The Primal Hunter

Jake smiled as the Viper probed him. He felt the Blessing strengthen as he knew he had just entrenched himself even further with the Viper, and clearly, so did the snake god.

“Just upgraded my profession. A straight upgrade, the same name, too, meaning I am still a Heretic-Chosen Alchemist. So nothing overly exciting,” Jake answered his divine buddy.

“A straight upgrade that dragged even more out of me,” the Viper said. “To a level where it is beginning to limit the maximum number of other Blessings I can give out.”

“… Is that bad?” Jake asked with a bit of worry.

“No, I am not even close to reaching that maximum and probably won’t be unless I one day wake up and decide to give high-level Blessings to an entire planet. What actually happened isn’t the problem; it is the principle in the thing,” Villy answered, clearly not a trace of actual worry in his voice.

“My apologies, then,”Jake said with a grin.

“Did you at least get something out of it?”

“Let me check,” Jake answered, already knowing the answer as he checked the first of many notifications.

Your bond with the Malefic Viper is further strengthened as you now share not only a karmic and bodily connection but a bond of history and Records, sharing memories known to no one but the two of you. You will no longer be able to receive a new Blessing even if the Malefic One perishes unless you purge yourself of all his Records.

He had not expected that to happen. No longer being able to receive a Blessing would probably seem like a very bad thing to anyone else as that meant if the god started to dislike you for some reason, you would be screwed. Luckily for Jake, Villy could not take it back, so the snake god was fucked in that regard and would have to talk things out with Jake if they had problems. Or kill him. As for the Viper dying… yeah, Jake saw the chances of that happening as really fucking low, especially before Jake himself either died or reached godhood.

Jake checked his Blessing and saw that it indeed had changed slightly from this upgrade.

[True Blessing of the Malefic Viper (Blessing - True)] – An Alchemist recognized by the Malefic Viper himself that has now seized parts of the Blessing in an act of defiance. Few throughout the ages have found themselves blessed by the Primordial, despite their desire to be so. You are his Chosen. Now even the true blood of the Malefic Viper himself is found within your very being, only strengthening your bond further. Your Records are more and more intertwined with that of your Patron, and through a powerful direct karmic and bodily connection, the Wisdom, Willpower, Vitality, Intelligence, and Toughness of the Malefic Viper empower you. +10% Willpower, +10% Wisdom, +10% Vitality, +10% Intelligence, + 10% Toughness. Grants access to many new paths. Only one Blessing can be held at a time. Cannot be denounced or retracted.

“Villy, not to sound like an ass, but why do the stats tied to your Legacy suck so much?” Jake asked after seeing the Blessing had been empowered to also give an extra 10% Toughness. Why did it have to be Toughness? Jake didn’t want Toughness.

“Wow, you come in here, steal some of my Records related to Blessings to empower yourself, and then complain about it not giving the stat you want?” Villy asked with a faux tone of outrage. “Very heretical of you, that’s for sure.”

“Just following my Path. I firmly expect it to increase Perception next time,” Jake said with a smile. “Anyway, I still got all the skill changes and upgrades, so talk to you later?”

“Keep me posted on that Path of the Heretic-Chosen skill,” Villy said, finishing off the conversation so Jake could get back to business.

Going through his notifications, he saw they included three skills. Two that had experienced changes and one new. He began with the least exciting of the bunch.

[Malefic Viper’s Poison (Epic)] – The Malefic Viper stalks its prey and needs only to strike once as venom devours its prey. Increases the potency of all crafted poisons. Grants the ability to craft a poison with a rarity above that of your Concoct Poison skill if certain conditions are met. The poison may at most be upgraded to the rarity of the Malefic Viper’s Poison skill (Rare --> Epic). Allows poison not to lose efficiency for a prolonged period of time after being applied to a weapon.

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[Malefic Viper’s Poison (Ancient)] – The Malefic Viper stalks its prey and needs only to strike once as venom devours its prey. Increases the potency of all created poisons. Grants the ability to craft a poison with a rarity above that of your Concoct Poison skill if certain conditions are met. The poison may at most be upgraded to the rarity of the Malefic Viper’s Poison skill (Rare --> Ancient). Allows poison not to lose efficiency for a long period of time after being applied to a weapon.

Together with Big Game Arcane Hunter – another skill he felt fairly confident would upgrade during his evolution – this skill was one of his unsung heroes. It was simple, and while Jake had barely activated that special ability part of it to upgrade a crafted poison, it was still nice to have.

Needless to say, the primary benefit of this skill was that it just made everything poison-related better. It made all poison Jake crafted better and made it last longer when applied to a weapon. Both were great things that he took for a given due to the sheer passivity of the skill.

The changes from the evolution were nearly forgettable, except for one important change. The word “crafted” had become “created,” signifying that it now also included stuff like Fang and his Blood. Besides that, It just improved every part of it by a little, and that was it. In fact, the only real change was the rarity the triggered ability could upgrade to and the wording changing for how long poison would remain potent while coated on a weapon.

So, yeah. Great to see it upgrade, but otherwise, nothing overly exciting.

Next up was another skill Jake had expected to change.

[Path of the Heretic-Chosen (Unique)] – A unique path between the Primordial known as the Malefic Viper and his Chosen, the Progenitor Jake Thayne. Allows you to experience the Legacy of the Malefic Viper on a far more direct level by relying on your direct connection as a Chosen and the mentality of a heretic. Focusing on the Malefic Viper’s Legacy’s core skills, a skill that you adequately comprehend will allow you to peer into its true Records as you journey through time, space, and reality, to experience history firsthand. Be warned that gains are not guaranteed, and while the journey cannot harm you directly, the journey may cause harm or have lasting effects – a risk you must take as a Heretic. May you walk with confidence as you tread a path never walked before. Gains 1 use every 10 levels in Heretic-Chosen Alchemist of the Malefic Viper. Any skill can only be chosen once. Current uses remaining: 0

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[Path of the Heretic-Chosen (Unique)] – A unique path between the Primordial known as the Malefic Viper and his Chosen, Jake Thayne. Allows you to experience the Legacy of the Malefic Viper on a far more direct level by relying on your direct connection as a Chosen and the mentality of a heretic. Focusing on any core skill, event, or entity related to the Malefic Viper’s Legacy will allow you to peer into the True Records of the past as you journey through time, space, and reality to experience history firsthand. Limitations on Record Fragment selection may apply. Be warned that gains are not guaranteed, and while the journey cannot harm you directly, the journey may cause harm or have lasting effects – a risk you must take as a Heretic. May you walk with confidence as you continue to thread a Path never walked before. Gains 1 use every 20 levels in Heretic-Chosen Alchemist of the Malefic Viper. Current uses remaining: 0

Another skill that remained mostly the same, but with some subtle changes here and there. The biggest of which was in how Jake could use it. The old version required Jake to focus on a skill, while this version required him to focus on a skill, event, or entity. What this meant was in no way lost to him, and he already knew at least one goal during his journey through C-grade just from reading this skill:

To figure out more about what the hell was up with the First Sage. With the wording of the skill, Jake should even be able to focus on the guy directly and hopefully learn some spicy secrets. The skill was still a bit fast and loose with the actual requirements to trigger the skill, but hopefully, it would work. If not, then the limitation of only being able to focus on a skill once was also gone, so maybe he could use it to cheese out a great upgrade?

One thing he was sure of was that it wouldn’t be a skill offering borderline free skill upgrades this time around. The gap between ancient and legendary rarity was big, but it was nothing compared to the gulf that separated legendary and mythical. The complexity of Eternal Shadow should be proof of that. This would only be doubly true in this instance, seeing that none of the Legacy skills had downgraded in rarity. Them not reducing in rarity still meant they had reduced in quality, and even now, he had seen that they hadn’t been upgraded to give him more stats every level. Though that was perhaps something he could do something about… because a skill didn’t have to upgrade in rarity to change slightly.

A project for later.

The number of uses he got had also been reduced to every 20 levels, and it didn’t even give him a use right away. With it happening every twenty levels and C-grade being from 200-350, Jake would get a total of seven uses. Less than in D-grade, but with the expanded scope of what he could focus on, it wasn’t that bad.

Overall, it was a skill Jake was looking forward to using more than ever. There was so much to see and so many juicy and embarrassing secrets of Villy for Jake to discover and make fun of him for.

With the two upgrades out of the way, there was still one more skill gained. In D-grade, every alchemist had gotten Craft Elixir, but there was no such basic crafting skill in C-grade. Not sure what to expect, he looked at the last one.

[Grimoire of the Heretic-Chosen (Unique)] – Expand your Path and allow others to walk in your footsteps. Allows the Heretic-Chosen to craft a Grimoire related to his Path, allowing another of the enlightened races to consume it, granting them either a class or profession. The nature of the Grimoire depends on a multitude of factors, including crafting ingredients, the will of the creator, and several unknowns. Requirements to use the Grimoire vary. A cooldown period is required between each crafting attempt, and a longer cooldown is triggered after a successful Grimoire craft. Due to your unique Path, every Grimoire created will be more potent by default and receive additional Records based on all your stats.

After reading it and the instinctual knowledge that was given fitting into place, he still wasn’t sure what to think. This was not at all the kind of skill Jake had predicted to get, even if he begrudgingly had to admit it fit his entire Path of the Heretic Chosen thing. This skill would allow him to spread his Path, creating these tomes that others could use to get a class or profession. Probably a profession.

He knew that crafting them was hard as fuck, but a dedicated skill would definitely help. Jake was also pretty darn confident it wasn’t something he could do entirely alone. A high-level scribe would be needed to assist him in making the book itself, he reckoned.

It was also clear the system really wanted him to make one, with the last part pretty much telling him that it would lend a hand and make them better than normal. The boost also seemed significant, with it adding free Records just based on his stats.

Now, the ultimate question: would Jake actually make use of this skill? Jake had come across a total of three Grimoires in his life. The first one had given him the profession he had today, the second he had gotten from the Great White Stag and given to Lillian, and the third had been from the Treasure Hunt. That one had been the Fulgarian Depthcaller that Jake came to learn was killed unceremoniously by Scarlett. At least he had gotten good money for it.

The best usage case of a Grimoire was someone with a bad class or profession using it at the beginning of a grade to get a better one than what was offered. The second best option was using it right before evolution to hopefully get a variant of it in your next grade. Jake could already see some possibilities if he ever got into crafting it, but he wasn’t sure.

What held him back was the entire heretic-chosen thing. Who could he actually make a Grimoire for? Especially if it was alchemy-related? The only one really on his mind was Meira, and he wasn’t sure it would fit her at all…

Shaking his head, Jake wasn’t sure if he would call the given skill a bummer or not. Others would be up in arms in excitement, but Jake just felt uncertain.

Done with all the evolution stuff related to the profession, Jake contacted the Viper again.

“Hey Villy, done looking at stuff here. Here is the run down…”

Jake explained what he had gotten, not really bothering to hold anything back. The Viper did not seem surprised by anything either but did ask a few questions about Path of the Heretic Chosen, though he seemed to purposefully hold himself back from giving any suggestions or making any comments.

As for the Grimoire skill…

“Definitely look into crafting some,” the Viper said with certainty. “I am not even saying you need to make use of them, just create them. Creating a Grimoire takes a lot of effort and a high level of comprehension of your own Path and the Records that is behind every concept. The skill helps tremendously, but you will still need to learn some things yourself, and that learning process will be incredibly valuable in other places. So even if you don’t do it for others, do it for yourself. Also, I am sure that if it comes down to it, you can find people worth giving a Grimoire to. This can also just be for purely selfish reasons. Looking at someone else making use of Records similar to yourself can also be a great learning experience.”

“Huh,” Jake said. “I guess I hadn’t thought of it like that. Good point; I guess I should look into it.”

“I truly don’t care if you do end up making more part-heretic, part-believers in the Order. In fact, I think it could be a fun and interesting experience and spice things up a bit. It would also be interesting to see what kind of variants you make,” the Viper further added.

“Noted,” Jake said with a smile. “Any other pieces of advice?”

“Don’t neglect the Legacy skills you got from me, even if you don’t have Path of the Heretic-Chosen to upgrade them so easily anymore. Even without getting them to mythical rarity, if you focus solely on the stat-increasing effect, you can-“

“-make them increase in stats without improving the rarity, but simply making them better legendary versions. Another semi-new thing to C-grade, from what I can gather. It feels like I didn’t really see this happen before,” Jake answered.

“Look at you,” Villy said in a sickly sweet tone. “All grown up actually knowing system stuff yourself without being told. Brings a tear to my eye. Anyway, it is not a new thing, just far rarer in the earlier grades. The relative breadth of every skill rarity increases in every grade, so it would get quite silly if all changes required a full rarity upgrade in later grades. It only really applies to the higher rarities in your current grade, so most upgrades you see will still also result in a rarity change.”

“Makes sense, makes sense,”Jake nodded along. “Guess that is something I should work on for sure. Any other tips or inputs now that I got you?”

“Nothing that can’t wait till you get back here,” Villy said with a rather insidious undertone for some reason.

“Okay… well, see you later then,” Jake said his goodbyes.

“I will be awaiting you…”the snake god said as he cut off the telepathic phone call while doing an exaggerated evil laugh, leaving it to echo even after the connection faded.

Wonder what that is all about, Jake thought, but just shrugged. Problems for later. He had more important things to deal with right now.

Namely, a class evolution.