The Primal Hunter

So, Jake was used to quite a few reactions when he revealed he was the Chosen of the Malefic Viper. Most reacted with fear, confusion, and then some level of reverence and respect. The majority of the time, it was not toward Jake but toward what he represented.

However, when it came to poor Temlat, he never got further than the fear stage. He froze entirely as his face went white, and he stared at Jake with wide-open eyes. His mouth opened and closed a few times as if he tried to say some words but failed at every turn. The reaction was way over the top compared to what Jake had expected, as he felt such intense fear from the young man. As if he expected Jake to do something far worse than just killing him at any moment.

That is when Jake realized a little something… in the ninety-third era, Villy was still a Primordial, sure, but he was also just one of many gods. Not to mention all the other pinnacle factions people knew of. Throughout the years, the number of gods multiplied and, due to this, got more and more involved with mortals as their factions spread and consumed more territory.

In the second era, it wasn’t like this. Back then, there were only twelve “true” gods. The twelve Primordials. Jake had read a few old history tomes Villy had left in Jake’s library back in the Order for fun, a few of which were written all the way back in the second era. The way they described the Primordials was far different, including the way they described the Malefic Viper himself.

You see… Villy was not exactly known to be a good guy back then. Not that he was now, but back in the day, it was far worse. It was during the days when the Viper was still doing everything to continue growing in power, destroying anything and anyone that got in his way. He was truly a villain of the multiverse, so for Jake to come and advertise himself as his Chosen was the same as saying he was some harbinger of doom and destruction.

Jake was a bit perplexed as to how he should approach this but decided to lean into Temlat’s understanding of Jake. If he thought his teacher was some semi-divine being, that would just mean that when Jake convinced him to not be a doormat and make his own decisions and improvements, Jake would have accomplished a more impressive feat.

“Is that truly the limit of your desire for revenge? That the mere identity of someone can make you give up?” Jake said. “In that case, you truly aren’t worthy of another moment of my time. You can go back where you came from and live your pitiful life and wallow in despair until your owner gets tired of you.”

Temlat’s eyes seemed to come to life a little bit as Jake continued.

“Or do you want me to kill you right here and now? Are you satisfied with this being the end of your Path? An opportunity squandered due to your own pathetic fear?”

“I…” he finally said. “I… I want to get stronger, but-“

“No, that sentence was already over. You want to get stronger. Then do that. Grasp every opportunity given and take all you can until one day, the targets of your revenge lay slain before you,” Jake said in a loud voice. “So what do you want? To die a mere “pet” or to become someone no one will ever dare look down upon?”

“I am not a fucking pet,” Temlat said in an almost growling voice.

“I take that as a yes?” Jake asked.

Without any hesitation, Temlat kneeled down and went as far as to press his forehead to the ground. “Master, please-“

“Ah, don’t call me that; it still gives me the creeps,” Jake said, remembering Meira. “Just call me teacher, Mr. Thayne, Lord Thayne, or something like that. Or you can just call me Jake, but I have a feeling you aren’t going to do that.”

“Then, Lord Thayne… please help me become stronger! Help me get my revenge! If you do so, I’ll do anything to pay you back!” Temlat said with proper determination in his voice.

“See, that wasn’t so hard,” Jake smiled satisfied. “I don’t want something from you right quite yet, and right now, all you need to focus on is becoming someone who can actually be of help to anyone, including yourself. Now, come on, follow me.”

Finally getting out of the portal room, Jake let Temlat take in the environment of the House of the Architect as he walked slowly. Say what you will, but the extravagant place filled with servants and expensive-looking decor did look like somewhere the Chosen of a Primordial could reside, especially to someone like Temlat, who seemed to have the understanding that someone like Jake, who was only mid-tier C-grade, was a borderline godlike existence.

“So, you said you didn’t know much about alchemy, right?” Jake asked as he decided to just walk all the way to the floor with alchemy stuff on it. Mainly to give Temlat some time to adapt and to give Jake some time to ask his questions.

“I know about alchemy… but…” Temlat said as he sounded a bit anxious.

“But you know fuck-all? Got it,” Jake nodded. It was pretty much as expected. It was easy to see how nervous the young man was, as Jake reassured him. “That’s good. It means you’re a clean slate without any bad habits.”

“Yes, Lord Thayne!” he quickly said, perking up.

“Next question. How much do you know about curse energy?” Jake asked.

“Not much,” he confessed as he held out a hand, the darkish energy gathering. “It’s like my feelings somehow made it happen, and the system gave me a skill, and it helped me level up fast… it all just happened one day. That bitch was satisfied with me getting stronger, and I managed to convince her I was doing it because of her, which gave me more freedom. Enough freedom to try and run away once my collar was off.”

“Wait, she actually made you wear a collar?” Jake asked. What’s worse, Jake had a bad feeling it wasn’t even meant to be in the consensual, kinky way.

“Yes…” Temlat, the curse energy began to materialize around him as Jake saw his apparent anger. “If I tried to run away, the pain was… too much. I still tried once, but if I had not returned, I know it would have taken my life.”

Jake slowly nodded at the explanation. “Well, whoever the fuck made those collars also sounds like someone you ought to pay a visit in the future, eh?”

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Continuing their way down, Jake began to discuss some basic things and even got Temlat to feel comfortable enough to ask questions. Having a casual demeanor seemed to work well, and with every passing moment, Temlat’s nervousness lessened.

Soon enough, they reached the alchemy room of the House of the Architect. Alright, calling it a room really didn’t do it justice. It was more like a massive complex of halls, each with different functions, and every single one of them filled with tools of different kinds. There were even several rooms clearly designed for people to work with ritual circles.

The place also had living quarters and space for Jake to leave some books, so he quickly got Temlat settled. Spending a few hours, Jake sorted through some books and had Temlat go through them. Jake had considered for a while what exactly to teach Temlat and quickly concluded that normal alchemy wasn’t going to cut it. No, he would throw him into the deep end instantly. He would try to let Temlat harness his innate ability to create and use curse energy rather than learn how to make potions or anything like that.

A few books with more general alchemy theory and history were still left there, along with a large number of miscellaneous stuff Jake decided on in case the young man found it interesting. If Temlat found something he really liked, it would be way easier to teach him.

Also, during their conversations, Jake learned Temlat was nearly three hundred years old. This was not going to stop Jake from mentally referring to him as a young man. As a mid-tier C-grade, Jake was definitely more mature because he had a higher level; that’s just how the multiverse works. At least, that’s how he decided things were in this particular instance. It also wouldn’t be a good look if Jake admitted to being younger than his student.

After Temlat had gotten a bit more comfortable in his new living quarters, Jake headed back toward the Merit Exchange as he felt quite good about things so far. Having a student this early was definitely going to be a great boon, even if Jake still felt a bit unsure about how he was supposed to go about this entire teaching business.

Jake’s plans for Temlat were pretty straightforward. He would teach the young man alchemy and give him access to many of the books Jake had brought with him from the library back in the Order of the Malefic Viper to make him mainly self-study.

If he got lucky, the young man should quickly be able to progress and learn this new craft. Considering Jake’s influence, the plan was then for Temlat to evolve to a C-grade with a new class and profession, both partly related to Jake. If all went well, the power Temlat got would even allow him to take revenge on the woman who made him a pet.

It was definitely a bit of a gamble, and much could go wrong, but Jake felt like Temlat was his best bet.

With the young half-elf occupied, Jake quickly went and turned in his two completed Merit Point missions while abandoning the one he had “failed.”

Using some of his points, Jake picked up some ingredients he was familiar with. The way the store worked was a bit unique in that there was no browsing of goods or anything like that. Instead, the Creator had to request certain materials, with the exchange then acquiring them and giving a price.

This made it easy to get what you wanted but also added a requirement for the Creators to know their stuff when it came to ingredients. Jake was even happier than before that he had brought half a library’s worth of books so he could look up material names if he ever got in trouble and needed something.

Ah, Jake did try to trick one of the attendants into selling him things based on properties, but Jake sadly had to know the name of the ingredient. Even if Jake described something to perfection, the attendant would say that they lacked information on the goods Jake wanted them to acquire. It was a bit frustrating, but Jake did at least know quite a few good ingredients from all his time spent at the Order.

With a good stack of ingredients in hand, Jake finally got to crafting, having decided to start out with concocting some poisons. First of all, because he wanted to submit a good poison for evaluation, and secondly, to get more Merit Points from selling back what he made.

He had a few plans in mind for the poison in question, and he would definitely need some ingredients he didn’t already know the name of, but that was where the books came in.

Jake had also decided that one of the things he would make was a ritual circle. He would make one similar to what he used when he gave birth to Vesperia, though naturally without any Jake Juice in the mix. In fact, Jake wanted to make an improved and even more efficient version. Perhaps one suited for another kind of creature than an ectognamorph. Maybe he could even do something curse-related…

Both of these objectives would take a lot of time and resources, but Jake made them a priority. One reason why he wanted to do two semi-familiar things was also due to his new little student nearby, who he had a feeling would need a lot of guidance in the early days as he learned basic alchemical theory. Again, Jake would not turn him into a “real” alchemist, but just a highly specialized one who worked with curses and maybe a bit of poison to mix his curse energy into…

It was totally not because Jake also wanted to research infusing curse energy into poisons himself. Nope, that was definitely not something he would ever do.

This is how Jake’s initial time in the House of the Architect slowly began passing. Jake quickly realized he was horrible at teaching anything, primarily on the grounds that he also didn’t know exactly how things worked himself due to his instinctual approach to everything. However, this is where Temlat specializing in curses was advantageous.

Controlling curse energy was all about emotions. It was instinct and not knowledge that had to guide you. Even someone like Casper couldn’t logic his way to curse energy. He still had to nurture negative emotions in spades to keep himself powerful. However, as a trapper, he didn’t have to be emotional during fights. He just had to have been during his preparation phase. Ah, and then he had Lyra, his ghost girlfriend, who also helped him quite a bit and gave him access to blight energy.

Temlat had none of that. He was just an angry young man who hated the world, and Jake chose to nurture that. Very directly, too. Curse energy had the ability to affect other sources of curse energy, and Jake had a great source in Eternal Hunger. It was actually pretty normal for curses in the wild to fuse into amalgamations if more formed in the same area. The curse energy from Yalsten that Jake had absorbed was a great example of this.

That curse had come from countless beings and their resentment. This didn’t mean that they all agreed on who or even always what they resented, just that they all held a grudge. Over time, a common hatred would then be formed, with it eventually turning into simple resentment – one of the most common forms of curses.

Resentment was not a Sin Curse, though. Sin Curses were the highest level of curses by default and couldn’t be easily formed in the wild. They were pure in concept and had singular goals that didn’t lend well to curses born of people dying. Hunger, which Jake wielded, was a Sin curse that was actually considered pretty rare despite being such a common emotion. It encapsulated a singular desire to simply devour everything insatiably.

Temlat wielded a curse of hatred. Hatred was closely related to the Sin Curse of wrath but was still a bit off. Hatred had the problem that it needed something to hate. It could be resolved once everything you hated was exterminated. No, for something to be a Sin Curse, it had to be something far more basic, far more unfocused on a goal, but just the emotion itself. Wrath was just anger and hatred toward everything. Just an emotion of wanting to destroy and make others suffer until there was nothing left. And endless Path of destruction.

Considering Jake had a higher-ranked curse than Temlat, he decided to “feed” Temlat’s curse. He worked in a ritual that could contain some of his own curse energy for Temlat to experience it and be empowered by it. To have his curse of hatred be strengthened by his hunger for revenge.

This is how a few months passed as Jake trained and made Temlat stronger as Jake also progressed slowly. He had studied a lot related to the kind of poison he wanted to make, and all of the recent focus on curse energy had inspired him.

In fact, he believed he had gotten quite an interesting and idea for a new kind of poison he had never even seen mentioned in any of the books related to both curses and poisons.