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One could be born into the Holy Church. Born into the Risen. Born into the Altmar Empire. But this was not true for Valhal, the Court of Shadows, or the Order of the Malefic Viper for that part. One could have an easier way in, but that did not mean one was born into it. They were organizations that people could join and leave, closer to companies or guilds than empires and countries. Granted, their member contracts could be limiting, but there was always a way out.

Most organizations were also reasonable to some extent. They respected some universal rules set in the multiverse. But… some organizations could not truly be classified. One, in particular, stood out largely due to its power.

Ell’Hakan had been warned that in Haven, there was one person he was not to interfere with no matter what. One person he should even actively make sure the United Cities Alliance did not bother either.

Because some factions were what could only be classified as utterly insane. Usually, factions like these would crumble and break apart as insanity was not a good attribute for a leader to have, but there was one major organization in the multiverse that, despite its insane methods, managed to thrive.

An organization that had wiped out entire species for looking too much like one of the gods they prayed to. One that willingly had its members go to the domains or sacred sites of their gods despite half dying in the process. One that would be crazy enough to start a war in which trillions would die and swear an eternal blood oath to wipe out you and anyone with a karmic connection to you from the multiverse… over a statue. A work-in-progress statue.

It was naturally the Primordial Church. And the one person Ell’Hakan had been warned about was none other than Felix, the sculptor who was apparently working on a statue of the Malefic Viper - a statue shown by the Chosen himself. This mattered particularly much because the Chosen had, according to rumors, been the first person to see the Viper in Eras. This meant that in the eyes of the Eternal Servant, the Chosen was the only one who had truly ”seen” the Malefic One as he had met him both before and after he returned.

Ell’Hakan had been told all this directly by his Patron after the Eternal Servant himself had come to warn him. Warn him that the sculptor was to remain undisturbed until his task was complete. The Nahoom had not known what to think about this as he had honestly not even heard about this sculptor before arriving on Earth. In fact, he had been on his way to meet someone he had heard about and taken a particular interest in.

A certain man of technology by the name of Arnold.

A common misunderstanding was that spiders are insects. They weren’t but were instead distant relatives of insects, being classified as arachnids. Another common misunderstanding was that scorpions were insects, but they were arachnids and far closer related to spiders than something like an ant.

On second thought, most people probably did know this, but Jake didn’t. At least not the second part about scorpions being arachnids.

Post-system, these things were often mixed together, and these classifications kind of stopped mattering, but it was fun trivia nonetheless. One difference also did remain in the number of legs. Like spiders, scorpions had eight of them, and like spiders, these legs were honestly kind of weak and their joints rather exposed.

Jake leaped backward as he dodged the incredibly fast stinger aiming for him, quickly gaining distance from his large foe.

The scorpion had a sand-colored body, and its stinger stood more than twenty meters tall. It was an utterly monstrously large body, and the pincers were large enough to snap a human in half if caught. Several humans at once, probably.

Plating covered its entire body, making it look like an invulnerable tank, and Jake did indeed discover that trying to damage its armored parts was useless, with even his Powershot blocked and only leaving a nick. Now, for the far smaller scorpions, Jake could still blow them apart, but the C-grade in question was the real deal.

[Giant Sandstream Scorpion Lord – lvl ???]

Jake slid back across the sand after dodging another attack and heard the cheerleading voice of the worm in the back of his head, despite it hiding several hundred meters down and kilometers away. Yes, these worms had a very impressive range when it came to their telepathy, and no, it did not want to contribute to the fight at all. Not like it needed to.

Throughout the battle, he had landed dozens of stabs with his katars, and it wasn’t hard to hit the gaps between the armor with the occasional arrow. Their fight had been going on for a good while by now, and the difference was quite clear, even if there were some issues.

Streams of sand – probably what gave the massive scorpion its name – whirled around the scorpion and gathered as spear-like weapons that stabbed forward to try and catch out Jake. He easily dodged backward and took to the air as he bombarded the scorpion below with stable arcane arrows.

The scorpion angled itself to block with its chitin armor and formed a dome of sand around itself to stop his attacks while it tried to heal itself of some of the poison in its body. Jake smirked and simply began charging Arcane Powershot, having already seen the scorpion’s lack of ability to block it with its sand magic.

As expected, it penetrated the wall of sand and struck the scorpion in the stinger, making it screech in pain as even more poison was delivered into its system. Now, Jake mentioned issues, and one issue was that he had wasted an entire bottle of his special soul poison.

Turns out that it sucked against large foes due to the far larger Soulshape, and the scorpion also had significant innate poison resistance. Enough for him to not be able to build up a proper charge before triggering it. This is why he had just returned back to hemotoxins to at least make it bleed a bit more. Oh, another funny fact was that scorpions had blue blood. This had no impact on the fight besides the sand taking on a new color. It was just a bit of trivia.

Thinking about it, this was Jake’s third time fighting a C-grade. The first had been the Phantomshade Panther and the second the mushroom man he obliterated together with Draskil. No, he didn’t count the termites. And as the fight with the scorpion continued, it became clear this specimen was weaker than both of the C-grades he had truly faced before.

Moreover, Jake was stronger than he had been then. To add further, then the scorpion was not that well matched up against Jake due to his ranged options. It seemed that these scorpions nearly only fought melee foes, and those they fought with ranged options, their sand magic could face. He had noticed a distinct lack of flying creatures anywhere in the desert, but that was likely due to the one-sided nature of the environment. Birds with the earth affinity were super rare for hopefully obvious reasons.

So just flying around and keeping his distance allowed Jake to whittle down the massive scorpion a little at a time. Still, it wasn’t entirely one-sided and definitely not a fast fight.

Jake shot a barrage of explosive arrows as the scorpion had dispelled its wall of sand and moved to attack. The stinger struck forward and penetrated into the sand Jake had just been flying above. A black liquid was excreted that somehow pulsed through the sand, and Jake felt it continue through it to hit anything hiding below ground.

All he had to do to avoid it was not touch the sand, making Jake never stay on the ground. It was also smart to not stand on it as it gave him more time to dodge the sand manipulation.

The scorpion wasn’t stupid – no C-grades were – and knew it was in a very disadvantageous situation. After Jake managed to blow one of its legs off, the scorpion decided it was time to leave as it attempted to dig into the sand and get away.

Jake reacted quickly and did something many would probably find incredibly wasteful. Flying down, Jake smashed both his fists into the ground as he released massive amounts of stable arcane mana into the sand. The scorpion tried to manipulate the sand but found itself unable to move it as Jake had effectively frozen the ground with pure stability. This did not mean the scorpion couldn’t use sand anymore, as it was able to summon it out of thin air, but it sure as hell wasn’t going to dig anywhere.

Also realizing that Jake was faster, it chose to stand its ground as it finally went all out. Its entire body suddenly began shaking as Jake saw parts of it turn into sand. Jake frowned as the stinger seemed to disintegrate and simply become one with the desert below. Soon after, its pinchers followed.

His danger sense exploded as Jake jumped, only to barely avoid a stinger emerging. A stream of sand went towards him, and he dodged out of the way, only for a pincher to pop out of the sand flying in mid-air.

Looking down, he saw the scorpion’s stinger, and both claws were entirely gone as it just looked like just a big mound of armor, its joints also gone. Yet it still moved its amputated limbs, and in tandem, these limbs were summoned from any sand all around Jake.

It was actually a really cool trick and probably how it had hunted down so many worms who dared enters its area. Too bad its sneak attacks didn’t work on Jake as sneak attacks tended to not work on Jake.

Deciding to finish the fight, Jake dove down towards the main body of the scorpion, dodging all attacks on the way. Arrows didn’t do the job as its armor seemed even stronger in this form, leaving not a single opening. All it had were a few stumps sticking out, which were also covered in armor, making it like trying to hit a safe.

Jake had a way around that as he landed on the scorpion and pressed his hands to its body. Touch of the Malefic Viper activated, and the poison went straight into the armor and began corroding it. Dark green cracks appeared within seconds, and Jake felt it turn brittle enough for a good punch to break it.

To the scorpion’s credit, it also swiftly reacted in a way that Jake had not expected. Sand appeared on both sides as two massive pinchers appeared and tried to rip Jake off, making him dodge under them and smirk as he kept pumping in poison. The stinger then regrew instantly, but not on the tail as expected but out of the damn armor right behind Jake. It was a far smaller version of it, but it also moved faster than Jake was ready for.

He was hit on the back as the stinger pumped deadly venom into him. Jake reacted by pumping more poison into the scorpion. While Jake found his poison relatively ineffective at actually doing damage to the scorpion, the C-grade also quickly discovered it had little luck.

Jake did have to admit that the venom was stronger than anything he could make as his skin turned black and his insides began turning to mush. Emphasis on began. Nearly all other D-grades, even peak D-grades, would find themselves turned into piles of goo within a second of being struck with the stinger. It was a true kill-move that sadly relied on something Jake was very resistant to.

Both of them pumped toxins into the other for several more seconds before Jake had to disengage. Eternal Hunger – in its katar form – was summoned as he punched straight down. It penetrated the armor of the scorpion after it had been weakened and made cracks spread. Several more hits shattered a huge part of the armor as Jake finally cut off the stinger and took to the air.

The scorpion tried to roll over and protects its newly-made weak point, but Jake was not having any of it. He used Gaze of the Apex Hunter as a large arrow appeared from his quiver. One he had been saving for this moment. It was naturally Arrow of the Ambitious Hunter.

Frozen, the scorpion could not move in time as Jake shot down the arrow. It hit right in the weak spot and sank into the scorpion’s body, creating an even bigger hole and sending out an intense wave of energy that ravaged its insides. Jake followed up with a few explosive arcane arrows that hit inside the hole and hence exploded inside the scorpion’s body.

It struggled and writhed in pain, but it was too late. Jake activated Mark of the Avaricious Hunter as the scorpion flashed with arcane light for a brief second, making it screech out in pain more. All it took after that was a few more well-placed arrows and a bit of time.

A minute later, the building-sized scorpion finally collapsed on the sand as Jake got a notification.

*You have slain [Giant Sandstream Scorpion Lord – lvl 202] – Bonus experience earned for killing an enemy above your level*

*’DING!’ Class: [Avaricious Arcane Hunter] has reached level 174 - Stat points allocated, +10 Free Points*

He didn’t know if he should be annoyed or not at only getting a single level from a kill on a damn C-grade. Then again, it had only been a good half an hour’s work. A bit longer if you also counted the forty or so D-grades, Jake had to kill before he faced the Scorpion Lord, but he barely counted those due to how easy they were.

Sitting down on the sand, Jake took out a health potion and quickly drank it as he closed his eyes and focused on eliminating the venom still in his body. It would take a while, and during the process, he had to keep Arcane Awakening active, so he was in a bit of a hurry. He had not taken that much damage during the fight itself besides the last attack, but he was still tired as hell and would need some rest.

Focusing while in meditation, Jake practiced actively using Palate to eliminate the poison in his body as he waited for a certain worm to be brave enough to come over.

Minutes passed as Jake stabilized himself enough to move properly. He had still taken immense internal damage from that last stinger attack and felt like it would probably take a few hours before he was back in peak condition.

”You did it!” he heard the happy voice of the worm say from afar. Jake had also finally stopped tuning the worm out, as it had constantly been bombarding him with: ”Watch out!” and ”Hit now!” and… well, that kind of thing. He had never had a backseat warrior while fighting before, and he would prefer to never ever have one again.

”That I did,” Jake answered. He already felt the worm move closer, making Jake also head to their target.

A large stone was standing there in the middle of the desert. Somehow it stood upright and looked like a tall, slender boulder that someone had placed there. On it was a few natural markings, and it did give off an intense amount of earth affinity energy as well as something else Jake could not quite recognize, even if it did feel like a familiar concept. Jake had no idea what it was, but he could see why the worm wanted it.

”Now that the Scorpion Lord is dead, you got all you wanted, and we can move on?” Jake asked.

”Well… about that…” the worm began, embarrassed.

”There is more than one C-grade scorpion, isn’t there?”

”Maaybe? A few?”

”And more stones too?” Jake asked with a sigh.

”Now, that would be a happy coincidence… imagine if there were several of these stones which were kind of maybe linked or something, and getting all of them would be super good or something like that. That would be crazy.”

”Are you still trying to claim this way is faster?” Jake asked with exasperation but also had to admit he found the entire situation amusing. He had planned to take advantage of the worm to transport him, and there he was working as a mercenary for his driver.

”Well, that depends… C-grades are a lot faster than D-grades, you know? And I am sure I would be super fast if I somehow happened to reach C-grade, which would definitely speed up the journey, and to do that… you know, you can kill scorpions, and I can eat stones. Seems like a perfect fit,” the worm argued.

Jake just closed his eyes, tilted his head, and stared at the sky above.

Guess I am painting the desert blue with scorpion blood.