Chapter 788 - Nevermore: Gaze (Patreon)

Jake got really lucky in story number twelve. In that one, he was so fortunate as to be a suspected mass murderer who was thrown into solitary confinement for potential crimes against humanity.

Now, Jake had to admit this story was kind of interesting. Jake had arrived after the suspected crime was done and in the middle of the arrest, not knowing what was going on. What’s more, the character Jake was in didn’t seem to know if he had murdered anyone either. At least he claimed that he didn’t have any memories of the last week, which was one of the reasons he had just been imprisoned and not killed.

This left the mystery of whether he was guilty or not, and if he wasn’t the true mass murderer, who was behind this plot? Jake knew that losing memories was very, very rarely a thing with the system, so there was also a good chance the character was just lying. But it was technically possible he didn’t have any memories.

Jake would guess that a big part of this particular story was to figure out if the guy was guilty and, dependent on the answer – or your personal conclusion to the answer – how you would react to the entire judicial system.

Interesting, yes, but far less interesting than controlling the character for ninety-five percent of the time to practice his own skills while in isolation anyway. Considering Jake knew he was just waiting for some unknown investigation going on and that he would have to be stuck in prison for at least two weeks, according to the guards, Jake decided this was prime time to get some skills upgrades in. This was definitely not how things were intended to be, as Jake guessed it was meant to be some mental training exercise or something, but that just sounded like a needless waste of time.

Plus, Jake hid by erecting a stable arcane mana barrier to seal his cell away, and he seriously doubted any of the local E and D-grades could ever see through it. The cell itself was decently large, being around five-by-five meters, so just enough space for Jake to move around and work on skill upgrades. The reason for this size was to make space for the energy-draining magic circle installed on the floor that was meant to drain the one trapped there of stamina and mana, but, well, it didn’t seem like the thing worked properly on C-grades. This magic circle was part of the reason Jake was confident in controlling the character without missing anything, as with no resources, he would just have been on the floor, unable to move.

As for why he had waited with his skill upgrades, it was naturally due to the backlash. One could only upgrade skills when one intended to upgrade them or experienced a moment of sudden insight or enlightenment, so he had purposefully kept it off till he had fully recovered. Jake feared that if he upgraded his skills while all his senses were messed up, it could potentially fuck up the upgrade. It was maybe an irrational fear, but better safe than sorry, especially considering he didn’t need the upgraded skills while inside the Test of Character Challenge Dungeon.

But now it was time to finally integrate what he had learned.

During the Colosseum of Mortals, Jake had primarily worked on three things: basic archery, what he called Fear Gaze, and his expertise with making quasi-Protean arrows. While he had also worked on general energy control and whatnot, the gains there were far lesser than with these three.

One also had to remember that Jake had practiced energy manipulation far more than he had ever practiced archery. Every single time he did alchemy, he practiced manipulating his mana, and when using nearly every single skill, he improved his use of stamina. On the other hand, general archery was something Jake only ever really improved when he consciously worked on doing so. In battle, he only often used his skills, such as Arcane Powershot or Splitting Arrow, giving him little time to work on his usual archery.

However, archery was still part of all these skills. It was the foundation that all of Jake’s other bow-related skills worked with. Even when Jake, say, used Arcane Powershot, the loosed arrow benefitted from his archery skill as well, even if he didn’t think about it.

Having decided to start with improving his archery, Jake got to work with consolidating his gains and insights. He spent the next day or so going through his practiced archery in his small cell, no one coming to bother him at any point.

After this one day of practice, the system finally recognized his efforts to integrate what he had learned, if barely.

[Archery of Expanding Horizons (Epic)]

-->

[Archery of Expanding Horizons (Epic)] - An Archer’s best friend is the bow in his hand and the arrow in his foe’s heart. As your horizons expand, you realize flaws and build upon a foundation to make that expansion everpresent. You do not shy away from mixing archery with magic and making your arrows arbiters of your will. Your arrows will cross all horizons and bend over any obstacle to pierce your target, with only your own will limiting the possibilities. Allows you to affect the trajectory of arrows already in flight. By infusing arrows with your will before shooting, the effect is significantly improved. Adds a small bonus to the effect of Agility and Strength when using a ranged weapon. Adds a small damage bonus to all arrows based on distance traveled and Perception. Arrow trajectory control based on Willpower.

The “upgrade” was less than exciting but still recognized by the system to be enough for a notification. The only real change was a single sentence being expanded and one more functionality added to the skill. The skill before the upgrade said:

“Allows you to apply your will to control the trajectory of arrows before releasing them.”

While now, it had turned into:

“Allows you to affect the trajectory of arrows already in flight. By infusing arrows with your will before shooting, the effect is significantly improved.”

Again, it was very minor, but at least he now had skill-assistance when controlling his arrows mid-flight, while he didn’t doubt his prior method of infusing his will before shooting was even better than before.

Sadly, it stayed as an epic rarity skill, though it was no doubt peak epic now, extremely close to ancient rarity. Overall, it didn’t appear like a big deal, but Jake knew that he had taken an important step forward in his archery journey.

Even if the skill hadn’t suddenly grown significantly or even added much new and fancy, he knew he had shored up many weaknesses in his archery. He had hammered out some bad habits, both through his own practice and through the advice and sparring with Artemis, who naturally was a far better archer than himself, even as a level 0 significantly nerfed version of herself.

She understood that Jake didn’t really learn much when taught, so they just fought as he watched what she did, taking inspiration. It was a bit similar to how Jake trained against Sim-Jake, though he, of course, had far more time with his other self. Jake learned incredibly well by seeing others, likely because he had such high Perception, proving it was truly the best stat.

Either way, Jake believed his skill was now far more primed for future upgrades.

As for how he would actually continue to upgrade the skill, well, Jake felt like one of the best ways to do that would be to expose himself to more skilled archers. He had learned so much watching melee fighters, mages, and whatnot, but people using bows were just too rare. But hey, who knows, maybe he could even get the real Artemis to give him a hand…

Eh, doubtful… I am sure a literal goddess is too busy to waste time with some random C-grade. Maybe in the future…

Jake shook his head as he refocused his attention on something else. After thinking for a while, Jake consolidated his gains in regard to Protean Arrow, but even after two days in the isolation cell, the system didn’t give him any notifications.

He did feel like he improved some aspects of the skill, though. Jake could assemble the arrow faster and make the structure of the arrow even more complex, but clearly, the system didn’t think it was enough to warrant even an in-rarity upgrade.

Jake was admittedly a bit annoyed at this but not that surprised. The skill was already ancient rarity, making it a lot harder to upgrade.

Taking the time, Jake also went over all his other insights, including those to his general energy control and his Arcane Powershot skill. Nothing was upgraded, nor did he get any system messages, but he hadn’t expected any either. He just knew that many skills were now far closer to an upgrade than ever, especially those he hadn’t upgraded in a long time… which brought him to the final thing he wanted to do. The final skill he wanted to upgrade:

Gaze of the Apex Hunter. It was naturally to be augmented by the “new” technique Jake created while inside the Colosseum of Mortals.

Fear Gaze was a weird one. The technique Jake had created when he was skilless was very similar in many aspects of his regular Gaze of the Apex Hunter, yet he also introduced some new elements. He simplified its concepts a lot and also made the skill far, far more risky. Right now, Jake would only experience a headache after using Gaze too many times and a quick sharp pain if he used it on someone too strong. He wouldn’t take any actual damage to his soul, even if he tried to use the skill on a god, though it would give him a headache for sure and make the skill unavailable for a while.

With the skilless Fear Gaze, that wasn’t the case. This was also the reason Jake had been reluctant to use it on Valdemar during their fight. The backlash he suffered was intense, as the skill effectively made their two souls clash, and if Jake wasn’t confident about coming out on top, it would end badly for him.

Now, while Jake did have his Bloodline, which was just a straight-up cheat in a soul clash, it wasn’t perfect. The quality of his soul was incredibly high, and it would allow him to come out on top against pretty much anyone of equal level, but against higher-leveled foes, it could easily become problematic. Even if Jake was the highest-quality and most powerful ant around, he would still be squashed by the lowest-quality human.

This meant he had to willingly make regular Gaze more risky to use if he wanted to integrate Fear Gaze. At least he would have to accept that should he introduce the concepts he had learned, the backlash he would suffer from misusing the skill would increase significantly. He didn’t necessarily think he would die, even if he tried to use Fear Gaze on a literal god, but he would definitely knock himself out for a while.

However, with this trade, Jake would also make the skill far more powerful. One of the big differences between Gaze of the Apex Hunter and Fear Gaze was that Fear Gaze also affected all the energies of his target. His regular Gaze only froze the physical body, allowing his foe to continue controlling mana and likely even internal energy to some degree.

He often experienced foes erecting barriers even while paralyzed, with some even counterattacking using magic while frozen. Fear Gaze would stop all that. It had even been able to stop the Transcendent aura of Valdemar… though it was more accurate to say he himself had stopped it as Fear Gaze had made him hesitate for a moment.

Now, Jake knew he wanted these aspects infused into Gaze of the Apex Hunter. The question was how he was supposed to do that properly. Looking at the skill he wanted to upgrade, he realized he really hadn’t looked at the description for a long time.

[Gaze of the Apex Hunter (Legendary)] – A hunter who has seen his gaze reflected in the eyes of the Apex Predator and now stares back with equal zeal. With a glance that penetrates into the very soul of its prey, the gaze of the Apex Hunter can immobilize or even kill any it sees. Gives the hunter the ability to paralyze, knock out, and even kill his prey through visual contact. This skill directly targets the soul of the target, ignoring distance, physical defense, and most magical defenses. Passively enhances the hunter’s eyes, increasing the effect of Perception while also making weak points easier to spot. All effects of Gaze of the Apex Hunter are determined by Perception.

This was one of his first legendary skills and one he had gained right after the Tutorial. He had it since E-grade but never once upgraded it.

Jake couldn’t help but smile as he saw the “making weak points easier to spot” part of the description. When had he ever used this feature? At least consciously. Finding a weak spot usually wasn’t hard. In fact, weak spots were often incredibly obvious. Didn’t take a genius to figure out that shooting something in the eye was a good idea. Plus, the higher grade Jake got, the fewer natural weak points every creature got. Even now, Jake’s organs didn’t really matter for shit. The ones he had left anyway. So if he could improve this aspect somehow, he wasn’t opposed to it. In fact, he had a good idea of how to do it.

Fear Gaze was to gaze upon a soul. The soul – or at least the Soulshape – was far more informative to look at if one searched for weaknesses, and it shouldn’t be too hard to expand it so he could glance at Soulshapes using Gaze.

Compared to the prior skills he wanted to upgrade, this one was naturally far harder, but in some areas, it was surprisingly more straightforward. As mentioned, this skill was one Jake had for a long time. Shit, it had even integrated Hunter’s Sight, which came from one of the very first skills Jake ever got when he entered the Tutorial. Through the many levels and even grades he had the skill, minor improvements had naturally always been made. Jake had gotten better and better at using Gaze of the Apex Hunter, even using parts of it to nullify Identify-blocking skills.

His changed orange-yellow eyes from getting the skill had always been synonymous with who he was by now. It was something every person in Haven recognized and was, in many ways, truly part of his identity. In fact, during the Colosseum, it had been incredibly weird to see himself in mirrors without his changed eyes.

The thought of mirrors gave Jake an idea as he summoned a stable wall of arcane mana that he made to reflect his own image back at him. A large mirror appeared before him, and Jake met his own reflection’s eyes. Opening them wide, they began to glow as the pupils turned into slits.

Jake had expected days to pass before he would see any progress, but reality turned out differently. Throughout the years, he had been assembling puzzle pieces, and now he just had to put them together into one picture. So, as he stared at his own reflection, he felt the ease of what he wanted to do, and in that moment, he fully understood. He understood why Fear Gaze – a seemingly high-level technique – had come so easy to him in the Colosseum. He understood why he felt wrong when he didn’t have the skill.

Gaze had indeed become integral to him as a person. It suited Jake and aligned with him, perhaps more than any other skill he possessed. Gaze had long become part of Jake’s Path, and as he felt his own heartbeat, truly part of who and what he was… now more than ever.

[Gaze of the Apex Hunter (Legendary)]

-->

[Primal Gaze of the Apex Hunter (Mythical)] – A hunter who has embraced primal aspects of himself, his gaze more deadly than even most apex predators. With will befitting that of an apex hunter, unleash a Primal Gaze that forcibly penetrates into the soul of your foes. The Primal Gaze of the Apex Hunter can immobilize or even kill any it sees, the weak crumbling before you. Gives the hunter the ability to paralyze, knock out, and even kill his opponents through visual contact. This skill directly targets the soul of the target, ignoring distance, physical defense, and most magical defenses. Due to the nature of the skill, the soul of the hunter will also be exposed to the soul of the target when using Primal Gaze of the Apex Hunter, potentially causing the hunter harm. Passively enhances the hunter’s eyes, increasing the effect of Perception while also allowing you to glance at your opponent’s soul for weaknesses. Passively inspires fear in all that enter the hunter’s eyes, whom he displays hostility toward. All effects of Primal Gaze of the Apex Hunter are determined by Perception and the overall power of the hunter’s soul. May your gaze inspire primal fear in all who dare impede the Path of the Primal Hunter.