The Primal Hunter

Welcome to the Seventy-first floor of Nevermore: The Nine Towers

You have arrived on a planet long abandoned by those who once lived there. Yet artifacts are left behind. Nine massive towers are scattered across the planet, once part of a greater purpose, each holding secrets and power of the civilization that once was.

Your goal is to explore each tower and then ultimately decide if you wish to activate or destroy them. But be warned, for even if much time has passed, the defensive systems of the towers still remain, and who knows what entering them might lead to, much less the outcome of their activations.

Main objective: Activate or destroy the Nine Towers.

Bonus objectives: Discover the true nature of the Nine Towers.

Current progress: Towers activated (0/9), Towers Destroyed (0/9)

Note: More hidden events, achievements, or objectives may be hidden on the floor.

Current Nevermore Points: 1,242,425

It was almost nostalgic reading the long system message about the floor they had just arrived on. Jake would rate it just about as nostalgic as the feeling of the Golden Mark left by the Fallen King, allowing them all to stay in communication even when far apart.

The five of them had appeared on top of a small hill, giving them a pretty bad view of what they were dealing with. Jake, taking the job of scout as usual, quickly flew into the sky and scanned the area before he made a rough calculation of the curvature of the planet and ultimately concluded it was pretty fucking big. It was not as big as Earth after the system, but maybe about two-thirds the size.

“You see anything?” the Sword Saint asked when Jake landed back on the ground.

“Bunch of beasts, but they are all weak and barely in C-grade. Ah, but there are quite a few elementals here and there, all levels around 280. I also spot two towers, one over there and one over there,” Jake said as he pointed in two directions. The others could see one of the towers far off in the distance, but only Jake had the Perception to see the tip of the second.

These towers were all roughly ten kilometers tall each, looking like huge skyscrapers. One of the two Jake saw had a red crystalline color, while the second looked more yellowish. So, it appeared that the towers had been nicely color-coded, which was nice as it made it a lot easier to communicate about what towers people were at.

Jake also shared the size of the planet and other characteristics as the others listened. Once he was done with his explanation, Dina briefly shared that the plants around told her that this planet was rather special in that it had absolutely no underground nor any bodies of water any larger than lakes anywhere on the entire planet. It was definitely a weird place, but confirming those two things was helpful as it meant they wouldn’t waste any time looking for hidden achievements underground or underwater.

“So, I guess we all know what we’re doing?” Jake asked after they were done talking.

“Split up,” the Fallen King answered without any hesitation.

“That does seem like the best way,” Dina nodded.

“Ree!” Sylphie agreed.

“Alright, and if anyone is in trouble… well, better make it on your own and get the fuck away because no one will be nearby,” Jake added with a grin. “Then we can all group back up and take down whatever may be the issue.”

“Sounds like a plan,” the Sword Saint said, seeming almost giddy to set off on his own. They all were.

After a brief division of where to go, they all set off. Dina would take the second-closest tower, while the Fallen King would take the closest. Jake, the Sword Saint, and Sylphie would head off in three other directions to try and find a tower each. The Sword Saint did stay behind for a second, though, as he took out a canvas and began to paint one of his teleportation paintings so he could return to the hilltop if needed.

Setting off, Jake quickly used One Step-

Everything warped for a second as Jake suddenly found himself far beyond where he had wanted to step down, temporarily disorientating him. What was… oh.

Jake had made some estimations of how good his newly upgraded boots were, and concluded it was good but not overly impactful. That is until he took that very first step. He had traveled nearly twice as far as a usual One Step and consumed even less stamina than before… and that wasn’t even the crazy part.

The crazy part was how Jake felt space warp around him, yet he remained so utterly stable within this warped reality. It was like he was an untouchable entity within the fluid and warping space, as he only now truly realized the meaning when it said Jake would always find a solid foothold. What also surprised him was the concept behind this effect. It was pure stability. It was a slightly different concept from his arcane affinity, but definitely similar in many ways.

Taking a few more steps, Jake continued to feel space warp as he began to pick up speed. The reason why space warped as it did was because the skill was getting pushed beyond what it normally allowed Jake to do forcibly… which introduced the easy fix of just following the advice he had given the Forsaken Dragonkin in regards to using the skill:

To get good.

It wasn’t as if the boots actually made movement skills twice as effective and barely cost anything. It was that Jake was horrible at using One Step according to the standards of the mythical boots. Making the baseline improvement from the boots incredibly effective. Which was fair enough. One Step was just an ancient skill, after all.

Hours quickly passed as Jake zoomed forward, pretty damn proud of his speed. He had improved a lot, but as he felt the Golden Marks and the locations of his other party members, he realized he was definitely not the one who had improved the most. The Sword Saint, Dina, and Fallen King were also definitely moving faster, but Sylphie? Sylphie was on a whole other level as she was just zooming.

At first, he wondered if she was using her sprinting skill and was quickly running out of gas. But she kept up her utterly ridiculous speed for hours as she moved far faster than Jake… no, not just Jake. The four other members of the party put together.

“Hey, Sylphie,” Jake asked through the Golden Mark. “You sure got a lot faster, eh?”

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“Ree! Ree ree ree,” she responded, gladly explaining how she had managed to drastically improve her ability to move incredibly swiftly while at the same time remaining ridiculously efficient.

“I am not entirely sure what “riding the wind super swooshyly” means, but if it works, it works, I guess,” Jake responded, realizing no Sylphie explanation would ever help him.

Not long after, the Fallen King was the first to reach his destination as he had gone to the closest tower. Right as he arrived, he contacted the group.

“Allow me to send you some mental images of what I see,” he communicated to all of them, as it appeared he had made an upgrade to his Golden Mark skill, now allowing one to also send pictures. What the Fallen King sent couldn’t really be called a picture, though.

Jake received an odd mental image of sorts that, while clearly visual in nature, just looked off in every way. He saw a strong outline of the tower, but the color of the tower was an odd shade of gray with weird lines going across it. He also saw what looked like veins running through the entire tower, as well as small wisps of energy in the ground and even some floating in the air all around the Fallen King. Because, oh yeah, the picture wasn’t exactly a two-dimensional one, but more of a semi-three-dimensional snapshot where what appeared in front of the Fallen King was far clearer than what was behind and to his sides.

“Is… is this how you see the world?” Dina asked pretty quickly after the message was sent.

“I tried to make it more interpretable to your minds,” the Fallen King answered.

“Imagine not having eyes,”Jake joked, even if the lack of eyes was the reason the King’s sight was so odd. He viewed everything through some weird soul-sight or something at all times, which definitely had some advantages but also many disadvantages, as his view distance was quite limited.

The King didn’t say more as he entered the tower through a gate. Inside, the tower was clearly spatially expanded, and from what Jake saw in the limited vision pictures the Unique Lifeform repeatedly sent, everything was a mess inside. Nevertheless, he began exploring as he looked over the lobby, trying to find any clues for the bonus objective.

After searching and not finding anything, he began to climb the stairs of the tower. There was also what looked like an elevator there, but it was clearly broken, and the Fallen King also quickly confirmed that breaking walls and ceilings wasn’t feasible as everything was incredibly strengthened. That wasn’t to say it was impossible, just way too time-consuming.

Reaching the second tower floor, the challenge of the tower began to appear as they got their first clue as to what kind of creatures had built these towers in the first place. Robot-like golems were stationed as guards on the second tower floor. Eight in total, with four of them patrolling, with four others sealed-off side rooms. Their levels were all 275 to 280, making them relatively strong… but far from strong enough. This was also where the King’s vision was good, as things like walls didn’t matter when it came to detecting living beings nearby… which kind of made Jake feel dumb for when he tried to hide behind trees from the King back in the Tutorial.

The Fallen King didn’t hesitate as he simply floated into the room with the four guards. He was instantly noticed by the guards, who quickly proved to be aggressive as they attacked on sight. The four of them charged at once as the Fallen King raised one of his ivory claws that began to glow with golden power.

A wave of golden force was blasted out the very next second, hitting all the guards. They all stumbled back, physically seemingly unhurt, but through the vision of the Fallen King, Jake could see it definitely wasn’t so. Golden cracks had formed on their Soulshapes, signifying some significant soul damage.

Before they had a chance to attack again, the Fallen King continued forward as a second golden wave released. The four guards fell back further as a third wave came soon after. One of the four Soulshapes shattered on impact like it was made of glass as the golem fell dead to the ground. A fourth wave spelled the end of the other three as the King kept up his casual demeanor.

Gotten a lot stronger, Jake mentally noted as the Unique Lifeform continued exploring the floor. However, it quickly became clear this wasn’t going to be a fast endeavor. On a wall, he found a floor plan that depicted around a hundred floors in total for the tower, with the lower levels being residential while the higher ones were research-based. The ones at the very top had no information on them at all, but just looking at the floor plans, Jake already had a good idea of what they were dealing with.

“Each of these towers are probably mini-dungeons of sorts that get progressively harder the further up you go. Also, expect a boss of some kind towards the top,” Jake communicated through the Golden Mark. “Also, since there are nine… if you get the chance to activate the tower, don’t do so right away, alright? Getting a feeling we shouldn’t just activate these towers willy-nilly.”

“As you will,” the Fallen King responded, not trying to argue. The other three also quickly agreed, no one questioning Jake. They had learned over many years that questioning Jake’s gut feeling led to nothing good, and to just trust it instead.

While the Fallen King continued his tower climb, the others continued exploring the planet. Dina also soon reached her tower and began to climb it, and not that long after, Sylphie also discovered one, which she promptly entered.

Jake was flying very high up in the sky as he peered down, trying to get a proper lay of the land. Most of the planet was wide open plains with a few lakes here and there, with intermitting large deserts in between. There were barely any mountains or hills. The only tall things were the towers.

What really surprised him was that he saw no buildings anywhere. No traces of any civilization having ever lived there at all, despite the floor descriptions. The beasts roaming were also surprisingly low in number. There were far fewer than Jake assumed there would be on a planet this big.

His big clue as to what was going on came when Jake saw what looked like a small forest. All the trees still looked young, making Jake frown as he sent a message to Dina. “Hey, Dina, can you ask some of the plants you encounter how old they are?”

“You also noticed?” she quickly responded. “Something is wrong for sure. Meadows of grass can often be extremely old, yet I didn’t meet any that was more than fifty years old. Actually, I have yet to encounter any plants older than a few decades at most…”

Frowning at the revelation, an idea had begun to form in his head. After a week or so, they had all arrived in towers and were exploring them. The Fallen King had taken nearly half a day just clearing one tower floor, and finding the way to the next one proved challenging simply due to how big they were while being filled with enemies.

Jake was quite a lot faster, and despite reaching a tower only on the third day since their arrival, he had already overtaken the Fallen King as he did something very cheat-like. Rather than fight all the guards, Jake used Unseen Hunter as he snuck through the tower, using his Sphere to navigate.

Only on tower floor fifteen Jake began having to fight as there were methods of detection he couldn’t avoid… such as golems blocking doorways he had to pass through. Jake was making rapid progress, but he was not the only one, as all of them were breezing through the towers.

When they had finished Nevermore floor sixty-nine, they still did well, but things had begun to get hard toward the end, and getting good achievements started to prove difficult. Now, it was as if they had been given a second wind from the Challenge Dungeons. They had gotten stronger, refined their skills, and become refocused. However, that wasn’t the only thing that had happened.

After just reaching C-grade, one would have a lot of momentum for gaining levels. They came fast and easy, at least for a little while. But, soon, one began to run out of momentum as experience accumulated faster than quality Records, resulting in lower leveling speed. This was inescapable, even for someone like Jake, who had insane Records due to his Bloodline and Path as a whole.

Jake and all the others had begun to level slowly for the last many years of doing floors… but that too had changed now. The Challenge Dungeons had given jack shit when it came to experience but had instead refueled them all with new Records. It had filled up their momentum tanks, and now…

*You have slain [Tower Golem Enforcer – lvl 287] – Bonus experience earned for killing an enemy above your level*

*’DING!’ Class: [Arcane Hunter of Horizon’s Edge] has reached level 257 - Stat points allocated, +50 Free Points*

*’DING!’ Race: [Human (C)] has reached level 258 - Stat points allocated, +45 Free Points*

Now, the fast levels were back on the menu, as Jake, with excitement, slaughtered his way up the tower, feeling the same glee from the rest of his party as a second growth spurt was underway.