Unchosen Champion

Once again, Coop woke up before dawn. Jett had taken over his pillow at some point in the night, leaving him flat on the mattress. She had her two front paws pressed against his face while she slept, a smoking gun for how she claimed the pillow. He tried to hang onto his previous night’s motivation and start forming a new, healthy routine.

He splashed some water on his face to further wake himself up. He headed through the mess hall and up the stairs past the mezzanine, all the way to the top. He planned on starting the day with some cardio to warm up.

Coop ran along the top of the fort in what he called his island uniform. A pair of shorts. The tropical weather was too hot for much else. His ethereal gladiator shoes were the only update he had added to his wardrobe since arriving on the island months ago. Real sandals would have been unpleasant to run in at best, but these were like running on a cloud. He never got sand or pebbles trapped in them either. He admired the wonders of magic.

Unfortunately, half the fortress was separated from the other half, so he couldn’t complete a circuit. Instead he had to double back to complete his light jog before dawn heralded the transition from night to day. He caught his breath while watching the sun climb over the ocean. He had an unobstructed view from his vantage leaning on the parapets of the fortress.

He completed his cardio session by stretching next to an old cast iron cannon. The fort may not have really been a work of art the way Balor seemed to think, but it was a really impressive structure regardless. Even the top, which Jones would scold Coop for not knowing the name of, was remarkable. The fort was the thickest at the top, with the interior side extending over the open galleries below. Coop figured the whole thing was wide enough for a four lane highway all the way around the top of the fort walls. It was obvious it hadn’t seen much use in a long time, being covered in scrub grass and sand, but Coop quite liked it that way. Like one of those grass roofs, but the beachy version, and on a castle.

Coop headed back to the interior of the fort and rinsed off in the cold shower, feeling ready to start the day. He joined Jones for breakfast. Jones was running out of the food they wanted to eat before spoiling, so Coop made himself some oatmeal. They discussed future structures to purchase from the settlement interface that could provide food. There had been dozens of options for food services and they were leaning toward one of them being next. But first, Coop was going to farm basic credits and build up some savings for the upgrade cost. He had five days to make 1,000 basic credits. He challenged himself to do it all today.

The Ancient Defenders didn’t stand a chance. Coop left the fort with the intention of wholesale slaughter. He wanted to complete his Defeat 250 Ancient Defenders III quest, and start catching up to that level 10 burrowing owl. Once the quest was done he wanted to expand his horizons a bit and try hunting something new, assuming it wasn’t too far outside his comfort zone. His only experience was with Ancient Defenders so far, and even though he was already twice their average level, he was still wary of biting off more than he could chew. The experience fighting the single elite monster with Jones weighed heavily on his mind. But he knew he would need to move on to stronger enemies eventually if leveling continued to slow down each level.

He stuck with his spear and armor but didn’t conjure the shield. He wanted to move as quickly as possible between monsters to maximize his killing efficiency.

After only a dozen kills he got his first level up notification, but he refused to interrupt his hunt. He was moving faster without his shield, but he still had to pace himself to avoid exhaustion. Three spear strikes was enough to defeat every Ancient Defender he encountered, whether his opening spear throw connected or not. Planting his foot, twisting his hips, he engaged his full body with every attack. Each minor improvement was rewarded by whatever mysterious force that seemed to be subtly guiding his technique. He was forming a personal theory that it had something to do with his Haunted title, imagining a ghostly spearman was instructing him on proper forms and techniques.

After 50 kills he reduced his attack chain to two. His swings had improved to the point that the first was enough to completely dismantle the defense of each monster and the second was free to defeat them. He judged that it had only been an hour.

After 150 kills he was consistently landing his spear throw. His final adjustment to the throw was embarrassingly simple, a matter of accounting for his running gait and timing the throw with his steps rather than vice versa. Before, he was so focused on his arm and his upper body he would force his legs to follow rather than lead, and he would end up stutter-stepping mid run resulting in inconsistent throws.

After 200 kills he was only swinging his spear once, to end the fight, while his spear throw reliably dislodged the creature’s defense. The trick was timing his spear throw so that the creatures didn’t have time to resume their defense before he arrived. He had to throw the spear from much closer than he was before, but the end result was an improvement to both his speed and stamina in addition to better accuracy with the reduced distance.

When he completed the third stage of the Ancient Defender quest, he paused to take a break, dismissing his ethereal set. He sat in the shade of a palm tree with his feet in the water in an effort to cool down and catch his breath.

It had been four hours of combat. Admittedly, it was mostly just jogging, but the vast majority of it had been in sand. Even with his improved stats his calves were feeling shot. He reviewed his notifications.

[Congratulations! You have leveled up!]

[Congratulations! Your profession has leveled up!]

[Congratulations! You have leveled up!]

[Quest Complete! Scavenge Defeated Enemies III]

[Quest Complete! Defeat Ancient Defenders III]

[Congratulations! You have leveled up!]

[You have a new quest!]

[Scavenge Defeated Enemies IV (19/500)]

Coop was satisfied with the results of his first real grind session. It seemed that even though his level was eclipsing the Ancient Defenders he was still able to level off of them. This was terrific news because when he looked at Defeat Ancient Defenders IV he knew he was in for it.

[Defeat Ancient Defenders IV (0/5000)]

He considered abandoning it and as he formed his thoughts a confirmation window appeared asking if he was sure. He declined. Even if he didn’t complete it he saw no reason to actually abandon it. As far as he knew there was no limit to the number of quests, and he only had three right now. Besides, the third in the chain had given him 2,000 basic credits and another level. He was at least a little curious to find out what completing the entire quest chain would give him.

Scavenge Defeated Enemies III had rewarded him with Increased Rarity (Uncommon). He checked his spatial storage, but the only thing in it was the lone Elite Monster Token. Other than the credits, scavenging wasn’t picking up much. Coop wasn’t disappointed though, he understood it was due to the single type of enemy he had fought so far. And on the bright side the Increased Yield from the previous quest turned out to double the credits he got per kill. In total he collected an additional 900 basic credits from scavenging. It was a pure bonus to the hunt that he would have done with or without his profession.

Finally, he put all his unallocated attribute points into Mind and checked his status.

[Status]

HP - 470/470

MP - 750/750

Class - Revenant (Level 9)

Profession - Basic Scavenging (Level 4)

Affinity - Spectral

Race - Human (Rank 1)

Faction - None

Strength - 10 (+75)

Agility - 10 (+37)

Body - 10 (+37)

Mind - 75

Intelligence - 10

Acumen - 10

Unallocated - 0

Titles - Champion, Haunted, Ethereal

Skills (Active) - Identify, Retribution, Salvation

Skills (Passive) - Common Language, Mind Over Matter, Adamance, Practical Application

Quests - Defeat Ancient Defenders IV (0/5000), Scavenge Defeated Enemies IV (19/500), Upgrade Camp to Outpost

Basic Credits - 2,935

He felt better after his stats grew. He stood and resummoned his ethereal set, admiring his 400 remaining mana. He was once again impressed with the bonus stat effect from his passive skills, his stats were going to be huge.

He tried to imagine how he would have distributed his stats without the passives. Maybe two in Strength, one in Agility, one in Body, and one in Mind every level. If that was what the average class had to do, he shook his head with incredulity, his build was primed to snowball out of control compared to that baseline.

He had to worry about others with synergistic skills instead of the average. He anticipated there would be skills that increased individual stats beyond what he was doing. What if a glass cannon had the ability to increase their damage stat by some proportion of the attributes spent? What about a tank with the same effect but on defensive stats? He would be outpaced in either scenario. He’d still prefer his more well-rounded build, but he reminded himself not to get too caught up in his own advantages anyway. It was too early and he was too weak to have to remind himself to be humble!

He hopped a bit to test the increase to his stats. He swung his spear a few times and even threw it into the ocean, summoning it back before it hit the water. Now that he had gathered some experience with his Strength and Agility, the increase was immediately noticeable. His armor and weapon were both scaling off his Mind stat as well. A few more minutes and he felt that he would be ready to test his growth against more monsters.

Coop judged the position of the sun and determined that it wasn’t even noon yet. He spent the time stretching and breathing while thinking about how long it would take him to defeat 5,000 Ancient Defenders. If he pushed himself at his current level he thought he could do it in a week. That wasn’t bad at all.

The problem was that he might already be at his peak efficiency for killing the monsters, so even with an increase in power he might not speed up very much. The major time sink was traveling between the mobs. As soon as he came to the realization, he decided that he would focus on his pathing during his next grind session.

He walked back toward the fort without killing any Ancient Defenders, carefully analyzing exactly where each one had spawned. He tried assigning each spawn area a name based on some notable feature, but many of them were too similar at first glance to get unique names.

Back at the bridge to the fort, he was stopped by Balor, “Oi, Champion! Would you be so kind as to escort me to the noble lady’s lighthouse?”

Coop raised an eyebrow and pointed at the lighthouse. It was a straight shot down the trail and none of the Ancient Defenders lingered near the path.

“I can’t leave the settlement territory on my own and it seems to be just beyond the boundary.” The stonemason offered.

Coop shrugged and led the way. As they walked he asked, “Do you need me to stay with you while you’re there?”

“It should be fine, but I might need you to retrieve me…” Balor responded apologetically.

Coop didn’t mind, “No problem, just yell if you need me, I’ll be rotating between here and there until then.” Indicating the fort and the lighthouse. It was about time he found a new enemy, but he would put it off a bit longer to test some routes and put a dent into his fourth Ancient Defender quest.

Coop resumed memorizing Ancient Defender spawns as they arrived at the lighthouse. After convincing Balor that the lighthouse was also built without mana, Coop let the disbelieving stonemason in. Balor promised not to disturb any of the lady’s belongings. Coop just accepted that Balor's people worshiped cats. Wasn’t that like the Egyptians? Coop thought they might be Egyptian space dwarves.

With his pseudo escort quest complete, Coop started his second grind session of the day. This time with improved stats.

Coop blazed through the monsters, one throw and one stab at a time. He even eliminated a few with the spear throw alone, saving himself a fraction of the fight and travel time. His first route took him the entire length of the dunes, from the lighthouse to the fort, then completed the circuit by returning deeper inland from within the scrubland.

He tightened the circuit by cutting off the end closest to the fort as the distances between the monsters was the greatest there.

While his kill times weren’t making the leaps and gains they were in the beginning, his own techniques were still improving. The timing on resummoning his spear after throwing it had gotten so exact, he could start the swing while the mist was still coalescing and have the spear mid thrust just as it solidified.

After an hour of altering his route slightly over and over, he began to notice the increase in travel efficiency. If viewed above his pathing would probably look like a go kart track. He focused on a few spawn locations where the Ancient Defenders appeared in pairs. He relied on his Agility to evade the first guard and use only one spear thrust to eliminate the second mechanical monster in each pair.

During the second hour he tried shaving off more of the spawns on one end of his little circuit, but he started to return to spawn locations before the monsters respawned. He ended up returning to his go kart track pathing and optimized it by trading a spawn in one location for another to see if it sped him up. He had never seen a monster spawn, but they obviously respawned frequently enough for him to grind on roughly 20 monster spawns indefinitely.

By his third hour, Coop was flagging. He felt like his efficiency was dropping simply due to being tired. He forced a fourth, final hour so that he could compare his results with his first grind session, but he was exhausted. He hadn’t received any debuffs or anything, but his body was giving up.

Coop walked over to the lighthouse and sat in the shade of the entrance to review his notifications.

[Congratulations! You have leveled up!]

[Congratulations! Your profession has leveled up!]

[Defeat Ancient Defenders IV (278/5000)]

[Scavenge Defeated Enemies IV (297/500)]

Despite his weariness and experimentation with routing between the monsters, he still outperformed his previous session. He wasn’t sure if the improved routing, or the improved stats helped the most, but he would use the exact same path next time when he was fresh to see.

Of course, he’d accept each and every level with open arms. Coop dropped his 10 free points into Mind and while he was satisfied with the physical improvement that he felt, he also held some conflicting feelings. He wasn’t unsatisfied with his gains, but he was disappointed that he wound up being physically limited from continuing. Was it his Body stat, or was it his physical body? If this was a video game there would be a stamina bar somewhere.

As he considered the lack of stamina indicators and tried catching his breath, Balor joined him at the bottom of the lighthouse.

“You ready to go?” Coop asked.

“I’m ready, Champion. I actually finished a few hours ago and was observing your hunt. You’re a zealous one aren’t ya.” The stonemason commented with a raised eyebrow. “Reconjuring your spear is a neat trick. But what are you hunting these weaklings for?”

“I’ve got a quest to kill a bunch of them.” Coop stated, and further explained, “I was testing to see how long it would take if I did it as efficiently as I could.”

“You’re trying to complete the chains?” The dwarf scoffed. ”The titles are hardly worth it if you ask me. There are better ways to level up.” Balor suggested.

“Title?” Coop’s eyebrows shot up, suddenly interested.

“By the Great Golem, did your faction not teach you anything at all? The title you natives get for slaying an ungodly amount of a single invader that gives +100 to your highest attribute. It’s not worth it. In the time it takes to complete the chain you could just gain more than 20 levels instead. It’s a reward for someone like Jones, if he spent 100 years on this beach it would eventually be a nice bonus.” Balor was already exasperated with Coop’s questions, not realizing they had barely even begun.

Coop wisely held himself back, and simply answered Balor’s question before asking more. “I don’t have a faction.”

“What? You’re not a Chosen? You fool! Did you decline? It’s not a binding thing, just a startup bonus!” Balor tugged on his beard.

“No, no, I wasn’t offered anything.” Coop tried calming the excitable alien down. It didn’t completely work.

“Well, what in the name of the Great Golem is motivating you to push that hard? I thought you had some faction that must have guided you all funny as a joke or something! You have some family you want to save? Maybe a girl you’re hoping to impress? Eh?” He elbowed Coop a few times.

“No, nothing like that. Not really anything that complicated.” Coop inadvertently thought of Charlie the park ranger and shook his head. “For now I just want to survive, and that means defeating these Primal Constructs. Simple. If they have escalating power, then I need to gather my own.”

Balor nodded along, “Fair enough, lad. Those Primal Constructs are a nasty bunch and not everyone can hide in other people's settlements. I expect you, Jones, and the Lady Feline will all need to fight.” He straightened his posture as he declared, “You won’t have to worry about sieges, I’ll have those glorious walls magically fortified soon enough!” He slapped Coop on the back with a rock hard palm.

“So Balor, what is the Great Golem you keep mentioning?” Coop ventured.

Balor leveled a disappointed stare at Coop. “The Great Golem is what my culture calls the entity that brought us mana. Most cultures have different names for it and if you know what’s good for ya, you won’t go questioning other people’s beliefs.” He shook his head. “Some of ‘em get real weird about it. Many have made mana the central concept of their beliefs, worshiping it as a gift from their god.”

Coop nodded in understanding. He was realizing that what Jones had been told was an AI might be a more mysterious entity than they were led to believe. It made sense that some would end up treating it as a god since it seemed like it was expanding the galactic community by uplifting entire planets with mana. Coop mulled the entity behind the system without asking any further questions.

Once Coop was suitably recovered they headed back to the fort. Coop’s thoughts wandered back to the title that Balor had revealed. It would reward +100 Mind. Absolutely massive. Too bad it sounded like the quest chain would be unfeasible to complete. Coop wouldn’t give up on it completely, maybe just make it a lower priority and chip away at it gradually. Coop nodded to himself.

He thought it was time to explore outside the settlement territory to see what else this new world had to offer.