The Primal Hunter

Choosing skills when there were four shit options and only one skill he wanted was much easier than having multiple skills that appealed to him. If possible, he would have picked at least two of them, as he was honestly fine with missing out on either Penetrating Arcane Arrow or Arcane Arrow Rain, but he really wanted at least one of them.

That entire supercharging effect was just too damn interesting. What’s more, if it truly was something inherent to Jake’s class, would he maybe be able to upgrade other skills with the same effect? Would he become able to make an even better Protean Arrow that he could supercharge? Or, to be extreme… a supercharged Eternal Shadow.

Jake sucked at theoretical stuff, but as long as he felt how the supercharging effect worked just once, he would at least have an idea of how to apply it elsewhere.

But… if he wanted that, he would have to skip Arcane Supremacy. Just the name alone appealed to him as his arcane affinity was indeed the supreme form of magic, but there were cons to picking it. Plus, he had no idea how it would interact with his Malefic Viper Legacy skills or his ability to easily use curse magic. Touch should be fine as that one he had pretty good control over and could easily toss a bit of arcane affinity in there, but what about Scales? Wings? Fangs? Pride? All of them. Shit, just something like Malefic Viper’s Poison that made all his poison better did not have anything to do with his arcane affinity. Would that somehow get negatively impacted, meaning all of his poisons would get worse?

Also, while Arcane Supremacy was cool, so was being able to supercharge skills.

Mentally he had already written off Arcane Arrow Rain while just thinkings this over a bit more, and for two big reasons. One was that it just seemed the least interesting of the three, and two, because it was an upgrade to an existing skill. That meant he could upgrade the skill himself, even if he couldn’t make it as good. Picking one of the other options would add a new skill, and Villy had repeatedly talked about how having more skills tended to be straight-up better.

Jake momentarily considered asking the Sword Saint or one of the others but decided against it. This was his skill selection and his Path. He had complained to the Sword Saint about the mythical Hallowed Shroud, but he hadn’t actually asked for advice as he already knew such a skill didn’t fit him. If he didn’t know his own Path and knew what he wanted to do, how could he expect anyone else to?

Arcane Supremacy does seem best overall, right? he questioned. Yeah, it did. But picking it did mean fully committing to his arcane affinity, akin to picking an Attunement skill. He felt like there were many unknowns with doing that… and what if he discovered an affinity that he also wanted to use at some point? Curse energy wasn’t something he had initially been interested in, but now it was a core part of his Path. What if that happened with some magic affinity he just hadn’t encountered yet? What if there proved to be some fundamental problem with his arcane affinity? What if he faced an enemy who somehow resisted his arcane energy?

What if…

Fuck off, Jake… you gotta commit to things sometimes, he scolded himself as he got his shit together. Logically he knew Arcane Supremacy was the best. He would have to dedicate himself at some time to an affinity, as not doing so was just leaving power on the table. His intuition was also telling him he bloody had to pick it, but he still felt damn insecure. He was bad at commitments and any skills that would “lock out” other options… but there were times one had to do that.

Jake’s arcane affinity was his affinity. There would never be any affinity that could suit him better, as this one was literally created by him and was tied to who he was. If there was any type of magic or affinity to ever commit to, it would be his own. Even if some of his skills didn’t benefit from the skill or were negatively impacted right now, he would fix it in the future.

All he could hope was that the next skill selection didn’t have any interesting options or at least had another skill with the supercharge option because, this time, it had to be Arcane Supremacy. With conviction, he selected the legendary skill.

*New skill gained*: [Arcane Supremacy (Legendary)]

He selected the skill and took a deep breath as he felt something was coming. Seconds passed before a shiver went through his arms as it slowly spread throughout the rest of his body. The shiver was slowly replaced by an odd warm sensation that was on the brink of feeling painful, and in his sphere, he saw a bit of skin slowly begin to flay.

Then, the system truly went into gear. A protective bubble formed around Jake’s entire body, obscuring his form from view from the others waiting in the in-between room as the reforging process began. His skin sped up with flying off as both his arms rapidly began dissolving as if destructive arcane energy had ravaged them, yet the very next second, what was destroyed got rebuilt.

This was not simply his physical body undergoing a metamorphosis, but his entire Soulshape was influenced. The countless pathways that transported innate energy – stamina – throughout his body expanded and seemed to slightly change as the veins responsible for health points – vital energy – underwent rebirth next.

Nearly no part of Jake was left untouched. The only things he saw the system didn’t influence were his eyes, as trying to reforge them was utterly unnecessary. However, he was surprised when he felt a faint spectral outline behind his back also get influenced until he realized it was his Wings of the Malefic Viper. Even if he didn’t have them summoned now, Arcane Supremacy still affected them.

Jake had wondered if maybe he could achieve something akin to what this skill did himself… but undergoing the reforging process, he became fully aware of how far he was from achieving something like that. The endless pathways making up the body were so numerous it didn’t make any sense, and each evolution only added more and changed those that were already there. To manually try to do something like this would be akin to changing a living being by going in and affecting every cell individually. Plus, one had to be able to do this change within a very short time span, or the body would be in imbalance and try to “heal” any damage inflicted. Not to mention the fact one had to figure out a way to not just find and influence all of these pathways… one had to do it in a way that could directly change the Soulshape.

Soon enough, the reforging approached its end. Jake had almost expected his Bloodlline to act up or do something during all this, but it was surprisingly silent. Content. It clearly approved of what was happening, and as Jake began to inspect some of the changes, he couldn’t help but think:

This feels right… more right than it was before?

It was odd. The changed parts of Jake’s body felt more… natural? At least more so than before being reforged. Like this was how they had always been supposed to look… no… maybe that it was at least closer to it than before? He couldn’t quite put his finger on it, and before he could properly get an idea, his metamorphosis was fully complete.

The entire process only took around a minute before the protective shell that had formed around him slowly disappeared. Jake opened his eyes to see four individuals staring down at him, Dina with a worried look, the Fallen King and Sword Saint with pure interest, and Sylphie looking like she was annoyed at his commotion waking her up.

“So… you got an interesting skill, I take it?” the Sword Saint asked with a raised eyebrow.

“It reminded me a bit of when I underwent my full Nature Attunement… but not quite?” Dina said, slightly confused.

“First of all, yes, very interesting, and it is pretty close to an Attunement skill, Dina,” Jake answered the both of them as he slowly opened and closed his hand.

“So you have chosen to specialize your magic?” the Fallen King questioned.

“As I said, something like that,” Jake answered as he let a spark of arcane energy jump between his index and thumb. “I guess you can say I finally committed properly to my own arcane affinity, as odd as that sounds.”

“Will it affect your alchemy skills?” Dina asked with a bit of worry. “More often than not, that is one of the big hurdles for Attunement skills, as they can create difficulties for crafting. As far as I know, most alchemy is best with pure unattuned mana, so if you are attuned, it adds another layer of challenge and complexity.”

Jake felt for a bit as he transported pure mana through his body before shaking his head. “Nope, alchemy seems unaffected… in fact, it may be better than before. No problems moving pure mana around, at least.”

“Hm,” Dina said before smiling cheerfully. “Arcane affinities are odd, so I won’t ask anything. But it sounds like it was a good upgrade, so congratulations!”

“Thanks,” Jakes smiled back at her. “Now, can I get a bit of time to familiarize myself with things?”

“How long will you need, you think?” the Sword Saint asked.

“Not long, I reckon,” Jake answered. “But don’t worry. I have a strong feeling I would like to do some live testing pretty soon.”

“Very well. Notify us when you are ready,” the old man said as he went over to a corner and sat down to meditate. The others also went back to doing their own thing and left Jake to do some testing. As much testing as he could do in the relatively small in-between room, anyway.

Jake started by consciously moving some arcane energy around and found it moved far more smoothly than before. It was like his internal channels had slightly expanded and gotten lubricated, at least when it came to leading arcane energy through his body. He also quickly tried summoning a bit of magic, starting with a barrier of stable arcane mana to encase himself, serving both as an experiment and a way to not annoy the others too much.

With little effort, arcane mana manifested all around him, forming a stable barrier in a bubble all around him nearly instantly.

Faster than before, that’s for sure… by around twenty percent, maybe?

Next, he took out Eternal Hunger and did a pressure test. He rested the tip on the barrier and slowly applied pressure until the arcane barrier began to crack and break. He repeated this a few more times as he kept summoning barriers to break.

Durability is up too, and more than the summoning speed. Maybe thirty percent?

Jake did regret not doing all these tests before he picked the skill to have a better control group, but he luckily had a pretty good feeling of how strong his different skills and freeform magic were before he got Arcane Supremacy.

Anyway, after a few more tests with both stable and destructive arcane mana using freeform magic, he concluded that both had undergone significant improvements. Summoning speed had improved the least, as Jake was already pretty good at that before, but potency was where things had improved the most. For stable constructs, he had just gone over how much they improved, while for destructive energies, he summoned them about fifteen percent faster while the potency had gone up about twenty-five percent. So a bit less than the stable variant.

Due to Jake’s high Perception, he had always been pretty fast at summoning magic, so he guessed the bonus to that and potency were actually pretty similar. He also had more practice with destructive arcane energies, so Jake guessed the “true” bonus to summoning and potency – not factoring in Jake’s skill - was somewhere around twenty percent for both. In other words, this bonus made his arcane freeform magic twenty percent better under ideal circumstances while probably adding more under non-ideal circumstances.

Next up was the improvement seen with skills. That one proved to be a bit more tricky to determine. Skills already included system assistance when activating them, and while you could practice and get better, it wasn’t as much as one could with freeform magic. This didn’t mean that skills didn’t benefit, though. Through a quick test, he noticed the charging speed of Arcane Powershot had gotten faster, and his ability to construct a Protean Arrow had definitely sped up.

Power-wise, he estimated the boost was a bit lower across the board and varied quite a bit based on the skill. Something like his Avaricious Arcane Arrows – the arrows he normally shot – were surprisingly enough nearly twenty-five percent better than before, while the power of Arcane Powershot was only improved by about ten percent. Well, okay, that wasn’t entirely accurate, as his increased resistance also allowed him to now charge Arcane Powershot for longer and faster, resulting in that potentially being the skill that improved the most.

He also wanted to test Arcane Awakening but decided to wait with that, as he would rather see the effects in a real fight. Besides, he would probably piss off his party members if he decided to see how far he could push the skill while inside the in-between room, delaying their progress even more than necessary.

Finally, when it came to the increase in efficiency and reduced energy cost, Jake had to be honest and admit that part was by far the weakest aspect of the skill. It wasn’t really that he spent less mana doing stuff. It was just that less was lost in transportation, meaning he would estimate a five to ten percent efficiency improvement at most across the board.

Now for the downsides of the upgrade.

Firstly, Jake tried to move some dark mana through his veins to form a bolt of dark mana… and it was like dragging sludge. The feeling of the pathways getting lubricated had turned from smoothing things out to now being a sticky substance that made everything harder.

Power, speed, and efficiency had all fallen even more than his arcane energy had improved. With a bit of worry, he tried to move curse energy next and found the same result. It was indeed a lot worse in every single way.

Trying again, Jake did the same test with dark mana, but this time sprinkled in a bit of stable arcane energy and found that the dark mana this time traveled through his body as if it was arcane energy. The bonus did seem slightly weaker, but it was there.

So merging other affinities or types of magic with arcane energy works. Great.

Having tested that, Jake finally decided to try a few Malefic Viper Legacy skills… something he had been dreading. He hoped they wouldn’t have been impacted too badly and began by summoning Scales and Wings. Both appeared and…

Nothing.

It felt the exact same as before, with the cost and effectiveness both utterly unaffected. Confused as hell, he pulled out Eternal Hunger and infused it with venom from Fang… and once more, everything was the same. He kept trying, wondering what was going on, until a rush of realization hit him.

Villy you glorious bastard,Jake grinned widely.

Arcane Supremacy worked on combat skills and freeform magic.

All of the Legacy skills were technically not combat-related skills. Sure, they were used in combat, but they all had Origins in something alchemy-related, resulting in them not being considered combat skills by the system. Truly, Vily was truly a goddamn scammer.

Wait, does that mean…

Jake tried his new skill to summon Curse Fragments right then and there. He felt the curse energy move through his pathways, as he felt it was utterly unaffected. It was like the “lubricating” effect didn’t impact it at all. It wasn’t a combat skill, after all. This also meant that the arcane parts of the skill didn’t receive any benefits from Arcane Supremacy.

Next, he took out his cauldron and tried to use brew potion real quick, once more seeing it was unaffected. So that was a relief.

He kept trying a few more minor things but quickly reached a bit of an impasse. Any further testing he wanted would take too long or require real combat. That, or for him to at least not be locked in a small room where he couldn’t make big explosions or fully charge an Arcane Powershot without blowing up someone.

Standing up, Jake stretched. “Alright, gang, done testing and ready to go.”

It was time to experiment and get some floors done. Oh, and probably have some more multiversal lessons imparted to them.