The Primal Hunter

Chapter 1391 - Two Swords, One Bow

If Jake had to guess what the most common weapon in the multiverse was, he would probably go with claws and fangs. If he had to guess the second-most used weapon, it would be the sword, though, as it felt like so many used those, from enlightened to even monsters who had weapons.

The mere fact that an entire Palace of the Dao Sect revolved around the sword also emphasized just how common the weapon was. Of course, Jake knew that the bow was the superior weapon, but if one had to use one for melee, it was difficult to go wrong with the sword. It was versatile, capable of both defense and offense, tended to function well as a catalyst for skills, and overall was just a good weapon. In Jake’s hands, katars were better, but there was a good reason the default weapon for the Medium Warrior class in the Tutorial had been swords.

Now that he was facing two fairly skilled swordfighters, he also had to admit it was a rather dangerous weapon, and its versatility was also shown as they wielded their swords quite differently.

Azal had been the first one to reach him, striking with an upward slash that made the ground explode as the shriek of the many souls trapped within the blade was unleashed, sending up a torrent of blight energy. A moment later, an ethereal woman seemed almost to slide through the air and reach his side, her blade swift and precise as only faint light traced its movements.

Jake blocked the woman’s blade with his katars, planning on using the momentum of the strike to catapult himself away, but to his surprise, when he touched her sword, he didn’t feel any impact. Instead, it was as if he’d been the one whose strike had been blocked, allowing her repelled blade to quickly pivot and strike again.

He barely managed to block with his second katar while flying backward, only to have Azal stab forward, shooting out a beam of pure death energy that Jake didn’t want to trust in Scales of the Malefic Viper to block.

With little other choice, Jake kicked off the ground, creating an explosion of arcane energy to barely back away from his two attackers. They both tried to follow up, but Jake bought himself enough time to step down, teleporting himself into the air while taking out his bow.

Immediately, both of them followed him, Azal turning into a green flash, and the disciple of the Sword Palace stepped down, using One Step herself... no...

Hers is better than mine, Jake concluded as he spun to the side and shot an arrow right before the woman appeared, already mid-swing. She was taken by surprise at his reaction and tried to deflect the arrow, but it slightly curved at the end, striking her in the shoulder and momentarily forcing her back.

Jake didn’t hesitate to step down again the second a blade wreathed in blight energy stabbed for his head, the sword definitely not something Jake wanted to be hit by. It gave off an eerie and dangerous feeling, and while all swords were dangerous by design, he had a strong feeling that getting cut by this particular blade would be a worse time than usual.

Post-teleport, Jake unleashed an Arrow Storm with the intent of creating some distance between himself and his two attackers. Fighting them both in melee would be very ill-advised, as while he could face one of them wielding katars, he had no confidence against two expert fighters of this caliber.

When it came to ranged combat, things were very different, though, as Jake rapidly shot arrows towards the two who dodged and weaved while advancing towards him. Xiurong found another opportunity to use One Step and appeared behind Jake, but he was prepared and tried to land another quick arrow, but she had evidently also adapted. Rather than attack right away, she focused on defense despite being the attacker, successfully deflecting Jake’s arrow while moving in closer.

Her flowing blade once more swung for Jake, faster than he’d expected, as he barely managed to dodge it. She immediately followed up, and Jake had to dodge several dozen slashes in quick succession before finally counterattacking by swinging his bow like a melee weapon.

He’d infused it with powerful arcane energy, and when his bow and her sword clashed, a grand explosion blasted them both apart as Jake gritted his teeth upon feeling the many small wounds covering his forearms.

Jake thought he’d blocked or dodged everything, but her sword moved in an odd pattern, and the light tracing behind it could still deal damage, making her incredibly difficult to deal with. It didn’t help that his Arcane Awakening was active at the offensive 50%, making his defenses rather lacking.

Before he could offer the oddity of her technique further thought, he was forced to focus elsewhere as Azal had taken the opportunity to prepare something of his own as the two were clashing. He’d grasped his blade with both hands and held it in front of him as a phantasmal altar appeared beneath his feet, which he promptly proceeded to stab his blade into as he knelt down.

The altar exploded, unleashing a torrent of miasma and blight energy that instantly filled much of the room, turning the atmospheric mana into that of the death affinity. At the same time, faint echoes of specters were felt within the death energy, and Jake had a bad feeling Azal could call upon them at inopportune times.

Jake felt his scales react to the death energy around him as it sought to invade his body and snuff out all life, and to his annoyance, when he looked at Xiurong, he realized that she had no issues at all, showing that Azal had quite good control over his domain. Well, pseudo-domain Jake reckoned, as he’d effectively just filled the entire room with energy beneficial to himself.

To counter, Jake summoned his Wings of the Malefic Viper, which he could finally use again. The skill had gotten off cooldown during the waiting period for people to arrive in the antechamber, and now, it instantly proved quite beneficial as Jake started pumping out poison mist to combat the domain of death. He didn’t believe he could suppress the death energy, but he did hope to at least disturb it a little and make it harder for Azal to use it.

Which quickly proved to be a good idea as the Risen charged back towards Jake, his movement skill even faster than before after deploying the miasma. He unleashed several powerful blows in quick succession, each of them sending out torrents of blight energy and screeching souls that Jake barely managed to avoid. The torrent of energy also seemed to agitate the death energy filling the room, causing it to gather in certain places and form ghost-like entities that flew at Jake right after being created.

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Jake didn’t immediately feel any extreme sense of danger from the ghost, and as Xiurong had also rejoined the assault, he was forced to allow it to reach him lest he’d take a far worse blow. Right as it touched his body, it dispersed into death energy, and then instantly drilled into Jake’s body, making a cold shiver run through him.

He immediately felt that while it hadn’t done any noticeable damage, he’d just lost some of his vital energy. The ghosts effectively drained whatever they touched of vitality, and as Azal kept swinging and unleashing waves of ghostly energies, more of those specters started being born all around them.

Xiurong was annoyingly good at recognizing that these ghosts were limiting where Jake could move and quickly took advantage as she danced around him and in between these ghosts, forcing him to sometimes choose between dodging her sword or moving through one of the now over two-dozen ghosts flying towards him from all directions.

Realizing this couldn’t go on, Jake stepped things up a little as he activated Pride of the Malefic Viper and immediately exploded with arcane energy in an attempt to destroy the ghosts. The large explosion filled much of the room, and surprisingly, the ghosts were forced back as if hit by a physical blow from the magic. Which, to be clear, wasn’t a good thing, as Jake had hoped to disperse them.

However, he did see that some had disappeared, not due to the fact that he’d hit them, but because he’d momentarily pushed back all the miasma in the air surrounding them.

They instantly disappear when there’s no death energy around them, Jake concluded, also feeling that the ghosts were slower than before. Again, not because they’d been hit by the arcane energy, but simply because they’d been “alive” for longer. The poison mist mixed with the miasma, and since the ghosts were fueled by death energy, they were inadvertently poisoned as well.

Making more use of Pride, Jake expanded it and took control of the area immediately surrounding himself, pushing away all other energies, including the miasma. A single ghost had already been within this area, and the second he’d pushed away the death energy, it dispersed into nothingness, confirming Jake’s prior conclusion.

Having found a way to deal with the ghosts: even if it did consume a fair bit of mana: Jake found more space to dodge and get away from the two swordfighters as he teleported away repeatedly while shooting out potshots. While getting stuck by a sword was certainly more dangerous than being struck by an arrow on average, ranged attacks tended to be easier to hit as both Azal and Xiurong found themselves unable to block every arrow.

Jake’s arrows were very different from a regular archer’s, though, as each was dosed with powerful toxins. He felt that his poison did some solid work on Xiurong, but Azal proved far more resilient despite Jake using his blood, which served as an all-purpose toxin, meaning the problem wasn’t even his use of necrotic poison.

There was simply a massive difference in durability between the two. Xiurong was incredibly fast, her blows powerful and intricate, but it appeared she was very much a glass cannon, and when Jake started mixing in more magic and more tricky shots, she often found herself unable to avoid everything. Even when she blocked, the resulting arcane explosion dealt some damage to her, something that definitely couldn’t be said about Azal.

The Risen was clearly a heavier warrior than the disciple from the Sword Palace. His armor also betrayed this fact, and the magic barrier shimmering across it, along with the earlier ritual to summon miasma, showed he had some accomplishments in the realm of magic. In fact, if Jake compared them, he would say that Azal was a far more well-rounded combatant who clearly had many methods in his toolbox, while Xiurong was far more laser-focused on her sword. While she was dangerous, there was a definite disparity between her and the other two.

She clearly had more cards up her sleeve, though; she suddenly exploded with energy, her boosting skill that was also going at full power clearly getting pushed one step further. Raising her blade, a beam of light shot out of it, and Jake immediately realized what she was about to do based on what the Sword Saint had explained to him earlier.

Azal, who had gotten close again and was fighting Jake, clearly tried to create an opening for her, but Jake immediately fully activated Arcane Awakening and disengaged from the Risen and used One Step as he teleported forward straight towards her, words echoing right before he stepped down.

“Luminous Blade: First Dance.”

Jake, arcane energy surging through his body from his boosting skill, appeared right in front of Xiurong far quicker than either of them could have expected. She had her blade raised towards the sky, about to execute her dance, leaving herself incredibly open in the process.

She tried to swing down, but before she had any chance for her blade to reach Jake, he punched forward with Eternal Hunger as he unleashed Rupturing Fang for the first time outside of when he’d upgraded the skill. Xiurong tried to lean back or dodge in any way, but her own skill restricted her movements, making her unable to respond as Jake’s katar pierced into her stomach.

With the pressure of the still-descending blade bearing down on him, Jake pushed even harder as he unleashed a Venom Burst, making his katar explode with toxins inside her body. Instantly, black and green veins spread from the soda can-sized hole in her stomach, and blood started dripping from her eyes as the toxins flooded her entire system.

Jake didn’t even have to dodge as the luminous blade lost its luster and flickered out as she stumbled back, coughing up blood. Not wanting to give her even a moment to recover, Jake charged forward again, intending to finish her off for good, but Azal wasn’t going to let that happen as he actually threw his sword, forcing Jake to dodge to the side.

Kind of shocked at seeing a swordsman throw his sword, Jake was slightly too slow to react when the in-air sword suddenly curved at an incredibly tight angle and followed straight after him. Jake barely managed to parry it with his katars, but the blade still slipped by him and left a small cut on his forearm as it passed.

Searing pain instantly shot through Jake’s body as he felt an insidious energy invade it. It wasn’t a toxin or a curse, though he reckoned this was how people felt when he poisoned them. Instead, he felt a faint semblance of consciousness within the energy that entered his body, and he quickly realized that it was some fusion of soul and blight energy. Either way, it hurt like hell and proved more annoying than it should have for his vital energy to heal.

The sword that had flown past him quickly spun around in the air and shot right towards his back, while at the same time, Azal was surrounded by blight energy and charged as magic revolved around his hands as he was clearly controlling his weapon.

Jake attempted to use Pride to cut off Azal’s connection to the sword, or at least impede its movements, but it did absolutely nothing, resulting in Jake getting another minor cut yet again. The sword kept circling him several more times as Jake successfully blocked every subsequent attack, but this wasn’t good for him.

Sure, he was adapting and dealing with the attack, but the disciple from the Sword Palace had time to down a health potion, which allowed her to recover somewhat . Far from enough to fully keep fighting, and the poison was still ravaging her system, and soon it would start impairing her combat ability yet again, which was likely why she decided to do what she did next.

Before Jake got a chance to strike her again, she shot towards the ceiling of the antechamber as her energy started spiking once more to a far higher level than when she’d used her attack before.

Jake wanted to pull out his bow and shoot her down, but Azal was on top of things, having clearly also gone all out with his boosting skill as he summoned two blades of pure energy while still controlling his main sword as it flew around Jake, trying to strike him from tricky angles while ensuring Jake couldn’t get away.

Above them, the energy around Xiurong intensified by the second, and when Jake briefly glanced upwards, it was as if the northern lights had descended upon the antechamber, though in a far brighter and less green color.

Like ribbons of light, her energy spread before she finally held her sword out and spoke, unleashing her last dance of the Central Domain.

“Luminous Blade... Sixth Dance.”