The Primal Hunter

The curse energy within the underground room kept increasing with every passing second. The former freedom fighters stood catatonically as their bodies still burned, and Jake felt that their souls had already mostly been extinguished. They were being reduced to nothing more than the hatred within their hearts.

Plague energy also slowly began to emerge, infecting the mostly dead people. Jake realized now it had come from the dagger Temlat had used to stab himself with. The half-elf had changed it to somehow inhabit a nascent plague of some sort. It wasn’t a true plague yet, though. Temlat was far from being capable of making something like that, but it had the fundamental building blocks.

Building blocks Temlat had merged into himself right as he evolved.

Jake remained an observer as he waited for nearly a minute, the curse energy in the room continuing to rise. It was feeding into the evolution as far as Jake could tell, affecting Temlat’s evolution just as he had wanted it to.

He didn’t know what would emerge once the evolution was complete. However, he didn’t have a good feeling it would be something… acceptable. Curses and plagues were both less-than-fondly looked upon in the multiverse, and a merge of the two could only end in disaster. Especially with what Temlat had done right as he evolved. He had purposefully damaged parts of his own soul, as far as Jake could tell.

Which meant he didn’t plan on emerging as anything even close to a normal person anymore.

Soon, the energy reached a crescendo. Jake felt the Sin Curse within his own Soulspace rumble to life as curse energy tried to infect Jake, Eternal Hunger gladly eating it all up. Jake breathed in through his nose as Palate faintly activated, eliminating the traces of a plague that attempted to infect him.

Then, out of nothingness, a figure appeared. A cloaked being that looked surrounded by darkness, its form not entirely corporeal. It looked vaguely like Temlat had with his hood up… but Jake barely felt the familiar aura of his student. Instead, he felt only a bubbling mass of anger, and with a deep breath, he analyzed the being in front of him.

[Cursed Plague Remnant of Wrath – lvl 200]

The former freedom fighters all turned to black energy as they fed the Plague Remnant, the magic circle beneath him fading right after, having done its job. Jake considered what to do, genuinely unsure what his next actions should be.

He knew what Plague Spirits were. They were the premier example of beings that should be killed on sight if anyone encountered one. Mostly, they appeared when powerful death-affinity energy gathered in an area and was nothing more than mindless elemental-like beings who lived only according to their instinct to spread their plague and consume all life.

Jake also knew of another creature called Curse Remnants. These were very similar to Plague Spirits, but instead of a plague, they spread their curse energy far and wide, cursing anything and everything. As with Plague Spirits, these were also simply mindless creatures with nothing more than an instinct to spread their namesake to the world.

Both were considered living calamities. Beings to destroy. However… Jake didn’t remember ever coming across anything called a Plague Remnant. Much less a Plague Remnant of Wrath, indicating Temlat managed to finally evolve his curse of hatred into the Sin Curse of Wrath.

The easy explanation was that Temlat had truly managed to fuse the two into one. To create a cursed plague… which actually didn’t seem that weird. The two concepts mixed well, both being highly infectious magical ailments that could infect from one person to another without needing the original source to get involved.

One thing was clear: the being before him was a living calamity. Even if Jake didn’t recognize it, he knew it was dangerous. What’s more, the aura it gave off wasn’t meek by any standards. It was still only a C-grade, but Jake knew that it was a powerful variant.

Paths tended to be more powerful if they also included giving something up or having severe restrictions. Jake’s class was the easiest example; his Path making it so he couldn’t get any experience from anything lower level than himself. Temlat’s Path had taken far more from him than simply that.

The Plague Remnant in front of him began to slowly move as it turned into a dark smoke that quickly sought outside the underground chamber. As the Remnant left, Jake knew what would happen if he did so. He knew that everything around him would be infected and a chain reaction would start. A snowball of cataclysmic proportions.

However, as Jake looked at what Temlat had become and analyzed the plague energy trying to constantly affect him, Palate quickly gave him an understanding. If he killed Temlat here and now, everything would end. The world would be saved.

Jake seriously considered it for a second until the smoke stopped just before the exit of the chamber and took on the form of a hooded figure once more.

”Thank you, Teacher. Thank you for allowing me to finally spread true justice upon this filthy world and for granting me the power to do so. If you are still here… witness as I expunge my Wrath. Witness as a wrong is made right. Witness me.”

Sighing, Jake realized the young half-elf had lost his ability to perceive Jake after he evolved and quickly made it so Temlat could see him and flashed his student a smile. ”Go get ’em.”

The former young half-elf didn’t respond but quickly turned back into his remnant form. Jake was both happy and conflicted, knowing that Temlat’s psyche persisted, though it probably shouldn’t have surprised him too much.

It was similar to the Yalsten Shade of Eternal Resentment. Jake wouldn’t be surprised if that creature had also once been a Curse Remnant, but as it ran out of targets to infect, it died and was reborn into the shade it had been when Jake encountered it. Even that creature back then had retained some level of thought.

Curses were based on emotions, and in order to truly feel emotions, one needed a more complex mind. Perhaps not to the level of being fully sapient, but at least sentience was required. Of course, the psyche of such beings was very rarely just that of one person or in any way cohesive, which nearly always made Curse Remnants act illogical and on instinct as the only thing all the different psyches could agree on was their one shared emotion.

Jake would guess that inside Temlat’s head, he heard the voices of the former freedom fighters he consumed, and with every death, the choir of voices would grow. The faint curse energy released upon their deaths would become one with Temlat, empowering him and becoming one with him.

Following Temlat outside, a geyser of black smoke erupted out of the warehouse. As if a smoke bomb had been dropped, it rolled out with Temlat in the middle, slowly spreading out. It was barely noticeable due to the usual constant smog that hung in the lower parts of the megacity, and it took people a while to notice anything was even wrong… by the time they did, it was too late. The D-grades simply had no way to resist the influence of a C-grade Cursed Plague Remnant.

As Jake had noted many times, this megacity was ridiculously massive, with a population density absolutely insane. Hundreds of billions, if not trillions, lived on the planet, and due to how crammed they lived to one another, there was no escaping the Cursed Plague Remnant of Wrath.

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Jake observed as the smoke entered the mines. The miners working there began to get agitated and angry. Swinging widely when the annoying ore refused to get free from the damn rock. This earned them an angry foreman who screamed at them… only for the miners to all turn as they charged the one foreman. The foreman killed dozens before he was overwhelmed and hacked to death by the workers.

On the lower floors of the megastructures, the mayhem began to break out. Any small inconvenience became a cause for conflict as fights broke out. This was also where the truly insidious aspects of a plague were shown.

Not everyone was affected the same, as some had stronger mentalities or were simply a lot less emotional by default. They fled, afraid as they got attacked by others, going to somewhere the conflict had not broken out yet… bringing with them the Cursed Plague of Wrath. Their very presence made them spreaders, as their attempts to garner help only resulted in anger from those asked.

However, as Jake observed, it quickly became clear the anger was not indiscriminate. The curse was not without cause. Students killed teachers, miners killed foremen, children their parents or disciplinarians, and workers killed managers… rather than simply mindless anger, it was wrath towards authority.

Jake remained a silent observer as he saw the cursed plague spread. He saw how every death, no, even just every infected person, fed Temlat, the source of everything. Minutes turned to hours as Jake kept looking on, choosing to take this as an experience to learn and a solemn moment to reflect.

To observe a scene like this wasn’t something anyone could just do. Sure, Jake could probably find a recording if he wanted to, but this was vastly different than merely watching something unfold. It was closer to what he got while using Path of the Heretic-Chosen.

He felt everything. Took it in. Even if he knew this entire world was ”fake,” he never liked to think of them as such. To these people, they were as real as Jake himself, and they had full lives. Their lives just couldn’t impact the wider multiverse in any way.

This begged the question… what would Jake have done if Temlat had been a student Jake had taken outside of Nevermore? What if this exact same scenario played out? Jake wanted to tell himself he would have advised Temlat against researching plagues, but in all honesty, he probably wouldn’t have. Even if he did, he wouldn’t have insisted if there was the slightest pushback.

Jake’s teaching style was a lot closer to Villy’s than anyone else’s. It was a style that could barely make one acknowledged as a teacher, more a sparring partner or external advisor. Jake didn’t want to tell someone what to do or give them unsolicited advice. From the very beginning, he wanted Temlat to find his own Path. To decide what he wanted to do and not fit into a mold Jake created.

So perhaps that was Jake’s biggest fault… he hadn’t chosen his student properly. Temlat was talented, he had a rare compatibility with curses, but he lacked ambition. His goal had always just been to get revenge, which was such a weak motivation. But… for Jake, who knew he only had a few years in the House of the Architect at max, this goal was good enough. In many ways, he had just taken advantage of Temlat’s short-term goal to get a better result for himself, which made Jake feel even more conflicted if he did choose to step in and interfere now that Temlat was finally capable of realizing his dream.

As Jake reflected on his entire approach, he kept watching Temlat. He kept watching, even as the first megastructure began to tumble and the people charged toward the sky and the mansions up there. Only a few hours had passed at this point, and when Jake looked down and saw the ever-growing Cursed Plague Remnant of Wrath still within the warehouse, he could only sigh.

[Cursed Plague Remnant of Wrath – lvl 212]

He leveled up at an unprecedented speed, and from the looks of it, things were barely slowing down. At least not yet. Jake knew he was an empty cup that was just slowly getting filled with shitty muddy water. The curse energy that made up the Plague Remnant was getting contaminated by all the beings that were consumed along the way, and it would take a long time for him to properly consolidate himself once he was done.

Yet Jake doubted he cared. In fact, he doubted Temlat would be able to even feel the emotion of caring much longer as the curse energy from all the infected and dead people mixed with his own. At least Jake thought so, but to his surprise, he still sensed Temlat. He saw that he still maintained his humanoid figure standing in the middle of the warehouse.

He retains an ego even now… is it because of the presence-resistance training we did?

Jake had been able to hold onto his mind when he consumed all the curse energy from Eternal Hunger because of his Bloodline-empowered psyche, so it was entirely possible Temlat had built up enough resistance to handle the influx of curse energy he experienced. Compared to the curse energy that eventually gave birth to – and still resided within – Eternal Hunger, Temlat’s current form was nothing. One had to remember that this planet only had C-grades on the weaker side as their strongest, and barely any of those had even fallen yet.

Time passed as the cursed plague spread further and further. Attacks on the sky mansions had begun to happen, but their defenses were far more impressive compared to anywhere else. The formations alone were nearly enough, and when most of them sprung large laser towers and what looked like Tesla Coils, Jake thought the masses were done for.

However, that was when the nobles showed they truly had no idea what they were dealing with. Be it in a foolish attempt to save resources or pure ignorance, they began to send out their security forces to fight. The automatic defenses would not be affected by the cursed plague, but these guards?

Hundred were instantly killed by each C-grade bodyguard as they dominated the sky, killing in droves. The D-grades and even E-grades who had joined the assault didn’t stand a chance, but this was where another scary aspect of cursed plagues was seen.

With every kill, a bit of the energy invaded these C-grade’s bodies. With every kill, they got more and more infected, and as they had no time to sit down and purge the energy, the outcome was obvious.

It was one of the strongest guards – who had also killed the most – that fell first. His eyes were bloodshot, and right after killing a dozen D-grades, he turned around and roared as he released a massive blast of fire toward the floating island where he used to be employed. His hatred toward the owner who forced him to perform a massacre was obvious. The automatic defense system instantly triggered and attacked him, but he defended himself well. The other C-grades saw their friend being attacked, which seemed to also push them over the edge as they also began to attack the nearby sky island.

In the meantime, the D-grades kept coming for the guards and the island both. It was pure pandemonium, and Jake could only watch in silence as the barrier broke on one of the smaller sky islands. The woman who used to call the living calamity currently washing across the world a pet lived in one of the larger ones where the defenses still held out, but it was only a matter of time.

Temlat had been the first domino that started a cascade effect that appeared unstopable. Millions more were infected every single minute as Temlat no longer even needed to do anything. The cursed plague was spreading all by itself, causing destruction all across the planet.

Jake had flown high up into the air as he stared down. The spread was impressively fast, and as the planet wasn’t overly large, Jake guessed it would reach everywhere within a week at most.

A single week for an entire planet to fall to one newly evolved C-grade… Jake understood why Plague Theory and curses were both not anything to be taken lightly. It was something most factions outright banned, to the level of hunting down people they believed were researching it unauthorized or while not part of a big faction.

The former half-elf himself was also growing in power still. After half a day, when nearly half of the sky islands near the original source of the cursed plague had fallen, he had already gained nearly thirty levels from the billions upon billions of infections and deaths he had caused.

[Cursed Plague Remnant of Wrath – lvl 229]

His leveling speed had slowed down, though. His container for experience was just about full, and even if he kept growing stronger and absorbing more energy, it wouldn’t translate into levels much longer. Jake also knew that once he did hit a wall, it would be incredibly hard for him to ever overcome it. This was one of the reasons why Villy was so insistent on Jake also making sure he had a good foundation… leveling this fast felt nice and looked overpowered, but it was sacrificing long-term power for short-term gain. Alas, Temlat already knew this when he evolved...

No new developments happened for a good while. The massive cloud of pure curse energy around Temlat now covered several square kilometers, forming a domain all around him. He looked to be entirely focused on gathering this energy until suddenly, Jake saw it all begin to gather. A second later, he realized why.

The barrier to the mansion Temlat had once called a prison had been broken… and the massive cloud of curse energy shot upwards, the Sin Curse making the air shiver in his wake. It gathered into the cloak, and to Jake’s pleasant surprise, a face emerged within. Temlat’s unmistakable visage didn’t only tell Jake he still retained his ego... but that he was going to personally unleash his own Wrath on the woman who once dared call him her pet.