Jake slowly woke up as he felt something pressing down on his chest. At first, he thought that maybe the little Warpsnatcher had decided to use him as a pillow, but as he observed through his sphere, he realized that definitely wasn’t the case.

Opening his eyes, Jake saw a lot of different colors as he found himself covered in fruits of different shapes and sizes. A particularly big, coconut-looking fruit rested on his chest, carefully balanced and propped up by other fruit all around to make sure it didn’t fall down.

Moving a little, Jake shook off the many fruits as he forced himself to sit. The mere act of sitting up sent spikes of pain running through Jake’s body as he coughed loudly, blood coming out in the process.

After his coughing fit, Jake breathed heavily as he was tempted to just lie back down again. The blanket he had been lying on was a magical treasure like most other things the teleporting C-grade Warpsnatcher had gathered, and it even increased recovery by a little when resting on it. Jake did not know if it helped shorten his duration of weakness, but even if it could, he reckoned the effect would be negligible at best.

Looking around the cavern, he didn’t see the Warpsnatcher anywhere, but the fact that he had been covered in fresh fruit indicated it had been. Inspecting the fruit in question, Jake felt a bit of hunger as he shrugged and picked a peach-looking thing up. He didn’t reckon eating it would be dangerous, and Identify told him it was just an uncommon rarity fruit that did nothing when those of the enlightened races consumed it raw. Not outside of alleviating hunger a bit. Instead, it was the kind of item that monsters could eat to absorb the energy within, or those with cooking skills could create something actually useful from.

Biting into the fruit, Jake found the taste incredibly sweet, and while it indeed didn’t help his horrid state to consume it, the thing had at least been tasty. Inspecting his body more thoroughly, Jake confirmed what he already knew.

Bloody miracle I can even live with a body this broken...

His internal organs were, to put it in the nicest terms, still mush. With his evolutions, Jake had lost most of his organs, but some, like the heart, lungs and kidney, remained. Now, he only had one lung left, which helped explain why breathing was hard, his kidney was just straight-up gone, and his heart was full of holes and lacerations. The only thing his internals were still filled with was a lot of unrecognizable mush that, while Jake couldn’t outright see it, he assumed probably looked a bit like strawberry jam.

Those sound attacks had really done a number on him, but it wasn’t as if the rest of his body was any better. His muscles had been destroyed by his own destructive arcane energies, and when he observed his legs, Jake knew he wouldn’t be able to stand up yet, even if he wanted to.

His vital energies were hard at work repairing his body, but such a thing took time. It wasn’t even as if consuming a healing potion would work, as this wasn’t the kind of damage that could be fixed using that. Checking out his Soulshape, he also confirmed a slight bit of damage there, once more caused by Arcane Awakening’s overuse.

Overall, Jake concluded that during this fight, he had pushed himself beyond his limits and then a bit further. He had kept Arcane Awakening going for longer than ever before, and without Arcane Supremacy and his upgrade to Anomalous Soul, Jake would have lost and had to flee far earlier.

Using his internal clock, Jake estimated he had been knocked out cold for around two days. Which is to say that his current state was after already healing the worst of it for two days, really hammering home just how far beyond his limits Jake had pushed himself.

Closing his eyes, Jake entered meditation to hopefully expedite his recovery. Luckily, even if his body was a complete mess, his Soulspace remained undamaged and a great refuge. Meditation’s ability to cut off all other senses also came very in handy when this injured, as the constant pain wouldn’t distract him.

Inside the Soulspace, Jake finally also took the time to check out his notifications. Because of the sudden entrance of the Rainbowfeather Sovereign, Jake could not really revel in the kill, but now he could.

You have slain [Grand Simivita Warlord – lvl 354] – Bonus experience earned for killing an enemy above your level

It couldn’t be forgotten that this was Jake’s first B-grade kill. In all honesty, it felt anticlimactic as the Warlord hadn’t even been that powerful, and with all that had happened right afterwards, his fight with the Warlord seemed almost insignificant.

Which was also why Jake found it surprising, but also reaffirming when he checked the two next notifications.

’DING!’ Class: [Arcane Hunter of Horizon’s Edge] has reached level 308 - Stat points allocated, +50 Free Points

’DING!’ Race: [Human (C)] has reached level 311 - Stat points allocated, +45 Free Points

’DING!’ Class: [Arcane Hunter of Horizon’s Edge] has reached level 309 - Stat points allocated, +50 Free Points

He had hunted so many damn apes and barely made any progress, but one relatively easy fight against a B-grade had resulted in two levels. Sure, there was a bonus in Records from it being Jake’s first B-grade kill, but the experience increase from jumping grades couldn’t be denied. Especially not for someone like Jake.

If he had also killed the Sovereign, the experience would have been way more insane. Speaking of the Sovereign.

Jake allowed some of his senses to seep into the outer world as he felt for something. After a few seconds of struggle, Jake could subtly detect the Hunter’s Mark he’d left on the B-grade, confirming the Sovereign was still alive. Incredibly far away, but still alive.

With this knowledge, Jake breathed out a sigh of relief and sank his consciousness back into his Soulspace. Knowing the Sovereign still lived meant Jake had a chance for a proper fight. However, before the Sovereign, Jake now had nine other B-grades to also hunt down. They had ruined his fight with the powerful B-grade, and even now, as Jake reflected on the battle, he did not know who would have won if the two had kept going. All he knew was that he still wanted to find out next time they met.

One of the reasons Jake had any confidence in his victory was naturally the epiphany he had shortly before he had to flee. Even if he hadn’t managed to get the kill and the experience points from his fight with the Sovereign, he had definitely not come out of it empty-handed.

Though he hadn’t gotten what he’d expected and aimed for, either.

The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

Sadly for Jake, when it came to upgrading his Archery skill, he had completely failed. Perhaps his failure wasn’t entirely Jake’s fault, though. Neither was it Artemis’. He had a skill she wasn’t aware of and that Jake barely even thought about, but if he had just taken some more time and truly considered matters, perhaps he would have realized he had the perfect skill to make his “time arrows” all along.

Because, while Jake had failed to gain a skill upgrade to his archery skill, he had succeeded in gaining an upgrade to the passive skill Unblemished Arrows of the Horizon... now with an added Arcane in there.

[Unblemished Arrows of the Horizon (Ancient)] – To allow your arrows to reach the horizon unblemished and unobstructed is nothing but a given for a hunter of the Horizon’s Edge. Allows your arrows to gain significant resistance to all environmental factors and far more easily destroy any environmental energy or material. Grants a slight increase in penetrative power against energy-based defensive barriers and magical interference that may obstruct the arrow. The potency of the Unblemished Arrows of the Horizon skill is determined by the inherent power of the arrow. The maximum and minimum potency of Unblemished Arrows of the Horizon is determined by Perception.

--

[Unblemished Arcane Arrows of the Horizon (Legendary)] – To allow your arrows to reach the horizon unblemished and unobstructed is nothing but a given for a hunter of the Horizon’s Edge. Allows your arrows to gain significant resistance to all environmental factors and far more easily destroy any environmental energy or material. Arcane energies allow this effect to expand and affect certain concepts, eroding and altering conceptual influence on the arrows. This aspect of the skill requires active control and input by the Hunter. Grants a slight increase in penetrative power against energy-based defensive barriers and magical interference that may obstruct the arrow. The potency of the Unblemished Arrows of the Horizon skill is determined by the inherent power of the arrow. The maximum and minimum potency of Unblemished Arrows of the Horizon is determined by Perception.

Not much of the skill description had changed. In fact, it was mostly the same one as before, except for one added sentence in the middle about concepts. The more Jake thought about it, the more this upgrade also made sense.

From the very beginning, Jake had viewed the best aspect of Unblemished Arrows to be the fact that it removed wind resistance from the equation. It meant that Jake’s arrows could shoot faster and further without being affected by the environment as much. Before, he had always considered the environment the medium in which his arrow traveled, so if it flew through water, Unblemished Arrows would make it not slow down as much.

However, why did the skill have to be restrained to only resisting the most obvious things? Well, it turns out it didn’t. Resisting the more complex was just significantly more difficult, and Jake was fairly confident he couldn’t have done it without “cheating” using his arcane affinity.

The additional effect also wasn’t passive, as per the new description:

“This aspect of the skill requires active control and input by the Hunter.”

Unblemished Arrows had always just been a background skill Jake could comfortably forget, but now he had to actively use it if he wanted his arrows to resist the concept of time. Or any other concept, for that matter. The key was that Jake had to actually comprehend the concept to actively control its resistance, and Jake was fully aware that if his new skill could passively make his arrows resist the concept of time itself, he wouldn’t have gotten just a mere legendary skill.

Jake had a lot of things he wanted to test, including the upgraded skill’s interaction with Penetrating Arrow, which increased the effectiveness of Unblemished Arrows, but all of that would have to wait for when Jake was able to physically move. For now, he had to focus on recovery... and figuring out how he was supposed to upgrade his archery skill now.

He also realized that he had to think more for himself when it came to forming his archery skill. From what Artemis had said, her archery skill had the ability to manipulate concept’s effect on her arrows, but evidently, Jake didn’t need that as he had an entirely separate skill to do so. There was also a chance that Jake could merge Unblemished Arrows and his Archery skill one day, but such considerations were for the far future, and he doubted he even wanted to do that.

Looking at this current archery skill, it stood out being only epic rarity, however, its effects remained extraordinary. It allowed him to bend arrows by infusing Willpower into his arrows, but more importantly than anything else was its increase to all the damage Jake did with a bow based on the distance of his shots and his Perception. Especially the Perception part.

Jake did not know how much stronger it made his arrows, but Jake had a feeling it was meaningful. The increased effect of Strength and Agility while wielding a bow was naturally also nice, but all archery skills had that by default, though Artemis said hers only increased her Wisdom, likely because she heavily relied on her special plant arrows. In many ways, Artemis was halfway a summoner that used archery to deliver her summons, while Jake was an archer who used magic to enhance the damage done of his arrows.

Looking over his skills a bit more, Jake continued considering matters for the next few hours as he meditated and recovered. After he had done all the thinking he possibly could without losing his mind from being unable to actually experiment, Jake turned to a certain tome left by the First Sage to get his mind off things.

Nearly half a day passed with Jake studying before something moved in the cavern. He opened his eyes to find the Warpsnatcher back, and a second later, a picnic table was summoned into the air before falling down onto a pile of loot. The critter didn’t even look at Jake as it dismantled the table and took out a few metal plates that had been hidden within before waving its small parts, destroying the useless wood.

Several more items were summoned over the next half a minute, each of them sorted into different piles using a system only known to the Warpsnatcher. With business handled, the beast finally turned to Jake as it jumped over and looked up at him with big eyes.

“Better?”

Jake couldn’t help but smile as he gave a painful nod. “A little better.”

The Warpsnatcher tilted its head back and forth a few times before jumping closer and placing a palm on Jake’s leg. It tapped his leg two times before jumping back again.

“Be better?”

“I’m working on it,” Jake smiled as he resisted reaching out to pat the creature. He did not know if doing so would be considered rude, and he really didn’t want to make the otherwise friendly near-peak C-grade mad.

The little thing seemed happy enough with Jake’s answer as it picked up a small fruit and offered it. Jake fought through the pain as he took the fruit and put it into his mouth, finding it quite tasty. It reminded him of a more flavorful avocado.

Satisfied at seeing Jake eat something – almost as if the Warpsnatcher viewed Jake as some poor hurt baby bird – it clapped its little hands and padded his leg yet again.

“Home safe. You rest,” the Warpsnatcher said before it promptly jumped away again. With its fourth jump, its entire body shimmered and disappeared, no longer even within Jake’s Pulse range.

Would give Sandy a run for their money when it comes to running away... though I guess Sandy is a lot tougher in case they get hit, Jake thought, shaking his head a bit. Or at least he tried to before stopping himself halfway through turning his neck as a sharp pain shot through his body, reminding him not to move.

Alone once more, Jake closed his eyes and reentered meditation. It would take a while before Jake was back in fighting condition once more, and during this time, he would have little else to do but read the tome left by the First Sage and ponder existence.

Outside of reading the tome, which could get mentally exhausting, Jake kept himself motivated by summoning statues of nine creatures within his Soulspace. Each was a B-grade on his shit-list, and he had plenty of time to decide which of them he was going to hunt down first once he recovered. He hadn’t been able to get a good read on their individual auras, and thus didn’t know which of them were stronger or weaker, but going just by appearance alone from the snapshot he’d taken with Pulse, he was already starting to hone in on one of the B-grades.

It was the bipedal crocodile-like creature, and the reason Jake focused on that one was because of its facial expression when Jake had used his Pulse. It had a smile that made its face very punchable, and while, sure, perhaps attributing human expression to inhuman creatures wasn’t the fairest thing to do, Jake had to start deciding which one he disliked the most somehow.

Not like it overly mattered, as he had no intentions of leaving any of them alive.