The Primal Hunter 7: A LitRPG Adventure, page 28
"You sure you really wanna come?" Carmen asked skeptically, with Jake getting why. The guy looked young, probably barely in his twenties. He also just struck Jake as a bit green, even if his level was high. He was too… cheerful. But then again, Jake wasn’t the best at reading people if they were good at hiding their emotions.
"I can carry my own weight," he said, smiling. "Trust me, I will be of use, even in a fight!"
Jake just shrugged. "Just know we aren’t your babysitters."
"Naturally not.” The warrior kept smiling.
After a bit more convincing and the man even pulling out a small satchel with snacks for Sylphie, their group was convinced. If nothing else, he was a damn good planner. They continued their journey, which had rapidly turned from a three-man journey into a four-man one.
This did change the dynamic quite a bit, as Jake and Carmen were the kinds of people who could run through the plains for twenty hours straight without exchanging a single word. But this guy? It was like he had a condition that would make him explode if he shut up for more than ten minutes straight.
Anyway, this guy was called Peter, the kid of the city leader of Puddlerock. At first, he’d seemed a tad… well, dull, but the more the guy talked, the more Jake’s opinion changed. Even Carmen seemed to shift her perception.
Peter had originally been a member of the Holy Church. The plan had been for him to get good relations with the massive faction on the planet to help out his father—and because he genuinely wanted to make Earth a better place. The Church had been present on both continents from the start, with its influence spreading from the beginning.
At first, the young man had fit in well. His affinity for light magic was high, and he’d quickly been recruited as a potential paladin. He had risen through the ranks, gained power, had his own elite party, and generally just been a real asset. He’d actually enjoyed his time there and thought the Church a force of good… until something happened.
Peter had been part of the Treasure Hunt. He had left pretty early on due to getting into a scuffle with vampires a bit above his own league, but some members of his party had stayed behind. One of them was a mage that the young guy clearly had a crush on despite not admitting it, even with all his blabbering.
She never returned.
This in itself was not that suspicious. Many had died during the hunt. Peter had kept going as normal for months after that until one day, he had coincidentally met up with her parents and heard them talk about how much of a hero their daughter had been. Peter had agreed, but when they talked a bit more about her, he found out that she hadn’t died in a fight or anything like that. She had sacrificed herself in a ritual to create a sword.
Jake remembered the Sword Bertram had used on the Monarch of Blood. He remembered the power Bertram had displayed, but only now did it make sense how they had managed to create it.
Peter had been distraught, and he’d only felt more messed up when no one around him thought it that weird. They’d praised her sacrifice and said she was just in the Holy Land now. He had even been brought to speak to her spirit… but still. She had explained how she had reached the end of her Path and had trouble gaining levels, and she had gone out doing what was best for everyone.
Even if Peter could see the logic, he just didn’t like it. He had heard about it happening, but, like an idiot, never believed it would happen to someone he cared about. His faith was broken, and it was almost as if his progress stopped from one day to the next.
When the system event of Unusual Unions arrived, he’d participated and become what he was today. He had even renounced the god from the Holy Church that had blessed him. This had all led to some fallout between Puddlerock and the Holy Church, and honestly, Jake put two and two together pretty quickly—Peter’s old man hoped to create good relations with Valhal and the Order of the Malefic Viper through Jake and Carmen, as the bridge to the Holy Church was more or less burned.
Since the event, Peter had progressed more than ever and begun leveling again. He was not associated with any faction besides the United Cities Alliance and was more or less a lone wolf. Now, for the final question: How was he in a fight? Well, that was yet to be determined, as none of the guards or officers they met as they teleported around wanted one. And boy, did they meet a lot of guards.
The next days were spent teleporting to a city, going to the public office of the city, and then tracking down Carmen’s family in the records. Luckily they were a group of nearly thirty people, making them stand out quite a bit, but it was still damn annoying.
Peter helped immensely by cutting away all the red tape and giving them instant access. It still took a while to get around and put together everything, but finally, they got confirmation after visiting city number eleven.
The family was found.
They were in a city without a teleportation circle in it and had lived there for about two months. Now, while this city didn’t have a teleportation circle currently, that didn’t mean it had never had one. It had been deactivated about three weeks back due to what an official described as "political differences” that were “currently being resolved."
Talking to a merchant who had been there recently, things became clearer.
"Eh, they had some issues with the guy running it not wanting to contribute taxes or something, last I heard… or maybe it had something to do with all the workers. I honestly don’t know, but the place is a damn mess and keeps raking in money. I would generally stay away.”
"Why?" Jake asked.
The merchant looked at Jake and shook his head. "The place is just a bit messed up and serves a certain clientele… but hey, if you are into whores, gambling, and doing some messed-up stuff, you may enjoy it. I sure know I ain’t going back. If I did, my wife would kill me."
For some reason, Carmen smiled upon hearing this description. As for Peter, he just frowned, clearly not aware of the place. As for the name of the city… well, it had the most on-the-nose name Jake had ever encountered:
Paradise.
Chapter 32
Tracking & Danger Bird
Paradise. A city with a rather apt description for certain kinds of people. It was the kind of place that the United Cities Alliance didn’t truly recognize as a member but still wanted in their circle. A necessary evil, so to say, where all the weird and controversial shit could be done. A center of debauchery, wealth, and whatever the heart desired—and that came from its own marketing.
Peter had gone and gathered all the intel he could on the place. Considering what he got was clearly a watered-down version of the actual place, Jake was impressed the "civilized" United Cities Alliance hadn’t denounced it yet. They didn’t exactly promote or endorse it, instead just acting like Paradise didn’t really exist, and their stance had led to some recent trouble, resulting in the teleportation circle being cut off.
This meant they would have to travel there on foot, which the clerk heavily advised against. Apparently, one would have to pass quite the dangerous zone where these gazelle-like creatures roamed, and they were known to be rather aggressive towards anyone invading their territory. Hearing this, Jake naturally knew they had to check it out.
There was still one thing bothering him, though.
"Any idea why your family would choose to settle down in that kind of place?" Jake asked Carmen the second they were outside the city.
She looked to be thinking for a moment before answering, "I don’t really want to know, but if I had to guess, then it is because they thrive in that kind of environment. My aunt and uncle made their fortune by running a casino, and I know my grandparents were heavily involved in the medicinal industry, so producing drugs or shit like that is right up their alley. As for my parents, they probably just followed whatever my grandparents, uncle, and aunt wanted."
"Sounds like a pretty messed-up family dynamic," Jake commented.
"Yeah," Carmen said simply.
"Whatever the case, I hope they are safe," Peter tried to comfort her. It didn’t seem to work very well, as Carmen just ignored the guy.
While Jake did believe Carmen wanted them to be "safe," he had an odd feeling about why she wanted that. She seemed to carry a lot of animosity, yet she also clearly wanted to meet them again. Jake knew he wasn’t even halfway qualified to try and figure out what was going on, but he did know that Carmen certainly didn’t come from a typical family.
"Let’s just get moving," Carmen said, making them drop the topic as the four of them headed off.
Jake took out the Prima fragment to inquire with Peter. "You killed any Primas or gained any fragments?"
The young man sighed and shook his head. "Yes to the first one, no to the second. While I was still with the Church, we killed a Prima, but the fragment was given back to the leaders. I haven’t killed or even come across any since then."
Jake nodded in understanding. "Alright. Just gonna say right now that we still need two for Carmen, so even if we come across any, she has them reserved."
"Naturally," the young man agreed.
Jake didn’t detect any hint of disappointment from him, so he nodded as they headed forward with great speed, only slowed down by Peter a little bit. Being a warrior with light magic, he was actually relatively fast, but his movement skills were more focused on instantaneous movement than long-range travel.
Sylphie helped as always with her wind magic, and only now did Peter seem to truly take notice of this small hawk. Jake hadn’t really thought much about it, but he now realized that most people probably just viewed Sylphie as an extension of Jake. An animal companion or something akin to that.
"I don’t think I ever properly introduced you to Sylphie, did I?" Jake asked, way overdue.
Peter just smiled and said, "I do not believe you did."
"Well, Sylphie is Sylphie, a pretty young little hawk and probably one of the strongest creatures on the planet at her level, with less than ten humans alive able to fight her.”
The young man froze a bit as he chuckled and looked at the hawk. "Nice to meet you."
"Ree!" Sylphie answered, slightly offended. Even she was able to detect his lack of belief in what Jake had said.
"I am not joking," Jake said in a serious tone. "She is higher level than both Carmen and I, and she is a high-tier variant."
"Yeah, I’m gonna be honest—I would probably lose in a fight." Carmen shrugged. "She is faster than any of us, incredibly elusive, hard to pin down, and has incredibly potent attacks."
Sylphie began circling them, and Jake could feel how much she enjoyed being praised and spoken highly of. Peter looked at the cute little hawk with newfound respect and a touch of fear, as he seemed to finally understand they weren’t joking. It did help that Sylphie was circling them faster and faster and created a small hurricane that they were in the eye of, even while running at high speed.
The guy also finally didn’t speak for more than ten minutes, as more than an hour passed in silence. He and Jake ended up opening their mouths at nearly the same time as they reached the outskirts of a grassy plain.
"I feel a Prima,” Jake said.
"We reached the territory of the gazelles."
Jake and Peter exchanged gazes, and Jake smirked. "Well, then, seems like this won’t be a waste of time. I am a bit confused, though. How come no one has bothered hunting down this gazelle?"
"It and its pack moved in—"
"A group of gazelles is called a herd," Jake corrected him.
"It and its herd moved in only a month or so ago, and they are fast and difficult to track down while also being rather powerful," Peter explained correctly.
Jake nodded as he felt for the Prima. He knelt down and sensed the faint energy left in the air by the Gazelle Prima as he and the others began making their way into the plains. While usually referred to as a mana signature, it was more accurate to call it an energy signature, as even someone like Carmen without mana had this identifiable trait. It was tied to the soul, and even with evolutions, it remained more or less the same. In many ways, it could be viewed as the DNA of the Truesoul.
There were ways to obscure it, and for the first time, Jake felt something like that. The trails of energy left by the Prima were muddled. It was like the beast had gone in both directions at the same time while also giving Jake a hunch it had actually gone in neither.
This was one way to hide trails better: making false ones. Jake’s stealth would hide his energy signature, and most stealth-related skills worked like that. Due to the way energy was related to the body, it was effectively entangled with the soul, meaning that when Jake used a stealth skill, it hid all the mana in his surroundings, even the traces he had passively left, before going stealth.
What the gazelle did was far more complicated than merely hiding. A false trail combined with stealth skills would mean the gazelle could easily create ambushes and whatnot while never itself falling into a trap. Moreover, when Jake felt the presence of other, non-Prima gazelles, he noted their trails were identical to the Prima’s.
"This thing is good," Jake muttered.
"What is it?" Carmen asked.
"The Gazelle Prima is able to mask its tracks and lay down false ones…” Jake turned to the young man. “Peter, have other people tried to hunt it?"
"Yeah, quite a few, but they never find it or never return," he said worriedly. “That is also why we didn’t even know it was even a Prima.”
Jake nodded. He inspected the energy signatures but simply had no way to properly distinguish them and track down the gazelles using them. Usually, this would be where Jake was fucked, but there was one more thing he could do.
He waved his hand, weaving strings of arcane mana that cut away some of the tall grass in front of him. He went forward as he scanned the area with Sphere of Perception until he finally found what he had been looking for.
"Please stay back," Jake said to the others as he carefully condensed mana under his feet and went forward, avoiding stepping on the grass. With the strings of mana, he cut away more grass as he finally found what he had been looking for: physical tracks.
Tracking in the new world was quite a bit different from old-world tracking. Tracking in the old world relied on spotting actual tracks, analyzing feces, and just looking for any physical evidence left behind by the traveling animal. A lot of these methods were made harder with the system. One such example was the fact that trampled grass was far more resilient and would simply make itself stand again, regenerating with a bit of mana mere minutes after being trampled.
However, the ground below did not even itself out. It became covered by the grass, but Jake could still see the earth below had been dented. Hoof marks had been left, and using them, it became clear the gazelles had gone through there. Unsurprisingly enough, there was no trail of energy despite them clearly running there, but one leading off in another false direction.
Now, it would be a difficult thing to determine where the tracks were pointing. Physical tracking was rarely done, and Jake could only really do it due to his incredibly high Perception allowing him to see minute changes coupled with his Sphere of Perception, but even that did not grant him the knowledge to read and analyze the tracks. This is where Jake had one final card up his sleeve: He used to really like binging those TV shows about guys drinking their own piss and walking around in the wild while explaining stuff.
"One has larger hooves than the others… but is lighter," Jake muttered. He followed the trail a bit and became more and more sure this one was relatively recent. The soil would still smooth itself out with time due to the grass and when it rained and whatnot, and he could see the absolutely minuscule smoothening of the hoof marks by only traveling half a kilometer or so. "That way for sure… and recent. Hm…"
Jake closed his eyes and took a deep breath. No matter how good the gazelle was, it was only D-grade like him. Even if it had a powerful skill and was talented, Jake had something even better: a high-as-fuck Perception stat.
Releasing some of his own arcane mana, he introduced stability into his surroundings. Everything seemed to almost freeze as Jake scanned the mana in the air and around the tracks. He discovered what he was looking for down inside the hoof-print he had been looking at—or, more accurately, embedded in the soil. It was just a faint wisp of energy that did not belong there. But it was enough. Once thoroughly scrutinized by Jake, it revealed itself as the kind of energy he had been looking for.
That of the Prima.
It was like the entire technique made to hide the Prima unraveled as he found this. The false tracks now correctly appeared false in his mind, and a true track emerged, leading into the distance.
"Got you."
[Hunter’s Tracking (Uncommon)] - The Hunter does not sit silently in his lodge but actively hunts for his prey. Unlocks proficiency in tracking down prey based on limited clues left behind. Also allows the Hunter to more easily identify characteristics of the game, including mana signatures and aura. Adds a small bonus to the effect of Perception while tracking.
-->
[Traditional Hunter’s Tracking (Rare)] - The Hunter does not sit silently in his lodge but actively hunts for his prey. Unlocks proficiency in tracking down prey based on limited clues left behind, including both magical and physical ones. Also allows the Hunter to more easily identify characteristics of the game, including mana signatures and aura. Allows the Hunter to more easily distinguish and analyze physical tracks. Adds a bonus to the effect of Perception while tracking.
Jake smiled as he got the upgrade. This one came as no surprise. He knew the tracking skill was a lot like the weapon skills or even the stealth skill. Abilities with identical names could have different effects, and Jake knew he had gone in a rather mundane—or traditional—direction with his tracking by using conventional methods, but it clearly had been good enough. Others would mix in odd stuff like analyzing space or the two perhaps most popular paths: karmic analysis and time magic.
