The Primal Hunter Chapter 909: Lunewood Forest

Sandy said before disappearing, leaving Jake with the Meteorite Fragment floating in front of him. He didn’t even bother putting it in his inventory or anything as he quickly nocked an arrow and turned his attention to the many charging Lunewood Stalkers.

Seeing no need to hold back, Arcane Awakening even activated at the stable 30%. Jake felt his body brimming with power as he released the first arrow rain down upon the many charging creatures who were all roughly the same level as the first Stalker. Another thing they had in common with the first Lunewood Stalker was that they didn’t even try to dodge but simply tanked the blow as parts of their bodies were torn off. However, with around thirty of them, this reckless strategy was far more viable, as Jake now also understood why the first one had acted as it did.

These creatures were indeed just one part of a whole. They were individual limbs of a greater lifeform and simply had no sense of self-preservation. For them to dodge would be the same as Jake making his arrows dodge the attacks of enemies… which he actually did pretty often by making them curve around, but that was beside the point and, at most, just a commentary on how the strategy of these Lunewood Stalkers could still be optimized.

The point is, individually, these Lunewood Stalkers weren’t valuable and were just defenders of the forest and life domain they came from. Attacking recklessly like this also tended to have a better chance of landing blows, as it would give the foe far less time to respond, even if the tradeoff was that you risked taking far more hits in return. The term “tended to” was used very deliberately in this case… as Jake just happened to be the exception to that rule, as few things ever had a good chance of landing blows, but less when they were as predictable as these Stalkers.

Arcane explosions lit up the skies above the moon, and Jake began to retreat as he kept shooting arrow after arrow. A constant barrage of attacks flew for him, forcing him to dodge all the time as the Lunewood Stalkers closed in ever-so-slowly. If Jake didn’t have to dodge ranged attacks, he could have outrun them pretty easily, and if he abandoned attacking, he definitely still could, but retreat wasn’t on the table. Not knowing how far they would chase, it was potentially even faster to just kill them all.

So, he upped his offenses and mixed in arcane bolts with his attacks, and before any of the stalkers even reached him, four were slain as their lifeless bodies fell toward the surface of the moon below… only for a giant space worm to swoop in and chomp them down before they could land, all while sending an encouraging message to Jake before disappearing again.

Right as the fifth one fell, the first Lunewood Stalker was also upon him. Jake dodged as the creature spun in mid-air, its tail whipping around as it cut through the, well, not air, but whatever existed within the thin exosphere of the moon.

After its initial attack missed, the Stalker tried to bite him with its thorn-filled mouth, as long vines erupted from all over its body, shooting forward to entangle Jake. Pulling out his katars, the vines were easily shredded as Jake closed in and landed a solid punch to the side of the Stalker’s head. He wanted to continue and attack the core directly, but two more Stalkers arrived right at that moment, making Jake use One Step to teleport away and pull out his bow again.

A barrage of exploding arrows created some more space as Jake blasted himself backward. A heavily injured Lunewood Stalker shot after him, and Jake’s eyes glowed for a moment as the creature flew past him, lifeless, as its already feeble and weak soul crumbled.

Turning around, he released an Arcane Powershot, blasting away another Stalker while taking off two of its legs as he used One Step again to dodge two tail swipes from even more of the annoying plant creatures. His sphere expanded slightly as he made sure to keep an eye on all of them, every single Lunewood Stalker also hit with a Hunter’s Mark.

It wasn’t that hard to keep track of them, though. They didn’t attack with any strategy at all but just charged for him in a straight line. There weren’t even any attempts to surround or cut off his paths of retreat, making the fight far easier than it had any right to be.

One by one, he killed the Lunewood Stalkers, not taking any injuries himself. They simply weren’t fast or strong enough to pose a real threat, and shortly, the final creature had its midsection exploded by an arrow as it fell dead toward the moon.

The entire fight hadn’t even taken that long, as he methodically tore them apart. He also noticed that they seemed to grow a bit weaker the further they got away from the forest, just making things even easier.

Dispelling his boosting skill, Jake sighed as he hoped there would be better foes further inside the forest. While the levels of these Lunewood Stalkers were impressive, their power sure as hell was not. They were so weak that Jake doubted he even got any good experience from them. Disappointing was really the only emotion he felt toward them so far, and while they could offer the flavors of a horde battle if even more attacked him, Jake had always preferred singular powerful foes.

Oh well, at least Sandy had been eating well and made sure to snatch all of the corpses. The worm did spit them out again, though, only really caring about extracting those Lunewood Meteorite Fragments they all had. It effectively served as their cores, and during the fight, Jake noticed striking these cores did more damage than anywhere else, though he had been a bit afraid of accidentally breaking them.

Sandy said after the worm teleported back up to him.

“I don’t think we have to,” Jake said, as he didn’t detect anyone or anything coming for them. He had deliberately made sure to retreat away from what he had chosen to dub the Lunewood Forest to test out the detection range of whatever lived there, and it seemed like this was enough. The fact distance from the forest also made the Stalkers weaker had just been a happy bonus.

Sandy said.

“An attack should we enter does seem probable,” Jake nodded in agreement. He didn’t have that much confidence in his stealth skill either when it came to hiding the fragments. If Sandy wasn’t confident, Jake sure as hell wasn’t. He did have one thing he wanted to try, though. “Let’s go down and land on the moon. I have one… no, two things I want to try.”

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Sandy agreed as the two of them flew down with impressive speed. Jake did kind of like how he could travel a lot faster in space, even without subspace nonsense. He could simply fly a lot faster and even near-constantly accelerate to a far higher top speed. Even his One Step range was significantly longer.

Due to that, he soon reached the surface of the moon. Stopping just before he landed, Jake stood a few centimeters off the ground as Sandy looked at him, confused. Jake cleared his throat and raised a foot as he did something he had wanted to do ever since arriving on the moon.

“One small step for man, one giant leap for mankind,” Jake said with a stupid grin on his face as he stepped down on the moon’s surface.

Sandy commented, confused.

“Just let me have this moment,” Jake said, throwing a glance at Sandy.

the giant space worm sulked before seemingly getting an idea as they also floated down to be just a few meters off the surface.

A big crash shook the local area as the giant worm crashed down.

Jake just stared at the worm as Sandy giggled.

“Stealing my moment,” Jake muttered, as he decided to just move on to the actual reason he had wanted to touch down on the surface.

With his two awesome mythical boots solidly on the ground, their ability to detect natural earthbound treasures was activated… and it may just be because the moon was primarily rock, but he got a massive response. Closing his eyes to focus, Jake felt hundreds, no thousands of responses below the ground, and as he focused and infused even more power into his old leathery companions, he finally got enough reach to detect the center of the moon.

It was a massive response as he felt the core of the celestial object. Giving Planetary Cores rarities wouldn’t really make much sense, but it was unquestionable they contained an absolutely ridiculous amount of power. What’s more, they had the ability to produce mana, making them incredibly valuable and near-endless power sources. Jake couldn’t feel if anything was siphoning power off the core, but he could feel it and confirm it definitely had enough juice to give birth to a B-grade.

The second largest response came from the direction of the Lunewood Forest, and it wasn’t hard to guess this was the Wood Meteorite that Sandy talked about. The fragments of the meteorites within each Lunewood Stalker were about the size of a basketball, and based on the response, he felt that the true meteorite was far, far larger. He wouldn’t necessarily say that the size of the fragments had to proportionally correlate with power, though, as if that was true, the meteorite would likely have contained more power than the planetary core.

Sandy said.

“I more so just confirmed what we already theorized,” Jake answered as he opened his eyes. “I think you are right on the money with that Wood Meteorite thing, and I want to go confirm for myself, but before that… do you want those Meteorite Fragments? As in, do you need them?”

Sandy confessed.

Jake nodded, once more impressed with Sandy’s insights, as he asked: “In that case, can I have them? And would it be fine if I end up effectively destroying them?”

Sandy asked to make sure.

“That’s actually a very good point,” Jake frowned as he reconsidered.

Sandy suggested.

“Fair enough,” Jake nodded along as he considered the plan he had begun to form in his mind. Sandy was correct that the life energy could indeed only be described as poluted. He had nothing to use it for alchemically, and the imbalance and the relative weakness of the Lunewood Stalkers compared to their level likely also had roots in the broken life affinity. In fact, the affinity contained way more raw power, hence the levels, than it had any right to. There was just no cohesion, leading to an ultimately shitty result.

“Say, what do people usually do when they notice a Wood Meteorite has crashed somewhere?” Jake asked.

Sandy once more gave a lengthy explanation as Jake learned more neat space facts.

“So, if I say, want to eat the entire Wood Meteorite and kill the entire forest, there would be nothing wrong with it?” Jake asked.

Sandy said in a joking tone.

“True, true,” Jake nodded. Even if he used Palate, he wasn’t sure he was able – or wanted – to eat it. But that wasn’t the only option. “I won’t be the one eating it, though. This bad boy will.”

Jake pulled out Eternal Hunger and tossed it up before catching it again. “Life energy is still life energy, and I’m sure this little one will enjoy it fully.”

That’s right, Jake’s idea was to get rid of this entire Lunewood Forest by absorbing it with Eternal Hunger. He even had a ritual in mind to do it and reckoned it would be a good way to get a few profession levels. Plus, based on what Sandy said, these kinds of Wood Meteories could be problematic if left alone, so wasn’t he doing a good thing?

While he couldn’t confirm it, he wouldn’t be surprised if this Lunewood Forest was expanding and, with time, would cover the entire surface of the moon. So, better nip it in the bud before it could get that far.

Sandy pointed out.

“True,” Jake nodded. “I will have to scout out the forest properly to find out.”

Sandy said in a disgusted tone.

“Fair enough,” Jake nodded as he and Sandy prepared to split up. “You know where to find me, right? I’ll also throw a Mark on you in case things go south.”

Sandy said in a casual tone.

“Not sure it’s considered normal to consider your Patron a walkie-talkie,” Jake grinned.

Sandy defended themself.

Shaking his head, Jake smiled. “In either case, see you around. I’m gonna go on a picnic inside the creepy polluted life forest filled with weird monsters that wanna kill me.”

Indeed, just another normal day in the life of a giant space worm and a human on adventure.