The Primal Hunter 8: A LitRPG Adventure, page 1
THE PRIMAL HUNTER 8
©2024 ZOGARTH
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Also by Zogarth
Also in series:
The Primal Hunter 1
The Primal Hunter 2
The Primal Hunter 3
The Primal Hunter 4
The Primal Hunter 5
The Primal Hunter 6
The Primal Hunter 7
The Primal Hunter 8
The Primal Hunter 9
Check out the entire series here! (Tap or scan)
Contents
Previously on the Primal Hunter…
1. Mushrooms... So Many Mushrooms
2. Truly Evil Dungeon Design
3. Heroes of the Ninth Floor
4. Mushroom Massacre & Friend Visit
5. United in Hatred
6. Reflecting On Stats & Supreme Final Boss
7. A Rude Interruption
8. An (Un)expected Situation
9. Reika & the Insurmountable Task of Trying to Explain Jake
10. Friendships & The Question Of Why They Are So Damn Hard
11. An Offer Difficult to Refuse
12. A Teaching Moment
13. Two Very Different Fates
14. “You are never going to let me live this down, are you?” - Jake Thayne
15. A Real Anomaly
16. A Small Shopping Trip
17. Equipment for Him & Her
18. Something Wrong
19. In an Instant
20. Celestial Alignment of Yore
21. Across the World
22. Just Sand-Witch Things
23. Into the Ground
24. Making (Unpleasant) Business Deals
25. Painting the Desert Blue
26. A Sandy Sand Worm
27. A Whole New Worm
28. Searching for a Path
29. A Logical Conclusion
30. Just Winging It
31. Godly Interference & Advice
32. Hunter Level 180 Skill Selection & Being Hunted
33. Snake Girl = Danger Noodle
34. Taking Status & Making Plans
35. Schemers
36. Rebuilding & Lots of Killing
37. Chronicles of Skill Upgrades
38. Sky Whale & Old Acquaintance
39. Teaching How to Human & Angry Shark
40. Angry Shark, Doo Doo Doo Doo Doo
41. A Bloody Mystery
42. What Even is a Health Potion?
43. The First Sage
44. Annoyingly Complicated
45. Sandy's Personal Aquarium
46. In This Time of Change
47. All Hail Sandy
48. Strategizing
49. Assessment & Preparation
50. Broken Sky
51. Unique Trump Cards
52. Sun & Rain
53. Miscalculations & a Third Meeting
54. 0/10 Master, Would Not Recommend
55. End of Conflict: The Start of Another
56. Towards Haven We Go
57. Bold Plans
58. World-Tier Preparation
59. Towards a Better Future
60. A Chill Trip
61. Family Time
Intermission 10 - Arthur
62. More to the Story
63. A Visit to the Resident Mad Scientist
64. Snake Friends Visit!
65. C-grade Checklist
66. Sensing the Missing Link in Monster Alchemy
67. A Feathery Reunion
68. The Eve Before the Third World Congress
69. The Third World Congress
70. Earth's Final Trial
71. A World That Makes Sense
72. Snake in the City
73. A Friend of a Friend is a Rival
74. Back to School Season
75. Not That Dense... Okay, a Little
76. The Library of a Sage
77. Profession = Done
78. The Importance of Time
Thank you for reading The Primal Hunter 8
Previously on the Primal Hunter…
The last time we saw our hero, Jake had finally gotten his ass off Earth and was out exploring a bit more of the wider multiverse in the last book, huh? Alright, not really; he was more just visiting the school founded by his drinking buddy and not doing much exploring. A school that also wasn’t really a school but more of a self-study academy where you had to sign up for all the classes yourself with no compulsory curriculum.
He also had to deal with annoying political stuff. Case-in-point, he was made to participate in a get-together for new members of the Order of the Malefic Viper from the new universe. There, he was confronted by two dragonkin. One of them was a woman who wanted him to join her little Dragonflight by the name of Helen, and another, a Malefic Dragonkin with a Divine Blessing from Villy called Draskil.
The female Dragonkin ended up outing Jake as a Bloodline Patriarch, as she also had one, instantly annoying him and leaving a less-than-positive first impression. Alas, this political get-together soon ended, only for Jake to have to attend the World Congress. Yay, more politics.
There, he met up with Miranda and others from Haven, but also the Fallen King – formerly known as the Tutorial Boss King of the Forest that Jake killed in book 2 and revived in book 6 – who could also attend. Which created quite the chaos as the Fallen King was, well, a king. This gave the Unique Lifeform quite a bit of influence during the Congress simply due to how many votes he had.
Anyway, to make a long story short, a lot of people didn’t like to have a powerful Unique Lifeform monster be part of the meeting, but in the end, they did get the two votes during this Congress done in a proper fashion. One of the votes was about selecting a World Leader, where nobody was picked as expected, and the other was about an upcoming system event known as the Path of Myriad Choices.
This Path of the Myriad Choices system event had two parts. One of them was about selecting a Path for Earth that would help those struggling with finding their own Path and progress, and the other was about an upcoming event known as the Seat of the Exalted Prima, which one could enter as long as they collected at least three Key Fragments of the Exalted Prima (remember those from prior books when he killed that monkey Prima and he bird that bullied Sylphie and her parents? Yeah, I didn’t forget about it!).
With everything on Earth handled for now, Jake went right back to the Order of the Malefic Viper, where he decided it was time to go offload some items and maybe even look into some new gear and buy some alchemical ingredients.
To do that, he visited the Nalkar House of vampires that belonged to the Order of the Malefic Viper. During the Treasure Hunt (book 5), he gathered a lot of vampire stuff that originally stemmed from a realm that had fallen many eras ago, including a token related to the Nalkar Vampire Lineage, and now it was time to sell it off.
Jake quickly made a discovery after visiting these vampires… they were bloody hoarders blinded by their past glory. This meant Jake got overpaid for all the old crap he had gathered, making him feel quite vindicated. He knew all along that stealing even the chairs and other random furniture had been a great call as the hoarder vampires thirsted not over blood but old, useless memorabilia.
Through this visit, Jake not only got a lot more Credits and alchemical ingredients, but even got an upgrade to his spatial necklace, so it was definitely worth the trip.
Back from scamming vampires, Jake returned to his alchemy, concocting better and better poisons as the days slowly passed until one day, he was contacted by Miranda and told that Carmen – the boxer girl related the the divine faction known as Valhal – would soon arrive at Haven to ask for his assistance.
Taking that as his cue to return to Earth, Jake even got a new teleportation disc from Villy on the way, allowing him to go back from elsewhere than Haven. Considering he was going on an expediti
On Earth, things had been going well during Jake’s absence, with the newest system event kicking in and allowing many of those who had gotten stuck to progress once more. It allowed those who had been pigeonholed into a specific Path due to their circumstances to switch direction for something they would actually like. This included Phillip, the former leader of the Fort close to Haven, who had switched from being a military leader to a guy who used magic to punch things harder.
On his way back to meet up with Carmen, Jake was intercepted in the middle of the void by a mysterious creature that he later came to know was a Void God called Oras. It asked him to deliver a gift to Arnold before the Viper popped in and had a friendly conversation with the god while tossing Jake back on his way to Earth.
The gift he received turned out to be for Arnold – resident tech guy of Haven and connoisseur of drones - who had been blessed by the eldritch being that, to Jake, looked like an endless sea of eyeballs. Meeting up with the best birb, Sylphie, Jake heads off to meet up with Carmen for her to finally have a family reunion, stopping by Arnold’s on the way to deliver the eldritch gift while questioning the sanity of the man.
Carmen herself was busy destroying an illegal slave trade ring when Jake finally met up with her, and after a brief visit to Haven, where they had a very enlightening discussion regarding the acceptability of troll gardeners, they set out for their trip.
From here, their road trip began. One that included fighting monsters, killing Primas for those keys, and even making friends with the local wildlife when their party encountered a powerful C-grade snake that Jake ended up giving a Blessing. At least Jake viewed them as friends, while the snake had more of a fangirl vibe.
After getting some help with their travels from their new snake friends, Jake, Carmen, and Sylphie continued. Following a good deal of city-hopping through the expansive teleportation network Earth had begun to have, as well as a lot of running across plains while Jake tracked down another Prima to kill, they finally arrived in a city called Paradise.
A city where laws were more of a suggestion rather than a rule. It was also the place where Carmen’s less-than-nice family had decided to settle down. On the way, they even met up and traveled with this nice guy called Peter, who turned out to be the son of the United Cities Alliance – an organization very critical of Jake, the Fallen King, and any divine faction. Oh yeah, and then Peter was also the brother of Jacob, the de facto leader of the Holy Church.
Entering Paradise, Jake and Carmen quickly found a hotel to check into while Peters headed off on his own and was practically never heard from again in the rest of the story. Anyway, this hotel had an attached casino Jake promptly visited, using his Bloodline to scam them until he was approached by a man who turned out to be the City Leader. The man named Renato was more than happy to assist the Chosen of the Malefic Viper and an influential member of Valhal, though let’s be honest, he just wanted Jake the fuck out of his city so he could stop causing trouble.
During Jake’s casino scam, Carmen was busy scouting out the mansion her family was occupying. There, she discovered they were living happy, unbothered lives in their big mansion. Something that left her with quite complicated feelings.
Nevertheless, after a conversation with Jake, Carmen decided to go visit. Because what could possibly go wrong?
Well, it turns out her family were still very much the same shitty people Carmen remembered them as. Not only were they doing plenty of immortal and illegal shit, Carmen’s most hated cousin, who had led to Carmen going to jail before the system arrived, even turned out to be dating a warlock who was into human experimentation.
Only Carmen’s mother turned out to not suck ass. Peak family drama ensued, which resulted in Carmen’s family tree of living relatives getting a severe trimming. After that, she and Jake headed back to the hotel as Renato cleaned up their mess, and after a nice and cathartic conversation about how awesome revenge was, poor Jake was (more than willingly) attacked by the aggressive woman and unceremoniously thrown toward the bed for nightly wrestling.
The next morning, Jake was feeling fresh and did what any man would do after a nightly escapade: hunting. Sylphie stayed with Carmen, who had to sort out some things regarding her mother, leaving Jake to have some solo adventure time again.
Jake soon found a nice little jungle to hunt in, where he trained his stealth skills a bit, got some levels, and finally stumbled upon his very first C-grade opponent. Several chapters and a Lion King reference later, Jake came out victorious, even getting a nice little skill upgrade to his movement skill on the way.
Happy with his kill and a short rest later, Jake and everyone else who managed to gather three Prima Key Fragments were swept away to the system event known as the Seat of the Exalted Prima. There, Jake met up with old friends and frenemies but soon discovered that the place they were brought to had quite a lot more people than simply those from Earth.
It turned out that this Seat of the Exalted Prima was something known as a World Wonder. A system-created place, only a few of them existed in the entire multiverse, with Nevermore being the most well-known (which it will also be for you in a few books). Based on the objectives they got, this World Wonder was even one someone could eventually take control of. However, that is a plot point that won’t be relevant for many books to come, so you can kind of ignore that piece of information for now. Which begs the question of why I even included it here. Truly baffling.
Anyway, Jake and the others were confronted with all sorts of other enlightened (read: humanoids with race/class/profession), who all turned out to also stem from the Milky Way. Truthfully, Jake didn’t spot many he found worth mentioning and swiftly proceeded to the event on offer: the Path of Myriad Choices.
This system event was an opportunity for someone to change their Paths once more, but one aimed at the powerful rather than the lost. A way to optimize their Paths. Each person who did it had the opportunity to experience an alternative reality based on whether they changed one vital choice they made earlier in their lives.
Jake was able to choose between a few things, such as if he never entered the Challenge Dungeon in the Tutorial and become Villy’s Chosen and stuff like that, but one of the choices truly stuck out. One of when he was a child, stopping his parents from leaving the house because he had a bad feeling.
Changing this choice ended up creating an entirely different life for Jake. A version of Jake who never got a brother and had to grow up in an orphanage because his parents died in a car crash the day he stopped them. This version of Jake never suppressed his Bloodline but instead embraced it, becoming an adrenaline junkie hitman with an ego even bigger than regular Jake’s.
In this system event, Jake was just a silent observer of another simulated reality, with his other self acting entirely independently. Both parties were unable to interact with each other in any way, with the simulacrum version of Jake unable to detect the real Jake. At least he wasn’t meant to. Through the power of Bloodline-fuckery, his simulacrum ended up realizing he was part of a simulation and that the real Jake was observing him.
Anyhow, one thing led to another, and Jake ended up with what was effectively a clone of himself stuck inside of an item and crammed into his Soulspace. However, as a simulacrum, this other version of Jake – referred to as Sim-Jake – couldn’t survive for long but would eventually simply merge with the real Jake.
The two of them laid down a plan where Sim-Jake would teach Jake what he knew from a lifetime of violence with the goal of ultimately making the merging as seamless as possible and teaching Jake how to suck less in melee combat. Potentially, even find a way to make Sim-Jake a semi-permanent part of Jake. Potentially through the cursed Chimera from Eternal Hunger this other version of Jake seemed highly interested in. Yes, this is the most unsubtle foreshadowing ever.
Now, due to the peculiar nature of how Jake handled the event, he got a top-tier evaluation and soon after appeared within a garden terrace only for those with high scores. There, he met an alien from the Nahoom race, another species from the Milky Way. What’s more, this person also had a Bloodline.
