Unchosen Champion

“Achoo!” Coop’s sneeze caught him by surprise, though he managed to cover his mouth despite hurtling through the air.

“Someone’s probably talking about me.” He muttered into the wind.

It was an easy guess considering his name had been broadcast to the entire universe. They’d probably be disappointed by the fact that he wouldn’t be changing his routine just because some aliens saw them as the freshmen to be hazed. Thanks to the volunteer alien allies, it was business as usual for the Champion of Ghost Reef.

Coop was still struggling to wrap his head around the basic existence of factions. Even though he had been exposed to them through babysteps, he found that their form and function was difficult to reconcile with the limitations imposed by mana.

It seemed like nonsense that he wasn’t allowed to use Salvation to summon modern body armor and they had to use magic to fire Ghost Reef’s cannons due to restrictions on technological level, but aliens could wage war for control of planets from across the galaxy. None of the members of the galactic community had developed space travel, but they could be transported across the vastness of space in an instant so that they could fight each other with sticks and clubs.

“Bizarre universe.” He mumbled into the breeze as he ‘mistwalked’ above the regrown Everglades. The grassy prairies had given way to rivers of grass as water encroached on the state.

He launched his spear north, over Central Florida, watching the projectile until it was far enough away to justify another mistjump. His movement ability had evolved with his upgraded and merged active skills. The process remained the same, requiring an anchor point for his destination, but rather than being dragged through the monochromatic world of mists, he flickered in and out of existence while inside the dimension of Spectral mana. The main limitation on his mode of travel had shifted to the speed of his spear throws. The end result was that his teleports were significantly faster.

Coop recalled his exposure to factions one step at a time as he crossed miles of marshy swamp and dry pine rocklands in a fraction of the time it would have taken him before.

When the assimilation first began, he had viewed factions from the perspective of an outsider. He was an Unchosen individual that was dismissed as worthless by the powers that be. The minimal bid to sponsor Coop had been too much of an investment for any group in the community to risk, so he was discarded and left in the dark. Where every human was a type of lottery ticket, Coop was a neglected, unpurchased scratch-off left in the gutter.

Luckily, Jones had been appealing enough to be sponsored. The old caretaker collected information to share during his brief orientation. At that early point, factions were amorphous influences that Coop immediately felt animosity toward. They drafted humans to represent unrecognizable organizations on planet Earth in order to grab territory and on the off chance that they hit a jackpot where their Chosen could conquer the world in their name.

Coop didn’t appreciate their claimed authority, especially during a confusing period for the planet’s inhabitants. It was difficult enough to come to terms with mana itself, with or without a sponsor whispering in their ears about the secrets of the universe and their place in it. The whole process was overly manipulative, to say the least.

Then, the end of Ghost Reef’s Siege Event caught Lyriel’s attention. The so-called Avatar of the System revealed another wrinkle in the hierarchy of the galaxy. Factions may have been the top dogs over living beings, dictating how they interacted with each other on a societal level, claiming settlements and planets, and providing the aliens with civilization in general, but factions were only granted that position by the system. The system itself only existed as a sort of interface for mana, and mana was what had effectively altered reality by activating.

The two entities, the system and mana, existed jointly with only speculative purposes. Coop put together his own theories after being exposed to different perspectives and experiencing their influence for himself. Mana eliminated threats determined by technological levels while the system gave some base control over mana that essentially uplifted primitive life. The system created the galactic community in what Coop was increasingly convinced was a loophole in mana’s function. Mana let undeveloped wildlife live as it apparently terraformed and judged planets, then the system came in and gave the spared creatures the opportunity to create basic civilization using the very thing that was filtering them.

Coop shook his head as he aimed another spear throw northward, recognizing that he was fighting to destroy whatever careful balance had been found between the two greater entities. The Lighthouse would be resisting the Eradication Protocol, no matter what. If that meant shaking up the universe as a side effect, he didn’t really see it as his problem.

After the Siege Event rewarded Ghost Reef with two different Chips, the factionless contracted residents provided further guidance that demonstrated factions’ fundamental importance to the structure of the broader universe. The assimilation was better contextualized by considering the external forces that were vying for pieces of the pie, but even then, Coop was getting the picture that factions encompassed everything from religions to corporations, guilds, brotherhoods, and consortiums. Factions were elevated above any other association of beings through recognition from the system. The only difference from a basic club and a faction was that factions were official.

The preliminary establishment of the Lighthouse through the Purification Chip provided a real example within the private network created by the assimilation. They had a chance to adjust contracts and get a better feel for recruitment processes while bolstering their numbers ahead of time, but what a faction actually was remained relatively flexible. It was just some more menus that were similar enough to the settlement menus to not seem particularly unique. Instead of residents, they had members, and instead of settlement events, there were faction events.

In a way, the unique circumstances of their official recognition was only viable because they were able to organize ahead of time, giving Ghost Reef’s contracted residents an opportunity to make a plan to bolster the fledgling faction against official challenges. Otherwise, the structural foundation of a faction had made little impact on his overall thoughts. The way they were wielded by the beings of the galactic community had left a greater impression, and it was mostly negative as he was exposed to potential for forced servitude and other cruelties.

Now, with his perspective gradually broadening, Coop concluded that factions were essentially the civilizations of the universe, as designated by the system itself. Basically, if they weren’t a faction, they barely existed at all. They would be as primitive as the aliens viewed humans. Factions competed for territory and resources in order to bolster themselves and their members. The galactic community consisted of an unbelievable number of factions, organized in all sorts of different ways, all pushing and pulling at their borders while contending with each other in system events.

At this point, the Lighthouse was kind of an official part of the galactic community, but because their Core was on an unassimilated planet, they were limited to indirect interactions with other factions. It was another baby step, but it put them in a bit of a precarious position. If a faction lost its Core, it would be eliminated. If the assimilation failed, they would naturally lose all the civilization shards, and that included the one that had become the faction’s Core.

Still, the trade off was probably beneficial for the Lighthouse. They had no use for a faction if they failed the assimilation anyway. Ultimately, it would mean they were dead because they failed to survive the Eradication Protocol. In the meantime, they were protected from the declarations of war that resulted in direct conflict with alien forces thanks to the planetary shield established for the assimilation.

As he understood it, the battles that were taking place off-planet between his companions and distant aliens were designed in a way that didn’t permanently injure the participants. However, there were also Wars of Elimination that would have had alien armies landing at the edges of their territory with the sole purpose of claiming their shard, more like how they contended with the Primal Constructs, but not limited by the assimilation forcing them to use proxies, minions, and manifestations. At least with the indirect battles, if they lost, the lives of the residents had the option to be spared as they were integrated into another faction.

Outside of Wars of Elimination, the system kept the sides relatively balanced, creating brackets based on the development of the defending factions, but imbalances in resources, particularly in experience, consumables, and material equipment, would tip the advantage one way or the other. The Lighthouse would be in the absolute lowest bracket with the shortest amount of time since their activation of mana, but that meant that every challenger would have an advantage.

On the other hand, a long term War of Elimination with even a single faction would presumably result in an inevitable defeat. Coop imagined the Siege Event, except without individual waves or a time limit, and with enemies more advanced than the Primal Construct’s minions, all while being unlimited by the system. The actual number of factions that had set their eyes on Earth’s lone faction was horrifying, and any one of them would be easy favorites to come out on top.

Thankfully, The Lighthouse was exempt from Wars of Elimination for the time being. The system prevented outsiders from entering the assimilation scenario without an officially designated work contract, and even those that did continued to be regulated by the system, prevented from acting outside of their settlement or faction territory. For the moment, aliens couldn’t directly interfere with Earth while the system and mana assimilated the planet, but his allies could defend the faction’s holdings.

The limitations imposed by the system on other factions didn’t stop them from doing everything in their power to meddle with the new faction. If they defeated the Lighthouse’s defenders in one of the other war types, they could effectively turn the Lighthouse into a subordinate faction, almost exactly how Coop had turned Empress City and Neptune’s Bridge into subordinate settlements. The different types of war would dictate the shape of the relationship between Ghost Reef and their new leaders, but none of them were suitable for the independently minded humans, not to mention the previously factionless aliens that had aligned themselves with them after forcing their own freedoms in the past.

Whether they became an underclass at the mercy of another faction in a War of Conquest or were outright killed in a post-assimilation War of Elimination made little difference. If outsiders took control, the assimilation would certainly fail. The alien faction’s priority would be to siphon as much experience and resources from the planet before the shield lifted and they would need to defend their holdings from all the other factions. The actual fate of humans was irrelevant, and the Eradication Protocol was completely off their radar.

The Lighthouse had some surprises for their challengers. The first was in the incredible power borrowed from the previously factionless residents. Humans only had 117 days to progress, and therefore only the freshest of rookies from other factions would be allowed to challenge them for the moment. The brackets were based on the defending faction, granting something like home-field advantage. Literally, only those who were able to claim their classes and begin leveling in a timeframe that was relatively similar to humans could engage with the Lighthouse. But the factionless aliens that had joined the Lighthouse had thousands of years of experience, and they had accumulated that power to resist even the strongest of their former faction members. They may not have been allowed to actively participate in the assimilation, but they were allowed to defend their faction.

The idea that individuals who had grown powerful enough to escape the influence of established factions would voluntarily join a brand new faction on an unassimilated baby planet was so far outside the realm of possibilities, it wouldn’t even be considered. It wasn’t like factionless contractors were a common choice in the first place. Coop had only been selecting what the galactic community would consider subpar services because he had started with a hostile perspective toward factions. But the factionless were perfect for the portrait of Ghost Reef that he held within his subconscious.

The second surprise was the actual progress of the rest of the residents. Ghost Reef had bolstered them to an extent that went beyond what would be expected elsewhere in the galaxy. Assimilations were known to be fertile grounds for fast development. The end of an assimilation would result in survivors that were essentially brought up to speed relative to the rest of the galaxy, in terms of experience, by their struggle. That was why the completion of an assimilation was so important for gauging the strength of new factions.

It would be a risk to challenge a faction that formed at the end of an assimilation because they would still have the home-field advantage as defenders while enjoying the higher levels brought by the experience. Over time the advantage would fade away and eventually the brackets would be wide enough that new factions were still at the bottom of the barrel, but at least they were afforded time to adjust to the galactic community.

Even with those factors, the residents of Ghost Reef, and therefore most of the members of the Lighthouse, were completely blowing the expectations out of the water. If one level a day was exceptional, what was it when Coop and the phantoms doubled it?

The third surprise, and the one that caught Coop off guard as well, was the last notification he had received. Before the final notification from the galactic community arrived, his feed had been completely unreadable. They honestly may have exceeded a million declarations of war. Balor and the others had immediately responded, but they would be extraordinarily busy making sure that the Lighthouse didn’t fall into outsider hands.

In fact, they may not have been able to keep up in the long run, if not for the last message that had put a stop to all the rest. Eventually, they would risk a forfeit if the declarations continued to be added faster than they could fight the battles. Coop read the last message again, with it lingering at the bottom of his now stationary feed.

[The Blessed Mau Collective has offered a Treaty Negotiation to the Lighthouse (Pending Assimilation)]

Coop had no idea what to make of it. He understood the implication that Jett’s faction was refraining from trying to grab Earth’s resources, but the simple show of interest had been enough to discourage other factions from declaring more wars. Were they that powerful, or was it just a coincidence? Coop suspected there was something else he was missing. There were probably some unspoken rules among the factions that humans would just have to learn over time.

They lacked the ability to respond, because of the planetary shield, so the offer was just waiting until the time came. He wondered if in a matter of hours after their faction’s formation they had reached an equilibrium that would last the full 111 years. In the meantime, he guessed that roughly half of the declarations of war were canceled at significant expense of those who had initiated them. The Lighthouse was suddenly racking up the victories. Most were forfeitures as factions accepted penalties to abandon their declarations, but in less than 25 hours, individuals like Vronk, Desmond, Maeve, Caisalya, Asha-Kali, Abithik, Ledwidge, and Erasimus had each won dozens of battles, and they were still going.

Officially establishing the faction and revealing themselves to the rest of the galactic community hadn’t only brought additional pressures to Ghost Reef, there were positives as well. The most obvious advantage was marrying themselves to the more powerful contracted residents. There was no risk of losing his friends early anymore, but Balor and the others were exposing themselves to the hazards that sought to eliminate humanity. Even after revealing the jeopardy of the Eradication Protocol, the aliens had thrown their lot in with Ghost Reef. It had taken some spirited debates, but ultimately, their position in the broader community held enough risk that every single contracted resident agreed to gamble on humans.

Coop was honestly shocked by the result. From Caisalya’s Foragers to all of the Librarians of the Archive, every factionless contracted resident was in. Then, even more surprisingly, the few residents with factions also indelibly tied themselves to Ghost Reef. The aliens from the Merciful faction were contractually open to commit to whatever faction their Sage designated, meaning that Madison was able to keep the hospital’s residents with Ghost Reef before she joined herself. Even Zakronaw, the weird bird mayor was staying, his purpose clear; he would protect the civilization shard with his life.

The aliens had definitely been influenced by the rebellious human spirit. Ghost Reef was a place where deities would be challenged, and there would be little reverence for the system, mana, and those who wielded their strength for oppression. Elsewhere in the galactic community, social standings were concrete, but in Coop’s settlement they would unhesitatingly punch Icons of Mana in the face. The aliens had been swept up in the zeitgeist of the Lighthouse.

The other advantages of activating their faction were primarily systemic. They had access to faction events, assuming they could afford the millions of credits in entry fees to send individual competitors. They could potentially sponsor their own Chosen during upcoming assimilations, but the costs to bid were even more exorbitant than the events. In fact, they could also bid to become a Planetary Sponsor, which revealed all sorts of surprises.

For example, what would the Lighthouse faction’s manifestations look like? Obviously, they wouldn’t have Ancient Defenders like the Primal Construct faction.

Apparently, they would instead send minion versions of the phantom soldiers or pirates. A field boss would be an empty suit of haunted armor like Captain Alaric, a ghostly pirate captain that would inherit similar skills to the actual ship captains, or one of the many army officers that led squads of phantoms in the defense of Ghost Reef accompanied by spectral birds of prey. They even had siege bosses: facsimiles of the Tempest Fleet’s very own Admiral Kayla, the Phantom Army’s Rear Admiral Gideon, or a suspiciously enormous wild pig.

Coop even gleaned a hint of future challenges in their own assimilation. There was at least one more level of raid boss shrouded in shadow that came after the siege boss designation. He had already thought it a possibility, but the faction confirmed it by giving them an incomplete list of their own manifestations. It was possible that there were more beyond, but for the moment, the shadow of only one more character was hidden in the menu.

The last of the initial advantages gained from creating the faction officially was in their ability to indirectly communicate with other factions at a rather steep cost. They could send a similar offer for a Treaty Negotiation to what the Blessed Mau Collective had demonstrated. The cost appeared to depend on the recipient faction, and the prices could grow to be pretty far out of Coop’s budget. For instance, Sunny’s faction, The Pack, was a flat 10,000,000 credits, just to send the offer. Jones’s Collegia Universal, on the other hand, was a mere 250,000.

He figured Marcus would be excited, but Coop also believed he might never see the Viceroy again if the diplomatically minded individual became immersed in the full list of factions in an effort to glean galactic politics based on names and prices.

The new alien members of the Lighthouse had prevented Coop from personally participating in the defensive battles, despite his insistence on following their lead. Instead, he was encouraged to concentrate on getting everything else in order. He hated to admit it, but he thought they were right to have him prioritize the assimilation. Between the potential Placid Lake Hive, the upcoming Underlayer Event, the Fallen Zone, the New Continental Congress, and the inevitable Eradication Protocol, he had a lot to do, and that was ignoring how many more levels he intended to grind out in between.

“One thing at a time.” Coop reminded himself, happy to try and keep things simple.