the ground as his mostly fingerless right hand could no longer hold it.

Despite his minor victory in their exchange, Jake didn’t feel even the slightest sense of relief. He was on a tight timer, and even breathing hurt like hell, and his body was beginning to feel sloppy.

I need to end this…

Charging forward again, Jake unleashed a flurry of attacks as he tore apart much of the Necromancer’s armor. His opponent struggled as he tried to land attacks, but Jake did all he could to not take more damage than he already had.

Sadly, he was far from in an optimal state. In a crucial moment, a coughing fit overtook him, making Jake slightly too slow, dodging as a hand wrapped around his forearm and pulled him closer.

Jake had been caught as the Necromancer wrapped his arms around Jake and squeezed him against his body. His sense of danger was going haywire, and he tried the only thing he could think of. Jake barely managed to get his arms free as he stabbed both katars into the Risen’s neck. His opponent barely reacted as Jake roared, and he tore his arms apart with as much power as he had, even releasing a small arcane explosion.

A head wearing a helmet with a single antler on it flew into the air as blood splurted all over Jake. It landed with a heavy thud on the sand… but the relief did not come to Jake.

The arms trapping him squeezed harder as Jake had all the air in his lungs pushed out. The blood covering his body from the severed head began to evaporate as the miasma formed all around him. Jake struggled with every shred of strength he had, even making his body explode with arcane energy to try and get free, but he found his pathways clogged up by the poison.

Soon, the miasma closed in. Jake kept trying to get free as his body weakened… his resources emptied, and his internal organs began to decompose. His vision went dark as time seemed to slow down, and he pulled on the final thing he had. A deep thumping sound echoed a single time, but instantly, Jake stopped it as he got an odd sense of wrongness… a second later, a message echoed in his mind, and his consciousness ceased to exist.

You have died.

Vilastromoz sighed as he looked at the fight reach its conclusion. Jake’s strategy had been all fine and good, assuming he faced a normal opponent. However, the one named the Necromancer was far from normal and not someone who would die merely from having his chest blown apart.

He was a general working directly under his fellow Primordial, after all. The highest-ranking general in the entire Risen faction, in fact, and a man that not even Primordials had any confidence in killing. Not necessarily because he was as powerful as them, but because the mere act of killing him wasn’t exactly an easy ordeal.

So… yeah, there really wasn’t any shame in it, was there? If one did have to lose a life during the Challenge Dungeon, doing so to the Transcendent known as the Undying General wasn’t the worst.

Even if it was a significantly weakened version. The true Undying General was not a duelist, after all, but a general who led armies into battle. He commanded legions of gods in the war against the Holy Church and had, throughout the eras, slain thousands of gods belonging to them. He was a true menace on the battlefield, and even during the times the Holy Mother herself made an appearance, she failed to slay him for good.

Outside of his ability to be borderline impossible to kill, his powers revolved very much around leading these armies and making them more powerful while also borrowing their power as his own. He was a fearsome being that the Blightfather sent to any conflict he wanted to ensure victory in, striking fear into the hearts of any who stood in opposition to the march of the Undying Army.

So, yeah. Jake had picked the first opponent to kill him pretty well.

Besides, there was an upside.

”To bet against your own Chosen… how shameless,” Minaga muttered, shaking his head.

”Are you going to renege on a bet again?” the Viper raised an eyebrow, not displaying the slightest sense of shame from betting on Jake dying. ”In the presence of your great friend and fellow colleague? If that is so, Jake will also be super disappointed that you could display such shamelessness.”

Through grumbles, Minaga muttered that, of course, he wouldn’t as he practically threw the Viper an ingot of metal that Vilastromoz gladly accepted. He also reminded himself to thank Jake for dying once he got the chance. Dying like that was definitely a great friend move.

Of course, if Minaga wanted to bet again, the Viper would put his money on Jake winning the rematch.

Jake appeared in an entirely white room the very next moment as a system menu popped up in front of his eyes.

Three Resurrection Points Available:

1. The day the challenge to the Necromancer was issued.

2. Fifteen days after the challenge to the Necromancer was issued.

3. The same day that the fight with the Necromancer took place.

Choose one Resurrection point.

Reading the options, Jake had to admit that he had kind of wondered exactly how this entire ”multiple lives” thing would work, and it turned out it was pretty much a save system with different checkpoints. Well, at least that was better than blacking out and waking up in a hospital bed while being told he ”barely made it” or something else dumb like that.

Considering his choices only for a moment, he decided on the second one.

Jake made his choice, and in the blink of an eye, he found himself lying in a bed back at the townhouse. An odd sense of Deja-vu hit him, which shouldn’t be that surprising considering he had just returned to a prior point in time, but he still felt the need to check his system menu to confirm it wasn’t just his own mind fucking with him.

Lives remaining: 9

He had really died. It was an odd feeling indeed. Well, okay, it wasn’t true death, but just a Challenge Dungeon death, and he had a feeling being put in a similar situation outside of a scenario with multiple lives would have ended differently. The fight certainly would have, as Jake would have bailed out the second the Necromancer yelled Undying and became seemingly immortal.

Also… it was quite the way to die.

”For my first fucking death to be to poison is oddly… is ironic even the word? No matter what, it’s pretty damn funny for the Chosen of the Malefic Viper to be poisoned to death,” Jake muttered as he grinned stupidly to himself.

Not having Palate of the Malefic Viper seriously sucked. It was the kind of skill Jake just took for granted, but it really was utterly broken, wasn’t it? How in the hell did a skill even give such insane resistance and even immunity to poison? Jake had the feeling that if he had Palate, the fight would have been easy despite the Necromancer being some freak semi-immortal Transcendent.

Anyway… Jake had lost, but his spirit hadn’t diminished in the slightest. His opponent had been an incredibly powerful monster in the form of a Risen, and Jake had gone in with a lack of information and a bad plan. At least it was a bad plan for the type of foe he was fighting.

That is why Jake had chosen to resurrect fifteen days before the fight. He wanted to make new preparations, but he didn’t need to go back an entire month or even choose another opponent. No, even if he had lost once, he was confident in winning the rematch.

He also mentally addressed what had happened in those final moments before he died. Jake had felt a sense of desperation and tried to reach for something that he now wasn’t quite sure of what was… but he knew that the moment he did, he felt it was a bad idea to do. It was a ”there is a time and place for everything” moment, and a Challenge Dungeon like this was obviously neither. Exactly what Jake had tried to do… Jake had a feeling he didn’t necessarily ever want to find out.

Sighing, Jake got off the bed and stretched. He had preparations to make, and as he walked out of the bedroom, he saw Owen and Polly approach through his sphere… which was when he realized something.

For the next fifteen days, he would be forced to rehash the same conversations while potentially even having to explain why he knew things he clearly shouldn’t be able to.

So, it appeared there was still a major punishment from dying in the Colosseum, at least on the mental front.