The Primal Hunter

Jake really had to restrain himself every time he visited Arnold. Mainly by suppressing his desire to see if he could break through the big dome of metal that guarded his workshop. It looked and felt damn sturdy, but he should have a good shot with enough destructive arcane mana. If not, then surely Touch of the Malefic could do it.

Alas, he was not there to break stuff.

He had already gone to see Arnold before he went on holiday, so he was a bit interested in why Arnold had asked for him to stop by. Interested in what kind of thing the madman had made that he wanted to show Jake and potentially hand him. Or maybe he wanted a favor this time around?

As expected, then he was let straight in, Arnold aware Jake was back. The workshop had expanded once more, this time primarily downwards, it seemed. From Jake’s sphere, he also saw some weird robot-looking things digging even further, making it clear the scientist was still expanding.

It didn’t take long to locate Arnold, who was working inside a laboratory with a familiar cube. The one Jake had brought from the Void God, Oras.

“Good, you are here,” Arnold stated when Jake entered without even turning around.

Jake was a bit surprised, not by what he was doing, but by the response when he used Identify on the man.

[Human – lvl 199]

The bastard has surpassed Jake in level. As for if he was working on getting his Perfect Evolution or still had evolution quests to finish, Jake didn’t know, but he had still surpassed Jake. Holidays were truly detrimental to growth.

“So, what did you want?” Jake asked bluntly.

“I have been made aware you will soon return to the Order of the Malefic Viper,” Arnold stated. “I would ask of you to procure some materials when you are there. Compensation shall naturally follow. Further discussion as to the form of compensation beyond Credits is possible.”

“Oh?” Jake asked, a bit surprised, but he quickly got it. Arnold was probably running low on high-level materials. The guy had stockpiled when the system store was around and made ample use of the Holy Church and all other merchant groups… but by now, he had outgrown them. That, or they were gone off the planet.

He maybe even needed them for his evolution quest.

“Sure, we can figure something out,” Jake agreed.

Arnold nodded and took out a tablet from his spatial storage, and handed it to Jake. “All details are within. A list has been made and ordered based on priority. Will a deposit of funds for the purchase be necessary?”

“Nah, I should be able to front the cash,” Jake shrugged as he took the tablet and opened it to see the… list.

He started scrolling. It kept going.

“Arnold… how many items are there?”

“Eight hundred and seventy-one unique entries, the quantity of each item specified individually,” Arnold answered with a deadpan face.

Poor Meira, Jake could only think as he put the tablet in his inventory.

“This is quite a lot,” Jake commented. “And even if I don’t want a deposit now… maybe we can talk about what you can potentially offer.”

Arnold looked at Jake for a moment. “I would advise delaying. Preparations are underway for projects designated for use by C-grades. Based on the assumption that you are close to evolution, I predict any items would be more useful for you then. Moreover, the items requested will, in high likelihood, include the materials required for these projects. Before knowing what is possible to acquire, I cannot give an offer.”

“Eh… sound logic,” Jake said. He would need a lot of new stuff after his evolution, wouldn’t he? “But, give me a sneak peek anyway, okay? Come on, you must have something fun in the works.”

The man took a moment before nodding. “Continued research has gone into improving many weapons. Follow me.”

Jake gladly did so as they entered another workshop. Walking to a wall, Arnold activated some magic as barriers were rapidly removed. Jake had already seen the hidden room behind the wall and also knew that he had no fucking way to enter it. The way it was hidden was actually damn smart.

The walls that enclosed the room were three or so meters thick and made of metal, very similar to what the dome consisted of. It would take quite a while to get through it, and Jake reckoned only Alchemical Flame could do the job. The opening mechanism to enter was also simple but effective. The door of sorts required one to open it correctly, or a massive wall of steel would fall and block the entrance, and from the looks of it, Arnold had placed bombs on the inside to blow it the hell up if anyone broke in. The dude was very dedicated to protecting his works in progress.

Entering the room, Jake saw a few interesting things.

Firstly was a golem that Jake very much recognized. In a tank filled with murky water, the Census Golem floated, nearly all the destruction on it restored, though by other types of metal. If it was functional, Jake didn’t know, but clearly, Arnold was far from done with it.

Next up were a few gun-like things in cases. Or, well, calling them blasters was probably more accurate. Jake had no way to properly evaluate those, but they looked fancy. Besides that, there were many different kinds of drones and spherical robots of sorts that Jake also had no idea about.

Arnold clearly knew this, which is why he led Jake to the one item Jake would likely care about. It was just a thin long piece of metal, but Jake recognized it right away. It was a nanoblade.

“Further improvements of the nanoblade are in progress, the durability, sharpness, and mana conductivity improving continuously. Seeing your recent switch to the use of katars, time will be needed to optimize the internal structure to support thrusting over slashing attacks. Moreover, from your explanations of Fangs of the Malefic Viper, the nanoblade can be further optimized to better facilitate and make use of the skill. I assume you are still interested in the weapon?” Arnold asked.

Jake looked at it for a bit before nodding. While he had two weapons right now, he knew the bone weapon was only temporary. When sim-Jake fully merged with him, it would lose much of its Records and power, making it effectively useless. By then, he would need another katar anyway.

Arnold took out his usual tablet and noted down this answer. “Finally, I recall you are planning on visiting the Grand Mangrove River. If possible, please take this along with you as you are going anyway.”

The man summoned a weird-looking cylinder of metal about the size of a person. Jake saw that on the inside, it was filled with mechanisms, and Jake could only throw Arnold a questioning look.

“The spatial mana within the Grand Mangrove River has interesting properties. I would like to analyze it to assist in another project of mine. From my initial tests, while a satellite is easily doable, proper drones for space exploration face challenges in the open cosmos as creatures and energies now lurk there. From my assessment, the Grand Mangrove River’s spatial mana has natural properties related to the concept of stealth,” Arnold explained.

Jake simply nodded and took the cylinder. “Makes sense.”

He had noticed the energy there before, of course. He had not quite identified it as some stealth concept, but then again, maybe it was a mix of space and stealth. Either way, what it truly was and how to make use of it was for Arnold to figure out.

“Anywhere specific you want it placed?” He asked to follow up.

“Somewhere safe, as the measuring device is not made to sustain unnecessary and sudden forces acting upon it during readings,” Arnold answered. “Simply place it somewhere and infuse mana into the center circle. That will allow me to know it is in position and remotely activate it.”

“Got it,” Jake confirmed. As he stood there, he couldn’t help but notice the many robots flying everywhere within his sphere within the workshop, especially those that seemed to do some rather complicated work like analyzing what looked like circuit boards. So he couldn’t help but ask:

“Say, how do you even manage to control all these drones of yours? Even back in the Treasure Hunt, you had so many flying around. Are they all programmed? Some kind of artificial intelligence?” he asked. It was a bit rude to ask about someone’s secrets like that, but considering how much Jake had shared with the man, he thought it okay to ask.

Arnold seemed a bit surprised by the question but was in no way offended. No, it was the exact opposite… he seemed elated that Jake had asked, giving Jake a bad feeling. A feeling that only grew as Arnold lowered his tablet and seemed to dedicate his whole attention to Jake as he explained.

“A number of methods have been applied. Most mundane models still run on simple programming, while more advanced models make use of artificial soul constructs. The Altmar Census Golem was my basis for these constructs, and I can only admire their ingenuity and prowess. However, the methodology and magiscripts used by the Altmar Empire do not suit my own, requiring me to adapt it, which made me switch to a more unorthodox approach by applying scripts and runes of the eldritch variety. The skill I received from Oras allows me to more easily split my attention between different tasks, and by augmenting the concepts within, I managed to implement soul constructs faintly mimicking my own, which then also allows me to temporarily fully immerse a part of my conscious within a given model. Do note that I do not need to use this functionality as the artificial soul construct will already act based on pre-programmed instructions and can be updated remotely through the eldritch scripts. Finally, all information from every drone is fed to me continuously, which required me to develop skills and methods to filter, archive, and in other ways, sort through all data gathered. Models of machine learning are being applied here, which do require further development and improvement of skills, but the prospects are promising. If you are interested in delving into some examples of this theory, I could show you-“

“No, I’m good,” Jake cut him off. Okay, he had gotten way more than he had bitten off, and it did sound interesting, but more the kind of interesting that Casper would be excited about. Sure, Jake understood what Arnold meant, but he also understood that what Arnold was doing some something others simply couldn’t. From how he understood it, Arnold effectively split his mind into segments and had each handle different things. At least partly. Of course, this wasn’t really anything special, and, in fact, it was considered kind of normal to do this. Jake could, as an example, focus on different things at once while doing alchemy or using magic, but Arnold had taken it to a whole new level for a D-grade. One could only imagine how much more extreme it would become when he reached C-grade.

“Have you faced any issues with different personas emerging or conflicting thoughts?” Jake did have to ask as he knew that was a risk. Especially as he was dealing with someone using the Legacy of a Void God. Eldritch things and human brains didn’t mesh well based on all the books Jake had read pre-system.

“No,” Arnold simply answered.

“Well, geez,” Jake joked, having expected him to at least admit he had some problems. “Did you make a legendary skill or something to not mess with your head?”

“The initial skill received by Oras was at legendary rarity,” Arnold confirmed, making Jake feel a bit better… at least until the next sentence.

“However, I only became able to properly create my artificial soul constructs who were able to act autonomously after the upgrade to mythical rarity.”

Jake was taken aback. “You created a mythical skill?”

Arnold, even more surprisingly, shook his head. “No, not truly. Due to its nature as a Legacy skill, I did not upgrade my title from the achievement due to the offered Records and assistance from Oras.”

That at least made Jake feel a bit better, and he even felt some relief from within his Soulspace as sim-Jake was also looking on.

“Well, either way, damn if it isn’t impressive. Say, you pretty much put a part of your soul into each of these machines, right?” Jake asked.

“No, that assessment is incorrect. My soul remains intact and singular. However, partitions are linked through void scripts to each model,” Arnold clarified.

Jake nodded. “I see. Well, this has been very enlightening, but if there isn’t more, I should be on my way.”

“Very well,” Arnold answered, looking a bit disappointed, before leading Jake out of the hidden room with all his interesting works in progress. Jake said his goodbyes and quickly headed out toward the teleporter. On his way, he had to admit… he felt a bit relieved.

The reason for that last question was actually pretty simple. He wanted to probe if Arnold had delved into soul magic or what people often called soul ritualism. Jake already did some soul magic himself, but he wanted to see if Arnold had begun to delve into actually altering his own soul. Mixing eldritch magic and soul magic couldn’t be good in Jake’s eyes, and also, there was one final reason.

He wanted to know if Arnold planned on staying human. From how Jake saw it, Arnold was a prime candidate for someone to evolve out of their usual human form, maybe even turning himself into a robot or sentient computer or some shit.

However, this was not necessarily a smart thing to do. Arnold was still human, no matter how weird he was, and still had many of the more positive traits of humanity, such as emotions. Arnold becoming a robot was a prime path to turning evil, especially with his Patron.

Jake could only imagine the horrors of a sentient eldritch supercomputer without any empathy or emotions. While it was entirely possible for Arnold to not go down this path even if he changed his form, it was a potential threat. At least it looked like Arnold was not planning anything like this but would remain a living human supercomputer instead.

Shaking his head, Jake moved on to the next task at hand: visiting the Grand Mangrove River. He hadn’t been there since he traveled through with Carmen and Sylphie but had wanted to visit for a while, primarily to thank them for helping him out by protecting Miranda and the others when he couldn’t. Miranda had praised them a lot, especially the Crimsoneye Alabaster Snake, who led the group. It was only right that Jake would go in person to show his gratitude and chat with them.

As he got close to the teleporter, he suddenly remembered something. Jake had a tendency to zone out during long boring talks, but he did remember Miranda mentioning the name of the Crimsoneye Snake at some point…. he just couldn’t quite recall what she was called.

Oh well, I can just ask her.

Jake also remembered Miranda mentioning that the snake had learned to take human form, so that was also interesting and definitely something he wanted to check out and talk to her about.