Unchosen Champion

Coop approached Empress City on foot, looking like the Skunk Ape that Bobby Jon had enthusiastically advertised to ignorant tourists on their way to the amusement parks. Beneath the layers of mud splatter, Coop felt absolutely fantastic.

He had strolled across half the state of Florida, grinding monsters the entire time in what was essentially a marathon of high-tension combat, the likes of which would leave a better-adjusted person exhausted. For Coop, it had taken at least that much focus to shake off the stress of campaigning through the jungles of Central America and dealing with the Cult of Chakyum. Without the ability to linger on his thoughts, running through hypothetical scenarios, and asking what if he had acted sooner or done something differently, it gave him the opportunity to put space between any regrets that might have formed. There was a pep in his step that most people only got after an excessively refreshing vacation.

He thought it was a bit scary how easily he bounced back. The human mind was surprisingly pliant, or there really was something to be said about time healing all wounds. Less than a week of focused concentration and it felt like all of the misgivings and self-doubt that lingered in the back of his mind, threatening to take root and kill his growing confidence, were erased. He was as good as new, maybe even better than ever, and all it took was defeating 30,000 some odd manifestations of alien invaders that lingered within marshlands.

Admittedly, he could have used a shower and a nap, but with a full day remaining before the Underlayer Event, he had time for both. He hummed to himself happily as he followed the remnants of a state road and confirmed his progress. With the way he was feeling, he was already prepared to conclude that the grindcation had been an overwhelming success, but it didn’t hurt to keep track of his changes.

[Status]

HP - 22250/22250

MP - 42000/42000

Class - Revenant (Level 250)

Profession - Scavenging (Level 181)

Affinity - Spectral, Abyssal

Race - Human (Rank 1)

Faction - The Lighthouse

Strength - 125 (+4200)

Agility - 125 (+2100)

Body - 125 (+2100)

Mind - 3360 (+840)

Intelligence - 125 (+4200)

Acumen - 125 (+2100)

Unallocated - 0

Titles - Champion IV, Haunted, Ethereal, Reaper II, Slayer XI, Dauntless, Stacked, Defiant, Siegebreaker, Mindbender, Valor XXIV, Dedicated, Dynamo

Skills (Active) - Mistwalking

Skills (Passive) - Mind Over Matter, Adamance, Practical Application, Arcane Comprehension, Clarity of Purpose

Quests - Fortune Seeker (22/50), Upgrade City to Metropolis

Basic Credits - 17,611,836

Though Coop tried to keep things in perspective as usual, he couldn’t prevent his initial reaction to his progress from being the imagined sounds of air horns and fireworks going off in his brain. That he had recently been exposed to the insane numbers accumulated by the newest alien members of his faction did little to rain on his parade. He basked in the vision of his attributes, feeling like maybe he should challenge Vronk to an arm wrestling match to see if he had a chance of winning.

The nice, smooth progress was just so satisfying when contrasted with going days or weeks without seeing any gains before jumping through the tiers. Realistically, he had only received 13 levels in around 9 days, so the rate wasn’t exactly going above and beyond his limits, but it had been consistent in a way that spoke to him.

The individual levels demonstrated that he was making incremental progress, accomplishing things, and had momentum. It was like cleaning his room before buckling down to study, or setting out the next day’s outfit the night before going to sleep early. He would find opportunities to progress faster, but he would rarely have such well-rounded and gratifying sessions of progression, and it was the steady sessions that set him up for the bursts of growth that came later. His first Slayer title had empowered him to take on the zombies of the oil rig, and the most recent additions would definitely get him through the next challenge.

Obviously, he wasn’t actually ready to challenge Vronk to anything, let alone any feats of Strength. Really, with his current stats matching 3,500 levels worth of unmanipulated attributes, he couldn’t even hold a candle to Balor’s class level, let alone the highest levels in the Lighthouse. Imagine including the grandmaster’s profession level into the competition. He could only shake his head as he acknowledged the long way he had to go.

Coop reminded himself that, though he was far behind, he had the whole assimilation to catch up. Theoretically. They actually had what seemed like a million challenges to overcome just to ensure they survived the full duration, but otherwise, assuming they could rise to the occasion, he had time to close the gap.

His profession levels in particular had recovered nicely, gaining 19 levels in the same time frame as the 13 class levels. If he maintained such a rate, it would only take around 140 more class levels before the two steady sources of stats evened out again. Coop felt excited by the prospect, feeling like building his profession back up to his class was totally doable.

Slayer titles were always a welcome prize. Adding two more to his stack was extremely satisfying by itself. However, he had finally hit a milestone in the Slayer track as well. The eleventh title was an even greater reward than the usual +100 to his highest stat. Slayer XI came with an upgrade. The eleventh iteration of the title now also evolved to grant an additional +5% to his highest attribute in addition to adding the expected total of 1,100 to the same stat.

The +5% to his highest stat combined with the +10% bonus granted to his selected stat for being the top performer during the Siege Event, designated by the Siegebreaker title, and the +10% to Mind applied by his Spectral-Infused Under Armor. He now had an additional +25% applied to Mind in total.

When Coop first viewed the title’s upgrade he could have cartwheeled through the swamp all the way back to Empress City with his excitement. As if he needed another reason to grind Slayer titles! Slayer XI had already contributed a third of his raw total stats, but adding a multiplier bonus to the entire amount meant that it was edging out his class levels to be the largest contributor to his attributes. For all of his excitement for the rate that he gained levels, it was the title reward that was fueling his progression more than anything else. Due to his earliest choices, class levels, profession levels, and Slayer titles all came from the same source - grinding monsters.

Throwing every single one of his attribute points into Mind couldn’t possibly get more efficient. It was absolutely nutty. His dedication to his build was continually rewarded by the system as he accumulated further bonuses, whether it was through stat increases, passive conversions, and now more multipliers.

All he needed to do in order to reach this result was decide on a build from the very start, based on extremely limited second-hand information, and really commit. Before he simplified his experience too much, he reminded himself he also refrained from taking skills that would help his immediate chances of survival in favor of passive skills that would only be potentially advantageous in the long run. Then, he also needed to synergize his profession with his overly specific style of skilless early combat to grow two sources of stats simultaneously, grind 180,000 normal monster variants, and get first place in a planet-wide competition to earn a unique title. He couldn’t forget he also had to claim a civilization shard to become a Champion, complete the first bonus objective before upgrading his settlement to infuse the territory with mana that matched his own, and specifically recruit factionless services that included a grandmaster clothier who could use legendary materials to custom craft an item that specifically worked for his build.

“It wasn’t that much. Why didn’t everyone do that?” He pondered sarcastically.

Honestly, when he laid it all out like that, it kind of lessened his enthusiasm. There were constantly opponents that managed to challenge him without all of that effort. The right combination of skills or affinities, equipment, and even just knowledge had elevated many of his enemies to the point of real danger. It wasn’t even that many monsters to defeat when looked at in isolation, though there were so many others that didn’t count toward the quests. Elite variants, event monsters, infestation minions, and creatures in the mana wells had all occupied some of his attention by being interspersed in his adventures.

Coop shrugged, telling himself that it was still relatively early. His build was meant to snowball. The more time he had to build up, the better off he would be. If someone tried to do what the Lich did, years in the future, he couldn’t imagine he would be pushed as far as he was. If he developed into a simple Revenant that didn’t need to rely on Apparitions to rise to the heights necessary, he would be satisfied. It was possible. He just needed more time to grind.

With the two new Construct variants of Central Florida, in the Ancient Vanguards and Primal Lurkers, his Fortune Seeker quest had gone up by two. Coop sighed at the profession quest. It wasn’t even halfway done. He was growing to hate the presence of the quest and how it polluted his status. It didn’t annoy him enough to abandon it, especially since as slow as it was going, he was making some progress, but he wished for it to complete sooner. He just wanted it gone.

He’d made a ton of credits while grinding for almost a week straight, but the actual amount was being dwarfed by another unexpected source. Every time the Lighthouse was victorious in one of their defensive battles, they won a purse that had to be provided by the attackers. Part of the cost of attacking was throwing in a pot of credits. So, in addition to the participants gaining experience when they won, they also brought a large stack of credits home.

At this point, the core settlement’s coffers were positively overflowing. Coop couldn’t imagine a situation where he would need to contribute funds to anything the settlement wanted to do. With thousands of battles already concluded, and a few million awarded each time they were victorious, he was pretty sure they were becoming rich on a galactic level. He supposed it was abnormal to have to defend against so many factions at once. Or maybe the abnormality was in winning them all. In any case, he wasn’t sure if he would need to be considerate of credits ever again.

At the rate that they were collecting their winnings, they would be able to afford Charlie’s entire underground project right away, though he couldn’t imagine the girls had cleared far enough down to justify spending so much on residences. A few layers would be more than satisfactory for Ghost Reef to be prepared for potential influxes of people, but the option was there.

Finally, at level 250, Coop had unlocked another potential skill choice. He liked to check them last. Most of the time it was because he wanted to take his time and really consider the possible synergies of his skills. It wasn’t like he thought he was particularly insightful, but it had become a habit. Maybe he was giving the system ideas for how to work with him on his build by manifesting his visions.

This time, he had procrastinated for a slightly different reason than normal. He had an ominous feeling regarding his path. The Path of the Abyss had already broken what had seemed like a fundamental rule by presenting him with a single choice at the start. Ixia, the moth girl gardener, had described to him the reliable structure of paths before he had even reached his first crossroad, but Coop’s second path had started in a different way. It made him wonder about how adaptable the system really was.

With a deep breath, he opened up the choices, only half expecting the largest selection of choices he would see during the path.

His incomplete expectations were half met. There were more choices than the singular option to add an affinity that he had received on the first go around, but it still wasn’t the proper start of a path. A normal path would have revealed 20 or 30 choices according to his understanding. Instead, there were seemingly only nine options to choose from.

Could he be on the shortest path ever? At least it could lead to a clean triple choice at the end. He would have been really confused if it had offered him an indivisible number of options.

Even weirder than the minimal number was that every option appeared to be identical. Was it really nine options if they all had the same name? Coop had no idea what he had gotten himself into, but whatever it was, it seemed unusual by galactic community standards.

The evolution of his active skills at the end of the Path of the Mistwalker had resulted in the feeling of an overbearing parent finally letting their child accomplish things on their own. Coop could cast the skills he had learned along the way without the specific guiding hand of the system. On the other side, the Path of the Abyss seemed like it had all of the system’s attention being placed on it. It was as if the system was creating a custom experience just for him.

Coop knew he wasn’t that special, and he suspected that this was still the standard within the system, it was just that normally the subjects had simple expectations that were easily met, or no expectations at all. By introducing the full breadth of human history and imagination into his build, the system was having to accommodate for some interesting abstractions. Coop suspected that there were others on Earth besides him that were forcing the system off the rails. It must have been a tough job being every living beings’ dungeon master, especially after adding humans and their unique demands to the game.

For his current choice, Coop could select between nine different passive skills, each called ‘Dedication.’ He could only furrow his eyebrows and read the description of the first option before making any judgments, though the name alone had his ears ringing. He liked passive skills, after all, but he wasn’t sure about the multiple choice non-choice being designated a dedication. He already had enough commitments to Ghost Reef, the Lighthouse, and all of his allies to be adding any more. Still, he read on.

‘Dedication’ was a formal petition to a greater authority for the purpose of acquiring a benefactor of the abyss. It wasn’t much to go on, but he got the idea: the abyss was multifaceted and he was choosing a specialization.

“Fair enough.” He muttered.

The first option was a dedication to Ashevoth, the Hunger in the Mists. Upon reading the name, he had the vague impression of a warped eldritch creature with extraordinarily long limbs looming in a thick night-time fog. Its presence was enormous, but it wrapped itself in the shrouds, as if the weather was its cloak, masking the monstrous entity so thoroughly it was impossible to detect.

The monster moved without disturbing the dense formation with even the slightest sound and the domain drifted along with it, swallowing a cold swamp that was filled with gnarled and blackened trees, but no life at all. The fog extended so high that Coop wasn’t sure where the overcast sky began and the mists ended. The same obscuration applied to the horizon.

As the vision faded, Coop put his frozen foot down where it had paused midstep. He shuddered like his body was trying to rid itself of the cold swamp atmosphere despite the heat of the sun baking the mud on his skin.

Coop’s eyebrows went up as he tilted his head slightly in contemplation. The first ‘greater authority’ sounded like a twisted deity related to his first path rather than the current one. It was certainly creepy, though. A mere glimpse had given him an uncomfortable shiver. Before he got stuck thinking about just the first option, he went to the next.

The second was a dedication to Balaros, the Force of Silence. The image that flashed in his mind was a massive ghastly claw that was suspiciously familiar, like a corrupted version of his own hand, warped by darkness, gripping a planet with features similar to Earth. The claw kept squeezing until the structure of the globe abruptly cracked beneath the strength of the fingers, collapsing the planet like a dropped ceramic pot, leaving the shards to float in the emptiness of space.

“Right…” Coop mumbled at the drastically different image being presented. He thought he was beginning to have an idea of what was happening, but he kept checking the choices before he confirmed the pattern.

The third was a dedication to Chaug-lith, the Faceless Inevitability. It was a misshapen nightmare that endlessly returned in order to consume all. Unlike the others, it was roughly person-sized, but it made up for its stature with relentlessness, like a ghoulish starving wolf-horror. Coop immediately understood it was meant to be an eldritch deity flavored to the Revenant.

He went through the rest, and recategorized them according to what he instinctively understood they were associated with for his own benefit. They were presented in alphabetical order, but he sorted them the way he viewed his status.

Chaug-lith, the Faceless Inevitability - Revenant Class

Hauvian, the Cosmic Remembrance - Spectral Affinity

Ashevoth, the Hunger in the Mists - Path of the Mistwalker

Balaros, the Force of Silence - Strength

Zuldaldru, the Unimaginable Chaos - Agility

R’thorvun, the Writhing Mass - Body

Sethrak, the Deep Dweller - Mind

Yaggath, the Eldest Nightmare - Intelligence

Rashogoth, the Light Eater - Acumen

Ignoring the flavor of the skill, not letting the images of galaxies being wrought dry or nebulas smothered, he concentrated on their focus. He was adding another skill to his build, so he wanted to make sure it continued to elevate his abilities. As difficult as it was, he tried to ignore the lore around the skills and focus on the practicality of a path dedicated to a specific aspect of his build. He didn’t see any reason to change how he fundamentally constructed his set of abilities.

The only options he felt comfortable passing over at first were the five attributes that were not Mind, and that was only because he wasn’t in the market for a shift in direction at the moment. Frankly, he thought even those would have been perfectly feasible options, though he was presuming that the Path of the Abyss would eventually give him more traditional skill choices. Unfortunately, even eliminating five left four viable options, one of which was a bit too familiar.