Unchosen Champion

Without the bolstering power of Inheritance of the Mists, Coop spent triple the amount of time to defeat one third of the equivalent number of enemies. It wasn’t exactly a fair comparison, considering his personal capabilities were diminished by the previous expenditure due to simple fatigue, but the broader conclusion was the same.

Finding a way to effectively weave Inheritance into his regular tactics was a worthy goal with the potential to yield exceptional results above and beyond his normal standard. If he was going to conquer as much of the Primal Constructs in the Underlayer Event as he desired, leaving the impressions that he intended, he needed to adapt yet again, and exploring Inheritance if the Mists was a viable avenue to do so.

The assimilation was a series of challenges presented to the entire planet. Coop never had the desire to take on all the burdens of the entire world, but the Underlayer Event presented a temporary situation where he could afford to ease the weight for people outside of his current sphere of influence. By taking up that mantle, he had committed to pushing himself in a different way than he had in the past. No matter how much power he accumulated, he was still just a single person, but that didn’t mean he had reached his limits.

That’s why he would keep iterating on his use of Inheritance of the Mists. He felt like he was on the verge of establishing an optimal use for a unique application of the skill. The upgrade to Salvation multiplied his abilities in unpredictable but extreme ways. Utilizing the powers granted by apparitions came with risks, penalties, and restrictions. As he explored the limits, and occasionally played with fire, he had to accept the consequences.

He had already learned to tamp down on the power, using restraint to avoid being completely incapacitated by the ability, but there was still plenty to learn about restricting downtime. The Battlemaiden, and in a way, the Lightning Lord, had taught him the lesson in humility. In the meantime, while he waited for another chance to summon an apparition and apply all that he had learned, he used his other skills to turn the first control point into a perpetual meat grinder.

It wasn’t like he was helpless without being possessed. The fact of the matter was that Inheritance produced such impressive results because it was building off the carefully laid foundation that was the rest of his build. Otherwise, the skills of the apparitions would just be a flash in the pan.

The Champion of Ghost Reef staked his claim on an area inside the glowing perimeter that marked the area as an objective of the Underlayer Event. The objective was pinned to Primal Construct colors, since they consistently outnumbered him within its area, but for them to maintain their advantage, they had to throw a steady stream of bodies into a turbulent fountain of mists. None who entered survived for long.

Coop was maintaining a tumultuous field of Fog of War, establishing it within the borders of the control point, but the mists struggled to resist the pure mana of the Underlayer. The formation couldn’t be considered a proper domain, as anyone viewing from the outside would be able to catch clear glimpses of the Revenant roaming within. At best, it merely established a haunting milieu of danger.

Gaps repeatedly coalesced throughout the mists, only to be swallowed by swells of vapor that were in turn torn asunder by the invisible forces in the air. Even at its thickest, lower to the ground, shadows were still clearly visible inside the struggling domain, revealing the motions of the warrior at the heart of the fog as he kicked through the vaporous arrangement.

Elite Primal Constructs weren’t hampered by the obscuration of mists anyway, but Coop was using it for his own abilities. Presence of Mind and the phantasms from Legacy of the Mists both benefited with the addition of his haunting fog. He was using all of his other abilities to their fullest, whether they were active skills or merely practiced techniques.

A clenched fist, gripping the hilt of an ethereal weapon extended beyond the fog for a moment, attached to a shadowy silhouette of a spectral gladiator as it pummeled the challengers unlucky enough to draw his attention. When he spun on another target, a window in the fog appeared, revealing his grim, determined eyes, contrasting a subtle smile that told a different story of zealously kept momentum and fully indulged abyssal hunger.

Coop’s ethereal shield deflected ranged attacks that pierced the formless cover, ripping thin strips in the fog as volley after volley tried to suppress his resistance, only to clash against the solid manifestation and be flicked into the air. Counter attacks from the Revenant were relatively rare, but when they came, they were devastating.

Ghostly warriors whipped from the billowing mists, as if they incorporated the fog into their forms when they dashed beyond its limits, dragging fingers of vapor along with their attacks. They leapt into the ranged attackers, matching the fervor of their summoner. Explosions of violence ensnared the invaders, and dozens were lost before the phantasms lost cohesion and drifted into mists themselves, undefeated, but limited by time in the Underlayer.

The other Primal Constructs had no choice but to enter the control point, and Coop took advantage of their commitment to the objective. His spectral short sword flickered through the inconsistent mists, its edge glinting with reflections of the indefinite light source in the underground. It found gaps in the melee Constructs’ guards, despite the wielder’s ability to overpower each and every challenger.

Coop was king of the hill and he wouldn’t be dislodged, no matter what the Primal Constructs threw at him. They were physically limited in their encounter, only able to collapse an insignificant portion of their armies on the control point at once. The Revenant was a solitary point of resistance when they were prepared to battle across vast tracts of land. Naturally, a lonesome neophyte gladiator would be overwhelmed by the sea of opponents under typical circumstances. At least, that’s what they thought. He was proving them more and more incorrect as their forces diminished.

The absurd part of the situation was that the immovable object within the mists was the Revenant engaging in recovery mode. The invaders fed him mana and he transformed their contributions into resistance. He was bruised and battered by errant attacks and lucky shots, but his layered defenses easily absorbed everything the invaders managed to land. As far as he was concerned, he could go all day, but he already had. Make it all week. All month even. The meditative combat refueled him.

The Primal Constructs refrained from sending their entire forces, splitting them into armies that were either anchored to the castles or dedicated to the field. The other three castles remained manned, watching the armies in the field be crushed one after the other, as if they had a different set of priorities compared to the rest of the aliens. They defended points they already controlled while the armies outside of the fortresses worked to recover any lost ground.

Unfortunately for them, the first control point beneath this settlement was unrecoverable as long as Coop was there. It wasn’t even a matter of skill, though that played some small part. The reality of the situation was that, looking at raw levels, he was far beyond what should have been allowed. Tack on his particular strategy of multiplying his attributes, and he was thousands of levels their superior when the time frame stretched beyond the fluctuations created by active skills. Even the Siege Boss had fallen far enough behind to be rather unimpressive. The limits of the assimilation doomed all who attempted to conquer the strength of humanity’s current highest level.

However, the misfortune swung both ways. While Coop had been gaining steady, if slightly diminished, levels before, he had finally reached another point where they really slowed down. The first bout while he was possessed by the Apparition of the Greatest Fire Elemental had given him a burst of levels, a total of 12, as he destroyed hundreds of thousands of Elites, and including the major contributions by the Siege Boss and all of the Field Boss minions.

The levels gained while conquering the first control point put him at level 271 in something like four hours. Since then, a full day of steady grinding later, Coop had defeated an equivalent number of Primal Constructs and twice as many Field Bosses. Day 128 had begun and Coop was still defending the first objective, but his efforts had only added another three additional levels.

The gap between himself and the invaders had grown beyond 100 levels and with the additional difference, another diminishment of the experience was applied. Or at least, enough experience was required for gaining more of his levels that he really felt the gap. Coop would have been sincerely frustrated by the difficulty in maintaining his leveling pace, except that the enemies were so numerous and so densely packed, his progress remained insane. He couldn’t actually ask for better conditions.

Three levels a day was still a number he would be more than happy with. It was just that he was climbing to a point where he would have to measure the defeats of his enemies in numbers that were exponentially larger than before. He fully expected his growth to slow down as the event went on, but that didn’t mean he wouldn’t be taking every advantage he could get in the meantime.

As he danced in his volatile mists, he spared a portion of his vision to the system’s display, checking his status.

[Status]

HP - 22717/23000

MP - 20194/43500

Class - Revenant (Level 274)

Profession - Scavenging (Level 181)

Affinity - Spectral, Abyssal

Race - Human (Rank 1)

Faction - The Lighthouse

Strength - 125 (+4350)

Agility - 125 (+2175)

Body - 125 (+2175)

Mind - 3480 (+870)

Intelligence - 125 (+4350)

Acumen - 125 (+2175)

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, Reverence (Rank 1)

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

Basic Credits - 15,111,836

A thrown shield ricocheted into a pair of charging invaders before Coop flickered from existence, reappearing on one knee in the dirt with the protective manifestation held against his forearm. The ethereal short sword, swung from his other hand, cleaved through the leg joints of a third Construct, and as Coop rose to his full height, the falling monster received a devastating blow from his one-handed warhammer that crushed its torso before its body was embedded into the ground. The enemy disappeared from the mannequin shaped crater, leaving a cloud of mana to drift away.

A pair of phantasms leapt through the turbulent mists, each armored in dark iron suits, back where Coop had mistjumped from. They simultaneously smashed another pair of confused Elites that believed they were attacking the Champion, the ghosts matching the swings of their ethereal hammers as if they were reflections of each other in a mirror.

Coop threw his hammer like a tomahawk, and reappeared on the opposite side of the control point as bolts of mana pierced the fog where he had been a moment before. His abrupt arrival caught a full party by surprise, and his war fork was already puncturing their metallic heads before they recognized that combat had begun, still exploring the swirling domain like visitors of a haunted house.

Preventing the Primal Constructs from comfortably reclaiming the control point was the single best grind he had ever found. Diminishing returns on experience be damned, he was having the time of his life. How many times had he wished for a situation where multitudes of enemies would come to him, saving him on all the travel time that typically fought to put a ceiling on his efficiency?

If it wasn’t for the event’s deadline and the consequences of the Champion of Ghost Reef stagnating in his efforts, he would be in heaven. Unfortunately, this was one of those times where he wasn’t fighting for himself, no matter how badly his deeply seated desire to selfishly prioritize his hunger hammered his soul. As soon as he was able, he would summon another apparition to push himself that much harder in order to protect those who were absent.

While Presence of Mind gave him a picture of his battlefield, he used his eyes to steal glances at his status. His health was good, with every few kills recovering what was briefly lost. He made sure to spend his mana on Fog of War at a reasonable pace, refusing to allow his mana pool to be diminished too far beyond 50%. Anything more than half would be consumed by the reservation of Inheritance anyway, but he didn’t like to spend too much more than 50% in order to always have room for Mind Over Matter to completely protect his health pool. That was one of the self-imposed rules that he tried not to break too often. Thankfully, the Primal Constructs were generous with their mana pools so he could keep dumping resources into his imperfect misty domain.

Coop bent backwards, letting a single bolt pass through the mists where his neck had been a moment before. At the same time, a phantasm appeared behind the attacker, piercing it through the back with a barbed polearm, lifting it up like a ragdoll, before tearing it in half above the edge of the mists. Coop twisted his torso before he fell, getting his feet beneath him so that he could lunge in the same direction as his phantasm with his shield and sword solidifying as he went.

The dirt rumbled as a massive snake entered the control point, half submerged as if it wanted to get deeper, but couldn’t. When it burst into his mists, he inspected the aura just as he assaulted it directly, sensing the subtle vibrations with Presence of Mind before it had made its appearance.

[Field Boss: Ruin Serpent (Level 170)]

[Bol the Hidden Lance (Body)]

[Manifestation of the Primal Constructs]

A massive worm raised itself up, and Coop cut straight through its body, finding the equivalent of a spine as he exited its back. Its bulk collapsed before it even identified him as its target.

“Gaol?” Coop wondered as the Field Boss dissipated, recognizing the form as a familiar boss during the Siege Event. Though he didn’t get an answer, Coop thought it was weird to see another familiar face, even if it was a mechanical horror and labeled differently. “Do the Primal Constructs have variants of variants?” He asked himself as he smoothly transitioned his target onto another Elite.

Gaol was the Primal Serpent Field Boss, but it seemed like he had a Ruin Serpent cousin. Coop figured he should pay some attention to the Field Boss types rather than treating them as more of the same. The difference between a Primal Serpent and a Ruin Serpent seemed hard to distinguish.

In any case, the kill gave him another level, bringing him to level 275 and opening up another skill selection. He multitasked during the grind, checking the options as Presence of Mind guided him from invader to invader.

He was looking for a way to advance his Dedication, and of course that was all he found. When he snorted, the mists swirled like the smoke from a dragon’s nostrils. Every choice was another Dedication, as if he was being given the option to betray his current benefactor in favor of any of the other previously offered connections.

As his levels climbed and he received more and more skill choices, he was beginning to better understand how Ixia and the other alien contractors had managed to gain thousands and thousands of levels while their toolkit of skills remained modest. The system had a way of putting them on shorter tracks of upgrades and alternative choices.

Coop would just keep plowing forward. His primary goals were always centered on gaining levels to stack his attributes anyway.

He found the Dedication to Sethrak, quickly noting that the other options had nothing extra to sweeten the deal and entice him to reset his progress. His was a build optimized for doubling down, and he wouldn’t be switching things up. He selected the offering to Sethrak again, confirming his original choice and another rank of the passive skill was added.

The description of Reverence (Rank 2) declared Coop as an Adherent of the Deep Dweller, rather than a Supplicant. It seemed as though he was climbing through the tiers of his very own cult, one dedicated to the grind.