The Primal Hunter

Curse energy was a great tool for combat. However, when it came to using it to craft while doing alchemy, things were very different.

The energy was actually pretty damn hard to store outside of your body, something Jake already knew and now had to find a way to work around. Jake had a talk with Casper back during Minaga’s City Floor, where the Risen shared that he primarily used wooden stakes due to innate concepts within the element. Wood was great at storing energy of different kinds, as trees in the multiverse tended to be very diverse. You could find trees capable of housing anything dependent on their environment. This included curse energy.

To be fair, most plants were very adaptable, but wood was one of the only things that retained most of these properties even after the tree itself had been cut down. It was also part of the reason why Yalsten had even fallen. If it hadn’t been a giant tree that granted that world its unique properties but had instead been some special kind of star or big rock, the chances of the curse taking hold would have been far lower. The fact it was a tree also helped it survive for as long as it did, even if the curse was eventually reduced to a single root.

Curse energy also didn’t mix well with anything; something had run into this many times with his own magic. Jake’s Sin Curse especially did not do well with any other form of energy. One could even say that Jake’s destructive arcane energy and his curse energy were exact opposites.

One wanted to simply destroy everything, while the other wanted to devour it. When these two met, the result would be mutual destruction until there was nothing left of either. However, the story was different with his stable arcane energy. As long as Jake kept the hungering curse energy and destructive arcane energy apart by just a small sealed barrier of stable arcane energy, they would ignore each other.

It was a bit odd that the curse energy didn’t even try to eat his stable arcane energy, but he just chalked that up to another special trait of his arcane affinity. Maybe the energy just wasn’t tasty or something, or maybe it was because the barrier registered as something physical and not energy. Honestly, who knows? Probably Villy, but Jake digressed.

Due to the difficulty of using it, he only actually had a single skill that actively used curse energy. Piercing Cursed Arcane Fang made use of Jake’s ability to seal in the curse energy with a coating of arcane mana that he would then stab into stuff. It was as simple as could be, really.

Either way, Jake’s problem with curse energy was that it inherently wanted to eat everything, so if he tried to mix it into a concoction, surprise, surprise, it would try to eat the concoction. This is what was called a bad thing in the alchemical world. Even if the curse energy was far from powerful enough to consume the rest of the concoction, all Jake would have accomplished was to destroy a part of what he was trying to make.

In all honesty, Jake had no way around this. The only place where Jake could mix poison and curse energy was during combat. Eternal Hunger didn’t passively give off the curse energy when not in use – it was simply too greedy to do something like that – which meant Jake could coat it with poison with no problem. The curse energy would then activate to attack foes he stabbed or cut, ignoring the poison it was with to feast on something far tastier.

Jake’s idea for a unique poison came from a simple question: what if Eternal Hunger didn’t ignore the poison? More specifically, what if he wanted the curse energy to eat it? What if he made a type of poison specifically made to be eaten by his curse energy to empower it?

Mind you, methods to empower curses weren’t new, far from it. There were many catalysts or liquids Jake could make to empower curse energy; Jake had even been offered a skill to create cursed items that he could then later use to empower his curse energy.

But this wasn’t what Jake was thinking about. No, he wanted it still to be a poison. To accomplish this, Jake looked into another branch of alchemy that he didn’t study much but was considered a side-branch of ethtoxins – soul poison. Some poisons existed out there that didn’t deal any damage or even registered as harmful at any point, some of which even made the person you infected more powerful… but at the cost of grave consequences once the poison ran out.

One could almost compare it to doping someone forcefully. What’s more, this always came with effects that infected the mental state of the target. Something that made them more bold, reckless, and overconfident. The effects wouldn’t be overly powerful, and the poison was considered very hard to make, but he had found it intriguing, even if something was a bit weird.

Jake wondered why he had never really run into this type of poison before until he read a book that explained its fatal flaw: it only worked against idiots. Not just idiots when talking about intelligence, but beings that didn’t even have any ”instinctive wisdom” either. Even elementals who were just beings of pure mana would notice something was wrong.

Considering the poison didn’t register as a poison and had subtle effects by design, anyone who didn’t suck could quickly purge it when they noticed it and rely on their Willpower to get rid of any mental manipulation in the meantime. This made the poison hard to craft and hard to use, making it subpar due to this alone. When you did use it, it very rarely worked, and even when it did work, it made your target a bit stronger for a period of time before it would then be weakened, making it an overall shitty poison.

All in all, it was one of those types of poison many had researched but never really used. It was more a branch that some alchemists recommended looking into to make better flasks using some of the concepts to also benefit from some Malefic Viper poison-related skills. Because, yes, poison flasks were also a thing… but that was a topic for a whole other time.

Anyway, this type of poison that sucked to use against people gave Jake an idea. What if he made a poison that effectively boosted the curse energy? Curse energy was odd in that it kind of ”lived,” if that made sense, so Jake was pretty confident he could affect it. He also didn’t care about any of the subtlety or the potential consequences of using too much of a steroid. The curse energy just had to go wild and eat whatever it struck anyway, and if it did so more ravenously and uncontrolled than before, all the better.

However… there was one huge problem with crafting this kind of poison. It included a lot of ingredients classified as psychedelics – which could also be used to make flasks or potions to help one hallucinate and gain enlightenment – and these kinds of ingredients tended to have one thing in common. One terrible thing.

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”Violet Cap Sporeduster of at least rare rarity, Mindcap of epic rarity, Rainbow-Spotted Satyr Mushroom of rare rarity, Illusiary Puffball of rare rarity, and finally a bag of mosscap and moss mix. Rare-rarity, please,” Jake asked the Merit Exchange worker, holding back any vomit.

That’s right… pretty much every single ingredient was mushrooms. Even the goddamn moss was mixed with small mushrooms that grew on and inside of it. To make matters even worse, Jake would have to eat many of those disgusting shrooms for Palate of the Malefic Viper.

Oh, and also, all of these were psilocybin mushrooms, or what Jake before the system would have called magic mushrooms. They didn’t really affect Jake much in their raw form due to his Palate, but some of their effects did leak through as they didn’t register as necessarily being detrimental. Jake wondered why the hell an effect that made everything take on a rainbow sheen or made him feel like his feet were twice as big as before didn’t register as detrimental, but who the hell was he to question the Legacy skill of a Primordial?

Oh wait, he was Jake, so of course he would question it.

”Sometimes I do wonder to myself if there is any particular reason why psychedelic mushrooms don’t register as purely poisonous to Palate of the Malefic Viper? Oh, wait, is it related to how alcohol also has some effect despite clearly being a toxin? Could it possibly be that the Malefic One, in his infinite wisdom, purposefully wanted to still leave himself an opening to get both drunk and high? No, that possibly cannot be it,” Jake spoke out loud while getting back to the alchemy room.

It was naturally purely coincidental he spoke to himself while in the only area the livestream was live, and he was pretty sure the Malefic Viper was listening. Coincidental, for sure.

Another reason why Jake chose this kind of poison was naturally due to how different it was from anything he usually made. This would add a lot to the ”journey” part of the craft, and due to how different this kind of poison was, it opened up the possibility of Jake also submitting a more normal poison without much penalty if he ended up not making anything he thought was better.

Speaking of unique, Temlat was doing pretty damn well if Jake said so himself. He had brought the young man back from the dystopian megacity about a month prior, and by now, most of his nervousness had bled away and been replaced by a singular focus on getting stronger.

Jake had kept tempering him with his own curse energy over this period and had seen it slowly feed the young man’s curse of hatred. Based on his talks with the guy, his progress was beyond anything he had ever seen before.

To try to boost his progress further, Jake had also considered giving him a Blessing but ultimately decided not to. First of all, Temlat didn’t really exist. He was effectively just a copy of someone who died trillions of years ago, so Jake wasn’t sure he even could bless him. Secondly, even if Jake could, he wasn’t sure he wanted to, as it risked exposing Jake could bless someone without the Viper’s approval. There was also that it was a bit of a dickmove to do it without the Viper saying it was okay in the first place. Oh, and finally, say Jake did give him a Blessing, wouldn’t that just contaminate the Records Jake wanted to impart? Wouldn’t the Records of a Primordial replace many of his own and make it much less Jake’s Creation, worsening the final evaluation? Probably, which is why Jake stuck to just helping his student the usual way.

Progress-wise, Temlat had only gained a single level this month, but Jake was all good with that. The young man had instead improved many of his skills, and based on how fast the potency of his curse energy grew, Jake didn’t doubt he would be able to level up fast when necessary.

In the alchemy department, Jake’s little student had even made a bit of progress. Jake had expected him to have a profession related to being a ”pet,” which he did kind of have, but it wasn’t what Jake expected. The one he had was pretty much a double-agent kind of deal and gave him a bunch of skills to try and deceive people while keeping himself hidden. The profession was also related to curses, so that was a win for sure. Plus, there were a few skills in there he worked on turning more alchemy-like.

One skill he had that was already useable was one to condense curse fragments. It was pretty much a worse version of the skill Jake had been offering to make curse marbles, but it was a start. As for how he would use his curse energy, Jake wouldn’t dictate. He was very much a hands-off teacher and just believed in creating the best environment for Temlat to figure shit out himself while helping him improve his fundamental power. Ah, but he did do some teacher-like things, like answering questions as best as he could.

”I don’t get this part of the ritual circle,” Temlat asked as he brought a book related to rituals that could utilize curse energy. ”The lines don’t seem to connect at all with the other segments…”

Jake studied the book for a bit as he recognized the ”issue” Temlat spoke of. ”It’s because the connection will be established by the liquid you need to pour into the formation indents here, here and here. Blood is recommended, but as you don’t have the Legacy skill of the Malefic Viper, you need to figure out a way to make your own useful.”

”Can I use someone else’s blood?”

”Sure, but they need to be strong enough for their blood to support the rest of the formation, and I reckon you need to infuse them with a lot of curse energy beforehand. Oh, and they need to be kept alive throughout,” Jake gladly answered. ”If they die and their Truesoul disperses, so will their Records and the power in their blood. So at least keep the Truesoul around.”

”How would I do that?” Temlat asked curiously.

”There are many ways to delay someone’s soul from dispersing. In your case, modifying the ritual circle a bit to include focal points to seal in the creatures you want the blood from is probably recommended. That way, their soul will disperse the moment the ritual circle is done doing its job,” Jake said as he sent out a string of mana and took a book from one of the big piles Jake had thrown there. ”Here, check this one out; it talks about it.”

”Thank you, Lord Thayne,” Temlat said in a respectful voice. ”I will be sure to make you proud and hopefully make me worthy of being your student.”

”Just keep up the good work, yeah?” Jake smiled, pretty satisfied so far, just happy that Temlat seemed very interested in something.

”Also, Lord Thayne, I am allowed to study all the books here, right?” Temlat asked. ”Nothing is off-limits?”

”Of course,” Jake shrugged. ”That’s why I brought them. Why, do you have any more questions regarding anything? While I am not sure what’s in all the books, I have read quite a few of them.”

”No… no, I simply wanted to make sure,” Temlat said as he bowed. ”I shall return to my studies.”

”Don’t forget resistance training later,” Jake said, seeing the young man shiver at the mention of it.

Resistance training was, of course, Jake’s signature presence-resistance training regiment. He knew from helping Caleb train his shadow assassins that just a little bit of resistance training did wonders, and from the looks of it, Temlat was also helped tremendously. It helped him manage his own energy better and keep his head calm even when wielding amounts of curse energy, which some would argue was too much for him.

Watching Temlat walk off after looking for a few books, Jake couldn’t help but feel like things were really going smoothly.

Sadly, Jake did run into having to do a few more Merit Point missions. He learned that the things Temlat worked on couldn’t be refunded to the exchange, and Jake had been experimenting a bit too much, losing more than he had earned. But he made something positive out of it as he scouted out all the other worlds properly.

He also took the opportunity to confirm that he could bring Temlat through portals to other worlds, which confirmed Jake’s theory that once the young man had gone through a portal, he could use it from that point onward. This proved to be really advantageous when Jake discovered one of the worlds turned out to be a great place to level for someone like Temlat.

Something Jake, of course, made the young man do so he could get a grasp of Temlat’s power level, and, well… let’s just say Jake would also have to throw some combat lessons in there.