The Primal Hunter

“You know we can’t allow him to actually bring that Mimicry World Core out of that floor, right?” the Wyrmgod questioned the Malefic Viper.

“Does seem kind of counterproductive if he decides to reintroduce a Karmic Plague that was wiped out a long time ago back into the multiverse,” Minaga nodded in agreement.

“Relax, he isn’t gonna actually bring it out,” the Viper waved them off. “He is just going to eat it and consume all the knowledge of how to make plagues within.”

“And… that’s a good outcome?” Minaga said in a deadpan tone. “Totally seems like a good idea to teach him about them… especially considering his track record of always making well-thought-out decisions.”

“Come on, would he really be my Chosen if he didn’t at least know how to create a plague?” the Viper smiled. “Not saying he should make one, but nothing wrong with learning how to.”

“I am confident nearly every other faction in existence would disagree with that assessment,” the Wyrmgod sighed.

“And I am confident at least half of those have a rule written somewhere that one of the reasons they shouldn’t fuck with me is out of fear I will throw a plague at them,” Vilastromoz shook his head.

“Hm,” the Wyrmgod thought for a while. “I will reclaim the World Core if he brings it out, but should he consume it or sufficiently alter it, I shall allow him to leave with it as long as there is no chance of reintroducing the plague.”

“Sounds fair enough,” Vilas shrugged.

“Also, to be fair, I think most factions wouldn’t fuck with the Malefic Viper even without the plagues,” Minaga said. “And I do guess there is value in knowing how to make one, as there are some very interesting concepts at play. Speaking of which, seeing as you are the expert here… would it be possible to make a plague that wipes out Bloodlines that allow those possessing it to ruin any and all interesting labyrinth experiences? Asking for a friend.”

Just to clarify, Jake wasn’t planning some over-the-top double suicide or anything when he asked the old man to stab him. He just knew that was he was about to do wouldn’t be something he had confidence in pulling off under normal circumstances, so he decided to indulge in a bit of clever use of system mechanics.

“You want me to trigger that defensive skill of yours that activates from a lethal blow?” the Sword Saint questioned, having quickly picked up on what he was getting at.

“Ah, that one,” the Fallen King nodded in understanding, having also experienced that one himself.

“Exactly,” Jake smiled. “And I reckoned that Erosion thing is the best skill to use as it seems pretty easy to dodge compared to the slash, considering it is just one line of water. True, using the Transcendent skill may be me overestimating my durability, but I want to assure the system will consider it a lethal blow.”

The Sword Saint considered for a moment before nodding. “Fair enough.”

Jake thanked him as he turned to his other three party members. “Better make some distance to not get hit by anything. Ah, but Dina, probably stay close. Someone might need healing. On second thought, someone will definitely need healing.”

“What exactly are you planning on doing!?” the Dark Witch butted in rudely. “And what exactly did you do with the Mimicry World Core? It needs to be destroyed, or all of this is in vain… wait, do you plan on keeping it? If that is the case, I will-“

“Relax, jeez,” Jake waved her off. “Trying to figure out a way to destroy the Karmic Plague without you dying in the process.”

“I… I already told you I am fine with my fate,” the Dark Witch said dismissively. “And unless you can call down a god, do you honestly think you or anyone else here can do anything?”

“Eh, I tend to be overconfident and reckless, yet I still turn out to be correct and have things work out for me in the end. And my guts are telling me I can pull this off,” Jake tried to assure her. Not very effectively, mind you.

“Trusting your gut? Don’t be ludicrous. If the Karmic Plague is unleashed within you, death is the only outcome,” the Dark Witch criticized him.

“Again, show some trust here. I also know quite a bit about plagues and even Karmic Plagues. At least, let me give it a shot. Worst-case scenario, you die; best-case, you survive. Doing nothing is literally the same outcome as your worst-case scenario, so why the hesitation?”

“Because if something goes wrong, the Karmic Plague may not be destroyed, I-“

“This entire argument is getting circular and is wasting everyone’s time,” the Fallen King said in an annoyed tone. “Jake here is the Chosen of the Malefic Viper, so you should show some trust. If any C-grade can rid you of the Karmic Plague, it’s him.”

The Dark Witch was about to protest as the Unique Lifeform mentioned Jake was the Chosen as the lizard woman’s eyes opened wide. “I… I didn’t… I apologize for my-“

“So you’re on board?” Jake asked. He was a bit annoyed at the Fallen King spilling the beans like that, but things were getting tedious.

“I… yes. I shall trust you, Chosen of the Malefic One,” the Dark Witch nodded resolutely as her voice slightly cracked. Jake even saw a hint of hope in her eyes, which only reinvigorated his desire to pull this off. Deep inside, he knew it didn’t really matter as they were in a dungeon and all… but he still wanted to do it.

“Great,” Jake smiled. “Now, here is my plan. While in physical contact with you, I will break the World Core inside of my stomach right as the Sword Saint hits me with a lethal blow. This will make time slow down for me as the Karmic Plague is destroyed, at which point I will manipulate the karmic energy going from within my stomach into you. Before this, I will infuse the plague within you with a toxin that will react with this karmic energy to only destroy the Karmic Plague along with the part of your soul you isolated together with it. This is still destroying the Karmic Plague, but it is more like cutting out an infected tumor before it gets a signal to spread the cancer to your bloodstream.”

“I am unsure what you mean with that final analogy, but I believe I understand what you mean. Will I need to do anything?” she questioned.

“Don’t fight back and focus on protecting your own soul. It may get hairy, and it will definitely be a thoroughly unpleasant experience,” Jake said.

She nodded as Jake motioned for her to sit down as he looked at the Sword Saint. “I will need to set up some stuff before I begin, so it may take a bit before I need you to try and kill me.”

“Happy to try and stab you through the head any day,” the Sword Saint smiled as he stood to the side of Jake, making sure that his stab wouldn’t also hit the Dark Witch.

Jake sat down with his legs crossed as the Dark Witch sat in front of him. He put both his hands on her back as he subtly activated Touch of the Malefic Viper, pouring in a tiny bit of poison as he scanned her body through Sense.

With her not resisting at all, even suppressing her natural vital energy, Jake quickly found the portion of her Soulshape infected. Her case was by far the best of anyone Jake had seen, but she was still in a precarious situation. Usually, the Karmic Plague would inhabit the entire soul, but the witch had managed to isolate it to somewhere around her stomach region. At least most of it. Small slithers also hit other areas. Removing it would lead to some serious damage… but likely survivable.

With intense focus, Jake did two things at once. Firstly, he pumped more poison into the witch using Touch as he “infected” the plague. This was to allow him some influence over it as he more or less tried to usurp control over the Karmic Plague. This was sadly also where his lack of power came in.

The reason why he couldn’t just destroy the Karmic Plague his own this way was due to the innate difference in level between Jake and the creator. If Jake was A-grade, he was confident in being able to cure her entirely without having to take any major risks or even needing something like the World Core. However, as things were, all he could do was try and nudge the destruction process in a favorable direction. Something that should be enough if his second objective went well…

He needed to influence the Mimicry World Core within his stomach. Something he couldn’t really do currently. Of course, Jake already knew how he wanted to do this: through Touch of the Malefic Viper. His problem was that the only skill his Palate only allowed him to use on a swallowed item was Cultivate Toxin, a shitty common rarity skill.

But… for the longest time, Jake had known that shitty common rarity skill wasn’t really necessary. He never used it. Instead, he used Touch of the Malefic Viper for most things. So, the question was: why even keep them separate? The answer was even more obvious. He wouldn’t. And he believed that if Cultivate Toxin became part of Touch of the Malefic Viper, then Palate would allow him to use Touch of the Malefic Viper on any item swallowed.

Jake needed to do little more than will for a fusion as he tried to influence the swallowed World Core. It barely took any effort on his part, almost as if the system had been waiting for him to stop being a moron and just get it done, as shortly after he began, a notification popped up.

*Skill Fusion Detected*:

[Cultivate Toxin (Common)] + [Touch of the Malefic Viper (Legendary)] --> [Touch of the Malefic Viper (Legendary)] (Rarity Unchanged)

Jake chose to not check out the updated description right away as he knew it worked the way he wanted it to. He didn’t dwell on the unchanged rarity either or the fact he felt like he had just gotten a bunch more Intelligence out of nowhere. Instead, he focused on Palate and the Mimicry World Core.

Instantly he felt Touch activate on the Mimicry World Core, proving he had been correct. He looked within his Soulspace and observed the ”stomach” of Palate and the core pulsing within as Jake slowly influenced it. It was naught but a slight nudge, and he felt the Karmic Plague fight back at every step.

Focusing on the core thoroughly, he put a lot of pressure on it as he exerted as much control as he could. With his mind split, it was difficult, but Jake refused to back down. He knew that truly changing anything wasn’t going to happen, but as long as he could slightly influence the plague to act differently when it encountered the other influenced plague energy within the Dark Witch, it should be enough. With a deep breath, he moved on to the next stage once he felt that trying to prime the core more wasn’t gonna happen.

You got this, he assured himself. The next part was where everything would be decided. Jake began to feel slight doubt about his plan as he slowly absorbed knowledge about the Mimicry World Core, becoming aware that things weren’t entirely as he had hoped.

It was true that destroying the core could be done by activating the formation on it. It was also true it would just collapse and not actually explode and harm anything around it. The problem was that Jake had decided to eat it… and imploding it within his Soulspace was not something it was designed to do. In fact, he couldn’t even activate it.

So Jake decided that rather than use the built-in destruction formation, he would slightly alter the formation on the core himself and change it from a harmless explosion to something a bit more destructive. This did still mean one thing, though: Jake would have to bear the brunt of effectively having a World Core explode within his own Soulshape.

”Be ready,” Jake communicated to the Sword Saint as he saw the old man get in position – sword raised and all.

He was worried about handling the fallout of an exploding core. Luckily for him, it was going to happen within his Soulspace, and as long as the resulting explosion was something he understood, he was confident in handling it. Well, having a part of him handle it anyway. The amount of energy that would be released was substantial, but Jake had an even more substantial and powerful source of pure energy he could make use of to suppress it.

Within his Soulspace, a version of Jake covered entirely in a black shadowy aura appeared right in front of the space that occupied the stomach of Palate. It looked like a massive orb of glass with the World Core floating in the middle, yet the shadow simply stepped through this glass and entered the glass bubble. This version of Jake then pulled back his arm as a katar appeared on its hand.

”Now.”

The moment he told the Sword Saint to attack, so did his Eternal Shadow stab the katar into the World Core, triggering its destruction.

Right as the katar pierced the core, Jake also heard the rumbling sound of Words as Power as his danger sense exploded, and a thin beam of water shot straight for his head. Both things happened within the same fraction of a second as the destruction of the core slowed down within his Soulshape, as the concept of time was momentarily seized.

And seize the moment he did. Jake barely registered the notification he got upon the destruction of the core as a shockwave of ethereal energy pulsed out from within his body, slowly spreading from the confines of his Soulshape.

[Palate of the Malefic Viper (Legendary)] --> [Palate of the Malefic Viper (Legendary)] (Rarity Unchanged)

Jake ignored this one, too, as he focused on the task at hand. An invisible aura he could only sense through his Sphere moved out of him at a rapid speed, even with Moment active. It washed over the Dark Witch, and instantly the Karmic Plague went haywire – or at least it tried to.

It tried to spread and destroy to take the Dark Witch with it, but Jake controlled it. Barely. The lizard woman’s body was ravaged internally, as several parts of her literally rotted away near-instantly. Jake barely had time to react to the function of the early S-grade Karmic Plague that told it to spread and stop it from infecting her entire soul at once. Emphasis on barely.

Whipping his head back, time resumed, and Jake felt a tinge of pain as his nose was cut off, but it was nothing compared to the screech that came from the Dark Witch as half of her stomach rotted away, along with one of her arms and several of her internal channels. Black spots of pure rot covered her body as Dina slammed her staff down, a green veil of energy covering Jake and the Dark Witch both.

Jake also quickly took out a healing potion and practically forced it down the throat of the Dark Witch as he also kept a hand on her to handle any fallout from the Karmic Plague that may have lingered. However, it seemed like the entire Karmic Plague had just self-exploded, consuming any part of the body and soul it had been a part of, leaving the Dark Witch with severe soul damage and physical damage taken. But… it was nothing that wouldn’t heal with time.

Several seconds passed as all that was heard in the core room was the deep hum of the true World Core and the heaving pained breaths of the Dark Witch. Dina was focusing as much as he could on healing, while Jake kept just staring at the Dark Witch, Sense of the Malefic Viper on full alert. The Fallen King even joined in as a soft golden light fell upon the Dark Witch, lessening her pain from the looks of it.

Seconds kept ticking by, but no matter how much Jake searched, he couldn’t find a single trace of the Karmic Plague anywhere. Not within any of his party members either.

They had succeeded… and the Karmic Plague was gone.

The notification that came a few seconds later nearly made Jake laugh as he had to admit he had forgotten about it.

Bonus Objective Completed: New Beast Alliance assisted with eliminating all Enlightened Beings in their territory. 1000 Nevermore Points earned.

He still smiled as the notification had pretty much served as a confirmation the chain reaction caused by the Karmic Plague had indeed led to a mass extinction of all the enlightened on the planet. An odd thing to celebrate, but something worth celebrating nevertheless.

”Are you okay?” the Sword Saint asked, and Jake was about to respond that the Dark Witch should be fine. That is when he noticed the old man was staring at him.

Jake did a quick scan of himself and noticed nothing that much out of the ordinary. At least not outwardly. Looking inside his Soulspace, things were a bit more messy. The stomach space created by Palate was filled with cracks all over, with intense curse energy lingering all over as Jake had been forced to deploy Eternal Hunger to suppress the energy backlash to not risk damaging himself.

What’s more… the stomach was filled with energy still. It looked like an inferno was sealed within, trying to break out but luckily restrained by the curse energy, along with what was left of the stomach’s structural integrity. Jake was worried about the energy until he noticed it depleting at a noticeable pace as some of it did leak through the cracks of the stomach, only to be instantly consumed by the curse energy.

Seems like Eternal Hunger is having quite a feast… but it’s gonna take a while to heal Palate’s stomach space, he concluded as he finally returned his attention to the real world and smiled. ”I’m fine. Honestly, better than I thought I would be.”

What was more important was the woman who was rapidly healing in front of him. The rotting flesh had slowly been removed or renewed, and while she still looked like shit, she was alive.

”I… I still live…” she muttered in a hoarse voice as she stared at the ceiling of the core room. Tears began to well up in her eyes as she began to sob. ”I live… how… I didn’t think…”

Jake just smiled, not saying anything, as he allowed Dina to keep doing her work.

Not far away, right below the true World Core, a gate had already popped into existence, making it clear they had passed the floor. The fate of Tri-World had been decided. However, Jake wasn’t in that much of a rush, and neither were the others. For now, they just savored the moment before it was time to move on.