The Primal Hunter

Chapter 1126: Defensive Measures Of Tree Monsters & How To Counter Them

Hiding the majority of its body beneath the ground was honestly a good way for tree monsters to avoid getting attacked. Not the best way, but beings like that really needed anything they could get their branches on to deal with opponents able to inflict serious damage at long range.

It was definitely the biggest weakness of tree monsters. They tended to have far higher Vitality and Toughness as well as resource pools that not even Jake could compete with. Several incredibly powerful passive skills were also to be expected, though it all came at the severe cost of being unable to move. Well, move under regular circumstances.

It wasn’t odd for tree monsters to have some limited mobility options, especially upon reaching B-grade. More than mobility, Jake would call it relocation tools, though. Ways to either uproot themselves alongside a large piece of land, or perhaps the ability to teleport elsewhere.

They all had in common that they weren’t applicable to combat and required a lot of preparation, which meant that the tree needed to be able to handle opponents despite being unable to move.

There were many ways to do this, with four methods being prevalent. The first one was to never get found in the first place. Illusory fog, formations, stealth... There were a lot of ways for a tree to hide itself, but if it were found, it needed one of the three other methods.

The second method was also straightforward: be impenetrable. Be so tough and have so many magical barriers defending yourself that your opponent simply couldn’t break through and actually deal any damage. Being immobile did mean the tree had plenty of time to make preparations, making the vast majority of them domain fighters, not unlike Miranda and all her witch-abilities.

Sometimes, the opponent had too powerful offenses, though, so some form of offense was needed, which was naturally the third method. Magic in all the forms one could imagine naturally came in here as the tree could learn whatever ranged spells it wanted to try to shoot down the attacker with what was effectively anti-air magic cannons. These anti-ranged fighter tools were also regularly deployed beforehand, making taking down a powerful tree monster a lot like assaulting a well-defended castle.

However, even the most well-defended castle could find itself in a situation where it had to move out and address opponents at times, which was where the fourth and final method could be found: summons. Trees could inherently grow and even create offshoots of themselves, making many develop skills to create clones or treant soldiers, something Jake had seen frequently when fighting tree monsters before.

Jake had considered what kind of defensive means the B-grade tree would have, and with it being a B-grade and all, it honestly shouldn’t have come as a surprise that the answer was all of them.

The entire island the tree lived on was covered by a fog that sought to obscure the tree from view, making it difficult to pinpoint where the actual monster was. Alongside this, the island was covered in hundreds of “fake” tree stumps of the reverse-growing tree, all of them hidden among all the other vegetation of the dense jungle.

These many fake trees weren’t just there to fool an attacker, though. All of them also served as focal points for powerful formations that the tree had likely spent decades, if not centuries, placing down as it grew and took over the entire island, where it was now the only life that remained.

Both defensive and offensive formations could be seen, and Jake also spotted signs of several hidden treant monsters spread around the island, all giving off an aura similar to the tree, which was why he didn’t consider there to be any life outside of the B-grade. These treants were just soldiers or drones without any real soul or mind of their own.

Now, Jake could understand why a B-grade like this would have confidence in themself. It was an impressive setup that would scare away many hopeful hunters from even attempting to attack, and if they did attack, chances were they wouldn’t get much out of it. Trees were also known to have an insane regeneration rate of energy as they could absorb mana directly from the ground, and their ability to get it from the environment surpassed something like a human’s several times over.

In many instances, the tree could regenerate faster than someone could deal meaningful damage, turning it into a waste of time for everyone involved. And as Jake looked down at the large island, he guessed this was also the conclusion the most talented C-grade hunters from the Pantheon of Life would make.

Artemis had shared that the Pantheon of Life tended to produce fighters with relatively lower than average offensive prowess due to their focus on life magic. This meant that the hunters who had attacked the tree in the past likely hadn’t been the best at damage dealing, and any life-affinity offensive magic they did use, the tree would be very resistant to. Being a tree and all.

All of these things definitely made the tree monster Jake was about to face incredibly impressive, but in truth, this wouldn’t be a fair fight at all. When it came to hiding, Jake had taken just a few minutes to find the main body of the B-grade, the fog covering the island having no effect in front of his supreme Perception stat, which even allowed him to Identify the tree despite it having a skill to avoid that happening.

[Grand Adansonia Lifeshaper – lvl ???]

Having located his opponent just meant Jake had to deal with all the other defensive means... except not really. Jake had no intentions of making this a normal fight in any way. He had confidence in winning by just setting up shop far up in the sky while raining down arrows, but that would take a long time. Long enough for other B-grades to perhaps get involved, including the Forest Fae... especially since Jake had no idea where she was.

After killing the lioness, he had flown by just to check her island and failed to spot her despite scanning the place with Pulse, meaning she had to be elsewhere. Her showing up after Jake had already burned through a lot of his resources could easily turn an otherwise safe situation hairy.

That’s why Jake had decided to handle this B-grade tree not solely as a hunter but also as an alchemist. That’s why Jake had made so much neurotoxin – or soul poison, as it was also often referred to as. Nearly all the advantages of the tree came down to its superior resource pools and ability to rely on the environment, so what would happen if Jake inhibited the B-grade’s ability to use its own energy while also turning the environment that supported it toxic?

Well, they were both about to find out.

Floating close to the upper edges of the atmosphere, directly above the island, Jake stood surrounded by nearly a thousand larger-than-normal bolts of arcana mana, all hanging suspended in the thin air. Inside each of these bolts was a reddish black liquid that had come straight from Jake’s veins as he’d bled out more blood for this attack than the average donor could give in their entire lifetime.... ten times over. At least.

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Meanwhile, Jake also prepared his usual Eternal Hunger Protean Arrow, alongside roughly five hundred arrows coated in his Soul-Petrifying Shadow Poison. He stored all these poisoned arrows inside his quiver, ready to be unleashed after his initial strike.

In all the fights prior, Jake had expected a lot from his initial arrow, but this time around, all Jake aimed to do was destroy the defensive barriers shielding the island. Using his Protean Arrow as a wall-breaker did feel a bit odd, but Jake felt confident this was the best approach, and soon enough, all his preparations were complete.

Jake did a final Pulse and a scouring of his surroundings to see if the Forest Fae or any other B-grades were nearby before he decided it was go-time. Nocking his Eternal Hunger Protean Arrow, Jake took aim for the unassuming tree stump with just a few willow branches sticking out of it. It didn’t look like a B-grade, nor did it give off the aura of one currently, but Jake knew this was the true body of the tree.

After fully channeling his arrow, he let go as he let it descend. Right as he loosed the arrow, he also commanded all the bolts to fall before instantly taking out a poison arrow and shooting that, too.

In many ways, this opening salvo reminded Jake of the Ashen Phantom Devourer. Back then, he had also created a huge cluster bomb of arrows and even shot arrows down with varying power to ensure they would all arrive at the same time. Back then, Jake had done this simply by not pulling the string as hard to make the first arrows descend more slowly, but this time, Jake had a new trick up his sleeve.

Before his Protean Arrow even arrived, Jake had shot out thirty poisoned arrows, all falling with varying speed as the concept of time seemed to affect each one differently. The only thing they all had in common was that all of them would arrive at roughly the same time, give or take less than half a second, as even if Jake was pretty damn good at timing things, he had limits.

Far below, the tree didn’t notice the attack before it struck the barrier, likely also due to a lack of danger sense that most animals possessed. Jake watched as his arrow pierced through a thick barrier of dense energy, shattering it completely and sending out a shockwave of force that destroyed the entire barrier covering the island like it had been a fragile bubble of glass.

The arrow continued down into the trunk of the B-grade, penetrating deeply into the wood. It pierced over nine meters into the tree that stood only ten meters above the ground, and just as the B-grade likely thought the Protean Arrow was done doing its thing, Jake activated part two of the attack.

A wave of destructive arcane mana erupted from the Protean Arrow, destroying the tree from within and sending the mana down into the root network to ravage there, but perhaps most importantly, Eternal Hunger was freed from its Protean Arrow shell.

It wasn’t hard to guess what would happen when a mythical cursed artifact of hunger came into direct physical contact with a tree brimming with powerful life energy. The weapon instantly started going on the offensive without Jake even having to do anything, serving as a wonderful distraction as roots erupted from the ground and sought to extract Eternal Hunger before it could do too much damage.

This distraction meant the B-grade didn’t properly respond when the rain of arcane bolts fell upon the island. With the barrier destroyed, there was nothing stopping them from falling down like small meteors of arcane mana.

Only a few dozen were destroyed before reaching the ground, but that didn’t even matter. Jake had never intended for these bolts to explode, as instead, they penetrated into the soil, after which the bottom section quickly self-destructed, depositing the toxic blood into the ground below.

A moment later, Jake’s first wave of arrows also arrived. These had been aimed not at the main tree trunk of the B-grade, but at all the “fake” trunks it had spread throughout the island. These trunks were connected to the real one, and Jake hoped to either sever this connection or weaken it severely with a good dose of soul poison.

The arrows all struck true as they penetrated into twenty-eight trunks with utmost precision and timing. Jake had never stopped shooting arrows, and more were on their way as the tree finally began responding properly.

A lot had happened from Jake’s perspective, but in truth, only a few seconds had passed since the first arrow landed, and it wasn’t surprising at all that the tree had needed a while to get its bearings and formulate a response.

All across the island, magic lit up as runes covering the “fake” trunks gave off powerful mana. Vines and other plants erupted from the ground to block the incoming attacks, with some of them moving to pull out the arcane bolts stuck in the ground, likely believing they were the source of the ground rapidly turning toxic, and not the toxic payload they had come with.

Toward the center, around the true body of the B-grade, two dozen treants rose from the ground, all giving off respectable auras toward the peak of C-grade. Half of them shot into the sky from where Jake was shooting, while the other half stayed and tried to help address the damage Jake had already done.

The approaching treants weren’t even a concern to Jake, as it would take them too long to reach Jake for him to care. All he had to do was shoot around them as he continued bombarding the island below with shadow poison arrow after shadow poison arrow.

Below, the B-grade kept trying to respond as best it could, but it was dealing with a lot of things at once. The soil was poisoned and began seeping into its roots, its trunks were getting struck by arrows, sending an insidious poison into the treeʼs system, limiting its ability to mobilize energy, while a cursed spear had thoroughly embedded itself within the main trunk.

Meanwhile, Jake didn’t give the tree any chance to rest as arrows were constantly in the air, curving and flying at different speeds, hitting the tree again and again, no matter how much it tried to defend itself.

When he began to run low on shadow poison arrows, Jake even began to use Rain of Arrows liberally, splitting each arrow into a few dozen to blanket the island in arcane explosions. Shooting repeatedly, Jake soon chugged a mana potion, making sure he could keep going without slowing down in the slightest.

Jake’s entire upper body soon started to hurt as he had been shooting for several minutes straight with no breaks, releasing roughly ten arrows a second. While Jake didn’t count, a conservative estimate of how many arrows had been on the island exceeded three thousand... not counting Rain of Arrows. Factoring that in, the true number reached far into the tens of thousands, if not already above a hundred thousand.

This was also a great time for another lesson on how to deal with stationary monsters like trees. These kinds of monsters tended to fear alchemists or those who could use powerful toxins or curses that affected a large area, as it could potentially destroy their entire domains, thus weakening them. However, there was something one could do that was perhaps even more effective than corrupting the domain of a stationary monster:

Leveling it entirely.

Below, the island was no longer filled with a jungle, but had become a wasteland of pure destruction. Destructive arcane energy had blown up and disintegrated so much soil the entire root network of the tree was exposed, and as Jake continued to bombard the island, it was questionable if it would even qualify as an island anymore when Jake was done as the average elevation had definitely been lowered by several meters already.

The B-grade tree monster was durable. Strong. However, it was limited, and if the lioness could say she had met a terrible opponent in Jake, this tree had the right to say it had just encountered its natural predator: a ranged fighter with powerful toxins, able to nullify and counter anything the tree could do.

Jakeʼs shadow poison, having done wonders in limiting the treeʼs energy movements, prevented it from properly defending itself against Jakeʼs continued bombardment. Healing itself using its innate talents to absorb nutrients from the ground resulted in just poisoning itself even more, and while the B-grade did manage to dislodge Eternal Hunger from within its trunk, by the time it did, the damage was already done.

In many ways, this had never been a question of if Jake could kill the tree... just how long it would take.

The answer to which ended up being fourteen minutes and thirty-two seconds.

You have slain [Grand Adansonia Lifeshaper – lvl 355] - Bonus experience earned for killing an enemy above your level

Jake finally stopped shooting and took a moment after the notification appeared, before he realized he had indeed only gotten one. That is to say, no level-up from this kill, which was a bit disappointing.

A lot of arrows were also still mid-air and continued to fall upon the island, as Jake allowed himself to relax for a moment. He looked down and saw the island pretty much entirely destroyed by his attack, and Jake could sigh as he turned his head towards the island the Forest Fae usually occupied.

And then there was one.