Unchosen Champion

Coop was sitting cross-legged in the fluffy dirt with a playful frown plastered onto his face. The unused Champion was doing his best to pout dramatically and make his supposed grievances apparent. He was situated in the middle of the furthest control point, arms folded across his chest, openly sulking while the threatening red lights slowly transitioned to a less harsh shade of blue.

A crowd of defenders had assembled within the artificial confines of the final control point as it transferred into Ghost Reef’s possession. They were decompressing in groups, not completely sure if it was truly appropriate to relax so soon. Coop was right there with them, finding the opening of the event to be nothing but jarring.

No matter what they concluded, it seemed as though they had no choice. Their uncertainties were reflected in the semi-serious conversations that were taking place between themselves, briefly recalling the battle while wondering if that was really it. They were braced for significantly more conflict than they had experienced and all of that intensity was difficult to ease out of.

Coop went through similar feelings every time he started farming Primal Constructs. There was something about momentum in combat that drove him forward and reinforced his grind. It was always difficult to let the impulse to keep going fade away. He thought he understood what they were feeling. They had generated all this motivation, but lacked an outlet.

The build up and preparation for the event had been substantially more arduous than the event itself. They spent weeks hyping themselves up, readying themselves for a repeat of the Siege Event, not to mention the months of calculated progression, but Ghost Reef had essentially been given a freebie for the Underlayer Event. They didn’t really know how to react. All of that potential energy didn’t want to go unrealized.

For Coop, when a grind ended in such a way, it usually motivated him to chase the next one as soon as possible. It was a bit scary how much he mirrored the habits of an addict, but as long as he occasionally stopped to smell the roses, he was able to convince himself that he didn’t have a problem.

He shook his head at the scene. It seemed like their tiny island settlement was an anomaly that even the system struggled to properly manage. The wild swings in difficulty between events were wild. Coop wasn’t alone in finding the whole situation surreal.

The diversity of invaders around Ghost Reef had empowered the original residents considerably, but the side-effect was in the staggering number of waves during the siege. Those waves further conditioned the population, preparing them to contribute far more than should have been expected on a person-to-person basis. Then, the Underlayer Event based its challenge on raw population numbers without consideration of individual strength. The end result was an island prepared to fight the most difficult battles, but only confronted with the most minimal of assaults. The difference in expectations versus reality was staggering, but it could be to their advantage.

The Primal Constructs were logically distributing their forces across the assimilation, but logic failed to account for Ghost Reef’s experience. It made perfect sense to assess settlements by population when the purpose of the event was to establish bulwarks within settlement territory. The primary contributor to territory was population, after all. The largest settlements would naturally end up with the widest areas and the most defenders.

Coop would see for himself exactly how the Primal Constructs dispensed their forces soon enough. In the long run, the residents of Ghost Reef intended to prove that the invaders had made a mistake in failing to occupy their tiny settlement. They would be free to influence other assaults, at least once they were liberated from Shane’s supervision.

At the moment, he was sitting with Charlie and Camila in the middle of the fourth control point. They were being subjected to another round of experiments. This time, Shane was testing for differences in capture rate based on location within the control point itself. It was boring work. Coop was distracting himself by acting up with the girls.

“You know, I try pretty hard to make sure I’m prepared to deal with whatever gets thrown at us.” He complained, still brooding. “And this is how you guys reward me? By making me completely redundant? Why am I even here?” He asked dramatically.

“We’ve been over this. You’re our mascot.” Camila responded a little too quickly, rolling her eyes, while Charlie nodded along. Camila poked him in the shoulder as she continued. “You just sit back and look pretty while the rest of us handle things.” She suggested playfully, mocking his feigned annoyance. “That’s the role of our little Champion.”

“I don’t feel like you really appreciate all I’ve done for you.” He continued on the same line, exaggerating his pridefulness.

“That’s right.” Camila countered, leaning away from him and turning her head fast enough to flip her ponytail. “We don’t.”

Coop scoffed at her flippancy. He sighed even more dramatically. “The days and nights of constant combat, making sure I’m high enough level to confront whatever the system sends at us aren’t just for fun.” He argued. “I do it all for you guys!”

“Don’t lie.” Camila countered, quick to call him out for pretending he wasn’t a weirdo that rejoiced whenever he had the opportunity to grind. He giggled at how she got him there.

“You’ve just been holding us back.” Charlie added, going straight for the kill with uncharacteristic brutality.

“Oof.” Coop put his hand protectively over his heart. “I just wanted to make you proud with my place on the leaderboards.” He responded sadly, trying to appeal to Charlie’s compassion.

“As if they matter.” Charlie dismissed his excuse with a wave of her hand. “You don’t see me complaining about how Camila stole all of my contributions on this one.” She pointed out, earning another giggle from Coop as the target of her exaggerated animosity transferred to Camila. She gave her friend a challenging look.

“Hang on!” Camila tried to stem the tide as it shifted against her, losing the air of superiority she cultivated toward Coop after taking a critical blow from her closest confidant. “My score is our score, Charlie. We’re like a single unit. The system just hasn’t caught up with our relationship yet.” Her voice noticeably pitched up as she ran through excuses like a kid caught lying.

Coop shook his head in artificial disappointment. “Can’t believe you would use our poor innocent Charlie like that. That’s really low.”

Camila turned to Charlie pleadingly before shifting her strategy, turning her head and closing her eyes as the tone of her voice changed. “Now hang on. Shouldn’t you just be happy you aren’t stuck in the back making tornadoes over and over? We got to do something really cool this time and it was only because of how much we trust each other.”

Charlie crossed her arms, not backing down. “Well, aren’t you afraid they're going to make us dig more trenches, now that we’re all done?” She responded by bringing up a concern that was a bit too real, suggesting that at least she wouldn’t be digging around in the dirt if she was anchoring their defenses.

Camila just groaned, realizing that Shane probably would want to fully secure the control points before providing any leniency. They couldn’t really be sure that the event was completely over for them, and they had already allotted the next month and a half to handle it. They could turn the Underlayer into the equivalent of an ant farm with all the free real estate.

“I guess we can’t really start celebrating.” Camila sadly admitted, flicking a speck of dirt from her knuckle.

“Celebrating?” Coop chuckled, preventing them from getting too serious as he imagined the sequel to their Beach Bash taking place in the barren dirt plains of the Underlayer. “What would you even celebrate? You barely did anything! One punch and you already want to bring out the champagne?”

“You only say that ‘cause you were napping the whole time.” Camila argued back.

Charlie shook her head at Coop, switching back to Camila’s side. “Oblivious Champion. Doesn’t even understand how much coordination and practice was necessary for our super cool ultimate move. Such little appreciation.”

Coop sighed dramatically, thinking that was his line, before gazing around the control point. The truth was Coop was sincerely impressed with the residents of Ghost Reef. They were dominant in a way he hadn’t been able to imagine. Sure, they had presumably been given a remarkably easy challenge when it came to the Underlayer Event, based on the system’s assessment, but they had handled it with a level of comfort that went above and beyond reasonable expectations.

The Primal Constructs had been Elites that were still slightly higher level than the defenders on average, and the invaders had the additional privileges of arriving with their own fortresses already positioned in key locations. They even outnumbered the residents of Ghost Reef, though the reinforcements from Empress City hadn’t been engaged and would have flipped the numbers around.

The Constructs essentially held every advantage over the human defenders, but the planetary sponsors were completely overcome by Ghost Reef in a single hour, giving him a bit more time to spend with his friends before setting off on what would surely be a long trip.

After Elder Olani’s pre-event preparations had resulted in the first fort being demolished seconds after it appeared, Camila and Charlie had annihilated the second. They cleared another quarter of the invasion force, along with the apparent champion, in a single minute of the event’s initiation. The next fort to fall succumbed to the continuous, focused ranged attacks of those posted inside of the interior mound, sniping from a distance while Shane decided on how to press the most distant of their opponents’ strongholds.

Apparently, it had been like shooting fish in a barrel. The defenders were already familiar with the personal shields of the Primal Constructs, and they used volleys to temporarily bring them down while individual snipers picked the support monsters off one after the other, letting their mannequin-like bodies tumble off the walls of their stronghold. The high ground turned into a carnival-style shooting gallery.

In the end, the Cleary Brothers led an exceedingly simple charge on the final fort while the freed up ranged combatants provided cover fire and support classes powered their own mana shields above the assault. The fully armored warriors smashed straight through one of the walls of the fort, exposing the Constructs within to the experienced and remarkably bloodthirsty melee fighters of Ghost Reef. They were eager to get a piece of the enemies before they were completely wiped out. Gibson’s party, Emmanuel, and even Edith Buford smashed the robotic manifestations without any reluctance.

While most of Ghost Reef’s residents leaned toward ranged combat, those who specialized in close quarters were excessively serious about their role. They recognized the importance of making sure the ranged combatants were able to maintain their distance. It was a lesson learned when the walls broke during the Siege Event. But that didn’t mean they were satisfied sitting back and spectating.

Ghost Reef’s Underlayer Event was effectively over after barely more than one hour and Coop had been the one to do nothing but watch. It was a complete stomp. Shane assured him he had been held back to make sure he was available in case any more difficult challenges popped up that might catch them by surprise. They had been spooked by the thought of an Icon of Mana appearing, so they had kept the idea of escalating threats in the back of their minds, and therefore Coop was the insurance that allowed the rest to go all out without holding anything in reserve.

So Coop just sat around in the trenches, waiting, until it was time to experiment with the control points, at which point he sat around, waiting even more, but in the open ground rather than behind cover. Instead of simply jumping into the claim areas, they had tested how they worked a bit while checking to see if the Primal Constructs would respawn or otherwise retaliate.

They had a better understanding of the event, the control points and the scoring after their careful and patient analysis, but it was boring for the battle-ready residents.

The Primal Constructs sent one force, and that was it, as far as they could tell. The allotment of enemies was decided by the population of the besieged settlement. Ghost Reef’s population was among the smallest on the planet, so they received an excessively minor force. In total, there were 10,000 Elite Primal Constructs worth a single point each, split between four encampments, and a single Field Boss worth 1,000 points by itself.

The Primal Constructs were leveled in a way that was appropriate for the amount of time that the assimilation had lasted. The event began on Day 125, but the event would end as they approached Day 170. If the Constructs were meant to last the entire time, their level was exactly correlated with the days. The experience curve that the galactic community espoused was clearly delineated in the Underlayer Event, not slowing down just yet.

The system limited the invaders in such a way that they were barely a threat to Ghost Reef. The tenth wave of the Siege Event had been nearly equal to the entire Underlayer Event’s assault on Ghost Reef. The main difference was the single Field Boss and the fortifications the invaders were able to implement. Even trying to compare a single wave of the siege to the entire second event only served to highlight the extraordinary difference. The Underlayer Event was a joke if viewed only through the lens of Ghost Reef’s experience.

But that wasn’t all they had planned to do this time around. Once they confirmed everything they needed to about holding their own control points, they would send an appropriate force to their subordinate settlements. If things continued to go so well, Coop would venture even further.

“Can I get going, now?” Coop finally broached the topic directly, raising his voice to get Shane’s attention where he stood at the outer edge of the objective, as the last control point’s illumination fully transitioned to a gentle blue. It pulsed once to indicate the conversion was complete, sending light all the way to the ceiling for a brief moment.

“Wait just a few more minutes.” Shane requested. “We should see what happens when all four control points are under our governance, but none of us are within their areas.”

There was an audible groan from more than just Coop as they realized they weren’t free yet. So far, they had tested whether the rate of capture changed by having one person, then several people enter the control points. They tested if levels had any impact on increasing the rate of capture. They even experimented with rotating people in and out to see if progress continued, reset, or changed rate.

As Coop removed himself from the control area with everyone else, wiping the dirt off his hands, they all watched to see if they lost any progress. Nothing happened. All four points remained blue, designating Ghost Reef as the group in possession of their territory. In a twist on their expectations, it had taken twice as long to check everything they could think of with the control points than it had to actually defeat the Primal Constructs.

Coop checked the leaderboards again, believing that they would be moving into the next phase of their plan soon enough.

Underlayer Event Individual Scores:

Camila Alvarez - 3,364 (+3364)

Kenny Wolfe - 743 (+743)

Zach Miller - 717 (+144)

Gibson - 623 (+623)

Platinum - 602 (+601)

Elder Olani - 590 (+68)

Sila Tupua - 522 (+522)

Buck Cleary - 501 (+501)

Jacqueline ‘Jackie’ Simpson - 487 (+272)

Neon - 429 (+429)

Camila was the clear frontrunner thanks to the unshared point distribution of this event. During the Siege everyone shared contributions on individual kills, but this time around the sharing was only done between the settlement and its residents. For each individual Primal Construct defeated, one point went to the person who landed the killing blow, one point was given to that person’s settlement, and one point was applied to the settlement that the Construct was assaulting. That meant that for every individual Construct that Camila defeated, Ghost Reef also received two points.

Underlayer Event Settlement Scores:

Ghost Reef - 22,000 (x1)

Neon Park - 5,212 (x13)

Aotearoa New Zealand - 1,855 (x5)

Shinjuku Gardens - 0 (x25)

Gangcheon - 0 (x15)

Nyiragongo - 0 (x13)

Can Gio - 0 (x11)

Silvervalley - 0 (x11)

Englischer Garten - 0 (x8)

Ordesa - 0 (x7)

Ghost Reef had taken an initial lead, but it clearly wouldn’t last, and when the final scores were tallied, they had no real hope of winning this event. Higher challenge assessments inevitably correlated with far more enemies to defeat, meaning that Ghost Reef was completely disadvantaged compared to the larger settlements. Neon Park was already technically ahead, and they were just getting started.

If there was anyone that was truly disappointed among the residents, they kept it to themselves. Even Coop hadn’t complained about the fact that they were safe. No one would trade their security for a higher score. On the bright side, Coop was also the first candidate to explore more opportunities to get individual points elsewhere. There was still hope that he could top the individual leaderboards while finding opportunities to advance himself during the Underlayer Event.

He watched Shane expectantly, bobbing his head as if he was nudging his own advisor into giving him permission, waiting for the vocalized go ahead as if he needed the authorization.

“Alright, Coop.” The often stressed guard captain finally spoke what the Champion wanted to hear. “Just make sure to check the leaderboards every once in a while. If it looks like we need help, come back and check on us.”

“Of course.” Coop agreed, feeling like it didn’t need to be said.

“We’ll get the Empress City soldiers mobilized soon enough, but if you could capture any control points you manage to liberate before you move on, that would be great.”

“I’m gonna capture them all.” Coop concluded with a thumbs up, seriously intending to circumnavigate as much of the globe as he could to do just that.

“Not if we capture them first.” Camila taunted him with a challenge, several other residents who were near enough to listen in nodded with her. He smiled with a tinge of pride, having a better idea of what they were capable of. Ghost Reef’s expedition would head the opposite direction as their Champion while Empress City’s force would follow in his wake. He would leave first, while they all reorganized themselves.

There was no real concern of getting lost. He would be guided by the confines of the Underlayer. If he went fast enough, theoretically, he might even be able to return to Ghost Reef from the other direction before the event was complete. He rotated his shoulder as he planned to unleash his movement abilities in a way that he never did on the surface.

The only landmarks in the Underlayer were control points guarded by Primal Constructs and enormous pillars that marked the connections to the surface. The complete lack of features in the dirt-filled desert worked in his favor. If he saw anything at all, it would be something that he was looking for.