Jake decided to find a nice tree and take a seat as he opened his notification window to go over the last few days of hunting. There were many kill notifications, all of them giving experience as naturally a stealth archer was always the one engaging, and why would Jake choose to engage lower-leveled foes?

As for levels… well, it was pretty good as his hunting speed kept picking up, and in his fervor to upgrade the skill through trial and error, he probably ended up hunting faster than before. Especially when he considered the ever-growing level of power of his prey.

Checking it out, he was at least satisfied.

*’DING!’ Class: [Avaricious Arcane Hunter] has reached level 161 - Stat points allocated, +10 Free Points*

…

*’DING!’ Class: [Avaricious Arcane Hunter] has reached level 164 - Stat points allocated, +10 Free Points*

*’DING!’ Race: [Human (D)] has reached level 165 - Stat points allocated, +15 Free Points*

*’DING!’ Race: [Human (D)] has reached level 166 - Stat points allocated, +15 Free Points*

Jake looked at the notification and saw his level. 166. Having gained four class levels and two race ones from that. This has to be enough, right?

He believed it was. Draskil had done it at 173.

That’s right…

With a bit over a day left till the system event, it was time for this stealth archer to take down his biggest prey yet:

It was C-grade hunting time.

Now the issue was just finding one. No, not just finding one, but finding one suitable to hunt. One Jake was good against would be preferable. This meant it needed to be flesh and blood, probably a beast of some kind, and if it was not on the more durable side, that would also be nice. He wanted to avoid prey with healing powers if possible, as Jake knew that he would risk running himself dry. Fighting any C-grade would require Arcane Awakening to be active from start to end, putting him on a timer, so facing a foe able to turtle down and wait him out would suck.

The reason why It needed to be flesh and blood was naturally for his rare Hemotoxin Poison, his most potent toxin to date. He had made it with C-grade hunting in mind, so finding an elemental or something like that would be inadvisable.

His other requirement would be a good hunting ground, but honestly, the jungle was fine if not downright great for him. He had a lot of space to kite, and he had already tried and tested the effectiveness of striking from above to land Stealth Attacks with excellent results.

With all of that in mind, he set out on his hunt.

--

The Malefic Viper had naturally observed as always and nodded as he saw Jake’s recent skill upgrades. Nothing was overly unexpected so far, not because what Jake was doing was normal, but because Vilastromoz had gotten used to it. Pointing out the fact that usually it could take months of deep meditating to identify and become familiar with the conceptual changes brought on by such a skill would be a waste of time. Jake’s level of perception was truly disgusting, and the Viper was not just talking about the stat.

He had a policy of never giving Jake direct advice on picking skills or upgrading them. Doing so would only lead to adverse effects down the line. Perhaps it would help him upgrade it now, but the next upgrade would only get more challenging, and the god fully expected Jake to one day reach godhood on his own anyway. Trying to “help” would only risk hampering that.

Vilastromoz failed to hold back a small smile as he recalled his old days. A skill starting at low rarity was just that – a starting point. While getting one that was higher rarity was all fine and good - in most instances the preferable choice - there were also cases where it was not. Stealth Attack was a case where picking it was clever. The Viper had never wanted to ask or question Jake about getting the skill, and he had to admit seeing Jake pick it was a pleasant surprise.

Back in his day, he remembered not picking up quite a few skills… one of them he had skipped for a long time had been called Scale Armor. Instinctually the Viper had passed it back in F-grade before he even had anything close to sapient thought. Back then, it had been useless as the Viper was small and an ambush predator. Chances are, if he was caught and hit, he would lose anyway, so running away was better, making more robust scales useless.

Naturally, it was skipped in E-grade and D-grade too. The useless inferior rarity skill was ignored, and the Viper had already gained other defensive means. The Malefic Viper had always been a magic-focused beast, so getting magical defenses just made sense. Who needed stronger scales with a powerful mana shield and a cloud of miasma warding off any foes daring to engage in melee?

It took all the way to C-grade. Late C-grade that is. His decision-making then had spawned from interacting with some humans who had theorized these low rarity skills could be worth it. As he had no other skill choices he truly wanted at the time, Vilastromoz took a gamble and picked up the weak skill. The day he got it, he was disappointed as it did nothing besides making his scales a bit tougher to physical attacks… but he recognized something in it.

A concept spawned by the system. Simplistic damage reduction. A flat damage reduction on every blow that is. Its effect was so weak right when he got it, but it got stronger and stronger as time progressed. He adapted the skill, made it his own, fused it with Dragon Scales when he reached B-grade and refined it more… until one day, it became a skill many alchemists and followers of him knew today:

Scales of the Malefic Viper.

It was quiet. Incredibly quiet. Far more so than in any other areas of the jungle. Rather than encountering beasts or Vinewood creatures every few minutes, he now barely saw any, and those he saw were all towards the peak of D-grade. Jake hunted a few, but they were not his target, and even the stronger ones didn’t offer a good challenge.

None of these foes were beings born of struggle or created from extraordinary circumstances. They had just grown up in an environment with high mana density, making them grow powerful just by time passing and hunting each other. Nothing compared to genius-level beasts like Sylphie or the hydra Snappy had been back in the day. They were just regular beasts… and so were the vast majority of C-grades.

Jake was not looking for a powerful C-grade. All C-grades were already powerful to him, and he knew he didn’t stand a chance against something like the Termite Hive King. No, he needed a lower-tier C-grade, and as he spent the next many hours searching, he thought he had found one.

He had seen several already. A massive treant that towered above the jungle and made all the greenery sway and wave in its wake. An owl that looked to be made out of metal and used light magic that Jake did consider as a target, but it had taken off before he got a chance to properly assess it. A third had been a Vinewood Elephant that was also utterly massive and looked to be made entirely out of bark. As he did not want to fight a being that was not of flesh and blood, he quickly moved on.

Until finally, he had found his current target that he had been tracking for nearly an hour.

The beast was no larger than a regular specimen of its species. Its entire body was black with sleek fine hair covering it. Four paws soundlessly hit the underbrush as it hunted peak D-grade beasts and creatures and consumed their cores or other natural treasures, with Jake covertly observing from a distance.

Identifying it, the name fit.

[Phantomshade Panther – lvl ???]

Jake had been keeping an eye on it to get an idea as to how powerful it was and what it was capable of, and he had to say… it was weaker than expected. It was undoubtedly a C-grade, but the fact that it hunted peak D-grades should already be evidence enough it was struggling to fight others of the same grade. Compared to the three other C-grades he saw, it was far behind. Still stronger than any of the peak D-grades, but still.

In an hour, he had seen it kill three opponents of the Vinewood variant. It seemed to use a mix of dark and space magic, coupled with incredibly high Agility to take down its foes. The Panther was a bit of a glass cannon, though, and he saw it take a few minor wounds here and there, and even if these did rapidly heal, the mere fact that these D-grades could hurt it was a testament to its relative weakness.

He did find it peculiar how its flesh, even beneath the hair, was black and how it bled entirely black blood. The way the wound healed also looked weird, but who was Jake to comment on what kind of physique made sense for a C-grade?

Checking the time, Jake had around eleven hours left till the system event. Smiling a bit, Jake knew it was enough time as he made all his preparations. He marked the Panther as he kept tracking it and waited as he took to the air. It had just engaged a beast to fight, and he would wait till the moment it stopped to relax after the kill – something it had done every other time.

It did not take long before the Panther had won, and Jake felt his Mark stop moving. He could not make an Arrow of the Ambitious Hunter as he had yet to understand its physique, but he could still land quite the opening blow. He had prepared his arrows already with his rare Hemotoxin Poison and now pulled one out. He activated Arcane Awakening in the offensive state and began charging Arcane Powershot.

The Panther was still unaware as arcane wrath descended upon it. It reacted only a moment before impact as it rapidly dodged, but the arrow was too fast, and the beast was hit in its side, opening up a deep and nasty wound – Stealth Attack naturally fully triggering.

Jake followed up, but his next attacks were dodged as the Panther instantly locked in on him. He had just nocked an arrow as his danger sense exploded, making him stop what he was doing and step down just in time.

A claw emerged where he had just been as the Panther had teleported right up to him. Jake quickly stepped down again as the beast rushed him with anger in its eyes. Space distorted in its wake as it charged, bending everything between them as a dark streak cut across the sky.

Luckily Jake was far gone and managed to land a potshot before rapidly flying upwards to get some distance. He glanced back at it, and just before it charged, he turned and shot an arrow again as he used Gaze of the Apex Hunter, finding it worked even better than expected as the Panther froze for a moment. His arrow, already in the air, hit the Panther, infecting it with even more poison.

Come on, you can do better than that, Jake thought.

The Panther stared at him for a moment before it began to emit black smoke. The smoke absolutely obscured the form of the Panther as it charged once more. Jake smirked a bit as it entered his Sphere, and he easily side-stepped the beast as he pulled out Eternal Hunger and managed to stab the C-grade in the side before he stepped down, teleporting away once more.

He teleported, but the Panther seemed to have read him and followed a moment later. Jake blocked the paw and found his arms buckling as he was pushed back. Another swipe left a nasty cut on his arms as his bracer was torn apart, but before it could land the third blow, Jake used Gaze once more and, with a Descending Dark Arcane Fang, smashed the Panther down towards the ground.

Before it could stabilize, Jake fired a barrage of Splitting Arrows that exploded in a torrent of arcane energy, sending it tumbling down even further. Four black crescent waves were sent in return as a swipe tore up space itself, but Jake managed to dodge between two space tears as he fired an Arcane Powershot rapidly charged through the use of Steady Aim.

The beast tried to dodge, but Jake had predicted its movements as the Powershot slightly curved and smashed into the Panther’s stomach, sending it barreling down towards the ground, creating a crater on impact.

His foe had taken great damage, but there was no way a C-grade would go down that easily… no matter how weak it was. And damn, this one was weak. The mere fact that Jake had time to properly consider how weak it was during the fight was proof of that. It reminded him a bit of his first “true” D-grade kill against the giant lightning bird.

It was disappointing.

However, he would not let his guard down as Jake kept up the assault. The Panther was already healing as its black flesh wiggled, but the Hemotoxin Poison clearly did work. Its speed was incredibly impressive, and it could make itself invisible and attack stealthily – skills Jake already knew about from observing its prior fights. All things Jake could easily deal with.

Finally, it did something new.

He faintly felt space around him be affected as the Panther did not move from down on the ground. Jake shot several arrows but found them all bent away from the Panther as it stared up at him. Looking back, he met its gaze, and the moment he did…

Everything went dark.

No, he was not knocked out, but all his senses were thrown for a loop. His eyesight disappeared, all sound was gone, all smells, even Sense of the Malefic Viper was entirely cut off. Dense black energy had invaded his very soul, and Jake rapidly began cleansing it, but it was not something he could get rid of instantly. Even so, Jake did not panic. He still felt the space around him bend through his Sphere, and he quickly adapted and made a plan. Acting as if his senses were all gone, Jake began flailing helplessly.

The Panther took the bait.

Jake felt the same charge attack as before. In an instant, the Panther appeared right in front of him and cut down with its paw to shred him into several pieces. The moment it committed to its attack, Jake stopped acting. He dove forward under the paw of the beast and got below the Panther as he stabbed Eternal Hunger upwards and penetrated the Panther’s belly. He then firmly held on with one hand as he placed his other on the beast and activated Touch of the Malefic Viper.

His senses returned just in time to hear the Panther hiss in pain as it tried to get him off. Something made even more difficult by Jake pulling out strings of mana to wrap around the beast as it tried to stretch its body and bite Jake as he just kept pumping poison into the C-grade. Fang of the Malefic Viper was naturally fully active on Eternal Hunter as it pumped out venom into the beast from the inside, and Touch pumped it in from the outside.

Finally, the beast managed to muster enough energy. Jake swiftly disengaged as the Panther’s body exploded with space magic, leaving hundreds of small scratches on Jake’s body from the torn space. The Panther looked spent as it stared angrily at Jake.

Let’s finish this.

Jake stepped down and teleported to dodge a blow as the Panther tried to attack. The Panther teleported away when it failed to land a blow, but Jake was ready and stepped down once more and managed to appear above the beast. With a blast of arcane mana, he sent it tumbling down, and an Arcane Powershot blasted it into the jungle below once more. Explosive Arcane Arrows then fell like rain as the jungle, along with the Panther, was torn apart.

Looking down, Jake felt disappointment as he activated Mark of the Avaricious Arcane Hunter. The Panther that was already on its last legs flashed with arcane light before it finally succumbed as he got a notification. The beast rapidly began decomposing, and within a few seconds, its entire body turned to black smoke as Jake frowned.

He flew down and landed where he had killed the Panther but did not see any signs it had ever been there. No loot, no nothing. He got a feeling something was very off as he checked the notification.

*You have destroyed [Phantomshade Panther Clone – lvl 204]*

Wait, what!? Jake thought as his eyes opened wide.

Before he could properly grasp the situation, he suddenly felt more presences nearby. In the clearing created from the fight, Jake stood as four figures appeared. Four identical Panthers surrounded him on each side as Jake’s frown changed into a serious expression as realization struck him.

He had only killed one of five clones.

Arcane Awakening fully activated a moment later as all four Panthers charged.