Unchosen Champion

A clump of dirt, around the size of a quarter, bounced against a haphazardly stacked pile of similarly shaped chunks before tumbling down the side. Coop had one hand planted on the ground while he sat, sifting across the surface of the earth with his other. The larger clods crumbled in his hand, giving him more appropriately sized ammunition for his little game.

“I wonder what Shane is making everyone do.” He muttered, feeling lonely again now that he had no enemies to kill.

As he recovered from casting Inheritance of the Mists, he reanalyzed the results and gradually realized that the first iteration of his new tactics still had room for improvement. Quite a lot, actually.

In the future, he was guaranteed to reach settlements that were large enough that each of the forts would have armies as large as the entirety of Neptune’s Bridge assault, maybe even larger. Coop couldn’t afford to exhaust himself after only a quarter of the enemies were defeated when he confronted more expansive forces.

When the numbers climbed to such extremes, even most of the mist-granted skills would be insufficient to strike all at once. Even a fully empowered Aeromancer, like Charlie, would lack the coverage necessary to crush the distant forts of Primal Construct forces in a single bombardment, and that was ignoring limitations on firepower. The Underlayer Event just wasn’t designed for a single actor to have so much influence.

If Coop expended all of his resources before the advantage was tipped in his favor, leaving himself weakened with significant forces still standing against him, he would wind up being even slower than if he had simply paced himself as usual. Treating the larger battles like a simple grind would overtake the explosion of violence given a large enough pool of enemies and a long enough period of time. His rate of recovery after Inheritance was simply too much of a burden to ignore.

It wasn’t the first time Coop had considered the tortoise and the hare when it came to his battle tactics, but the allegory was once again suitable. The difference this time was that there wasn’t a binary choice forcing him to do one or the other, like when he chose his skills. The scope was also different, encompassing 44 days rather than 111 years. The assimilation may have been a marathon, but the Underlayer Event was more of a middle-distance race at most. The skills granted by Inheritance of the Mists condensed any race into the final leg, but it could only do so much.

Now that he was a Mistwalker, he had a lot more flexibility with how he interacted with the mists. The obvious changes to his ability to manipulate his weapons, or flicker through his mistjumps were representative of a larger, more esoteric change in his relationship with mana. When it came to Inheritance of the Mists, he wasn’t as bound by crippling debuffs that required him to make the most of the connection while it existed because he would be left completely vulnerable afterwards.

Coop would still be confronted with crippling exhaustion if he expended all of his resources, but it was caused by the depletion of his stamina instead of the instability created by seizing power he wasn’t ready for. The fact that even his endurance was stretched thin by the utilization of Inheritance was testament to the demands of the possession. Coop’s greatest strength had to be his tirelessness, and even he was knocked down by the Apparitions.

His issue was no longer with the Apparitions threatening to cause his aura to burst. It was his inability to pace himself while using their skills. However, he was underutilizing another feature of Inheritance of the Mists that hadn’t really been a factor to consider in the past.

While he gained access to the Apparition’s arsenal, he was also granted multipliers to his stats by being bolstered by their presence. He thought he was making a mistake ignoring the empowerment and focusing only on the flashy skills now that the mere appearance of an Apparition wasn’t overwhelming by itself. He didn’t have to forcefully utilize as much as he could before the power was withdrawn or something within him broke now that he was a Mistwalker.

He hummed, wondering if that was also part of the lesson the Battlemaiden had left him. The devastating power was a double-edged sword. Coop expected there to be a happy medium in between, where he still found a way to pace himself while incorporating the Apparitions, but he was wrestling with undefined concepts while he waited to recover from his last bout.

There was hope for his change in tactics, he just needed more iterations. In the meantime, he was content with gaining another four levels during his last battle. As the day came to an end, he thought it was a decent start. He earned the expected five levels and three settlements had been cleared on the first day of the event.

The steady growth that he craved was available for the taking within the Underlayer. The diminished experience gains were compensated by sheer numbers and superb monster density. When had he ever found three Field Bosses clumped together in a single place? Not to mention there were enough monsters grouped together to complete the equivalent of three Slayer titles at once, and Neptune’s Bridge only had a Challenge Assessment of x1. Coop would be eating good in the future, he just knew it.

Coop checked the leaderboards as the fourth control point shifted from red to purple and his resources slowly recovered.

Underlayer Event Individual Scores:

Coop - 84,000 (+63,000)

Platinum - 3,511 (+2,487)

Sila Tupua - 3,387 (+2,523)

Camila Alvarez - 3,364 (+0)

Neon - 2,284 (+1,665)

Jung Suh - 1,821 (+1,821)

Sofia Alvarez - 1,406 (+1,406)

Wangmo Thaye - 1,377 (+1,377)

Cole Walker - 651 (+651)

Bao Nguyen - 644 (+644)

Coop was already running away with the individual lead. He wouldn’t be surprised if his score after the first day was already enough to keep him near the top until the very end of the event. There wouldn’t be many people capable of killing almost 2,000 Elite Primal Constructs a day until the event concluded, just to catch up, and the only alternative to keeping that rate would be to supplement their score with a steady count of Field Bosses.

Judging by how some of the scores had leapt forward, a handful of other individuals were defeating Field Bosses, but even among Ghost Reef’s forces, experience with the boss monsters was relatively rare. This event would almost certainly be many peoples’ first encounter with a Field Boss, and gauging by the challenge assessments, there would be a tremendous number of the boss monsters bolstering armies of Elite Primal Constructs.

The points were there to catch up to Coop, but he wasn’t going to suddenly go idle. In fact, as his tactics improved and he made adjustments for the novel challenge established in the Underlayer, he expected to ramp up. It was the standard cadence of any one of his grinds, only this one was expanded to encompass the entire planet.

Coop had already killed four Field Bosses. Based on the leaderboard, he guessed that another seven or eight had been defeated elsewhere.

“Not bad for the first day.” He observed, sitting up as he ran out of dirt clumps in his immediate vicinity.

Compared to the Siege Event, the Underlayer was a significant jump in overall difficulty. Ghost Reef may have received a free pass, but he believed the larger settlements would have more monsters this time around than the island faced in the first event, and they would all come at once. Hopefully the defenders around the world were sufficiently prepared. He checked the settlement leaderboards to see how things were getting started.

Underlayer Event Settlement Scores:

Ghost Reef - 106,000 (x1)

Neptune’s Bridge - 63,000 (x1)

Neon Park - 28,781 (x13)

Empress City - 21,000 (x1)

Aotearoa New Zealand - 14,472 (x5)

Gangcheon - 6,286 (x15)

Kyzyl Cross - 6,000 (x1)

Can Gio - 1,998 (x11)

Silvervalley - 1,249 (x11)

Nyiragongo - 0 (x13)

Coop snorted, wondering how long he could prop Ghost Reef’s score up. It might be a fun personal challenge to see how long he could pin it to the top. Could they keep the first position all the way until the challenge assessments applied? His companions hadn’t encountered any enemies since he left, but they would need a few days before forming their war party and reaching any potential opponents, so he was sure he would see the numbers going up independent of his battles as well.

Travel times would be their biggest obstacle. Only Camila’s Interceptor and maybe Amanda’s Outrider class could hope to cover the distances necessary to match Coop’s goals, but they knew to be more modest with their expectations than the Champion. Unfortunately, the lack of a decent score multiplier would cripple their standing in the end.

Only a handful of settlements were prepared to get started on the first day, but Coop thought even those might need time to get sufficiently organized. He fully expected them all to slowly ramp up as they were empowered by their experience, much like how the Siege Event boosted Ghost Reef along its duration. He reminded himself that the trip down was a hurdle that Ghost Reef had been able to conveniently skip due to the advanced preparations of Balor and he should probably lower some expectations for the other settlements.

Other than Neptune’s Bridge, there weren’t any new additions to the list. Coop thought that probably wasn’t a good sign, but it was still early enough not to panic. He shook his head to ward away his growing concern, noting that Kyzyl Cross had fully claimed a second control point, this time with a Field Boss, based on their perfectly round number.

“Nice.” He muttered, always rooting for the underdogs. The small, unknown settlement was doing a fantastic job and he hoped they would keep it up.

As he skimmed the bottom of the top 10 he realized something was missing. His stomach dropped and he slammed his hand in the dirt as it hit him, leaning forward as if it would bring him closer to the system’s display. He was horrified for the largest settlement on the planet after it apparently disappeared. Shinjuku Gardens should have been above Nyiragongo even if they were both still at 0 score, just by virtue of Challenge Assessment, but it was gone.

“No way.” Coop uttered, realizing he also hadn’t seen the usual Japanese names on the individual leaderboard. Could it be that the Kitawa pair had been wiped out, along with their entire settlement? 25,000,000 people gone? How?

Coop cursed, scrolling through the list to see if something was wrong with the rankings. Eventually, he got his answer, but it didn’t bring as much relief as it should have. Instead, it revealed another wrinkle in the Underlayer Event that he had completely missed due to the privileged position of Ghost Reef.

Underlayer Event Settlement Scores:

Tahoe - -135 (x2)

Crescent Bay - -144 (x3)

Yosemite - -152 (x2)

Cherry Hill - -272 (x3)

Lordship - -382 (x1)

Niagara - -404 (x1)

Sonora - -459 (x2)

Beantown - -466 (x5)

Toronto - -526 (x2)

Shinjuku Gardens - -760 (x25)

He blinked at the negative scores, confused and in disbelief. He remembered the Siege Event had penalties to their scores based on damage to the settlement, but in the Underlayer there were only the residents. Coop squeezed his eyes shut as the implication fully dawned on him. People were dying.

He climbed back to his feet, and paced back and forth within the control point, forced to wait despite the compulsion to hurry and kill more Constructs to rejuvenate his resources, personal stamina be damned.

There were almost fifty settlements with negative scores. Based on the ones that he recognized, he concluded that many of them were simply the subordinate settlements of others that were positive on the leaderboards. Their residents were fighting the Primal Construct forces assaulting the main settlement first, much like how Empress City planned on assisting Ghost Reef.

The north eastern alliance was clearly represented, as was the west coast. He tried to tell himself it looked worse than it was due to the preliminary introduction to the event. The scores would settle and all of the currently sinking settlements would rise back into the positives once the alliances shifted focus.

The thought didn’t really calm him down though. He wished they would just chill out until he got there. It wasn’t like he was personally taking losses, but then again, he hadn’t challenged any of the larger settlement assaults yet, so he had no idea what they were up against.

He cursed again, damning the control points and urging them to be captured faster. Coop already had his spear summoned, and though his mana was hardly recovered, still below 20%, the burst of adrenaline caused by the shock of Shinjuku Gardens dropping from the top 10 left him ready to go. He would recover enough mana as he went and he hadn’t forgotten that Inheritance was a mana reservation, rather than a mana dump. Without the debuffs he would be able to tap back into the mists, feeding his craving for the power necessary to defy the invaders and take a more prominent role among the defenders.

Coop kept pacing until he finished capturing the Neptune’s Bridge control points. He was immediately off again when it was done. All of the Lighthouse’s official settlements were reclaimed, but that was no reason to celebrate. The only festivity, if it could be called such a thing, was the small pile of dirt toppling over as Coop flickered from existence after throwing his spear.

Coop’s jaw was set as he pushed forward, launching his spear and hopping back onto the underground treadmill, stubbornly planning on never stopping for longer than it took to capture the control points. Moving in what he believed was a northward direction, he only completed a handful of mistjumps before he paused in the face of a new feature of the underground. He sighed as he faced a decision when he just wanted to be hunting.

Rather than another pillar, Coop discovered what was effectively a fork in the road. The impact of the decision wasn’t exactly the same, given how the paths through the Underlayer were probably wider than the entirety of the Floridian Peninsula, but he still had to choose which side of the tunnel to follow.

Coop stood beneath the tip of compacted stone that separated a route veering to the left from one that only drifted slightly to the right. He didn’t linger, choosing to stay right, hopefully angling toward the northeast alliance. They should have been the nearest force within the Underlayer, but he couldn’t be entirely sure that the Underlayer would guide him to where he wanted. For all he knew, the path would curl beneath the Atlantic Ocean, leading him to Europe or even Africa.

There wasn’t really anything he could do about where the Underlayer took him. Alternatively, he could double back, maybe only to the Alligator Farm, exit the Underlayer through the connecting chasm, cross the much larger surface, and find his way back into the underground closer to his desired destination. He knew it would be a monumental waste of time, even when ignoring the increased travel times, since the mana domes would prevent him from actually approaching any of the settlements, and discovering another way into the Underlayer was anything but guaranteed.

He took his chances, committing to the strange space between layers of the Earth, and followed the right side of the wall after leaving a mark in the dirt at the base of the stone separation. If he somehow returned to the same place, at least he would know which way he already checked, but he still crossed his fingers, hoping the Underlayer wouldn’t turn out to be so maze-like.

It didn’t take long for the isolation to settle in once again. It only got worse as the first day officially ended and the second day began. The mistjumps blurred into each other, and he lost count of how many it took to carry him through the underground. Even without a way to measure distances, he was confident that he was crossing significant distances, but it had taken him roughly half as long to cover all of Florida.

He crossed paths with more and more of the monumental stone pillars as he went. After the fifteenth column, he grew increasingly worried that he had somehow passed over Primal Construct forces. There was no way, with how they contrasted the barren landscape, but he couldn’t help feeling doubt. The picture on the surface was looking bleak if there really hadn’t been any settlements that he missed. So much ground was lost already.

From Ghost Reef to Neptune’s Bridge, there were five pillars marking chasms to the surface. There were three surviving settlements in the same distance. Triple the number of chasms without a single civilization shard was awful. The lack of shards left him refusing to imagine the early days of the apocalypse.

If he was beneath the ocean, he thought it would make sense that none of the civilization shards were protected, but if he was going up the East Coast of North America, which is what he thought was more likely, he could only shake his head. He didn’t need to wonder what happened to all the people given the numbers presented by the event. Most of the survivors would have needed to make it all the way to either Orlando or the Northeast to connect with settlement territory.

When he finally discovered an army of Primal Constructs, some hours later, he was relieved. The forts hiding the control points represented another group of people that were alive, in a roundabout way. The nearest army of invaders was actually much larger than the size of any of the previous ones he had seen, but Coop took it as a good sign. Wherever he ended up, people were succeeding on the surface on some level.

The four control points were spaced out over an absolutely enormous area, in a rather narrow pattern, like they were following the contours of a river or trapped within a valley. He was too far to assess the other three, but the one closest to him had around 25,000 Elites with a single Field Boss pacing back and forth by itself.

“Sorry to keep you waiting.” Coop muttered toward the impatient Field Boss.