The Primal Hunter

The conflict between the Viper and Yip of Yore was beginning to enter its later phases, pushed forward by recent happenings, and as any good schemer, the Viper had adapted to the situation.

In truth, Jake really didn’t want to do more schemes to get one over Ell’Hakan, but he was caught between a rock and a hard place. While he didn’t want to be a schemer, the Viper sure did, and it was a good thing Jake had talked to Villy because if he had just gone with his plan of attacking Ell’Hakan, it could have messed with Villy significantly. Especially if Jake succeeded.

Jake didn’t really want to do anything that could mess with the Viper… especially not when he felt shitty about the entire situation with Palate, and he felt like he owed the god a massive favor. So, despite not being a fan of not just taking the simplified approach of putting an arrow in Ell’Hakan’s skull, he would go along with whatever the Viper wanted. Assuming the plan didn’t suck, that is.

”I’m not sure I’ll like whatever you’re about to suggest, but sure. Shoot,” Jake said.

”Alright, this is going to be a long one, so strap in. I have been thinking how to really leverage this entire angle of you being unsatisfied with me as your Patron, and everything does really seem to be lining up well for us to tell a little story. Your display of catering to Valhal in front of Ell’Hakan’s men was a nice touch, and for a while now, many have been expecting something to happen with you. So let’s make it happen,” the Viper said before he continued.

”Let me also clarify one more thing. While it’s common knowledge by now I used my Transcendent Skill to do some form of interference in the ninety-third universe, no one truly knows what I did there. Not anyone who would rat me out anyway. If we want, we can even spin it to me having done something to you as part of my efforts of making you unable to be freed from me even if you wanted to. Honestly, me doing something like that would also fit my personality and reputation, wouldn’t you agree?”

”No, not really,” Jake shrugged. ”You don’t seem like the kind who would bother forcing someone into servitude that way. Seems inefficient, and I doubt anyone like me would ever take that lying down, making it seem childishly evil.”

”Duh, of course you wouldn’t, which is why you are really fucking angry I did it to you,” the Viper said. ”And looking evil isn’t a problem, as I am evil, right? Evil and arrogant.”

”One question,” Jake said, skipping back a bit in the conversation. ”How do people even know you used your Transcendent Skill? It happened inside my Soulspace, right? Through your Records and whatnot? No one should have seen any of that.”

”It did indeed happen in your Soulspace, but I did have to pierce the veil between worlds to get there. Not fully, but I had to do something the system didn’t like for me to assist you. Doing something like that is bound to send echoes out, and many felt I did something,” the Viper explained. ”Eversmile then confirmed it afterward, being the go-to kind of guy to notice stuff like that with his constant karmic tracking of most notable figures in the entire multiverse.”

”And he then told Yip of Yore?”

”Not sure he even had to, but yes, he did help Yip reach the conclusion that now was a great moment to strike,” Villy confirmed.

”At this point, I’m still not sure if that guy is a friend or foe…” Jake muttered.

”Sometimes the world isn’t black and white.”

”I would prefer if it was,” Jake sighed, finding all of this scheming incredibly tiring. He wanted to ask more about if the Viper would really be fine, but held himself back as he returned to the topic before. ”Anyway, you want me to come out as a heretic or what?”

”Kind of, but not really. Not fully, at least. I want you to aim higher than merely being a heretic… I want you to aim to be a Usurper of my Path,” Villy said, Jake knowing he was grinning evilly on the other side before really laying out his plan:

”Think about it… the Chosen of the Malefic Viper is wavering in his faith, something the evil Primordial, of course, notices. Therefore, he injects – or had already injected - his Chosen with a conditional poison that will activate should he move too close to the line of being a heretic. This ends up happening during the system event, forcing the Viper to activate the poison, but due to the barrier, he ends up having to use his Transcendence to break through, and even then, he only ends up injuring his Chosen. Perhaps as a warning, or perhaps because he wasn’t able to entrap him outright due to the system… it doesn’t matter. All that matters is that the Malefic Viper knows his Chosen is rebelling and isn’t happy about it.”

Jake listened, looking for any obvious plot holes as he did point one out: ”Why wouldn’t you just retract your Blessing or outright kill me?”

”Kill you? Kill Jake Thayne, the Harbinger of Primeval Origins and the one holding the top score on the Nevermore Leaderboards? That guy? Nah, killing him would be such a waste and uselessly piss off other factions who want to use him. Nah, better to make it impossible for him to escape while skirting the rules set by the Bloodline Accords. You underestimate your own value, Jake. You’re like a precious natural treasure, and would the avaricious Malefic Viper really give that up so easily?”

”Fair enough,” Jake muttered, motioning for the Viper to continue to spin his story, gladly accepting the compliment.

”Anyway, clearly, you aren’t happy with me and are looking for a way out. But you are also greedy. Ambitious. You have begun to read the currents of change and believe you finally found a way to escape my clutches without missing out on anything: becoming a Usurper of my Path. It makes a lot of sense. As my Chosen, you are in a prime position to do it, and it isn’t like there’s no precedent for Chosen ending up turning on their Patrons and trying to consume their Path. That’s also why you won’t outright denounce my Blessing, but you will show tendencies of a heretic, forcing me to either retract my Blessing and suffer another backlash or simply accept that’s happening. You usurping me would allow you to not lose anything and keep your Path as an alchemist and all my skills without any restrictions. Of course, it would be hard for you to do as a mere C-grade, but with the help of Valhal? Yeah, it could totally happen. Naturally, for you to usurp me, having me be dead first is highly preferable, making you more than happy to help Yip of Yore weaken me further while empowering him through the narrative of turning me into a Primordial that’s not even able to have his own Chosen stay loyal, while at the same time not being smart enough to cut my losses when I probably should have.”

Jake had to admit the Viper had clearly been thinking about this a lot, or maybe he was just making stuff up on the spot, but Jake found himself nodding along as he imagined what he would have done if Villy turned out to be an utter dickhead. He didn’t want to hurt his own Path, so renouncing the Viper entirely and joining Valhal didn’t seem that appealing, but making the Viper’s Path his own by usurping it? That would result in Jake losing pretty much nothing outside the powerful backing of a Primordial, something he would instantly replace with Valhal.

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”Of course, being an aspiring Usurper doesn’t directly make you an ally of Yip of Yore or Ell’Hakan. Your interests just temporarily allign, so it makes sense you remain cautious of the other Chosen, especially seeing as you are still competing. You switching to wanting to be all buddy-buddy with him wouldn’t make any sense, but showing a bit of restraint until your Patron is dealt with? That you can do. Afterward, you will leave with Valhal, who also only has a temporary alliance with Yip of Yore. In other words, you’re not allying or forming any positive relations with your opponents; you’re just selfishly using them to fulfill your own goal of being free of me and usurping my Path. What’s more, none of your emotions should you encounter Ell’Hakan would be wrong. He is no mind reader, and your feeling of dislike is only to be expected. You clearly don’t like him, and this won’t change that, and you will continue to restrain yourself until the situation between Yip and I is dealt with.”

Again, Jake didn’t find any obvious flaws in what the Viper planned, though he would still be very cautious around the other Chosen. None of them truly understood Ell’Hakan’s Bloodline, and while Jake didn’t think it was some perfect sniffer of schemes that could instantly determine Jake was up to something, he didn’t see the need to risk meeting the guy if he could avoid it.

”Alright, let’s just say I’m all on board so far… why the hell would they believe this tall tale? Also, you said I would be a heretic, but it doesn’t sound like I’ll actually reveal my identity as a heretic. Thought a part of your plan was to have this entire shocking reveal where I suddenly switched to fully unleashing my inner heretic aura,” Jake pointed out.

”Oh, you’ll have your moment, don’t you worry. Just not right away. Can’t frontload everything. No, you will become a heretic when I’m truly pushed into a corner, and in my pure anger at fully discovering your betrayal and the fact you’re helping my enemies, I will reclaim my Blessing and brand you a heretic, at which point, you just go ahead and unleash that bad boy,” the Viper said, enjoying this far more than someone who was currently in a deathly conflict with another pinnacle god.

”I assume you would let me know?”

”Naturally,” Villy said in a cheerful tone, as he seemed to be enjoying how his scheme was coming together.

”Still haven’t touched on why they would believe everything if I don’t even reveal myself as a heretic,” Jake once more pointed out.

”I was getting to that, jeez, the impatience,” the Viper said, continuing to explain his dastardly plan. ”Any good lie needs at least some element of truth. The fact you aren’t a real believer and have that inner heretic is just one part that you can show off, you just need to keep the actual heretic aura hidden. You can shit-talk me all you want to sell the lie, and I’ll only be slightly offended when I hear what you said about me after all this is done.”

”Oh, I thought I could shit-talk you at all times already,” Jake joked with a smile.

”Rude… anyway, besides mixing some lies with truth, how about we do one better? Physical evidence that I poisoned you to keep you under my control,” Villy definitely smirked on the other end.

”You know, I’m about fifty-fifty on if you actually did poison me or you are referring to something else,” Jake muttered.

”Oh, but I did poison you. Don’t you remember? Before you returned to Earth from your Tutorial, I made you undertake the Trial of Myriad Poisons, upgrading your Palate and Blood skills in the process,” Villy reminded him. ”Of course, this is where the version of what happened may differ a bit. But honestly, my version is way more probably, as who would believe that some weak E-grade managed to consume a drop of my blood, managed to suppress its Innate Records, and is now storing it in their Soulshape? Preposterous!”

Jake had a wry smile as the god kept going.

”No… no, it’s far more probable this drop was planted there by the Malefic One. A bomb within your soul, ready to corrode you from the inside out at my command. Oh, the horror of living with this, with me having lied about it, saying it was there to benefit you, but as your doubt about me has grown, the truth was revealed, which was what led to all this and me using my Transcendent Skill. Only Valhal can keep you safe now, and only my death can fully ensure your safety. Oh, and the drop will surely function as an excellent jumping-off point to truly make yourself my Usurper.”

”Man, all this is actually starting to sound pretty solid,” Jake said, nodding thoughtfully. ”Maybe you’re onto something with this entire betraying you thing. Becoming a Usurper does sound kind of fun. I should ask Carmen if we can make this thing with Valhal official and unite to take down the evil snake god and his cult.”

”Not a cult, it’s an Order, big difference,” Villy said jokingly before turning a bit more serious. ”But you know what? If I do end up falling, feel free to usurp whatever you can. Take every scrap of Records you can get and put it to good use.”

”When you say shit like that, it makes it really fucking hard not to ask if you really got this handled,” Jake said with a sigh as he prompted the Viper to continue. ”What’s the big final twist, then? How are we going to reveal that we bamboozled Yip of Yore and Ell’Hakan all along before crushing them both with their power weakened from breaking their narrative?”

”Ah, you see, that’s the neatest part of all this; we won’t. At least you won’t do anything like that while Yip of Yore remains alive,” the Viper said.

”… isn’t that the point of all this?” Jake asked, now genuinely confused. ”To make Ell’Hakan and Yip of Yore believe in some false narrative that we can then show has been manufactured by us, making them look like complete and utter morons while weakening them in the process as their story falls apart?”

”Now, where would you possibly get such a misunderstanding from? Not to say you can’t do that when I have handled Yip – which honestly will probably end up happening by default as naturally the story will fall apart with his death – but you can lean further into it if you want,” Villy answered. ”But, no, the plan isn’t to ruin his narrative. It’s to empower it.”

”You want Yip to grow stronger?” Jake asked. Sure, he was all for making opponents harder to beat to get a good challenge out of it, but the Viper hadn’t struck him as that kind of person…

”That is indeed exactly what I want,” Villy confirmed. ”Also, I would like to point out that revealing the story is bullshit in some big plot twist likely wouldn’t even work that well. Yip of Yore’s Path isn’t as fragile as that, as the stories he creates become almost… sticky. It would take time for things to unravel, and chances are he would be able to counter any plot twist we tried to introduce by simply claiming he knew all along and had planned for it. While such a lie could be seen through with some scrutiny, in the final stages, there’s no time for such scrutiny.”

”But getting stronger is easy or what?” Jake questioned, feeling like that bullshitter’s abilities were really way too damn overpowered.

”Yep, it is. Especially when he already has the narrative momentum. Right now, I’m nothing but an unreliable narrator in his discourse, meaning all my words are automatically doubted, while his are believed by default. He has the prerogative to make use of anything we give him, and he does genuinely believe you are unsatisfied with me and not at all faithful. However, even if he didn’t actually believe any of the bullshit we feed him, he would still actively make use of it and do what he can to convince it’s the truth, as that will only benefit him,” the Viper continued explaining.

”That’s part of why all this scheming even works. Yip wants to believe, and benefits from believing anything that makes him look better and this little Viper look worse. Be it lies or us trying to trick him, he will still gladly take advantage, having confidence in his own Path. In the end, it all comes down to who stands victorious in the end. The truth no longer matters when a victor is decided. As the saying goes, history is written by the winner… so Yip of Yore just has to win, and even the lies he knew we manufactured will become truth if he says they are.”

”You know, I’m beginning to wonder… what exactly are you getting out of all this?” Jake asked, having wondered this for a while. ”Why do you want him to grow stronger?”

”Now that is a great question and one I’m sure Yip is even wondering… but let’s not ruin the ending of this story, alright? Spoiling isn’t nice.”