Unchosen Champion

Coop didn’t just fight for himself. He didn’t seek glory or recognition, though he enjoyed topping the leaderboards. It wasn’t even for experience, as much as he valued his personal progression. No, what he actually fought for, deep down, was an idealized version of Ghost Reef that he had subconsciously built up in his imagination. He genuinely believed in his interpretation and fought to protect it.

For Coop, Ghost Reef was more than just a chain of islands. The fact that it had become a powerful settlement was essentially an unintended consequence of his honest perception of the tropical haven. The idealized rendition of Ghost Reef in his imagination had nothing to do with its physical development; it was far more symbolic. In his mind, the islands as they had previously been, with the crumbling fort, the rugged lighthouse, the simple sandy trails lined with coconuts, pristine beaches, and expansive reefs were already a true refuge from the rest of the world.

His feelings had been ingrained deep within himself even before the assimilation began. Before mana reset the world, Coop was adrift. Loss had driven him into a cycle of grief that he unintentionally wallowed in, painting his life gray. Ghost Reef had appeared like the light at the end of a long tunnel and restored color to his senses. It was his sanctuary, even back then, before monsters roamed the planet and aliens staked their claims on the world. It gave him purpose.

His idea of Ghost Reef, beyond its physical existence, was being manifested through the help of the system and the hard work of its residents. It was really becoming a refuge of hope, a safe haven, and a sanctuary for the downtrodden.

Coop, as Champion of Ghost Reef, was slowly growing into the embodiment of his settlement. As much as he wished to simply hang out on his island, leisurely grinding monsters while maintaining the sandy trails to fulfill his expected duties, he accepted the responsibilities that came with the title and internalized them. He understood that he represented the island and its residents, but beyond simply doing his best, he wasn’t actively pursuing any lofty ideals. He was just trying to help where he could while persistently safeguarding the settlement. His attitude had permeated throughout his territory and others followed his supportive example, assisting in the effort to bolster the islands.

The Battlemaiden had instructed him to remember his purpose if he wanted to become a true warrior. When it came to Coop, it was an unnecessary reminder. He wanted Ghost Reef to be the beacon of light for all those who needed it on such a deeply internal level, he wasn’t even fully mindful of it. It was just a natural inclination that required little input from his consciousness. He wanted to boost others just as he had been.

The principles he held within put him at direct odds with the Cult of Chakyum and the organization that the Lich had formed. The bottom line was that Coop acted through benevolence derived from learned empathy. He knew he couldn’t help everyone, but he still wanted to help as much as possible because he could imagine himself in their shoes. The Lich was callously embracing a tightfisted strategy that ensured his survival above all else. The Master of the Cult was happy to climb on top of his supporters and pull the ladder up behind himself, viewing the sacrifice of his companions as an easy decision that required minimal consideration.

The atmosphere was heavy at the top of Chakyum’s stone pyramid, and not entirely due to the absurd humidity. The monumental structure rose from the middle of a central lake in the Yucatan settlement, and its top floor had become the final arena for the Cult and the Revenant. The sky was thick with billowing gray clouds, but thankfully, they had reverted to natural formations that merely threatened rain rather than sealing a tear in the physical world where the Lich collected his experience.

Coop faced off with the Elite Void Queen, spreading both the Lich’s miasmic death mana, and Coop’s ethereal mists as they engaged in a final bout. She was the perfect example of the dichotomy between the circumstances of Chakyum’s companions and Coop’s own friends.

Ultimately, Coop considered her to be another victim of Chakyum, despite her culpability in the crimes of the Cult. Even though she had acquired extraordinary power through questionable means on behalf of the Cult, she was easily discarded by her Master. All the Cultists were similar. That they were only playing by the local rules, as dictated by Chakyum, was not a justification for the evil they had participated in. Coop would never put his own allies in a similarly difficult situation.

Despite the Void Queen’s 300 level advantage, the skeletal minion was no match for the Revenant. Coop had slain his fair share of powerful monsters, and she would have already fallen if not for her desperate defenses whenever he drew close enough to strike. In the end, that’s all she was: a husk that lacked the elements of humanity that made them distinct and dangerous enough in the eyes of mana to necessitate eradication.

They would have danced together, except that Coop was a poor partner, forcing her onto her back foot immediately. The skeletal mage slipped and flitted around the top of the pyramid with surprising grace, but for all her fluttering, it was clear from the start that she only delayed the inevitable.

The Jaguar Sun’s Elites ended up fighting down the stairs with a towering stone golem Colossus and the teleporting Deathstalker, separate from the action at the top of the pyramid. The Lich was distracted by his manifesting army, tens of millions strong, as he floated above the battlefield, hovering on countless grasping arms of shadow that formed a swirling mound that drifted along the edges of the temple. Only Coop witnessed and appreciated the Void Queen’s skills. He found it sad, in a way. In the end, for all of her potential, this was all she amounted to. It was a waste.

She filled the battlefield with obstacles, turning it into a playground for Coop. While he could dodge the stellar projectiles that orbited the Void Queen’s position, he also had the much more appealing option of smashing through them. The stellar spheres vacuumed his mana, denying his ability to establish a domain of Fog of War, but a direct blow was enough to overpower them. The less of them present, the better.

With his ethereal equipment whipping his own tempo, he collapsed stars into their constituent mana, marching forward until he could bang his weapons against the mage’s shield. He had never met a shield he couldn’t break or otherwise bypass, and he suspected that it was only a matter of time before he weakened this one to the point of dissipation.

The Lich maintained his own persistent shield, which Coop discovered when he periodically attempted to catch the level 5,000 by surprise. The necromancer didn’t even flinch when Coop abruptly attempted to crush his skull after a mistjump drew him into the air beside the sickly man. The collision of Coop’s quickswapped two-handed axe and the energy shield had sounded like a hydraulic hammer smashing steel, but all the force was projected back into Coop’s arms rather than into destroying his target. Coop didn’t let his frustration interfere with his rampage, meeting the Void Queen head on shortly after crashing to the ground. He was still ramping up, after all.

The Void Queen was a slippery target, drifting through her stellar field in a way that felt unfair. The projectiles that threatened to collide with Coop from different directions orbited her, never inhibiting her movement. Coop could catch up, smash her shield, sending a plume of shadowy mana into the air, but she would escape as quickly as he caught her, drawing dozens of obstructions in moments.

The next time she slipped away, Coop tried another angle on the Lich, attacking him from below in an effort to sever his connection with the pillar of shadow hands, but his glaive merely passed through, carving a narrow channel that refilled as quickly as it formed. Coop scowled as he sought the Void Queen instead, swapping his weapon yet again.

Once he spotted her concealed among her projectiles, he rushed forward. A stellar bombardment shot toward him and he shifted to his left, planting his weight hard on the stone. He bypassed a sphere of empty white void, and the bombardment scoured the stone surface of the pyramid, adding a rough texture to the relatively smooth exterior.

Pushing off the ball of his planted foot with a little jump while leaning backwards. He slid forward, feet first, like he was aiming to steal a base, gliding beneath another sphere. In a silky smooth motion, he caught the miniscule edge where two stones met with his other heel and slipped back to his feet, using the momentum to whip his ethereal bo staff from right to left and crack a bowling ball-sized orb into glowing dust.

Sparkles of light hovered in the air as Coop flexed his core and he halted the momentum of his swing. He rotated his hips in the opposite direction, drawing the bo staff back with a whoosh of air and caught another sphere with his backswing, shattering the formation into two large halves that each flew past him on opposite sides before crumbling into themselves with flashes of light.

He left his feet, vaulting over a low flying orb that hid another stellar bombardment in its shadow, raised the staff above his head, and drew it down in a blow that would easily pulverize even the sturdiest bones. When another bang clapped across the settlement, the death mana of the void shield erupted in waves, but the Void Queen remained whole before she escaped Coop’s range yet again, letting more spheres interfere with his pursuit.

Coop tossed the staff in an arcing javelin throw, mistjumping while it was still in the air and repeated the smashing overhand chop against the scurrying Void Queen’s shield. Clouds of black and green death mana floated all across the battlefield, marking the violent eruptions caused by Coop’s weapons colliding with both of his opponents’ shields. In between the clouds, shards of shattered stellar orbs glittered in the limited light where Coop crushed her obstacles.

Retreat was barely a temporary reprieve for the high level minion and Coop had already established that she lacked the firepower to eliminate her opponent when she was still alive. It was only a matter of time before he cracked her shell. It was the Lich’s shield he was more concerned about, but he tried not to get ahead of himself, only taking brief opportunities to test its reliability.

When she drifted away once again, Coop spun to track her down among her orbital field, whipping his staff in a full rotation that crushed another sphere that encroached on his space from his flank. He dismissed the bo staff in the moment of calm created by its destruction, quickswapping to his spear for better mobility, but as the mists solidified in his hand a cloud of insects swamped him.

Coop coughed and gagged as the insects climbed up his nose and into his mouth, squeezing his eyes shut to keep them out. He flailed as he leapt straight up and activated Vaporform to escape the suffocating swarm. As soon as he reformed, above the thickest portion of the stellar field, he shifted his target, identifying the Swarm Priest as the swarm condensed back into a humanoid shape. He let his spear rip through the air at her position from above in an instinctual counter attack fueled by a spike of adrenaline.

[Fractured Hivemind (Level 386)]

[Minion of the Unspeakable]

Her empty eye sockets glowed with the miasmic death power of the Lich, emitting the greenish tinge of a deep contaminated river while black oil swirled on the surface. The spear shot forward without any resistance before smashing another crater into the temple’s surface. The Swarm Priest had shifted back into her swarm immediately after solidifying in order to avoid the spear.

Coop suddenly felt pressured. The Swarm Priest wasn’t someone he wished to fight, even after her transformation into a Fractured Hivemind. She effortlessly transformed back and forth between a cloud of insects and a skeletal caster. While he was confident in smashing shields, he wasn’t so comfortable banking his strength against something he struggled to even hit. And that wasn’t even considering the more undefinable mental damage caused by the sensation of drowning in a swarm of writhing bugs.

He put aside his mounting stress and diligently sought the Void Queen, ignoring the newcomer while resummoning his ethereal spear. He found her staring back at him from behind a crowd of rotating spheres in the distance.

If nothing else, he had no intention of granting her an extended reprieve from his assault for fear of allowing her shield to regenerate. Her eye sockets were empty cavities of darkness that mirrored her void spheres. As they made what might pass as eye contact from across the dance floor, her eyes ignited with the basil smoke energy of the Lich, sending dark fumes forward and above her forehead as she empowered herself in anticipation of another exchange.

Coop lunged forward, planning his route to be as efficient as possible and give her the least amount of time to rejuvenate her shield, but he had to immediately abandon his path when the swarm of mosquitoes, gnats, and flies placed itself in his way. He dodged the suffocating swarm, shifting to his right, and barely avoided a massive pale-colored lance that shot from behind the cloud of insects with a spinning dodge off of his back foot. Coop hadn’t been able to assess the Swarm Priest’s abilities when she was alive, so he had no idea what she was capable of doing, but he hadn’t expected a fleshy spike to aim at impaling him from within the swarm.

He planted his feet after dodging the surprise attack, finding the stationary Void Queen still staring, and made to mistjump the gap as soon as he confirmed the Swarm Priest returning to her caster form.

Coop cocked his spear back as if he was aiming directly at the Void Queen, and with a hard turn, threw it over his own opposite shoulder, spinning like a shot putter rather than a javelin thrower.

The hard angle change caught the Fractured Hivemind unprepared, just as he intended, and the attack was even more effective than he anticipated. The spear blasted a hole through her naked ribcage, sending shards of bone flying through the air as they were freed from the miasmic energy that held them together. Coop mistjumped to the spear, letting the pulverized shards bounce off his armor with tiny clanks, and quickswapped to his morning star just as the undead Swarm Priest belatedly exploded into her mass of insects.

Coop ripped the morning star down with all of his ridiculous strength, dragging what seemed like the Earth’s entire atmosphere along with the blow. He roared as the clouds, hundreds of feet above, reacted to his effort by sending rivulets of their condensed air downward, following the gravity of his strike. The sky acknowledged his strength, mirroring his motion with a series of miniature cones that could have been the start of dozens of tornadoes if the pull continued for longer than his short swing. He was a bit desperate to prevent the fight from getting out of hand, fearing that he would lose momentum before he even engaged with the final boss, so the blow was empowered with unusual intensity that had Mindbender reflexively pouring his bonus stats into Strength. The Revenant was fully unleashed.

The morning star smashed into the pyramid, cratering a portion of the stone as the Fractured Hivemind’s insects attempted to escape. Only a handful of insects were caught by the mace, pulverized into tiny spurts of mana, but the absurd force Coop had used to smash a few flies battered the rest of the swarm with wind that could have toppled a building. The flying insects crashed into the crater, sticking against the humid stone, coating the surface with a squirming mass. Coop repeated his enormous swing, utilizing the wind to trap the bugs as he cleared them out while drawing the clouds down.

It only took five hefty swings that shook the settlement’s foundation to destroy the bulk of the bugs. The few that avoided the crushing mace simply dissipated as the Fractured Hivemind was abruptly defeated for the second time.

Coop glowed in a heavenly spotlight as the system provided the visual indication that he had leveled. He raised his eyebrows and grunted in surprise at the glowing light. He immediately looked back toward the Void Queen, a hungry smile climbing across his face as he found her behind dozens of floating projectiles. Something had switched now that the Lich had completed his ritual and freed his Cult from their Oaths.

Coop looked at the Void Queen and viewed her as an opportunity to regain some of his lost progression to further bolster his capable defense of Ghost Reef. As he drew himself up, feeling renewed with vigor at the prospect of regaining his momentum, he suddenly saw stars as his neck whipped back and he was blindsided by a runaway train.

Coop was driven forward, losing grip on his morning star while his chest smashed through three of the stellar spheres. Each detonated against his torso like sparkling landmines, sending fragments of stellar shrapnel careening across his armor. He crashed into the surface of the stone pyramid, a dozen yards away from where he had been tackled, trailing shards of light as he went. He couldn’t even brace himself with his arms as they were each pinned. One was beneath his own stomach and the other trapped behind his back. The side of Coop’s face was pressed against the stone by the weight of a mountain as he slid.

When he came to a stop, he attempted to turn himself over with his shoulders, and he was rewarded for his effort with a massive blow that hit him in the side of the head to cease his struggle. Immediately afterwards, Coop Vaporformed to escape, finally jolted into the understanding that it wasn’t an inanimate object that ran him over.

He identified his assaulter as he resolidified in the physical world, bouncing onto his feet, only slightly staggered by the blindside attack. He shook his head before testing the wound on his cheek with his fingers as he frowned at being caught by surprise despite Presence of Mind. The tease of finally progressing again had been too distracting.

[Wrathful Warden (Level 411)]

[Minion of the Unspeakable]

His fingers came away from his face wet with his blood and he glowered at the resurrected Totemic. The man had the skeleton of a gorilla, vertebrae spiked with bone and painted with tribal patterns. His fists were like sledgehammers and he towered over Coop even after they both stood straight. As they sized each other up, the Wrathful Warden’s eyes exploded with energy, losing the previous verdant color they glowed with in life in favor of the deathly miasma of the Lich. Coop spat blood from his mouth, invoking Retribution to summon his ethereal shield and one-handed warhammer.

Defeating the Fractured Hivemind had only given him two levels, putting him at level 199. It was an inadequate reward, all things considered, but he placed the unallocated points into Mind all the same. Allocating his stats was a routine habit that left him feeling satisfied after being denied for so many fights.

He lunged forward, switching his posture in an instant. He let one of the Void Queen’s spheres explode against his shield before he swung his hammer through the dazzling shards in an uppercut intended to take the Warden’s head clean off. The end of Coop’s hammer connected with the tip of the minion’s chin in a perfect mirror of their previous bout, blasting a chunk of bone into the air, and staggering the undead Totemic as he was pushed off-balance.

Coop quickswapped to his spear, spinning to the side as he rushed forward and swept at the big minion’s stumbling legs. The Warden fell to the ground with a solid thump and Coop aimed a killing thrust at his skull, but the skeleton’s eyes burst with even more energy as the spear approached. The undead Totemic blocked his attack with a thick ivory forearm, glowing with dark green patterns, that sent the tip of the spear into the stone adjacent to his head. Scraps of rubble bounced away from the pair from where the spear blasted the temple. Before Coop could recoil and slip past the defense, a series of stellar projectiles compelled him to shift position and abandon the thought of another attack, reminding him that the Void Queen was left free to cast and recover.

Unwilling to completely repeat the previous battle when his opponents were living, even if he had eventually won, Coop swapped targets before he was stuck engaging a tank with the support of allies. Without Fog of War extending the range of his summoned phantasms, they weren’t particularly suited for harrying distant opponents, but Coop could compensate with mistjumps. The Void Queen was ranged while the Wrathful Warden was not. By chasing the ranged combatant, Coop intended to draw them both together while maintaining the pressure on the Void Queen’s shield.

He threw his spear at the Void Queen with a line drive intended to force its way into her proximity. The missile shattered multiple spheres before he caught it himself and redirected the tip at her exposed neck, covering the distance in an instant with his precise mistjump.

As the edge of the spear approached her vertebrae her eyes reignited with the miasmic death magic and the magical shield saved her from being beheaded by mere centimeters. The strike blasted a wave of death magic that left a cloud drifting above the temple, but she merely stumbled, falling onto her side.

Coop embraced the recoil after the collision, spinning away and summoning a phantasm to attack her before she slipped behind her protective projectiles. His ghostly companion struck the shield with a lunging attack and disappeared, failing to penetrate any more than Coop had, but adding its own strike to the repeated blows that the shield was forced to withstand. It seemed like each of his attacks was closer to reaching its target, so he felt like he was making the right choice with his priorities this time around as she shuffled away.

The ground rumbled as the Wrathful Warden stomped and dragged his feet against the battlefield like a bull preparing to charge, cracked face gaping as he moved. It seemed as though the skeletal minion was frustrated by Coop’s retreat, but Coop retained his target, aiming his spear at the Void Queen as she desperately sought some relief from his assault.

Coop threw his spear hard, directly on target, planning a continued bombardment of her shield. The stellar projectiles were no match for his missiles, as they were more effectively used offensively, and the ethereal spear shattered them as they shifted into its path one after the other. Glittering explosions of light appeared, popping in a chain that mirrored his spear’s trajectory, decorating the shadowy death mana that increasingly permeated across the temple’s surface.

At the last second before the final satisfying collision between the spear tip and the Void Queen’s shield occurred, a much larger crystal clear orb fully engulfed the spear. Coop hesitated in confusion. He didn’t immediately recognize what had happened as he watched his ethereal weapon dangle within an orb. Then, when his spear folded in on itself and popped into a cloud of trapped ethereal mana, he scowled.

Coop glanced up at the Lich and noticed that he wasn’t casting anymore.