Paradise. A city with a quite apt description for certain kinds of people. It was the kind of place that the United Cities Alliance didn’t truly recognize as a member but still wanted in their circle. A necessary evil, so to say, where all the weird and controversial shit could be done. A center of debauchery, wealth, and whatever the heart desired – and that came from its own marketing.

Peter had gone and gathered all the intel he could on the place. Considering what he got was clearly a watered-down version of the actual place, Jake was impressed the ”civilized” United Cities Alliance hadn’t denounced it yet. They didn’t exactly promote or endorse it but just acted like Paradise didn’t really exist, and their stance had led to some recent trouble resulting in the teleportation circle being cut off.

This meant they would have to travel there on foot, which the clerk heavily advised against. Apparently, one would have to pass quite the dangerous zone where these gazelle-like creatures roamed, and they were known to be rather aggressive towards anyone invading their territory. Hearing this, Jake naturally knew they had to check it out.

There was still one thing bothering him, though.

”Any idea why your family would choose to settle down in that kind of place?” Jake asked Carmen the second they were outside the city.

She looked in thought for a moment before answering. ”I don’t really want to know, but if I had to guess, then it is because they thrive in that kind of environment. My aunt and uncle made their fortune by running a casino, and I know my grandparents were heavily involved in the medicinal industry, so producing drugs or shit like that is right up their alley. As for my parents, they probably just followed whatever my grandparents, uncle, and aunt wanted.”

”Sounds like a pretty messed up family dynamic,” Jake commented.

”Yeah,” Carmen just said as she fell silent.

”Whatever the case, I hope they are safe,” Peter tried to comfort her. It didn’t seem to work very well as Carmen just ignored the guy.

While Jake did believe Carmen wanted them to be ”safe,” he had an odd feeling about why she wanted that. She seemed to carry a lot of animosity, yet she also clearly wanted to meet them again. Jake knew he wasn’t even halfway qualified to try and figure out what was going on, but he did know that Carmen certainly didn’t come from a typical family.

”Let’s just get moving,” Carmen said, making them drop the topic as the four of them headed off. Jake took out the Prima fragment as he also thought to ask Peter.

”You killed any Primas or gained any fragments?” Jake asked.

The young man sighed and shook his head. ”Yes to the first one, no to the second. While I was still with the Church, we killed a Prima, but the fragment was given back to the leaders. I haven’t killed or even come across any since then.”

Jake nodded in understanding. ”Alright. Just gonna say right now that we still need two for Carmen, so even if we come across any, she has them reserved.”

”Naturally,” the young man agreed. Jake didn’t detect any hint of disappointment from him either, so he nodded as they headed forward with great speed, only slowed down by Peter a little bit. Being a warrior with light magic, he was actually relatively fast, but his movement skills were more focused on instantaneous movement than long-range travel.

Sylphie helped as always with her wind magic, and only now did Peter seem to truly take notice of this small hawk. Jake hadn’t really thought much about it, but he now realized that most people probably just viewed Sylphie as an extension of Jake. An animal companion or something akin to that.

”I don’t think I ever properly introduced you to Sylphie, did I?” Jake asked, way overdue.

Peter just smiled and said. ”I do not believe you did.”

”Well, Sylphie is Sylphie, a pretty young little hawk, and probably one of the strongest creatures on the planet at her level, with less than ten humans alive able to fight her,” Jake quickly introduced her.

The young man froze a bit as he chuckled and looked at the hawk. ”Nice to meet you.”

”Ree!” Sylphie answered a bit offended. Even she was able to detect his lack of belief in what Jake had said.

”I am not joking,” Jake said in a serious tone. ”She is higher level than both Carmen and I, and she is a high-tier variant.”

”Yeah, I’m gonna be honest; I would probably lose in a fight,” Carmen shrugged. ”She is faster than any of us, incredibly elusive, hard to pin down, and has incredibly potent attacks.”

Sylphie began circling them as Jake could feel how much she enjoyed being praised and spoken highly of. Peter looked at the cute little hawk with newfound respect and a bit of fear as he seemed to finally understand they weren’t joking. It did help that Sylphie was circling them faster and faster and created a small hurricane that they were in the eye of, even while running at high speed.

The guy also finally didn’t speak for more than ten minutes as more than an hour passed in silence. He and Jake ended up opening their mouthes at nearly the same time as they reached the outskirts of a grassy plain:

”I feel a Prima.”

”We reached the territory of the gazelles.”

Jake and Peter exchanged gazes as Jake smirked. ”Well then, seems like this won’t be a waste of time. I am a bit confused, though. How come no one has bothered hunting down this gazelle?”

”It and its pack moved in-”

”A group of gazelles is called a herd,” Jake corrected him.

”It and its herd moved in only a month or so ago, and they are fast and difficult to track down while also being rather powerful,” Peter explained correctly.

Jake nodded as he felt for the Prima. He knelt down and sensed the faint energy left in the air by the gazelle Prima as he and the others began making their way into the plains. While usually referred to as a mana signature, it was more accurate to call it an energy signature, as even someone like Carmen without mana had this identifiable trait. It was tied to the soul, and even with evolutions, it remained more or less the same. In many ways, it could be viewed as the DNA of the Truesoul.

There were ways to obscure it, and for the first time, Jake felt something like that. The trails of energy left by the Prima were muddled. It was like the beast had gone in both directions at the same time while also giving Jake a hunch it had actually gone in neither.

This was one way to hide trails better: making false ones. Jake’s stealth would hide his energy signature, and most stealth-related skills worked like that. Due to the way energy was related to the body, it was effectively entangled with the soul, meaning that when Jake used a stealth skill, it hid all the mana in his surroundings, even the traces he had passively left before going stealth.

What the gazelle did was far more complicated than merely hiding. A false trail combined with stealth skills would mean the gazelle could easily create ambushes and whatnot while never itself falling into a trap. Moreover, when Jake felt the presence of other gazelles than the Prima, he felt their trail be identical to the Primas.

”This thing is good,” Jake muttered.

”What is it?” Carmen asked.

”The Gazelle Prima is able to mask its tracks and lay down false ones… Peter, have other people tried to hunt it?” Jake turned to the young man.

”Yeah, quite a few, but they never find it or never return. That is also why we didn’t even know it was even a Prima,” he said worriedly.

Jake nodded. He inspected the energy signatures but simply had no way to properly distinguish them and track down the gazelles using them. Usually, this would be where Jake was fucked, but there was one more thing he could do.

He waved his hand as strings of arcane mana were woven and cut away some of the tall grass in front of him. He went forward as he scanned the area with Sphere of Perception until he finally found what he had been looking for.

”Please stay back,” Jake said to the others as he carefully condensed mana under his feet and went forward, avoiding stepping on the grass. With the strings of mana, he cut away more grass as he finally found what he had been looking for: physical tracks.

Tracking in the new world was quite a bit different from old-world tracking. Tracking in the old world relied on actual tracks, analyzing feces, and just looking for any physical evidence left behind by the traveling animal. A lot of these methods were made harder with the system. One such example was the fact that trampled grass was far more resilient and would simply make itself stand again and regenerate with a bit of mana mere minutes after being trampled.

However, the ground below did not even itself out. It became covered by the grass, but Jake could still see the earth below had been dented. Hoof marks had been left and using them, it became clear the gazelles had gone through there. Unsurprisingly enough, there was no trail of energy despite them clearly running there, but one leading off in another false direction.

Now, it would be a difficult thing to determine where the tracks were pointing. Physical tracking was rarely done, and Jake could only really do it due to his incredibly high Perception allowing him to see minute changes coupled with his Sphere of Perception, but even that did not grant him the knowledge to read and analyze the tracks. This is where Jake had one final card up his sleeve: he used to really like binging those TV shows about guys drinking their own piss and walking around in the wild while explaining stuff.

”One has larger hooves than the others… but is lighter,” Jake muttered. He followed the trail a bit and became more and more sure this one was relatively recent. The soil would still smoothen itself out with time due to the grass and when it rained and whatnot, and he could see the absolutely minuscule smoothening of the hoof marks by only traveling half a kilometer or so.

”That way for sure… and recent. Hm…”

Jake closed his eyes as he took a deep breath. No matter how good the gazelle was, it was only D-grade like him. Even if it had a powerful skill and was talented, Jake had something even better: a high as fuck Perception stat.

Releasing some of his own arcane mana, he introduced stability into his surroundings. Everything seemed to almost freeze as Jake scanned the mana in the air and around the tracks. He discovered what he was looking for down inside the hoof-print he had been looking at, or more accurately, embedded in the soil. It was just a faint wisp of energy that did not belong there. But it was enough. Once thoroughly scrutinized by Jake, it revealed itself as the kind of energy he had been looking for.

That of the Prima.

It was like the entire technique made to hide the Prima unraveled as he found this. The false tracks now correctly appeared false in his mind, and a true track emerged, leading into the distance.

”Got you.”

[Hunter’s Tracking (Uncommon)] - The hunter does not sit silently in his lodge but actively hunts for his prey. Unlocks proficiency in tracking down prey based on limited clues left behind. Also allows the hunter to more easily identify characteristics of the game, including mana signatures and aura. Adds a small bonus to the effect of Perception while tracking.

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[Traditional Hunter’s Tracking (Rare)] - The hunter does not sit silently in his lodge but actively hunts for his prey. Unlocks proficiency in tracking down prey based on limited clues left behind, including both magical and physical ones. Also allows the hunter to more easily identify characteristics of the game, including mana signatures and aura. Allows the hunter to more easily distinguish and analyze physical tracks. Adds a bonus to the effect of Perception while tracking.

Jake smiled as he got the upgrade. This one came as no surprise as Jake finally advanced the skill. He knew the tracking skill was a lot like the weapon skills or even the stealth skill. Abilities with identical names could have different effects, and Jake knew he had gone in a rather mundane – or traditional - direction with his tracking by using conventional methods, but it clearly had been good enough. Others would mix in odd stuff like analyzing space or the two perhaps most popular paths: karmic analysis and time magic.

Those were a bit too fancy for Jake to dabble in quite yet.

”You got it?” Carmen asked.

”I got it,” Jake smiled as the party of four took off to kill themselves another Prima.

The silent wind swept through the plains as a group of three people stood on the plains and gazed upon their handiwork.

”Well. That was a disappointment,” Jake muttered.

”Are you sure this was a real Prima?” Carmen asked.

”It dropped a fragment, so… yeah?” Jake said, equally perplexed.

Peter stood and stared all around him at the scattered body parts. Sylphie was busy plucking out all the Beastcores and even ate a few of them as snacks.

”You gotta do that ritual thing?” Jake asked.

”I only do that for good fights,” Carmen just scoffed. ”This barely – if at all - qualified as a fight.”

”Fair,” Jake nodded as he managed to swipe up the core of the Prima before Sylphie got to it.

Anyway, it turned out the Gazelle Prima was weak as fuck. It was a bit fast and good at hiding itself, but considering Jake could track it and they had a hawk that was even faster than it had been, the fight had been over in less than a minute. The Prima had also only been level 139, making it so weak that any one of them could have taken it in a one-on-one, even Peter.

”This does explain why it hid away when strong parties came looking,” Peter mumbled.

”Yep,” Jake nodded.

”Ree!” Sylphie said as Jake had to walk over and pat her on the head. ”Yeah, you did well!”

She really had. She had managed to cut off one of the legs of the Prima and then proceeded to slice and dice it about fifteen times before finally decapitating it with a fly-by to cut through roughly ninety percent of its neck. Then it just took a pair of talons penetrating the skull of the Prima, and a good yank later, the head was off.

The poor guy Peter hadn’t really had a chance to show off but had just killed a few of the normal gazelles part of the herd. He also looked at the small hawk with new eyes as he clearly thoroughly believed Jake had not been joking about her being a little ball of cuteness and death.

”Ree...” Sylphie screeched faintly as she acted all worn out as she looked up at Jake with begging eyes. Jake knew the spoiled bird just wanted to be cuddled and praised as he picked her up and held her like a cat, much to her pleasure.

He kept stroking her as she nuzzled up to him as he looked at the two others.

”Anyhow, with all that done, let’s get to Paradise.”