The Primal Hunter Chapter 1235 - Dragon Hunter (4)

Had Jake attempted to confront Yrelstromoz without the aid of Dragonsbane Poison, his certainty of success would have plummeted. It wasn't that he viewed her as his superior in raw strength, but rather that he questioned if he could outlast a True Dragon possessing a nearly limitless mana reserve and potent self-healing capabilities.

Injecting a sufficient concentration of toxins into his foe’s biology had taken a bit more time than he had anticipated. However, the moment the poison took hold, Jake sensed the shift immediately—and based on Yrelstromoz's reaction, she felt it too.

While her restorative magic attempted to repair her mangled claw, the effort now carried a heavy price. The Dragonsbane reacted violently to her high mana output, inflicting damage that scaled directly with the intensity of the magic she channeled.

Jake observed Yrelstromoz’s eyes widen in sheer bewilderment as she stared back at him.

“What have you—”

Jake gave her no room to complete the thought; he wasn't about to squander such a tactical opening. He unleashed a rapid Arcane Powershot, the concussive force of which sent the dragon tumbling backward while adding to her injuries. A volley of arrows trailed the first, with two more finding their mark while Yrelstromoz was still reeling from the sudden internal agony. Eventually, she managed to mount a defense.

Radiant barriers of light manifested to intercept the projectiles, but the act of summoning them triggered the Dragonsbane once more. This caused Yrelstromoz to waver. She conjured additional shields while attempting to retreat into the sky, but Jake’s arrows arced through the air, pursuing her and piercing the vulnerable webbing of her wings where scales were absent.

Utilizing Sense of the Malefic Viper, Jake could feel her attempting to analyze the nature of the toxin. It was a futile endeavor. Even though Jake hadn't actively tried to mask the poison’s properties, its epic rarity meant it was woven with high-tier concepts and energies that were incredibly difficult to decipher.

This divided attention proved to be her undoing, as it allowed Jake to land even more hits, steadily increasing the dosage in her system. Yrelstromoz became unfocused, her composure crumbling into panic as she faced a threat she couldn't comprehend.

Her lack of genuine combat experience was becoming glaringly obvious. Jake suspected she had never been truly pushed to her limits, at least not since reaching B-grade. Even if she had faced challenges, they were likely within the controlled environment of sparring matches where her life was never truly at risk. This was a far cry from her current situation, where Jake was hunting her with lethal intent—a reality she only now seemed to be fully grasping.

Capitalizing on his momentum, Jake began preparing his final strike. He started weaving a potent Protean Arrow within his quiver, intending to use Eternal Hunger as the arrowhead when the moment was right.

While preparing a finishing move might have seemed hasty, Yrelstromoz’s deteriorating mental state and her failure to counter his relentless barrage suggested the encounter would conclude much faster than he had initially projected.

Yrelstromoz fought a losing battle, swiping desperately at the incoming arrows. Her healing magic tried to purge the Dragonsbane, but it was ineffective. The poison was inherently designed to resist a dragon's cleansing abilities, and Jake’s specific version ensured that any mana used to expel it only resulted in further self-inflicted harm. A more skilled healer or someone with a deeper understanding of the toxin might have fared better, but Yrelstromoz was clearly neither.

As they moved across the planet's surface, Jake buried dozens of arrows into her hide, each one carrying a fresh coat of Dragonsbane. The dragon attempted to flee, occasionally utilizing a movement skill that Jake noted had a relatively low mana cost, yet she still showed hesitation. It was then that Jake grasped another factor.

She wasn't just avoiding magic because of the physical toll. While the damage from the poison was significant, it wasn't enough to kill her instantly from regular spellcasting. It was simply an additional drain that made her healing inefficient. The real reason Yrelstromoz was holding back was something Jake hadn't even considered:

Pain.

For someone like Jake, pain was a non-factor. He felt it, and he certainly didn't enjoy it, but it could never hinder his resolve. The same applied to the other geniuses he typically fought. Most monsters that reached their rank through constant struggle were well-acquainted with agony and had become desensitized to it.

Yrelstromoz, however, was a hothouse flower. She had never known the brutal realities of nature, and now that she was confronted by them, her reaction was disastrous.

To be fair, the agony caused by Dragonsbane Poison was in a league of its own. It was a toxin that ravaged both the physical form and the soul, creating a level of suffering that made her instinctive avoidance of magic understandable. Unfortunately for her, it was the wrong tactical choice and only accelerated her demise.

Jake felt a flicker of disappointment, hoping for a greater challenge. Given her escalating panic, he wondered if his first dragon hunt would truly end in such an anticlimactic fashion.

“She really is the bottom of the barrel… or close to it,” the Primordial of Karma remarked with a sigh, watching a recording that lagged just seconds behind the live events to ensure Jake didn't sense his presence.

“Absolutely,” the Viper agreed. “She possesses the physical attributes and skills of a True Dragon, but she lacks the spirit. True Dragons are lethal not just for their power, but for their mastery over it. That is especially true for those who specialize in magic as she does.”

“It seems she is a weakling among the elite,” Eversmile noted.

“And yet…” Vilas started.

“She is still a True Dragon,” Eversmile finished with a grin.

“Indeed,” the snake god replied, certain she wouldn't fall so easily. Her bloodline and heritage simply wouldn't permit such a pathetic end.

--

The barrage of arrows was ceaseless. Yrelstromoz tried to defend herself, but every effort failed. While the individual arrows didn't deal massive damage, each one spread more of that agonizing poison throughout her body. Her attempts to cleanse it only resulted in more blinding pain, forcing her to hesitate.

Support the author by searching for the original publication of this novel.

While she had easily neutralized the other toxins the Chosen of the Malefic Viper had used, this one was different. It was overwhelmingly potent, and every attempt to fight it only brought more suffering.

She knew she couldn't keep this up, but she was paralyzed by indecision. Her thoughts raced as she was struck repeatedly, finding no viable path forward. Every counter she could think of involved more pain—an agony far worse than the sting of the arrows themselves.

The poison seemed relatively dormant when she wasn't using mana, and low-cost spells were bearable, but she still desperately wanted to avoid the sensation entirely.

Her only strategy was flight, hoping the human would eventually tire and abandon the chase. His enhancement skill was powerful, which usually implied a short duration or a heavy cost, so she hoped to outlast him by simply staying out of reach.

But as the pursuit continued, the human showed no signs of slowing down. If anything, his momentum was building, and each arrow felt more painful than the last.

Then, a realization hit Yrelstromoz—a possibility she had never even considered until this moment.

The idea of losing to a C-grade had seemed like an impossibility, a fever dream. The power gap between grades was immense, and her natural defenses should have allowed her to outlast any C-grade opponent. Yet, the reality was undeniable. Yrelstromoz was losing… and if she lost…

Death was a concept she had only associated with the distant end of her lifespan. She had so much time left. Having only recently reached B-grade, she should have had centuries of freedom and luxury ahead of her, away from the constraints of her Dragonflight.

Now, the terrifying thought that she might never see that future began to take root. She realized this wasn't just a C-grade overstepping his bounds. She was being hunted by someone truly capable of killing a True Dragon.

Internal panic flared. She didn't want the pain, she didn't want the fight, but most of all, she didn't want to die. She wanted to live—and the only way to secure her life was to eliminate the hunter before her.

With that realization, her mind grew still. The pain receded into the background. Yrelstromoz felt her pulse steady as something primal and ancient stirred within her. It was an awakening of primeval instincts and the forgotten lessons designed to forge her into a True Dragon.

As this calm took hold, her awareness expanded. She finally recognized the human as a genuine threat to her existence; it was now a matter of survival. In the face of such a reality, the triviality of pain vanished. For the first time in her life, Yrelstromoz was prepared to fight with everything she had to validate her existence as a True Dragon.

Jake sensed the change instantly. It was as if a switch had been flipped, transforming Yrelstromoz’s entire aura. The cowardly creature that had been fleeing and swathing at arrows suddenly came to a dead halt.

Three arrows were already closing in when she stopped, but they never reached her.

Yrelstromoz’s eyes took on a strange glow as her form was wreathed in energy. She released a thunderous, empowered roar. The resulting shockwave swatted Jake’s arrows aside and caused the earth to shatter, sending debris flying into the sky.

Jake raised a shield to absorb the impact but was still shoved back. He watched warily as Yrelstromoz unfurled her wings and continued her roar, her scales shimmering with light while electrical sparks danced across her body and the air around her.

Through Sense of the Malefic Viper, Jake felt the poison react to her surging energy, but the True Dragon no longer seemed to care about the pain.

As her roar subsided and she lowered her wings, Jake locked eyes with her. He knew immediately that the creature before him was no longer the arrogant, disappointing coward he had been fighting moments ago.

The atmosphere had shifted, growing heavy with the weight of ancient power. The aura of a True Dragon fully embracing its heritage was unlike anything Jake had ever felt. His instincts warned him to be careful; the hesitant prey was gone, replaced by a predator of pure, unbridled power.

“Rise.”

The single word resonated from the dragon, and the environment obeyed. The shattered earth beneath them surged into the air toward Jake, blocking his sight and catching him off guard.

An instant later, the rising stone was bisected by a concentrated beam of light. Jake barely managed to dodge, the beam passing so close he could feel the heat radiating off it as it sliced through the rock with perfect precision.

The attack had originated from a sphere of light condensed between her horns. Before she could fire again, Jake activated Pride once more to blast away the surrounding debris.

“Implode.”

The massive chunks of rock were suddenly pulled back toward Jake as if he were the center of a gravitational well. Channeling his Pride, Jake shouted his own command to counter the effect.

“Disperse!”

His Words of Power, backed by the Pride of the Malefic Viper, fought to repel the crushing stones. He only managed to slow them down, but it gave him enough time to blast a path through the mountain of rock with a beam of arcane energy.

After this exchange, Jake understood exactly what she was doing.

She was using another legendary draconic ability: Words of Power, amplified by the Draconic Language skill. He knew many True Dragons possessed this, though not all. It required immense willpower and mental fortitude to master, and the fact that Yrelstromoz could use it with such potency meant her mental state had undergone a radical transformation.

One thing was certain: she was no longer afraid to use her magic.

Escaping the stone trap, Jake dodged another lethal laser. He returned fire with several arrows that moved in erratic patterns, forcing Yrelstromoz to deploy her own barriers.

He also noted she had begun mending her wounds, specifically focusing on the gaps in her scales that he had been exploiting prior to her awakening.

The battle had changed completely in a heartbeat, yet the core facts remained. Yrelstromoz was heavily injured and saturated with Dragonsbane Poison—far too much for her to ever purge on her own.

Both of them knew it. They also knew that without using her mana—which triggered the Mana Allergy—she had no hope of winning. Her only path was to endure the self-inflicted damage and hope she could kill Jake before his poison or magic finished her.

As for the toxin, they had both reached the same conclusion: while she couldn't heal it away, the poison would weaken if the one who inflicted it died. With Jake gone, she could enter a state of meditation and let the poison dissipate over time.

With their goals aligned, Jake and Yrelstromoz locked eyes again. The terms were set: she had to kill him before the Dragonsbane took her life, and Jake had to accelerate her death before her magic overwhelmed him.

On paper, the situation seemed to favor Jake... but as he felt the mana for thousands of kilometers respond to the dragon's authority, and watched the sky fill with a hundred thousand glowing orbs, he realized this would be anything but easy.