Unchosen Champion

Ethereal feathers buffeted the stagnant air of the Underlayer, forcing a rush of wind across the soil-covered ground. Small vortices of turbulence, created in the wake, lifted handfuls of dirt before redistributing them back to the surface. A powerful flap of angelic wings generated a burst of speed that propelled the Holy Avenger Spear and its wielder forward.

The blessed weapon punched through the metal shield of an alien defender with a crunch, bypassing the meager resistance with the tip’s extraordinary sharpness. The precise strike masked the crushing power behind the blow, but the way the weapon’s victim exploded into mana, dissipating as if it always lacked a physical presence was evidence enough of the holy devastation wrought by the spear. Though the Elite Ruin Construct attempted to guard itself, the effort was futile against the momentum of the sacred strike.

While the mana smoke from the defeated monster wafted into the atmosphere, the guiding spear twirled, whistling through the air, and the spiked butt found its mark in the center of the diamond shaped head of a second Construct. The attempt to counterattack only put the invader in range of a swift execution. The heavenly treasure was a blur of violence, and before the winged Champion landed, a third construct was ruined by the radiant tip of the deadly spear, failing to evade chastisement as it shifted to the flank of the attacker and was transformed into a burst of mana smoke.

Coop slammed his feet into the ground, having destroyed three constructs in a split second, before taking two steps and bounding back into the air with a low grunt. He flapped his manifested wings once, generating another burst of speed that extended his leaping thrust five times as far as he could have normally moved. Holding the spear forward with a firm grip, he used the extra distance to catch a grouping of support Constructs by surprise, completely ignoring the protective line that failed to match his maneuverability and futilely defended the supporting Elite Ancient Constructs.

The ranged Spite and Scourge Constructs fired projectiles into the air, doing their best to track his streaking path, but the bolts only pierced the trail of sparkling mists that lingered in the air, flying harmlessly off into the distance. Compared to the Champion, who was completely unbound, the invaders moved as if they were hobbled by tar. Coop dashed with speed granted by an Agility advantage equivalent to thousands of levels, then further boosted it with powerful wings.

Holy light emanated from the tip of the golden hued spear as it bore down on his targets, bolstered by the encouraging strength of purpose. The last second dodges of the unarmed Elites barely delayed their demise, inevitable as it was. Coop expanded one wing to adjust his movement, twisting his torso and catching the monsters like a raptor hunting desperately fleeing prey.

A steady chorus of gregorian chants accompanied Coop’s actions, echoing in his head as if the Underlayer battlefield was actually an empty cathedral. The deep tones of grand pipe organs resonated in his bones as the Revenant was divinely inspired to smite those who sought to desecrate the planet. Holy mana burned from his eyes, transforming them into nebulous orbs of golden energy as he aggressively sought his targets. From his perspective, the Underlayer was witnessing an empyrean sunset, and it was glorious.

His next sweeping attack sent a wave of holy mana chasing the pious weapon before emanating across the Underlayer, igniting another dozen Primal Constructs with smiting fire. He flapped his wings and burst through the flames, surprising the enemies that were further back and blinded by the shining flames. Even simple attacks were devastating.

The next iteration of his strategy had been another tactical improvement. Rather than a burst of firepower granted by activating the skills granted by the possession, he simply embraced the empowerment and fought with his own physical attributes. The increase in stats improved his efficiency significantly, but as he speared his way through the enemies, the Apparition of Vindictive Heavens provided some divine guidance as well.

Coop temporarily became the depiction of an archangel, borrowing the combat scheme of a celestial entity and incorporating them into his normal tactics. It was a feat only possible thanks to his experience with the Haunted title, but it worked beautifully.

The multiplier to his stats set him far apart from his opponents, extending the already significant gap between himself and the invaders to absurd amounts. Even the four Field Bosses that accompanied the Primal Construct armies were relegated to desperately defending themselves for a few seconds before being sent to oblivion, as if they were sacrificial monsters better suited for a starter zone. They may have been meant to be the armored tanks to the Construct infantry, but Coop dismantled them with equal ease.

All of Coop’s success had come without an expenditure of a single point of mana. Other than the reservation for Inheritance of the Mists, he was adroitly conserving his resources. The pressure of combat was instead being applied to his well-trained stamina, but a few hours in the dirt was nothing compared to days hustling through beach sand, especially when he could supplement his sprints and mistjumps with winged flight.

The final squads of Primal Constructs hopelessly defended their claimed control point as Coop leapt high into the air and expanded the wings to their full extent. The invaders had a moment to simultaneously look up and admire the otherworldly silver sheen that silhouetted Coop’s temporary form as he hovered down upon them. The heavens as recorded by the system leaked into reality, carried by the mists that drifted around the Revenant. The feathers of his wings left slight gaps for the radiant golden light to filter through, forming rays of heavenly light that matched the tip of his transformed ethereal spear. A moment later, and he was tucking his wings to dive bomb the Primal Constructs.

The Apparition granted the monsters salvation through Coop’s hand, but it came at the cost of their manifested lives. Coop swept the platform clean with the avenging spear, attacks infused with holy light. When the last of the invaders dissipated into the flowing mana currents of the Underlayer, the undisturbed fort walls, breached by Coop’s flight rather than his strength, pixelated and despawned.

Coop planted the rear of his spear into the dirt while folding the enormous wings that had transformed his normal tactics into something completely new behind his back. As the Apparition of Vindictive Heavens faded away, the ethereal wings that had sprouted from between Coop’s shoulder blades disappeared and his spear transformed back into the blank slate manifestation of spectral mana. Coop cast his gaze upon the now tranquil battlefield and exhaled into the renewed silence.

He already missed the feeling of adding another axis to his movement. Leaping into the air without the additional maneuverability of the angelic wings wouldn’t be the same. It took a second for Coop to accept that he was tethered to the ground again.

Being freed of the possession had no real adverse effect on his fitness. He had completely refrained from using any of the grand smiting skills that could have destroyed masses of invaders at once, granting them deliverance, instead opting to fight as normal. He was grinding it out as he would have at the start of the assimilation, only with the added benefit of divine power.

As he assessed his health, he nodded to himself, feeling good enough. The slight fatigue was less than he would have expected after hunting regular monsters on the surface for the same period of time. In the Underlayer, the Primal Constructs were kind enough to group together.

Coop slowly clenched and unclenched his fist, feeling satisfaction and relief at his adaptability. The only remaining problem with utilizing Inheritance of the Mists was how the debuffs from being possessed lingered in his status. They would probably be gone before he encountered another assault force, but if he had to fight the truly large armies, he might have to take intermissions to reset Inheritance. With how things had been going, he anticipated being able to fight while possessed for significant periods of time, so long as he refrained from wielding the skills granted by the apparitions. However, the longer he remained possessed, the longer the debuffs would last afterwards.

His tactics weren’t quite where he wanted them, but he was close. He felt like he was on the verge of rediscovering the flexibility of his build. Treating Inheritance of the Mists with the pliability of Retribution itself was next on his agenda. What would actually happen if he tried chaining Inheritance casts after shortening the debuff durations? It was a question he would answer in his next engagement, but he had high hopes. The worst case scenario would be that he had to fight as he had hundreds of thousands of times before, at least until the debuffs faded again.

He checked the leaderboards in an effort to triangulate where he was after successfully defending yet another settlement, already anticipating the next.

Underlayer Event Settlement Scores:

Neon Park - 268,612 (x13)

Ghost Reef - 210,000 (x1)

Shenandoah Confluence - 104,000 (x1)

Neptune’s Bridge - 63,000 (x1)

Aotearoa New Zealand - 59,671 (x5)

Empress City - 21,000 (x1)

Can Gio - 13,909 (x11)

Akagera - 13,868 (x2)

Kyzyl Cross - 11,000 (x1)

Silvervalley - 9,775 (x11)

“Wow.” Coop spoke. He was stunned by Neon Park’s leap ahead in score.

The primary settlement of the northeast alliance gained almost 250,000 points. They more than doubled his own personal gains and therefore Ghost Reef’s increase as well. Coop grunted, thinking that was probably it for Ghost Reef’s place at the top. He hadn’t expected the other groups to achieve so much progress so soon.

If the larger settlements were capable of such an increase in scores before the challenge assessment multiplier even came into effect, his tiny settlement had no chance of keeping the top spot. As fun as it was to see the Ghost Reef settlement in first place, he was mostly just glad that others appeared to be finding success. The negative scores at the bottom of the leaderboards had stressed him out, and he was growing concerned that no matter how hard he pushed, he wouldn’t be able to compensate for the rest of the settlements’ vulnerability.

Judging by the other scores, Coop concluded that he had reached a settlement called Shenandoah Confluence. Beyond the awareness that Shenandoah was either a valley or a river in Appalachia, his geography skills failed him. He supposed the arrangement of the Primal Construct forts had clued him in on the physical features of the surface, but it was a bit much to expect him to have a finer understanding of exact locations he had only heard of through cultural osmosis.

On the bright side, he knew enough to conclude that the Underlayer hadn’t taken him beneath the Atlantic Ocean. He was on the right track to reach their allies in the northeast. He figured he was around the eastern panhandle of West Virginia, beneath one of the smaller settlements that had joined Neon Park’s alliance.

As far as he had heard, mostly from Charlie, there were seven civilization shards split between significantly more groups that had independently organized without official territory. As the territories spread, those who had held out on the fringes naturally drifted into becoming residents of the settlements by default, but they were always allowed at the table in Neon Park. Eventually, they would all be swallowed up by the Neon Park shard, but in the meantime the gaps were filled by slightly smaller developments forming bubbles of safe territory.

The mana pylons were pretty much doing the same thing in Florida for the Lighthouse, except rather than groups of human survivors gradually being incorporated into the broader alliance, it was alligators and swamp people.

Coop shrugged at the comparison. “Same difference.”

Beyond the top 10, two more smaller settlements had made their first appearances. Barsa-Kelmes Reserve was the higher of the two, with a score of 3,500. The other was called Aydar and had a score of 2,500. Coop’s suspicion of another alliance somewhere else in the world was further supported, though he couldn't be sure who belonged to what. If the forces that liberated Kyzyl Cross had moved on, why would two settlements be partially liberated at the same time? Perhaps there was more than one alliance out there.

Either way, he guessed that the two settlements, each with a x1 challenge assessment, had a single control point freed from the Primal Constructs, while the one with the higher score had also conquered a Field Boss. Maybe he would have more help clearing the world than he thought. It seemed like every time he checked the leaderboards, his feelings swung from one extreme to the other. Instead of leaping to conclusions, he needed to wait until the event stabilized, but he couldn’t stop his mind from racing during the downtime created by solo capturing the objectives, especially before the momentum of combat had faded.

As he moved to the second control point, he checked the individual scores, thinking that it might be the last time he bothered. If any name other than his own was at the top he would be genuinely shocked.

Underlayer Event Individual Scores:

Coop - 188,000 (+104,000)

Neon - 104,946 (+102,662)

Platinum - 10,492 (+6,980)

Giovanni Ferraro - 8,152 (+8,152)

Hannah Silberstein - 7,228 (+7,228)

Gabriela Alvarez - 6,037 (+6,037)

Sila Tupua - 5,831 (+2,444)

Reggie Crawford - 5,629 (+5,629)

Alex Nova - 5,469 (+5,469)

Layla Itunu - 5,338 (+5,338)

While Coop’s name was at the top, he was still caught by surprise. His lead hadn’t continued to grow at all, let alone at the absurd rate he anticipated. Neon, the well-known Champion of Neon Park, had nearly matched his gains.

Coop had to give him props. At this point in the assimilation, Coop had been pretty confident that his ability to grind was unmatched, but someone that had never really appeared on the leaderboards, yet established themselves as a powerhouse with a dominant settlement in his name, exposed their ability to keep up.

“Maybe I’m not as far ahead as I thought.” Coop considered. Levels were only one measure of power. Just because it was sanctioned by the system didn’t mean it was the best method of comparison. Perhaps he had taken on a more prominent role in the struggle of humanity a bit prematurely.

The fact that his performance was matched made him itch to get moving, feeling like he had accepted a challenge, but he had to capture the control points first. He paced a bit, wondering how Neon had gained so many points, and whether or not he could maintain it for a longer period of time.

As far as Coop could tell, Neon Park’s population would have enabled the Primal Constructs to establish an assault force in the millions. That meant that his potential rival would have the opportunity to rack up points while Coop was mistjumping through the Underlayer and idling in control points.

Coop moved to the third control point, reconsidering the features of his own build. There were constantly ways to improve and iterate with how he employed his skills, and he could always refine his technique, but his last few skill choices had been kind of inert.

Wasn’t it weird that Sethrak was so quiet? He had originally been concerned he was adopting a passenger with the Dedication to the Deep Dweller, but as time went on he was growing convinced that his assumptions had been completely incorrect.

The connection he had with the abyss seemed to simply be the system’s interpretation of Coop’s obsessive desire to grind. Perhaps as long as he kept feeding the beast, so to speak, it would stay dormant, but that wasn’t exactly what he had hoped to gain from his second path.

Admittedly, he had wanted to keep his paths distinct and separate, but so far the Path of the Abyss was basically absent. Other than the occasional wisp of abyssal mana mixed with his spectral manifestations, there wasn’t much happening.

Coop’s newest passive skill had granted Reverence, but it was only at Rank 1. The conclusion he reached was that he needed more ranks in Reverence before he would start to see more effects, and more importantly, new skill options. That meant he wanted more levels, which was nothing new for him.

Thankfully, the Underlayer was providing him with significant quantities of experience. Nine levels so far, and the second day of combat had just begun.

Coop took a deep breath as the last control point transitioned to human control. More levels awaited him.