The Primal Hunter

Jake and company appeared on what would more likely than not be the final floor of Nevermore. Their spawning location was on top of a large ruined tower, giving them a clear view of the surrounding area. However, before Jake had a good chance to look around, he noticed the mana in the air and how it was filled with death.

Luckily, he didn’t have to speculate long why this was as the floor description popped up right then.

Welcome to the Eightieth floor of Nevermore: Plateau of the Twin Emperors

In a vast land ruled by two tyrants in constant conflict, you are tasked with ending it. These two tyrants are at constant war, with their armies clashing in war zones between the two empires of the land known simply as the Vast Plateau.

You find yourself standing in a long-abandoned war zone where remnants of battle still remain. Due to the nature of these wars, cursed lands and vast areas have appeared that are considered inaccessible due to the accumulation of death-affinity mana, resulting in the appearance of many undead. This is one such land you now find yourself in.

To end the deterioration of the Vast Plateau, the war must come to an end. Decide your next course of action. Will you join either side of the conflict? Will you attempt to negotiate peace by making them realize the doomed Path they are walking down? Or will you be the enemy of both, as you become a danger so significant you force the two warring emperors to come together? Another option altogether?

The choice is yours.

Main objective: End the conflict.

Bonus objectives: Join either side of the conflict or choose to remain as a third party.

Current progress: Conflict ended (0/1)

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

Current Nevermore Points: 1,953,950

Jake and the others read the long description of the floor as they got a general gist of the place. It was a pretty basic setup, basically just giving them an excuse to fight in a war if they wanted. There was probably more to it, but their goal wasn’t to figure out who was right or wrong but what decision would give them the most excuses to fight and gain levels while unlocking the event boss.

Addressing the Nevermore Points, Jake did feel pretty fucking good about how many he had racked up in the last ten years or so after the Challenge Dungeons. It was just about seven hundred thousand, with every floor giving more than the last – except for floor seventy-five being a bit of an outlier due to the event boss.

For reference, floor seventy-nine had rewarded just under a hundred thousand Nevermore Points, which was a bit less than double what floor seventy-one had rewarded. It was a big increase, but not that out of pocket, especially not when one considered how much the difficulty also spiked. Jake and his party, straight out of the Challenge Dungeons, would have gotten their asses handed to them against the event boss on floor seventy-five and also had serious trouble with the floors after that.

Jake sure as hell doubted many, if any, of the Leaderboard groups were capable of challenging anything above the lower floors in the eighties, assuming they even had the time. That still was a lot of potential Nevermore Points one could earn. He knew Ell’Hakan had been ahead of him time-wise with all the Challenge Dungeons, with approximately a full year extra to do floors, so assuming they matched Jake and company’s speed, they would end up doing one more floor than them. It wasn’t a lot, but it was something.

All of this is to say that things could get a bit hairy here toward the end. Alas, the only thing Jake should focus on was himself and clearing this floor. He would disappoint himself if he didn’t at least beat that orange fucker, but beating him still wasn’t Jake’s primary objective.

“You notice anything? Outside of the environmental mana clearly communicating that we are in undead territory,” the Sword Saint asked. Asking Jake about his thoughts at the beginning of every floor was pretty much standard by now, as he often could either see something with his adequate Perception stat or had some gut feeling. In other cases, primarily in worlds filled with nature, they also asked Dina for some insight from the local fauna. Not that there was any living thing for her to ask on this tower or anywhere nearby.

Jake looked around and saw dead land spreading in all directions. The ground was gray and dry, with some movement here and there from undead. Skeleton creatures, ghosts, zombies, large abominations… all the good stuff. Their levels were also all around level 290, with some of the larger undead just around 300.

Looking beyond the undead lands, Jake saw a few watchpoints established, likely to contain the undead. Further back than those, Jake saw plains, wilderness, some forests, and even some cities. It was very much the same in both directions, though he did also spot another contained land, and even from this distance, Jake felt the power of a powerful curse lingering there.

One might wonder how Jake could see this many things. It wasn’t because all these locations were bunched up or anything, but due to the peculiar layout of this world… because they sure as fuck weren’t on a planet. There was absolutely zero curvature anywhere, and the land was surprisingly flat, with not a single mountain of any kind in sight. Even with massive planets Jake could usually notice the ever-so-slightest curvature if he went far enough up, but here, there truly was none at all. A fact he shared with the party.

“Hm, so it’s a bit like the land the Endless Empire knows as the Great Plains. Massive landmasses just floating in space. The largest of which nearly matches the overall surface of a Great Planet, with the Heartlands of the Endless Empire placed primarily on these Great Plains. I have only seen some pictures from Grandpa, as getting to visit the Great Plains is quite difficult… though I don’t think Jake would have any problems,” Dina said, gladly sharing some more great multiversal knowledge.

“Let us hope this place is not that big,” the Fallen King commented with displeasure.

“Doesn’t look like it is based on what I’ve seen so far,” Jake shook his head. “Anyway, what’s the plan?”

“Going by prior floors, if we want the event boss, we have to take the hardest path possible, which I would reckon is not teaming up with any of these factions,” the Sword Saint said.

“Ree, ree,” Sylphie added helpfully, making Jake nod.

This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it

“Yeah, not making any allies will also give us the most potential enemies to hunt.”

“Before we make a final decision, we should become more familiar with the world. If these Twin Emperors are B-grades or above, we may be forced to at least act like we are allied with one of them,” Dina said cautiously.

“I doubt they are,” Jake shook his head. “I think it’s way more likely at least one of them is the event boss. But you do have a point; learning more about this floor would be a good start.”

So they went and did just that as they headed toward one of the cities Jake had spotted. On the way, they learned a bit about what kind of races they were dealing with. Unsurprisingly, it was a mix of many different enlightened races, but it did surprise them to see that most were orcs of different kinds. Orcs weren’t a rare race in the multiverse, but they were often looked down on compared to other enlightened races, primarily because they tended to be on the... simpler side. However, from the looks of it, the orcs in this world were a variant race of some kind.

With orcs also came a lot of goblins. Why these two were often grouped together, Jake had no idea, but a theory was that goblins tended to have strong mental stats, while orcs were more on the physical side, making the two races compliment each other.

These two races made up over seventy percent of the enlightened, with the rest being a mixture of the usual dwarves, elves, humans, beastfolk, and all that.

Anyway, having not sided with anyone yet, they believed it would be possible to enter cities and study the place a bit, but… yeah, things didn’t work out like that.

“Stop!” a guard said as the party approached a large stone city gate. “Identify yourselves immediately!”

Jake looked at the guard, who wore simple leather armor while wielding a halberd. He looked like a common low-level grunt, but his level said otherwise.

[Orc – lvl 284]

Then again, it was also entirely possible the standard for fighters was just really high on this floor. The few enlightened Jake had seen on the way were also all at least mid-tier C-grade, even the damn farmers.

As usual, the most diplomatic person in their party stepped forward, and luckily, they had discussed what they would do if they got into a situation like this beforehand. The Sword Saint smiled as he bowed politely to the orc. “Greetings, we are a but a group of adventurers who have just returned from fighting the nearby undead, and-“

Before he could say more, mana flashed beneath their feet as a magic circle appeared. On the tall walls, some goblin mages who had been listening in stood and had raised their staves the moment the old man mentioned fighting the undead.

“Bunch of fucking morons,” the guard swore as he shook his head and looked at Jake and company with pity. “Either you are incompetent spies or even worse adventurers, walking up to a guard and outright admitting to a severe crime.”

The Sword Saint admirably tried to save the situation as he looked taken aback. “We… we were not aware we had broken any laws. Could you-“

“Save your words for the mayor,” the guard said, as Jake noted the magic circle below them growing in intensity. “Now, try to stop acting stupid for just a second and surrender. Who knows, maybe the upper brass will be nice and spare you from execution. We could use some more war slaves.”

So… yeah, negotiations broke down.

Jake wasn’t even the first one to act. The Sword Saint simply nodded, and before the orc had a chance to open his mouth again, his head flew into the air. This clearly surprised the goblin mages on the wall, who prepared to activate the magic circle, but before they could, the Fallen King erupted with energy. A golden wave spread from his body, utterly dismantling the magic circle, as Jake drew his bow, and Sylphie shot toward the wall like a bullet.

Siding with whatever Twin Emperor was in charge of this city definitely wasn’t an option anymore. Especially not after their group effectively leveled the place, killing everyone who didn’t flee in terror from the five newcomers. Jake asked if he should pick off those who ran, but the group decided against it. Which Jake honestly prefered, as he didn’t like shooting a bunch of crafters who were just fleeing.

The city did have a mini-boss of sorts in the form of the mayor. A level 310 orc wearing heavy armor and a battlehammer, who definitely did not look like some official who spent most of his time in the office. In fact, barely anyone they encountered looked like they belonged outside of a battlefield. Even the average citizens were C-grade and took to weapons without hesitation. The population of the city was also way lower than Jake had first assumed. It was large enough to house at least ten thousand, but only about eight hundred had lived there.

Killing the mayor was easy enough, and based on records found in the city’s rubble – as well as some captured survivors - they learned more about the Vast Plateau. There was a lot of boring history, but to summarize, two powerful, nearly peak C-grades appeared less than a hundred years ago, calling themselves emperors after uniting a bunch of smaller factions. Smaller factions were already enemies with the factions that the other emperor brought together, which made making them go to war quite easy.

From there, they began to constantly fight as many battlefields were created. At first, only E-grades fought with the excuse of wanting to preserve power, but soon, it was D-grades, and now, there were barely any D-grades left outside of some crafters. Even low-tier C-grades were scarce; the battlefields now filled with C-grades.

At least a few billion had died within a single century, all concentrated on big battlefields. Battlefields that both emperors had made it illegal to enter, much less hunt undead within. Instead, they were treated more like conservations.

After listening to everything, Jake couldn’t help but reach a conclusion.

“They are cultivating these areas of curse energy and death. Working together to do so,” Jake said as the others looked at him.

“Why?” Dina questioned. “What would the purpose of that even be?”

“I know, like… at least seven rituals that use curse energy in an area. I reckon that at least one of these Twin Emperors has something similar for the undead areas. As for why, I’m just gonna take a shot in the dark here and guess it’s about trying to gain more power,” Jake shrugged.

“The endless folly of those too untalented to progress without cheap shortcuts,” the Fallen King scoffed.

“Yeah, not a fan of it either, assuming I’m correct,” Jake sighed.

“Aren’t alchemists from the Order of the Malefic Viper known to sometimes wipe out entire civilizations during their experiments just to try and get a level or two?” the Sword Saint said, being very judgemental towards poor alchemists just trying their best. He was entirely correct, sure, but still a bit judgemental.

“I wouldn’t know anything about acting haphazardly, my actions ultimately ending in the destruction of a planet,” Jake defended himself.

“Ree?” Sylphie asked with a tilted head.

“We aren’t talking about that one,” Jake quickly shut the bird up. Why had he decided to share all the things about Temlat with her again?

“Anyway, going by Jake’s theory, how would it function if we joined either faction when they are working together?” the Sword Saint got the discussion back on track.

“Even if they are in symbiosis right now, it doesn’t mean either isn’t trying to reap all the rewards,” Dina said with a frown. “It may be that they are both benefitting from the creation of these death and curse-filled domains and that our interference can tip the balance of power, resulting in the death of one Twin Emperor.”

“Ree,” Sylphie also added, making a good point.

“The name Twin Emperors does indeed communicate they are connected to one another and not merely competitors. That they appeared at the same time is also highly suspicious,” the Fallen King agreed.

“So what you’re saying is…” Jake hinted.

“We already discussed not choosing a side, so let us indeed not,” the Fallen King spoke. “They attacked us first. We are now merely retaliating and defending ourselves as we march toward the Twin Emperor.”

“Ree?”

“I am pretty sure using disproportionate force to pretty much slaughter an entire country or two would be considered a war crime,” Jake commented. “Actually, never mind, let’s not think about that.”

“To summarize, we’re all in agreement we will be a third force who just fights everyone?” the Sword Saint asked clarifyingly.

“That is indeed the way to get the most experience,” Jake agreed.

“In that case, let’s not dally,” the old man nodded. “Rather than ravage more cities, how about we check out one of the active battlefields instead?”

“You want us to just show up to an ongoing battle and put ourselves right in the middle to fight everyone at once?” the Fallen King asked.

“Precisely.”

“See, we’re all in agreement!” Jake grinned. “Now let’s go to war.”