The Primal Hunter

”Fire,” Caleb said as a string of black beams shot out, landing on the creature as it roared in anger and pain. It turned toward the position of the snipers and began charging their way as Caleb spoke again. ”Activate illusory array four.”

A second later, the entire area seemed to warp slightly. The charging Prima Guardian didn’t even look like it noticed as it kept charging… but rather than head toward the snipers, it began to slightly curve to one side, with it soon running an entirely wrong way.

The array wouldn’t last long before the Guardian noticed, but it was good enough for now. Caleb directed the thirteenth and eighteenth squads of assassins to move in while the Guardian was distracted as ten people erupted from the shadows and attacked the boss, each unleashing powerful skills right away. Caleb also took the chance to glance at the boss yet another time, noting its growing injuries while also throwing in another Identify for the heck of it… and because he wanted to make sure this one couldn’t somehow evolve mid-combat, primarily because he remembered the one on Earth having a different name.

[Honored Prima Guardian – lvl 323]

Turning to look at the people that attacked it, the Guardian was faced with only shadows as the ten assassins retreated once more. Another barrage of sniper fire hit a moment later, this time from across the valley from the exact opposite side as the first attack.

Having noticed something was wrong, the Guardian began to release pulses of mana, both analyzing and disrupting the formations and arrays they had placed down in a massive area around the Prima Vessel. The response was quick, as the mages of the Court responded by disabling some of the magic circles temporarily, fooling the Prima into thinking it had destroyed them.

This was the first planet he had gone to after leaving Earth to help the Court of Shadows, and so far, he would say things were going well. The Prima Guardian was also surprisingly weak compared to the one he had fought before, yet pretty damn strong if the planet was meant to have faced it by itself.

Then again, they weren’t meant to face it yet, but after potentially over two and a half years, during which they would wipe out most Primas, leading to a weaker Prima Guardian, too. If this wasn’t the case, Caleb would have expected the majority of planets with enlightened across the universe to be wiped out, but as things were and the current rules… the Court of Shadows intelligence network put the expected percentage of planets who would end up ”destroyed” at twenty-two percent.

It was yet undecided if the Milky Way would drag this stat up or down… but Caleb would do his utmost to ensure it would go the right way.

He continued to direct the flow of combat as more than four thousand members of the Court of Shadows participated in this Prima Guardian hunt. Many of them were supportive members, helping with the formations and arrays to control the Guardian, but there were still over five hundred melee assassins on the battlefield and about an equal number of ranged attackers.

Individually, none of them could do much to the Guardian. However, the Court of Shadows did have some unique abilities that allowed them to still participate. Out of perhaps every faction in the entire multiverse, the Court was the best at having their members be able to still deal damage to things they really shouldn’t be able to even touch.

A random newly evolved D-grade attacking someone like Jake, more likely than not, wouldn’t do any damage at all. That is to say, you could get a million of the same guy and have them all attack, and unless they used some means to combine their attacks through rituals or formations, none of them would cause any harm. Jake’s durability would simply be too high for them. It was a threshold they couldn’t pass.

The Court of Shadows had ways to circumvent this threshold. Shadows were slippery and ethereal and could penetrate even the natural defenses granted by the system, even if the damage would be incredibly minor. Even a skilled D-grade assassin could deal damage to a peak C-grade with a single sniper bullet or a stab of their dagger.

Now, the damage would be absolutely negligible. As in, perhaps not even doing one health point’s worth of damage… but just the mere fact it did any kind of damage at all was massive.

Needless to say, a bunch of mid-tier C-grades attacking a late-tier C-grade could do far more than a single health point of damage with every blow, but individually, they really were too weak to stand a chance. Yet, in this battle, they were enabled and able to fully participate. All of this was part of the core strategy the Court of Shadows often deployed to take down dangerous foes:

Isolate, harass, kite, confuse, and wear down. If a target couldn’t be killed quickly, kill them slowly in a dragged-out assassination where you controlled all factors. Use the shadows to limit their Perception and hide away, never giving them time to recover, and eventually, even someone far more powerful than the assassins would eventually fall.

Of course, if it was possible to go in with overwhelming power to kill the target instantly, that was preferable. In most cases, that is… this not being one of them, as the Prima Guardian wasn’t a real target but a mere practice dummy.

Caleb could attack himself, and considering how much weaker this Prima Guardian was than the one on Earth, he reckoned he would have a good chance in a one-on-one. It could get a bit dicey due to its high durability and Caleb’s fighting style relying on high burst damage, but he believed he could handle it alone. 𝔯ÄΝȎᛒÊŠ

That wasn’t the point of this, though. This Prima Guardian system event was viewed as just another training exercise in the eyes of the higher-ups of the Court of Shadows, and Caleb going around killing by himself wouldn’t really help the natives learn anything, right?

As a Judge, Caleb wasn’t just meant to be a fighter but one of the leaders of the Court of Shadows here in the ninety-third universe. Helping the natives get stronger themselves would reflect well on him and earn him more favor than if he just went around killing everything… though if things got too dangerous, he would step in personally.

The battle continued on, the Prima Guardian getting more and more whittled down. It did adapt a little to their attacks, but they attempted to counter this with different elemental attacks carried out primarily through formations or ritual spells cast by some of the mages. Still, the affinities used were very similar, which did result in the fight dragging out.

After the battle had been ongoing for over ten hours with the Prima Guardian just slowly running out of steam, the entire reason why they needed these kinds of training exercises was shown. While there was a certain level of leeway in their strategy and many fail-safes, it was still possible for a group to fuck up enough so that everything fell apart.

And that’s exactly what happened.

A squad of mages responsible for a formation messed up, with the backup casters not ready in time to react. The assassins that had just emerged to follow up the attack of a group of snipers found themselves fully exposed as the Prima Guardian turned toward them, light magic channeling as the shadows meant to protect them were dispersed.

Caleb considered giving them a moment to react on their own or maybe even make this a lesson, even if it would cost lives.. but as always, he was perhaps a bit too soft, as he quickly dispelled these thoughts and moved.

Besides… sometimes it was good to show off his power a bit, lest they forget the Judge wasn’t just considered an administrative role.

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All his boosting skills were fully activated as Caleb shot across the battlefield, emerging behind the Prima Guardian before it even had time to kill the first assassin. He didn’t mask his approach to make sure it wouldn’t kill any of them, as it quickly spun around to face him, only to find itself faced with a torrent of black lightning.

Caleb passed through the boss in his transformed state before turning himself corporeal again, slamming his staff down as the ground below the Prima Guardian erupted with lightning, dark thunderclouds gathering above. Attacking again, Caleb landed several blows with his staff before the Guardian could properly adapt to his speed, the ground below the Prima Guardian exploding once more a moment later, sending a bolt of lightning flying toward the skies above.

Riding the lightning, Caleb merged with the thunderclouds for a moment as he channeled his energies and spoke, his words echoing through the clouds.

“Thunderfall of Tenlucis.”

He descended in an instant, passing through the Prima Guardian as a pillar of black lightning consumed it. In its damaged state, it simply wasn’t able to adapt to the oppressive powers of the black lightning as its body was burned from within, and its soul crumbled before the overwhelming pressure of the dark heavens.

You have slain [Honored Prima Guardian – lvl 323] – Bonus experience earned for killing an enemy above your level

Caleb materialized himself in front of the burnt corpse of the Prima Guardian as he infused his voice with mana, addressing everyone.

”Good work from most of you, but a sloppy finale. I expect a full report from all responsible squad leaders within two hours, outlining what went wrong and how to ensure it won’t happen again. We move to the next planet in ten hours, and I expect better the second time around. Dismissed.”

Across the multiverse, there were many methodologies of war with some more alike than others.

The Holy Church and the Risen had quite a lot of things in common despite their antagonistic relationship, one of which was their hatred of being compared and people pointing out they had a lot of things in common.

Another big thing they had in common was their approach to combat. More accurately, how they viewed those participating in a fight. Many forces in the multiverse focused on elite groups, minimizing losses and only bringing those who could actually put up a proper fight to battle.

Neither the Risen nor the Holy Church had this approach, though it materialized differently. The Holy Church would gladly throw entire armies at singular, powerful people, sacrificing them all through rituals to empower their elites and bring victory. This had even been shown several times on Earth, both during the Treasure Hunt and the battle when the Risen were pushed off the planet during Ell’Hakan’s invasion.

These people who gave their lives did so gladly and willingly, as without their active participation, the methods of the Holy Church simply wouldn’t work. It was their faith that gave the Holy Church power, even in such rituals. Across the Milky Way Galaxy, rituals were carried out one after another to face not only Prima Guardians but regular Primas, billions dying as martyrs of the Holy Church.

The reason why they so gladly gave their lives was because, to many, what came after would be better. The Holyland would be an improved existence to their normal mortal lives, with many even viewing it as a privilige to be allowed to die in a ritual. Of course, to be allowed to be sacrificed, you needed to no longer be deemed a talent that could grow further to a higher grade, and the ones to go first tended to be those older and those who’d exhausted their talent.

One might view the way the Holy Church operated as insane or even evil when evaluated with Earth’s morals… but the numbers simply didn’t lie. A system event like this Prima Guardian one was far from the first of its kind that had happened during the integration of a new universe, and in all those prior, the Holy Church held the record every single time for their planets doing the best, even surpassing Valhal, a purely combat-specialized faction.

It wasn’t hard to understand why the Holy Church did so well, either. They were the best faction in the multiverse at making the ”useless” useful in combat. Rather than large populations merely being statistics for an event boss to wipe out, they could be converted to tangible power that could help bring down the threat. Did this mean that sometimes, the majority of a planet’s population got sacrificed? Yes… but ninety percent dying was better than a hundred.

The Holy Church truly embodied the concept of the ”greater good” and could only truly exist due to the Holyland of the Holy Mother allowing those who died to enter it. With life after death, sacrificing yourself was seen as one of the most honorable ways to die, with your death only taking you to ”paradise.”

In this way, the Holy Church was one of the premier factions that actively used the deaths of the many to overcome their foes… the other one naturally being the Risen, though their method of taking advantage of the dead was quite different. After someone died, they couldn’t become a Risen unless that death happened as part of a transformation ritual, but that didn’t mean that the dead couldn’t become undead.

Even the Risen could be raised once more when they fell, though it wouldn’t be as what they were before. They wouldn’t be the same people either, though there were some methods to preserve those who died by effectively saving their souls before they fully dispersed. The result wouldn’t be like a full resurrection, and the souls would be permanently damaged, making a second resurrection absolutely impossible and often harming them in other ways, making this simply not worth it.

Either way, using other Risen was barely part of the methodology of the Risen. Why would it be, when in war, there was so much death to take advantage of? So many corpses to raise as mindless undead.

In this war against the Prima Guardians, the planets ruled by the Risen had the possibility of taking advantage of the many dead Primas and monsters during the event, raising them to be used as fodder against their former comrades. Any death on the enemy side would strengthen the Risen, truly making them a force to be reckoned with.

Of course, just throwing a bunch of raised monsters at a Prima Guardian wouldn’t accomplish anything, as the raised ones were far weaker than when they were alive, and their power depended heavily on the one raising them as undead.

This is where the rituals came in.

Just like how the Holy Church could have thousands, millions, or even billions sacrifice themselves to create powerful effects, so could the Risen take a huge number of raised undead and combine their power. Sometimes, this took the form of rituals unleashing powerful attacks with their combined energies, but the most effective version was through the creation of flesh golems or ghostly amalgamations.

The forced fusion of countless undead into singular beings. Monstrosities containing countless souls, barely stitched together by talented necromancers. These types of undead could rarely persist for long due to their inherent instability… but for the time they ”lived,” they could be absolute menaces. As they were effectively summoned monsters, they didn’t have the same restrictions as regular Truesouls either, meaning their levels of power could truly reach absurd levels. That is to say, it was entirely possible to create a flesh golem capable of fighting and killing the Prima Guardian on its lonesome.

That it was possible didn’t mean that anyone was capable of doing so, though. This was where one of the big differences between the Church and the Risen came in: the requirement of skill. The Risen required skilled necromancers and intelligent undead to control and create their armies and monstrosities. Even if they could combine their powers, having hundreds of necromancers bind and control a flesh golem together, they still needed the skill to do all this. Because if they didn’t control it… well, let’s just say there were plenty of stories across the multiverse of people creating monsters they failed to control, ending in their own downfalls. So, skill was still a massive requirement.

Contrarily, the rituals and methods of the Holy Church were absurdly simplistic. It wasn’t difficult at all to teach even average people to create some of their rituals, with practically no skill or power required from anyone in the process.

Of course, the effectiveness and efficiency would improve if those conducting the rituals were more skilled, and some of the more advanced methods did require skilled individuals, but the mere fact the average folk was given options to fight back by the Holy Church was massive, and the primary reason they could thrive in the multiverse – even if the price of that was extreme sacrifices.

Now, all of this isn’t to say that these two factions preferred using means like this. Alright, the Risen would nearly always raise armies of undead; that was only to be expected, but if they could avoid the more risky rituals, they certainly would.

The Milky Way Galaxy was quite lucky in this regard. Working with Ell’Hakan and having a good pool of talented individuals, the Holy Church didn’t need to sacrifice people but could hunt down the Guardians without taking any such methods into use.

In the same way, the one planet controlled by the Risen got help from Earth, which included Casper, a Risen blessed by the Blightfather himself and a powerful fighter in his own right. Additionally, if they needed more help, Casper could get it, as asking for Jake, the Sword Saint, or someone else to lend a hand was far preferable to taking the risk of creating some abomination of stitched-together flesh and souls.

Things were far from as positive across the rest of the universe, though, and many factions wished they had the methods of these two factions in their arsenal. Wished they at least had the option of giving their lives to kill the Prima Guardian and not just die in vain.

Alas… there was a reason the Court of Shadows reached that twenty-two percent evaluation.

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