The Primal Hunter

The ground shattered as the two beings clashed. Mountains were torn asunder, and space shuddered with every impact as their bout seemed to go through a neverending cycle of change. The larger of the two figures repeatedly adapted and transformed in response to the attacks of its small attacker, while the small combatant seemed to always be able to counter whatever the monster did.

Jake stood back and observed this all as huge areas of the Soulspace were ripped apart. It was a fight clearly far beyond D-grade, and yet sim-Jake didn’t even seem that pressed. The level of power Jake could display inside his Soulspace had always been a bit of a mystery to him. It wasn’t a real world, but just one created from his Records and his own mind. Kind of. It was real and yet imaginary - a dreamscape.

What sim-Jake was fighting was naturally the chimera made up of the curse energy from Eternal Hunger. The hulking monstrosity of pure energy had an ever-shifting body that constantly tried to adapt and improve to better kill and consume sim-Jake, but even with everything it did, it was a losing battle. Not that it cared, considering it was just pure instincts with not a shred of thought within. It just saw sim-Jake and wanted to eat sim-Jake, because that is what it did. One could almost call it eternally hungry.

The fight finally reached the zenith as sim-Jake vaulted over its massive form and, before it could adapt, smashed his katar down into its head. The blade extended in an explosive way on impact and blasted the chimera into the ground below, where it took a bit to re-condense its body. Mind you, no energy was actually lost by either of them, and this battle could truly go on forever or until Jake himself died, thus making the Soulspace disappear.

Getting a feeling it was time to interfere, Jake stepped forward and once more wrapped up the chimera in mana strings and re-sealed it. Primarily so that it would stop trying to constantly eat Villy’s blood only to hurt itself and actually risk getting destroyed.

Sim-Jake nodded at him in approval once the job was done. “I must say, that arcane affinity is nifty.”

“Definitely better than the boring dark affinity,” Jake said in return.

“Spoken like someone who never bothered to explore it properly,” sim-Jake shook his head. “Also… an elf slave, really? How fucking stereotypical can you get?”

“Villy set me up,” Jake shook his head in the exact same fashion as sim-Jake had. “But I am handling it. More importantly, you seem to be having fun playing with that little bundle of very hungry joy.”

“Definitely worth it,” sim-Jake nodded. “It is better at fighting than most beasts I have encountered and is pretty damn interesting in the way it constantly adapts. Forces me to stay on my toes, you know? How come you never trained against it?”

Jake scratched his hair. “I maybe should have… anyway. How was your nap? Feeling rested and good to go?”

“Adequately rested, sure. I have been awake for a few hours now and just sat back and watched,” sim-Jake shrugged. “I really don’t have much interest in all of that alchemy crap, and based on how clueless I still am when it comes to it, I haven’t merged with any Records related to your profession.”

“But do you get the attraction?” Jake asked.

“Kind of?” sim-Jake answered, pondering the question. “I get the attraction in the complexity and that it can offer a different sort of challenge, though the lack of life and death makes it a bit less interesting.”

“Eh, a bit, but it makes up for it with pure complexity. The field of alchemy is so damn broad, and there is so much to learn and so much to craft. I feel like I would be able to keep doing alchemy forever while still progressing," Jake smiled. “But enough about me. This version of me. What is the lay of the land?”

Sim-Jake sighed. “A mixed bag. First of all, my skills are gone. All of them. This is partly to be expected, but I don’t even bloody remember how the skills worked anymore. I tried recreating some, but anything even remotely complex is completely lost to me. I have a feeling the system purposefully did it like this, but I am not sure.”

“That sounds plausible,” Jake nodded. “It probably deemed it too much to borderline hand me a bunch of skills to learn. Sure, they wouldn’t be skills, but that level of knowledge would make doing what the skills did a lot easier and make me learn them far faster.”

“True,” sim-Jake concurred. “However, there is one exception. After coming here, I naturally lost my Blessing and all connection to Umbra as well as anything related to Tenlucis… but I got a skill related to Umbra very early on. Before I was blessed.”

“You mean?” Jake asked with realization.

“Shadow Vault,” sim-Jake smirked as he jumped backward and used the skill as he turned into a shadowy form for a second before fully reappearing. “This one I can still use… but my version was at a higher rarity. As it is, this Shadow Vault doesn’t really jell with us anymore.”

Jake nodded. He hadn’t really used Basic Shadow Vault of Umbra for a long time, and the reason for that was simple: it was prone to do more damage than good. If he encountered anything while using Shadow Vault, he would lose heath, mana, or other resources, and at his current grade, it was hard to travel in a straight line without anything getting in the way. If he had a clear line to where he wanted to go, One Step was just better.

“Any thoughts?” Jake asked, but he kind of knew the answer already.

“We gotta use it with this,” sim-Jake said as he condensed a small arcane bolt. “And yeah, I can, of course, use the affinity too. Though I must say, I don’t quite understand it… I can just use it. Weird that one. Like, I get the destructive parts of it, but I have a hard time balancing it with the stability and making it useable.”

As he said that, the arcane bolt looked a bit unstable and soon scattered by itself as sim-Jake shook his head. “Anyway, we need to make Shadow Vault work with our arcane affinity, but without losing what actually makes Shadow Vault so great. More importantly, we need to get rid of its connection to Umbra.”

“Being a bit harsh towards your old Patron,” Jake joked, but he got it. Having skills related to several gods at the same time wasn’t necessarily a bad thing, but it could lead to some conflicts, especially when it came to upgrading the skills. One of the primary reasons Jake so easily upgraded his “of the Malefic Viper” skills was because of his deep connection with Villy, flooding him with Records related to the Primordial and hence his skills. One could say that as his Chosen, Jake was playing life on easy mode in regards to upgrading his Legacy skills. In the same vein, then the less connection Jake had with Umbra, the harder upgrading it would become.

“I am not being harsh, just realistic. Either way, I have some thoughts in regards to Shadow Vault and will focus on improving it. Or at least find a good direction,” sim-Jake said.

Jake nodded once more. “Now for the main dish. Melee combat. I assume you lost the skill you had made with your fighting style?”

“I never really had one,” sim-Jake just answered blankly. “I got that starting weapon skill to uncommon rarity, after which I didn’t even try to upgrade it anymore. I thought it would be a bad idea to upgrade an existing skill if I wanted to make my own style…”

“That isn’t how that works,” Jake said with exasperation.

“And I know that now. Major trust issues, remember?” sim-Jake scoffed, a bit offended. “Not that you should complain. That just means I retained one hundred percent of that knowledge. Again, that was probably helped along and approved by the system.”

“What more knowledge have you lost?” Jake asked, a bit concerned.

Sim-Jake fell silent a bit as he sighed. “A lot… but it is more like they are being replaced. I remember taking a university exam despite never going to university, but I do also recall the university itself as I once followed a target while there. The only things still clear in my mind are all the things after the system and mainly events related to fighting. If I stand here and try to remember details of mundane things, I instead just remember what you did. It is weird, man.”

Jake felt a bit guilty as he knew part of this was caused by him fucking up a bit during the infusion process of the bone. Yet he also knew this was an inevitable conclusion to two people with the same Truesoul sharing a Soulspace. Well, that, or be like the guy who went insane that Villy mentioned.

Nevertheless.

“Sorry,” Jake apologized.

“For what? For replacing memories of digging through dumpsters alone while avoiding adults wanting to take advantage of me with new ones of begging mom and dad to get fast food at the drive-through? Sure, both resulted in us eating trash, but at least I had a family and a brother in one of those memories,” sim-Jake joked, but then turned more serious. “I am being genuine here. You clearly made the better choices and ended up better off than I did. All I had was being strong and good at fighting. Sure, you are still a broken-ass human with major issues, but you are less broken than I was. Did you know I was a damn virgin? Not due to lack of opportunity, but because I thought it too risky to get vulnerable with another person. How pathetic is that?”

“Dude, too much information,” Jake said, trying to lighten the mood.

“Considering I got flooded with very vivid memories of sleeping with a certain Runemaiden, I don’t think you have much to say,” sim-Jake smirked. “At least I now have memories that I actually find positive. Ah, the one with Carmen included. I am becoming you more and more by the day, and I fully accept that. The day you learn everything I can teach you is also the day I will finally become a real boy. By becoming you.”

“Already beginning to inherit some humor at least,” Jake also smiled. They looked at each other for a bit before sim-Jake spoke once more.

“Well then, enough sentimental bullshit. Come at me,” sim-Jake said as he spread his arms wide.

“Unarmed?” Jake asked.

“That you think it makes a difference already proves how much you suck,” sim-Jake confidently said before taking a more relaxed stance. “Alright, the first lesson i-“

Sim-Jake charged forward, barely giving Jake time to react as he managed to block. A follow-up came, but he was able to dodge it. However, as he tried to avoid the third blow, sim-Jake managed to grab hold of his clothes and swung him over his back, smashing Jake into the ground.

“First lesson is to always seize the momentum,” sim-Jake smiled as he backed away.

Jake stood up and didn’t hesitate to attack. He went for a punch that was dodged, and as he tried to land a kick, his leg was caught. Sim-Jake just smirked again as he tossed Jake away, making him land on the ground with a thud.

The entire “fight” had been without either of them really using any superhuman abilities, and even then, the difference was clear.

“As you see, you do way better defensively. It is also pretty stupid to make such wide moves against someone with your instincts. So, let us say the second lesson is to not just go in swinging without thinking,” sim-Jake said.

Jake stood up again and cracked his neck. “Let’s go again.”

Sim-Jake just laughed. “Man, you are going to make people believe we are into self-harm.”

The next half an hour or so was spent with Jake fighting sim-Jake, or more accurately, Jake getting his ass whooped by his own simulacrum. After half an hour, Jake decided he wanted a win, so they changed up the rules by removing all rules.

Arcane explosions, arrows, shadow magic, and all sorts of methods were deployed. The two of them were perfectly evenly matched in power as they shared the same Truesoul, making it a truly “fair” fight. There were still differences in skill-set, though.

Sim-Jake was very good at dodging arrows, but real-Jake was very good at landing them too, and his curving arrows coupled with magical attacks made it undodgeable even for him. Meanwhile, sim-Jake would come out on top whenever he got close enough to land blows with his katars before Jake could disengage. Overall, Jake won most of the time, which was only to be expected as he ultimately had more experience due to having lived with the system longer.

Eventually, they both stopped as sim-Jake sighed. “This was actually a little productive as I have a better sense of your fighting style now. And a newfound hatred for bows. Those fucky curvy arrows are just annoying.”

“Guess we still got some way to go before we are perfectly similar,” Jake laughed at his simulacrum’s dislike for bows. Bows rocked.

“Anyway, go back to the outside world,” sim-Jake said.

“Is my life that entertaining?” Jake asked jokingly.

“No, not really, but it is the best I got, and I at least find the company you keep interesting,” sim-Jake answered. “Don’t worry, I will also be busy practicing and maybe having a few bouts with the chimera.”

“Suit yourself,” Jake shrugged as he disappeared from his Soulspace and opened his eyes in the real world. He was sitting on his bed within the mansion and stretched as if he had just woken up.

“Hey, Villy,” Jake spoke out loud. “Is the inside of the Soulspace considered a Dreamscape Simulation?”

A small hole in space was opened as a head poked out. “It is a version of one, yep. Took you long enough to figure that one out.”

“Oh… I think I get it now,” Jake nodded. It had been bothering him but he kind of understood now. “Sim-Jake can keep being a simulacrum because he just went from one simulation into another… with the difference being that I am running the new simulation. Or, well, my Truesoul is the one powering it.”

“Close enough to be true,” Villy, the floating head, said. “So was that everything?”

“Yep. See you around.”

With that, the head popped back into the hole in space and disappeared. It was just a small realization Jake had reached and wanted to confirm.

Still sitting on the bed, Jake could see the entire mansion through his sphere and saw Meira and Duskleaf in the library, still working hard. During their earlier talk, Duskleaf made it clear that while he would teach Jake about formations – only because Jake was pretty much a total novice – he would not touch anything else.

So, Jake still needed regular lessons. With that in mind, he took out his Order Token and began looking through everything that was on offer. He hadn’t been gone for that long, but long enough for him to not really be able to follow the old lessons he had been enrolled in. Fortunately, there was never a lack of willing teachers, especially not in the lower grades, making it easy to find replacements.

The next hour or so was spent picking out lessons about concocting poison and brewing potions with a few general lessons about miscellaneous topics mixed in as well as two related to elixirs. Coupled with the lessons Jake would have with Duskleaf, and his planned resistance training sessions with Meira, Jake’s schedule was packed moving forward.

Looking at the many lessons planned and what they were about, Jake had a feeling he never thought he would ever have…

He was actually happy to be back in school.