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However, Jake had gotten even more levels and power.

The two-headed hydra turned toward him and got ready as he approached. Its instinctual knowledge was enough to identify Jake as a strong opponent, making it clearly take him seriously from the get-go. One maw snapped forward as the other waited to strike, evaluating what Jake would do.

Its massive teeth-filled mouth missed Jake as he side-stepped and jabbed one katar into its side swiftly. The blade only went five or so centimeters into the flesh as he retracted it, the scales and flesh of the hydra too durable for Jake to ignore. If he tried to really jam it in there, he even reckoned it would get stuck.

As expected, the second head descended and tried to snatch Jake up. Jake again dodged and tried to counter, but the first head swiped to the side to hit him. This forced him back as the second head lifted itself towards the sky and breathed in.

Space itself appeared to distort from the inhale, with Jake feeling the movements of massive amounts of mana. Air mana primarily. It was being extracted and absorbed in huge quantities at a time, making it look like a maelstrom had formed above the hydra. Even the clouds several kilometers up in the air were affected.

Needless to say, all this took a bit of time, giving Jake ample opportunity to move. The other head of the hydra naturally moved to stop him, and the four-legged beast even tried to stomp him with its large legs to keep him away as Jake dodged the head and got beneath. He ran quickly but managed to stab four times into the underbelly of the beast, each blow delivering a solid dose of poison from Fangs of the Malefic Viper.

Just as he got to the other side, the hydra roared with the head not inhaling. Jake felt his entire body tense up as the second head bent and aimed its maw straight at Jake.

Let me have it.

A massive sonic boom rocked the entire marsh as a bubble of pure air was released. Trees were uprooted, and Jake found himself impacted straight in the chest. Blood pooled in his mouth as he spat it out, flying through the air through a few trees that had survived. He slid to a halt as he landed on his feet, using both katars to slow himself down.

The released air had been far more potent in the beginning but was just a mild wind by now. Jake felt his ribs hurt a little from the impact earlier but still smiled. It needed to at least be this strong.

He stepped down as he teleported forward and, in only three steps, appeared in front of the hydra once more. Without hesitation, he attacked again. The beast happily responded as the two heads capable of swallowing him whole descended from above to eat him like a snack. Sadly for the hydra, such elementary attacks had no way of hitting.

Jake dodged both as he landed several stabs, the poison slowly seeping into the body of the beast. The scales were tough, and the hydra healed quickly, but it was outmatched. Jake had gotten stronger, and the level gap was severely lower than last time. He was no longer a complete idiot when it came to melee, either. In fact, he felt better than ever. A part of him had feared that only practicing with sim-Jake for so long would have made him worse against an opponent like the hydra, but that fear had been needless.

In reality, the movements and attacks of the hydra just seemed so damn inadequate. It was a beast that fought based on its instincts, making it all too predictable. In some ways, Jake was a bit disappointed. Then again, he knew he couldn’t expect too much. It was common knowledge that the smarter a beast was, the more dangerous it was. If this hydra had the same level of intelligence as a human or even just the Phantomshade Panther, it would be far more frightening.

Not that Snappy had been weak when he was still a dum-dum.

Jake managed to land dozens of strikes, stabbing one of the legs several times, hoping to weaken it. He circled the large beast, making it harder for the heads to pin him down and attack him, positioning himself in such a fashion that only one head could strike at a time. Even if the hydra was dumb, it clearly was aware this was not good and changed tactics.

A massive roar was released, stunning Jake again. The hydra quickly spun and swiped Jake with its tail, sending him flying back from the impact. It did little damage to him, but it did buy the beast some time. Instantly it began shrinking, using the skill Jake was already familiar with from the first time around, and he knew this was when the true fight would begin.

Rather than try and take advantage of this slight opening, Jake let it finish. Soon, a hydra about four and a half meters tall stood before him, its gray scales now a darker shade. Jake felt its dense energy from a distance and knew it had improved this skill even more than last time, making him smile.

This time, he wasn’t even the one to attack. Incredibly swiftly, the beast ran towards him, not even using a movement skill. The two heads shot forward like two snakes, the many teeth biting down on air as Jake had already teleported back. With the very next step, he teleported forward again to counter, but a leg was raised to kick Jake, forcing him to block for the very first time in the battle.

Jake did so by reflecting the blow towards the ground as one of the heads flew in from the side. Once more, he dodged but had no time to counter as he got pressed by the now far faster beast. The only chance he got was for a slicing attack, but the bone katar just slid helplessly across the thick scales. To his surprise, he also noticed that the many wounds on the hydra were nearly healed, and even the poison in its body was being rapidly consumed.

Does not seem to have gained more tricks in the last 39 levels but just upped everything it already could to a whole new level, Jake concluded. It maybe did have one more trick. Hopefully it did because Jake was also about to get a bit more serious.

A head came for Jake as his body exploded with power, Arcane Awakening activating at the safe 30%. His body was flooded with energy as he dodged the attack, landing a solid jab with Eternal Hunger. He had taken the hydra by surprise, allowing him to penetrate all the way to the handle and pull it out again in one swift motion.

Roaring in anger, the hydra spun again to hit him with its tail. Jake angled himself and pointed both weapons towards the tail as he jumped slightly. The impact sent him flying, but the momentum of the blow also made both katars penetrate the tail as if the beast had just slammed itself into two nails.

Jake barely allowed himself to fly backward before he canceled part of the momentum with a blast of mana before stepping down and teleporting to keep up his constant assault. Wanting to really push himself, Jake even boosted Arcane Awakening, using the destructive mode. His increase in all his offensive stats grew from 30 to 50% as Jake got even faster and hit even harder.

Yet the hydra kept up well. It was clearly on the back foot, but it still managed to keep Jake at bay for the most part. More concerning was that even if Jake landed blows, he wasn’t doing much damage. The scales were thick and durable, making slicing attacks difficult, while the regeneration of the hydra made its wounds heal incredibly swiftly. It didn’t even feel like it drained a lot of health points doing this, as the beast probably also regenerated that at an insane pace. Moreover, Jake came to discover the hydra did have one new trick…

A berserker-like effect. The more damage it took, the faster and stronger it got, but at the same time, its regeneration also sped up. This made it so that one had to not only outpace the regeneration that increased the more damaged the hydra was but also keep up this high damage output while the hydra got stronger and faster. It was indeed true the beast had few abilities, but those it had all seemed to synergize and turn baby Snappy into a true terror.

The beast and human soon got into a status quo of exchanging blows. Jake focused on what he had come there for as he finally felt himself be pushed, the occasional stunning roar and absorption blast putting him on the back foot at times. He knew that a single slip-up with end up losing him a limb to the maw of the hydra, making it all the more exciting. Jake also bit onto the fact that even if the beast had increased regeneration as it got hurt, he was also gaining momentum himself.

Moreover, he had a few other tricks up his sleeve for when the time came.

However, for now, he would simply indulge himself in the dance of death with his opponent as the ball was firmly in sim-Jake’s court to begin what came next.

Inside Jake’s Soulspace, sim-Jake stood in front of the massive curse beast with one hand on its head. He had his eyes closed as he also felt the battle outside and experienced everything like he was Jake himself. Because he partly was.

The hydra was powerful but simplistic. The winner was clear, especially if Jake decided to go all-out and not limit himself as he currently did. That would ruin the entire purpose of this exercise, though. Sim-Jake felt the rush of adrenaline running through his body as it ran through Jake’s body outside. As he stood there, he carefully observed how Jake fought and what decisions he made.

Dodging was pure instinct with few decisions involved in it, but countering had many. In most instances of a fight, there were several choices that could be made when responding to something. Dodge, block, counter. Even while dodging, he had a few decisions to make, the standards being: side-step, reposition, disengage, or close the distance to set up something in the future.

Blocking was more limited and was only done when dodging was not an option or to potentially deflect and counter. However, by then, it may as well just be considered a full-on counter. Every counter had a myriad of methods behind them, too, though often only a few would be optimal. Adding in a bow had expanded the scope of possibilities significantly, though.

The more time passed with sim-Jake looking, the more sure he became of the Path he wanted to take. He wanted to fight. That had always been who he was. It was all he ever had. It was all he ever felt like he was good at. While he had lost all memories of who he truly was, the emotions remained… no, they had gotten stronger. Likely an aftereffect of attuning himself to a curse.

Sim-Jake had genuinely hated the world before the system. He knew that. After his parents died, he never really had any reason to not act out his inherent impulses, even if it was a world that had developed to not accept them. The world had not been made for the Primal Hunter. At least not back then.

The regular Jake also had some hate back then growing up. Had the same instinct and impulses. One to hunt and dominate. It still sometimes came through, but for the most part, he suppressed himself. He had chosen to bury it… bury it deep.

Jake’s Bloodline had awakened during the Tutorial, but it was never the system that had put it to sleep. It was Jake himself who had managed to make his own Bloodline dormant. To try and soothe his family. To try and fit in and be a normal human. Naturally, he could never truly suppress who he was, and what little of the Bloodline remained only made Jake know how much he missed. How hollow the world was.

He had been a shell of himself. Sim-Jake’s best way of describing Jake before the system was… depressed. Jake was walking the line between staying alive because surviving was so inherent to him and not seeing the point of life when it was so boring and mundane. Every action he made back then was so empty.

In some ways, sim-Jake understood why he never formed any good relations with others besides his family. It was only his family he ever could feel a connection to.

If sim-Jake had indulged his Bloodline and tried to find a purpose in life, Jake had suppressed his desire to ever find meaning and just tried to ride out the mundanity of the pre-system world. In some ways, they had both just waited for the system. Waited for them to finally enter a world where they could thrive. Who could blame Jake for losing himself after finally letting go and awakening his Bloodline after decades?

The sheer euphoria Jake had felt back then echoed into sim-Jake even now. Decades of pent-up instinct and desire had come rushing through his body at once, with ample targets to take it out on. The Jake of shortly after he awakened his Bloodline had been the closest he had ever been to sim-Jake since the day their Paths split when they were children. When they had made different choices…

“It’s funny,” sim-Jake smirked as he looked through the real Jake’s eyes while talking to the cursed beast. “A single choice can mean so much. That single choice meant that I became me, and he became him. One single choice where we reacted differently to our shared instinct…”

Shaking his head, sim-Jake stared at the cursed beast. “I believe it is time. A final fight, if you may.”

Sim-Jake let go of the beast as he sent a pulse into it. The beast’s eyes opened wide as it roared, making the entire Soulspace shake. He simply smiled as the beast attacked, and they fought. A brutal brawl where he didn’t even use any weapons. A final moment of pure indulgence.

The two of them clashed for several minutes before sim-Jake was sent sliding back. A massive maw came towards him as the cursed beast wanted to eat him. Sim-Jake simply smiled. This had always been the plan. To become one with the beast through the one thing it did: consumption.

The giant maw descended upon him as the cursed beast consumed sim-Jake. The energies of the beast began eroding him as sim-Jake connected with the Records he had stored there. This was what most of their time had been spent on: assuring this would succeed. The two would become one, whether Eternal Hunger liked it or not. At any moment, he could still escape from within the beast. At any moment, he could suppress it. He could stop this entire process. But he didn’t. He let it consume him because that was what he had chosen to do.

He had chosen how he lived, and now he had his final Path.

Because in the end, sim-Jake was nothing but the outcome of a choice. Such was his Origin, and so he would remain.

Just another choice: a shadow of what could have been.