Unchosen Champion

For what purpose did he need power? What was his goal? Coop had his current answer at the forefront of his mind, immersed as he was in developing his mastery over Inheritance of the Mists. There was nothing he wanted more than to smash his current target - simple and to the point.

Every fiber of his being was focused on his current action. Despite all of his combat sense, the messiness of the surrounding battle, his broader concerns for his allies, his own progress, the state of humanity, and all of the other pressures of the event, for a fraction of a second only he and his target existed. The rest of the world was shrouded in a self-imposed veil. Any attempt to break his concentration would be for nought. No enticements and no temptations could shift the Revenant’s fixation away from its prey.

He wasn’t sweeping an army away, nor was he becoming the harbinger of death and destruction. It was one swing. An isolated action necessitating zero guidance.

Time slowed as yet another possession took place. Coop maintained his immersion, engrossed in the singular crushing action, aiming for a demonstration of power that went beyond overkill. He had something to prove with regard to his skill usage.

The ethereal morning star was raised above his head, securely grasped with both hands, as he leapt up and toward a skittering raid boss. His knees were bent as he flew through the air, abs stretched, and back curved in preparation for whipping the weapon down upon his target.

In contrast to his taut muscles, his expression was calm. He looked down at his target, eyes locked in as his breath escaped his lungs. His consciousness expanded, while his focus pinpointed into his motion, fully entering the zone.

Dozens of Elite Primal Constructs were frozen in place beneath him, desperately reaching for their soaring adversary, but falling short in every possible way, like a dramatic renaissance painting. They couldn’t even succeed in subduing his attention, let alone suppressing his actions, as he rose above.

Bolts of energy were fired from the orbs at the ends of twisted metal staves, physical projectiles shot from arm cannons, blades fiercely snapped up into the air, and polearms jabbed at the Champion, all sluggishly sliding in his direction before revealing one of two fates.

Either the attacks would miss and their ineffectiveness was never realized, or they landed true and were forced out of the way by sheer momentum, like hollow twigs being used to stop a speeding semi truck, bouncing off his armor and layered defenses as wisps of mana flickered across the surface. For a single attack, he had become the personification of vehemence, asserting his will on the battlefield.

A noticeable amount of abyssal mana trailed the spikes of the mace. The dark mana mixed with the more familiar ghostly mists, painting the solid manifestation with patterns of inscrutable black energy that were mirrored from within his set of gladiator armor. The patterns flared as the defenses in his equipment contended with Construct attacks.

Instead of 1 out of every 100 wisps of mana, a small enough amount to go unnoticed by someone unfamiliar with the regular designs, the abyss was making up closer to 10% of the effluence after his level of Reverence ranked up. The darker streaks stood out against the cool backdrop of aquamarine vapor that normally accompanied his manifestations, all trailing behind his aggressive motion, transforming him into the ethereal gladiator he had established within the assimilation.

Despite revealing the growing fusion between his affinities, the newer color still seemed primarily decorative. Coop had already stopped worrying about it. So long as it didn’t negatively impact his combat fitness, he didn’t mind the aesthetic change, though he suspected it was slightly more than purely cosmetic. Another line in the obscure damage formula devised by the system was irrelevant to him as long as his enemies were defeated when he struck them.

As the moment stretched to impossible lengths, his brain working overtime, he was entirely immersed in receiving a brief flash of strength before he released the possession. All he wanted was a soft touch from a supernatural power to test how low the cooldown could get before he connected with his monstrous target. His racing mind only had one thought: smash!

The Field Boss he intended to kill was mostly legs, with a small spiked oval body housing a single glowing red eye, fit like a crimson orange crown. The elongated spidery limbs were doing their best to rise above the range of his mace, carrying the spiked body into the air and its weak point out of reach, but the boss had underestimated the Champion’s tenacity. The vaulting high jump demonstrated by its human opponent easily cleared the length of its spindly legs.

Coop hadn’t hesitated before implementing Inheritance of the Mists. As soon as the last of the debuffs faded from his status, he was reapplying them with his most powerful active ability. A heavy jab, shoving a guarding Elite into range of a powerful side swing preceded his rush forward, stomping on its fading shield before he leapt and activated the skill. His aggressive motion had been unexpected by the invaders that shuffled through the Fog of War, searching for him as he flitted between waves of mists, and the gap between him and his opponent closed instantly.

The first of four control points remained contested, with Coop’s scattered mists swirling across its arena, though he and his target rose above the wafting vapors, dragging fingers of smoke after them both. The illumination of the event’s objective silhouetted each of them in an urgent rouge, as if an ongoing emergency just wouldn’t lapse.

It was all Coop’s fault. A quarter of a million Elite Primal Constructs had been defeated during their effort to defend the objective, falling to the apocalyptic power of the Greatest Fire Elemental, and even more than twice as many had fallen during their attempts to reclaim their lost control. He was preventing the objective from settling into any sort of stability, but with the help of Inheritance, he would be pushing toward the inescapable conclusion. The Revenant would capture all four points soon enough.

Coop had already spent almost two full days satiating his runaway appetite. It was time to finish the job. When the morning star’s teeth eclipsed his own head, smashing down through the air as every muscle in his body tensed, he was fully bolstered by a multi-armed celestial entity.

His perspective shifted, and he could see himself in the third person, flying higher than the Field Boss as the mace crashed through the thick, stagnant atmosphere. A glass fist overlayed the ethereal morning star in his mind’s eye, and punched straight into the ground, smashing the sizable boss into the dirt.

The bang that followed seemed to ignore the muffling sensation of the Underlayer, instead pummeling his ears like a crashing drum, loud enough to travel through the tunnels and reach the empty Shenandoah objectives that had been left behind. The impact turned the solid surface in its immediate proximity into liquid and a wave of pure kinetic energy melted the topsoil, expanding outwards with a rush.

While the shockwave wasn’t particularly large, it had enough force to rip the nearest Elite Primal Constructs in two, tearing legs away from torsos, dissolving the metallic limbs into liquid mana before they reacted, let alone attempted to escape. A clear gap in the army of invaders appeared, thousands eliminated at once, replaced by a cloud of dirt that slowly settled back down to the freshly leveled ground around the crater in the center.

As soon as the FIeld Boss crunched, pulverized beneath the celestial knuckles, Coop freed himself from the possession. It was one single attack, merely bolstering his own strength rather than borrowing it entirely from the mists, exactly as he intended.

Mana smoke wafted from the exaggerated imprint of knuckles in the dirt, the last of the FIeld Boss’s corporeal presence, and Coop heaved his mace from the center indentation with a satisfied grunt, letting it rest on his shoulder. He checked his buffs and debuffs, noting that he hadn’t avoided the consequences of tapping into power beyond his means, but he could immediately tell that it wouldn’t be long before he could do it again.

“This is it.” He confirmed to himself as the mists drifted around him, sighing with satisfaction.

It wasn’t like he had cracked some super complicated secret code, but he felt gratified all the same. Finally combining all the little bits that he had incrementally learned was like pressing the last jigsaw piece into a high-quality puzzle. Supplementing his regular standard tactics with individual bursts of divine power may not elevate him to the highest of highs, but it would raise his floor far beyond what it had been before.

There was no additional fatigue to his body, and the cooldown on Inheritance of the Mists was drastically reduced. In exchange for a single empowered strike, he traded half of his mana pool in the form of a momentary reservation. Whether or not the trade off was worth it would depend on how he applied the divine spark, but his overall mana pool was extensive.

The ongoing benefits of his concentrated investment into Mind continued to reveal themselves. He wouldn’t be restricted from using his other abilities with only half his mana available, since his pool was huge, though he would probably need to reevaluate his standards for Mind Over Matter. Even the summons created by Legacy of the Mists had their flat mana cost reduced to zero by Practical Application after their continual use, so the drains on his mana wouldn’t be excessive whether it was a reduced total or not.

Coop quickswapped to his shield and spear, throwing his weapon in order to mistjump back into the Primal Constructs. The single strike of his mace had cleared a massive circle, leaving him with no immediate targets as the first control point finally found a moment of peace after days of conflict.

The Revenant, on the other hand, went on the hunt, targeting the left most of the protective castles. When he reappeared at the end of a mistjump, through a hole blasted into the outer wall of the stronghold, he immediately went to work. The idle Constructs within the parade grounds of their fort were dragged into his torment.

Mere minutes into the evolving battle, the interior of the castle was as chaotic as the first control point had been. The monsters did their best to contain the raider, but his baseline was much too high. Disorderly columns of mist leaked over the tops of the remaining walls as the inside turned into the domain of the Revenant.

When the time finally came again, Coop shifted gears and lunged forward. He thrust his spear beneath the double bladed guard of a dual wielding Construct before abruptly lifting it up, flinging the manifestation up and over his shoulder before letting a summoned phantasm finish the hapless victim off. He then used the butt of his spear to batter the next armored invader, forcing it backwards, and gave himself more space.

Satisfied with his position, he planted his foot and rotated the spear up and over, preparing a forceful jabbing strike while casting Inheritance of the Mists once again.

Time appeared to slow as Coop envisioned the single forward attack he intended to empower. This time, his spear was already crashing down, aiming for the raised shield of the stumbling Elite Ruin Construct as if daring it to block whatever would come next.

Coop felt the tempest build in his heart, turning his haunting aura into one filled with the fury of a storm god. The rage was channeled into his weapon and the air touching its surface crackled with volatile energy. A powerful glow emanated from the surface, already stinging his eyes, but unable to discourage his motion. The ethereal weapon had a focused beam of white-hot power temporarily contained in its core.

As the tip of the weapon met the Elite Primal Construct’s shield, the flow of time seemed to freeze rather than resume. For a single heartbeat, there was a stalemate between the two weapons, but it was never meant to last. Everything afterwards happened in quick succession.

The shield glowed like overheating metal before it gave way, shattering like porcelain, and the searing spear punched through. Then, the energy was released with a deafening boom. A blast cone turned the Construct to ash in an instant, continuing forward with tendrils of light lingering in its wake before fading away as Coop escaped the possession.

The attack had been a singular thunderclap, but it devoured a large enough slice of the army that it made Coop’s conquest of the second control point a foregone conclusion. He turned his attention to cleaning up the rest of the castle, as sparks continued crashing into the dirt. A rotating army of phantasms supplemented his individual attacks before moving onto the third objective as he carried his momentum forward.

Coop was settling into the new cadence of his abilities. The rhythm had slightly changed, incorporating massive punctuations of power whenever Inheritance of the Mists was ready. His steady grinds turned into a build up that culminated in dramatic outbursts of fantastical proportions. His momentum transformed into an ocean of waves rather than a steady pressure. The Mistwalker rotated through a pantheon of significant figures, revealing them a single blow at a time, and the Primal Constructs were all the worse for it.

Even after the fourth and final control point was cleared of Primal Construct invaders, Coop was awestruck by Inheritanceof the Mists. While he tried to remember that its effectiveness wasn’t truly tested against enemies that were anything above 100 levels his inferior, he couldn’t deny feeling astonished at the difference between his normal attacks and ones boosted by the equivalent of a true active skill. He knew it was coming eventually, and in specific aspects of his build had already reached the point long before, but among the lower leveled masses, he truly felt overpowered.

Coop distracted himself from the giddiness of successfully adapting the ace up his sleeve with the leaderboards, letting the control points slowly capture while he caught his breath.

Underlayer Event Settlement Scores:

Neon Park - 1,916,054 (x13)

Ghost Reef - 1,360,000 (x1)

Cherry Hill - 1,136,618 (x3)

Aotearoa New Zealand - 112,871 (x5)

Shenandoah Confluence - 105,510 (x1)

Akagera - 78,506 (x2)

Neptune’s Bridge - 63,000 (x1)

Silvervalley - 46,946 (x11)

Empress City - 21,000 (x1)

Barsa-Kelmes Reserve - 21,000 (x1)

“Tch.” Coop clicked his teeth. He couldn’t help already feeling brought back down to Earth after seeing his settlement officially lose the top spot.

As glad as he was that others found some success, he was still competitive enough that he didn’t want to let his own settlement fall behind. He’d just accomplished something unbelievable and it wasn’t enough to keep up with a larger settlement’s progress. Neon Park was pulling further ahead.

“That’s just how it goes, I guess.” Coop grumbled, trying and failing to feel some acceptance as he jabbed the dirt with his spear and retraced his progress through the control points.

He squinted at the rest of the list, having a moment of confusion as he sought the nice round numbers that would indicate the settlement he had cleared. It took him a minute, but he figured it out.

Cherry Hill was the recipient of his aid, but residents of the settlement had actively participated in the battle for Neon Park, so they independently contributed to the score, one way or another. Shenandoah had also gained some points, so he assumed the same for them.

The other big gainers were Akagera, New Zealand, and to a lesser extent Silvervalley, as was more or less expected of settlements that were relatively larger. The real story was buried deeper in the list.

Barsa-Kelmes Reserve had cleanly finished their defense, as had Aydar, joining Kyzyl Cross and Empress City with perfect scores. However, they were also joined by the previously dormant settlements of Syr Darya, Gora Zarkasa, Bugunskoye Hold, and Amu Basin Camp. In addition, there were another eight places with x1 challenge assessments progressing their scores all at once. It seemed like every time one settlement was cleared, two more were reinforced.

While Coop had spent a significant amount of time on one settlement, the event was continuing, and he didn’t seem to be the only one progressing. Thankfully, the number of settlements making progress against the Primal Constructs was continuing to expand, even while he was working in one place.

He checked the individual scores to see how he was doing relative to the other big gainers.

Underlayer Event Individual Scores:

Coop - 1,338,000 (+1,150,000)

Neon - 108,155 (+3,209)

Platinum - 14,278 (+3,786)

Azizi - 11,901 (+11,901)

Imara - 11,862 (+11,729)

Sila Tupua - 11,729 (+5,898)

Sefu - 11,274 (+11,274)

Carlos Alvarez - 11,109 (+10,503)

Callagun - 10,650 (+10,650)

Layla Itunu - 10,533 (+5,195)

Coop choked on his own breath as he checked the individual scores. They were far more lopsided than he ever imagined they could get. He actually felt guilty. His adapted tactics combined with his absurd level meant there was no competition anymore.

“Yikes.” He muttered, feeling like he was truly getting out of control.