The Primal Hunter
chapter-373

Jake had not heard much of the time god known as Aeon Clok… only some basic stuff from conversations with Villy and some casual reading. Out of all the Primordials Jake had heard of, he seemed like the hardest one to pin down and understand. He kind of got most of the others.

They had religions, empires, orders, or domains they controlled. The Wyrmgod had Nevermore, Yggdrasil was a massive fucking tree dominating an entire region of a Universe, the Starseizing Giant an even more massive entity that liked smithing and being big. All of them were public, besides two. Well, it used to be three, but Jake kind of dragged Villy into the spotlight again. Also, while Stormild did not have a faction per-se, the living catastrophe still controlled a large domain and had many elementals following her.

The two hidden ones were the dear Eversmile that Jake honestly still couldn’t understand, but the other was Aeon. He was just a time mage or something who liked to make watches, with the most on-the-nose last name “Clok.”

“Can you give some information on the guy?” Jake asked Villy.

“Sure. Aeon Clok, Primordial of Time, the Watchmaker, bunch of other names too, but that is just par the course. As far I know, he was a human born to two F-rank humans on a planet with not a single D-grade. He became a watchmaker as his profession, gained by working with his family, and he was always intrigued with the concept of time. Mind you, all of this is stuff I learned later, so it may be wrong or partially made up. He was the first one to reach D-grade on his planet in centuries, but he didn’t stop there. He kept experimenting, he kept making watches, and eventually, he reached C-tier… without having killed a single thing. He was just a watchmaker, and I heard his class hadn’t even reached level 100 by the time he was C-grade. Entering the wider multiverse, it quickly became clear that he was a freaking nightmare to deal with. B-grades tried to kill him in vain due to his magic,” Villy explained as he gave some lore.

“Huh… he sounds impressive somewhat, but Primordial-level? What made him so special? A Bloodline? Did he become a Transcendent early on?” Jake asked.

“Bloodline, no… Transcendent… not before he reached S-grade. No, it was simply his skills. Their rarities were often two or three levels above what it should be at his level, and his sheer comprehension of the concept of time made him near-unkillable. In late-stage B-grade, an entire group of S-grades wanted to hunt him down as he had acquired a natural treasure they wanted. They hunted him into a world much like Yalsten… and only he exited it, now firmly in A-grade. He had killed a group of thirty-seven S-grades, all able to kill him in a single move if they got the chance… but they never did. Moreover, he killed them without ever truly fighting them… for they all died of old age. He trapped them and manipulated the world itself to accelerate time,” the Viper said, Jake now beginning to get it a bit more.

“Okay… that does sound pretty badass,” Jake recognized.

“His most impressive feat is not that, but what he did in S-grade as he aimed to become a god. Ah, but one interesting thing was his motivation to even become one. You see, wanting to become a god to become immortal is normal. Wanting it for the power is normal. But Aeon wanted it for neither of these… no, he just wanted time. The concept of immortality didn’t matter to him; it was not about life or death; it was about how it felt like the ultimate way to beat an aspect of time as a concept. He wanted to steal time… to claim it. And that was his Transcendence. The day he evolved to a god, he stole a moment of time itself. For a moment, the entire multiverse froze… I still remember that day as clear as was it yesterday. I was already a god, and the sheer sense of wrongness was intense. I can’t begin to explain it. Out of all the Transcendences I know of, his is the most complicated. I don’t even fully understand it myself, but I do know I have no fucking idea how to kill him and that out of everyone in the multiverse, he may be the hardest to put down permanently,” the Malefic Viper continued.

Jake nodded along as he listened. He always liked hearing these stories of gods and how they grew to power. It was like those old mythical tales, but something that actually happened with a chance to meet the myth themselves.

“I guess that leads to the question… what makes you think he is a good fit for the Sword Saint? I do know he got younger and stuff, but I’m not sure it was time magic. Also… are you sure Aeon will even bless him?”

“Eh, my plan was just to put the human on Aeon’s radar. As for why they would fit together? Well, because they are similar in some ways. Both are ridiculously stubborn and achieved their Transcendence by claiming something as their own. The mortal claimed the concept of seasons, and I do think his magic is somewhat time-adjacent, and honestly, even if I am wrong, Aeon may just be interested as the swordsman is interesting,” Villy explained.

“And what’s in it for you?” Jake asked. Villy wasn’t the type to help a random old man out of the kindness of his heart and based on the entire thing with Stormild, Jake was certain he did a lot with his own agendas.

“In this case… I owe Aeon, so this can be part of paying back that debt. He rarely blesses people, but that doesn’t mean he gets nothing out of it. Also… I’ll be honest, I find the dynamic of focusing so many blessed by Primordials on one planet interesting. I don’t know if this has happened before in a newly integrated Universe, ever. Especially not with Eversmile and Aeon both involved,” the god answered.

“Makes sense, I guess, even if it is a bit of a weak reason. Now… final question on this matter; why the hell is he called Aeon Clok and not some cool title? I already think Eversmile is stupid, but Aeon Clok? It sounds… childish? Like what… he is called a “long time clock” or something,” Jake asked.

“Hah, always interesting hearing the opinions of those newly integrated, as no one would find it silly in the multiverse. Maybe even get you labeled a blasphemer and heretic to be hunted down. But you are actually correct. Aeon’s last name was Clok, which was just his family name as they made clocks. And don’t even try to argue that is stupid as your planet liked to name people stupid stuff based on the parent’s job. Anyway, his first name is the only one he chose, and he chose it to go with his last name. In some ways, his goal was to become an eternal clock; a watch that would forever record and be one with time itself,” Villy explained.

“You know surprisingly much about him for one so enigmatic,” Jake noted.

“Because I know him well. We have spent a lot of time together once upon a time. Out of the other Primordials, he is someone easy to get along with for me, even if he is quite peculiar,” Villy kept explaining.

“So, a friend?”

“Something like that,” he answered.

“Well, then be free to invite him for beers one day; he sounds interesting enough, and it would be interesting to meet a god that had once been human,” Jake shrugged.

“… Jake, if it was anyone else, I would interpret that as a joke, but with you, I am genuinely unsure. Then again, there are few people who could even handle being in the prolonged presence of one Primordial, much less two, a concept you for some reason don’t seem to get.”

“I was serious; why wouldn’t I want to meet a god damn time wizard?” Jake questioned.

“Because he could kill you if you said the wrong thing? Imprison you in a tiny subdimension with accelerated time until you die of age, forever trapped in total darkness with no stimuli till nothing of you remains?”

“That doesn’t sound like a present-Jake problem, but a potential future-Jake problem,” Jake shook his head with a wry smile. “But enough about that… I meant to ask, did you know my scimitar was something called a Sin weapon?”

“Of course,”the god answered.

“And you never told me?”

“You make it sound like that knowledge would have had any benefits. It’s just a classification of a curse, so not sure what I should say, and it isn’t my fault you never bothered to research the obviously very peculiar growth curse on your own weapon. You know what it did, didn’t you? But why are you asking about it now?” Villy answered with another question.

“It’s because I’m considering to use these two and the curse on the scimitar to create a new powerful weapon,” Jake said as he pulled out the Chimera weapon and the Root of Eternal Resentment. “Any thoughts on that?”

“Sounds fine. A pretty good idea even,” Villy answered.

“Nothing dangerous about it?”

“For you? Probably not. I believe your survival instincts should keep you well enough in check to not try and slaughter something too powerful while in the inevitable blood-fueled rampage that you will be under, as you kill anything with vital energy you come across,” the Viper answered.

“… explain?” Jake asked, wanting the god to elaborate a bit on that one.

“Well, Jake, while you do have Pride to resist the effects of the curse, do you honestly think you would be able to fully resist it? That Root has a lot of curse energy within, and that Chimera weapon should be able to contain it as it seems very compatible, but when you transfer the curse, you integrate with it even more. I don’t think this is a big problem, but I do think you want to do it somewhere far away from anyone you don’t want to kill, but also not somewhere you can’t kill anything. You need to sate the hunger of the curse somewhat,” the Malefic Viper explained.

“So, I will become a rampaging beast?” Jake asked, frowning.

“No… you will become a rampaging hunter. You will feel an overwhelming compulsion to kill, and if this emotion was standing in opposition with your Bloodline, I could see you resist it… but the thing is, it doesn’t. In fact, I could be afraid it would amplify it. Hunger is a powerful kind of sin, it is a very broad concept, and you cannot tell me you don’t instinctively want to consume. Consume life as fuel to advance your own power.”

Jake kept frowning as he slowly nodded, unable to deny it. “So… find some desolate area without any human settlements, but many beasts to kill when I merge them?”

“Up to you. You can also find a human city to do it in, but the wild is probably better as you want to kill powerful beings, and I doubt you can find many human settlements with enough worth killing, and it would take too long to slaughter E-grades,” the Viper answered nonchalantly.

“Yeah, no, not going to slaughter an entire human city,” Jake answered, adding in his mind. Not without good reason, at least.

The thought surprised him about as much as the sentiment that he didn’t even feel like it would be that horrible. He didn’t feel like killing humans. In fact, he would very much prefer not to, but at the same time, he wouldn’t hesitate if he felt like it was the best course of action.

“Again, your choice. Anything else interesting you wanna bring up?” the god asked.

“Now that I have you… advice on making my very first secret underground alchemy lab?”

Hey, with Villy being a master alchemist and all, why not ask? The god also gladly answered as Jake began going over his plans as he got feedback. Especially when he asked about making an artificial sun from the Sun Fragment, he learned a lot, as Jake had no experience with that kind of thing.

He also asked about things related to the Dustpollen Bee Queen and advice on securing the best possible start for the insect. The god was actually impressed Jake had managed to swipe up such a good treasure and emphasized Jake did not half-arse it. If he did well, that Bee could be the most beneficial thing he had gained from the auction in the long term.

His advice? Collect a mountain of D-grade cores from insect-like monsters to use in a giant ritual with the Nucleus and try to give birth to a powerful variant - the cores of other queens being extraordinarily important. Jake took it all in, as a plan began to form in his head of what to do in the future to deal with both his Sin weapon issues and his D-grade core-scarcity problem.

Because he remembered a certain area between Haven and Skyggen, nicely out in the middle of nowhere, with a giant underground network of insect monsters…

The two of them kept talking about a myriad of topics for a good while as Sylphie was still just sleeping. Jake himself was waiting for Hank or someone else to arrive in order to get started with some underground construction plans, and he honestly wasn’t in much of a hurry to get anything done here and now.

But, he planned to get construction started and get some work delegated before he would head out again. Jake had obtained many items of high value during the auction, but he couldn’t equip many of them yet. Which is to say he needed levels. To get those, he planned on going on a hunting trip towards the insect-infested area.

Because he had a feeling, he would soon have plenty of time to do alchemy, especially when Villy just said “soon” when he asked about that off-world teleportation thing he kept talking about. Of course, for an immortal god, soon could mean in a million years, but Jake believed they would be a bit faster than that.

Shortly after he ended his conversation with Villy, he detected movement as three people entered the valley. It was Hank and two of the people he usually worked with. When Jake saw him get closer, he went to greet him – bird still on his head – and he was pleasantly surprised when he finally laid eyes on him.

[Human – lvl 100]

“Congratulations on the evolution,” Jake said with a smile.

“Thanks,” he just answered, not even mentioning Sylphie on his head even if his two colleagues stared a bit.

“Now I heard you have some ideas for the underground lab… but before you say anything, does it have anything to do with those?” Hank asked as he pointed to a stack of massive black metal gates lying on the ground, having created a small crater.

“…yes?”

“Well, then you gotta help us set it up… because none of us can lift them, and they are too unhandy even if we manage to work together,” he explained. “I can’t even put them in my special storage due to their properties. It is some weird metal you have gathered.”

“Oh…” Jake answered, the thought having not even crossed his mind before. Well, he did know he couldn’t put them in his own storage, and he guessed that was just due to their size and weight, but maybe they truly couldn’t be put in storage.

He summoned the Cube he had managed to get the Sun Fragment into and failed again, more or less confirming the gates’ magic resistance also expanded to that.

“No problem, I’ll help,” Jake said.

“Great. Now, are you down for a tour of how it looks currently down there and future plans?” Hank asked.

What a silly question… fuck yeah, he was.