Unchosen Champion

The One That Hunts was swiftly dissolving into dust that further brokedown until nothing but thin wisps of mana smoke remained. The smoke was swept away with the underground currents, being carried off into the unseen depths by the invisible flows of mana. Coop’s phantasm had struck the battered creature with an ethereal bo staff, defeating it with blunt magical force while Coop chained attacks with his own weapon, simultaneously preventing the shrimp from getting close enough to grapple and keeping it off-balance with varied whirling swings.

Coop had cycled through each of his weapons, testing both the weaknesses of the monsters as well as his phantasms. The monsters were proving to be a difficult opponent for his personal abilities. None of his weapons had elevated his effectiveness above the rest by any significant degree and he continued to rely on the phantasms to carry his damage through each engagement. Coop checked his most recent notifications after the last kill of the round.

[You defeated One That Hunts (Elite Level 103)]

[+1004 Basic Credits]

[Congratulations! You have leveled up!]

It had only taken another 45 or so kills before he lit up with another level. The pace would have been excellent, considering the monster density and the speed that he could defeat them, but he was ironically running into the limitation that prevented most others from deeming grinding as a worthwhile pursuit at all: resource management.

The only reason the fights went smoothly was because of Legacy of the Mists, but the phantasms were intensive on his mana pool. The cost was forcing him to stop his grind to recover. It was frustrating, as it was preventing him from getting into a groove, taking him out of his meditative grinding mindset just as it got going. Coop would have abandoned the whole thing until he had a chance to exploit Practical Application into making the skill cheaper if it wasn’t so incredibly satisfying to incorporate the phantasms into his techniques.

Every time he successfully coordinated with Legacy it was significantly more rewarding than properly exercising his own techniques by themselves. The commendations of his Haunted title were put into overdrive when Coop and his phantasms exercised precise combinations as if the act of coordinating multiplied the subconscious rewards. The satisfaction was addicting.

He blasted through most of his mana in about an hour, using a single phantasm for every shrimp, but he got several extra summons through the Reaper title recovering a significant amount of resources for each kill. He told himself he just needed to power through the early parts and the efficiency would come later, but the initial mana cost was discouraging. At least he was diligent enough to avoid draining his mana completely, always maintaining some for Mind over Matter to kick in during an emergency situation.

Coop planned to continue to experiment with his different weapons as he engaged more of the shrimp monsters in the coral colony. He was trying to see if the phantasms came with any of their own particularities when it came to the different weapon types, but so far, every weapon had yielded expert phantasms with incredibly potent magic power. Each one had proven to be capable of perfectly executing precise and devastating attacks, whether their equipment was truly ancient or advanced enough that Coop would be prevented from summoning his own equivalent set by the system’s restrictions.

The shrimp monsters were weak to every type of magic that Coop could bring to the table. It didn’t matter if the phantasm was wielding a sword, a glaive, or a bo staff, every single one had a lethal and often explosive result. Coop was a little curious about both the physics and the mechanics of what was happening when the magical force was transmitted through a physical attack from an incorporeal entity, but he was more than content with the outcome regardless of his own understanding. The monsters themselves were at least partially to blame for the dramatic results, with their odd physiology. It may have made them physically robust, but it came with some other costs that magic damage evidently seized onto.

It did seem like the blunt weapons were slightly more effective when it came to the shrimp monsters. The bo staff and morning star phantasms never failed to take entire chunks out of their targets. While the bladed weapons had better penetrative power, they were more concentrated with their damage. Either way, the monsters were defeated, though.

As Coop returned to his resting spot, he reflected on the incredible progress he was already making thanks to the mana well. Two levels, some possible treasures, and there was massive potential with the Stage 1 monster alone. The Coral Forest had delivered with an excellent grind spot, and he was barely getting started, unable to totally capitalize with his mana limitations.

While he waited for his mana to recover, he tried summoning another new weapon. The one-handed weapons he could wield with his shield were missing a blunt option, and he didn’t necessarily want to give up the shield through quick swapping just to access the more devastating weapon options. Really, only his sword and spear were available with his shield, and even though quick swapping had nearly eliminated most of the restrictions between his weapons, allowing him to utilize his entire arsenal as he pleased, he felt like he should round out his one-handed weapons with at least one more to simplify his kit. The slight restriction where mists spent time solidifying was something he could easily prevent with a one-handed blunt weapon ready to go for each engagement.

Considering how many weapons he was already cycling through, he was surprised he hadn’t already stopped to consider the damage coverage of his arsenal. With his shield, he only had a slashing weapon in the sword and a piercing weapon in the spear. Previously, he had been hyper focused on other factors, like mobility and range, so he had left an obvious gap to fill. All the bashing while using one-handed weapons had come from the shield itself.

Coop thought about using a simple club and going all-in on bonking his enemies, but he had the image of a one-handed warhammer clear in his mind’s eye, so he tried that first. Mists gathered until he was gripping a surprisingly long weapon. He didn’t expect Retribution to allow the hammer to extend to a length that was similar to his shortsword. He was mentally prepared to try a regular claw hammer, but his ethereal summon was already shaping up to be much better.

The warhammer was simple enough, with a sturdy handle, and surprisingly narrow shaft. The head of the hammer was only as wide as the already slight shaft, with a flat face on one side, and a pointed spike on the opposite. The hammer head was almost comically small, but Coop really wouldn’t want to be hit by either the blunt side or the spiked side. It reminded him of a lengthened geological hammer that would be useful for precisely chipping through rock to find precious stones.

He swung it a few times, testing it, and finding the balance to be much better than his first summons usually went. It zipped through the air with shocking speed. A heavy pommel beneath the grip moved the center of gravity away from the head, but that made it feel like it was extremely quick. When he tapped it against his shield, he didn’t feel any reverberation run down his arm. The grip seemed to be insulated by the mists imitating thick layers of leather that would prevent painful vibrations. Coop thought it was neat.

After playing around with his new weapon for nearly an hour, shadow boxing with the help of his title, his mana had finally recovered. Coop hopped to another layer of the foliose coral, ready to crack some giant mana-mutated crustaceans.

He had to pick a different path because his previous routes were still cleared of monsters, despite having hours to respawn. The lack of proximity based respawns reminded Coop of the Primal Trackers back on the mainland. When he wiped them out from the Peacock Park fields they didn’t come back right away. First, they had to rotate from the golf course where they originated from. Coop had his own suspicions for where the shrimp came from, since the foliose coral structure grew from the depths, he thought they would be climbing up from below.

The coral path he selected twisted toward the interior and led him along folding structures that reminded him of the edges of a ruffled dress. The upturned edges were lit with the same bioluminescence that floated through the air in clouds of sprites, but the bases were solid coral that reached beyond the top of Coop’s head. Coop had to respect the guidance of the coral as breaking through it would be unreasonably difficult, and frankly, Coop didn’t want to damage the unique structures.

As he rounded a corner of the coral hedge maze, he found himself entering a natural courtyard with a single monster occupying the center.

Coop targeted the One That Hunts and launched his brittle shield to initiate the fight. The shrimp’s claws blasted the air with their incredible speed and Coop immediately followed. As he stepped through the mists with his warhammer cocked back, he greeted the shrimp with a devastating swing straight to the top of the head and activated Legacy of the Mists.

The One That Hunts was completely dazed even before the phantasm landed its own attack from behind. The ghost was fully decked out in heavy plate armor that the system would never have allowed Coop to equip. It held a painted kite shield at the ready while it smashed the warhammer through the exposed carapace of the shrimp. Coop and the phantasm had a moment to stare at each other before the mists took the summon back, but Coop could only see himself in the partial reflection of the heavy plate helmet and the coral walls behind, like he was peering into a dirty, fog-covered mirror.

Coop raised his warhammer to check out the small head. It really was unimpressive, completely lacking in any sort of intimidation factor, but there was something threatening about a seemingly innocuous weapon as well. There was no denying the effectiveness after it rendered the shrimp helpless with its initial strike. Really, the only reason any of his other weapons had worked at all was due to his sheer Strength and relentlessness, but the warhammer finally had some impact outside of shifting his opponent into vulnerable positions.

Coop continued through another of the winding coral pathways, brushing past tall sheets of violet or orange gorgonians, and heavy gardens of bright anemones, all while defeating every shrimp he found with even greater ease. After refining his tactics and finding the right tools for the job he was already gaining momentum. If not for mana putting the breaks on him periodically, he’d be entering the zone. He still had mana to go when he lit up from receiving yet another level.

[You defeated One That Hunts (Elite Level 101)]

[+1008 Basic Credits]

[Congratulations! You have leveled up!]

Coop may not have been able to get a nice steady grind going, but he was still establishing a cadence of a level every few hours of fighting. He tried to compare the speed to any of his other grind sessions, but nothing really compared to the flood of experience he was receiving except maybe the Primal Construct Elite wave. It was ridiculous when he considered half of the time he spent was wasted on recovery.

Legacy of the Mists was slowly getting cheaper. He noted it cost 498 mana and wondered if Practical Application was taking pity on him by working faster than normal. If that’s what it took, he wished the skill would feel more sympathy. Coop only wanted the ability to grind anything he wanted for as long as he wanted, whenever he wanted.

“Perfectly reasonable.” Coop assured himself under his breath.

Coop continued defeating shrimp monsters within the coral maze until he was nearly out of mana again. Another level marked the time to return and he checked his notifications before he got his bearings.

[You defeated One That Hunts (Elite Level 101)]

[+1026 Basic Credits]

[Congratulations! You have leveled up!]

If there was one aspect of the mana well he was already feeling unfulfilled by, it was the lack of profession levels. It was too early to establish that Scavenging wouldn’t progress at all, but he was getting worried. He hadn’t defeated that many monsters yet, but other than the initial shrimp, Scavenging hadn’t gone up at all. It was fine. Any increase to his stats was good and a grind area where class experience exceeded profession experience was merely the inverse of the normal quest chain grinds. They’d probably balance out over a long enough period of time as long as he kept up with both.

Coop looked around at the confusingly similar coral structures as they overlapped each other, establishing nooks and grooves in the borders of the trail, and shrugged to himself. He would have been completely lost if he was relying on his own navigational skills to keep track of the winding paths across the coral colony, but when it was time to recover his mana all he needed to do was swap weapon sets and mistjump above the barrier walls. Teleporting back to the safe coral platform was as straightforward as tossing his spear a few times. Mistjumping for free was pure luxury.

The pyramid shape of the coral colony was especially handy, since no matter where he ended up, he always had the consistently shaped landmark to orient himself. Then there was also the fact that he was making himself comfortable in the very top level of the north western corner of the entire mana well. It didn’t take much effort to find himself back at the safe coral platform where he made himself cozy while he waited for his resources to recover.

“I shoulda brought snacks.” Coop mumbled to himself as he lay down on his back, doing his best to find a comfortable position on the magically reinforced calcium carbonate structures.

The frequent breaks were frustrating, but they also meant that he could probably keep up this version of a grind forever, as long as his mental state didn’t give in. Coop just had to keep in mind that, eventually, the mana costs wouldn’t hinder him any longer. He was finally starting to relate with all those who dismissed his type of extended solo grinding as a viable method of advancement. Even he would have sought alternatives if his build wasn’t specifically designed to be efficient.

Without his particular combination of skills, in order to have the equivalent regular attack potency, someone else would need to be hundreds and hundreds of levels above their target along with wearing extremely expensive equipment. At that point it would probably be insulting to challenge Ancient Defenders for however long it would take to kill a complete quest chain’s worth of them. It would definitely be preferable to find a party and challenge equal level monsters to gain more levels.

Coop was finally moving away from the idea that some of the factions were completely incompetent. They were approaching the assimilation from a different perspective, and if Coop was being honest, their conclusions weren’t that bad some of the time, as long as he could figure out their point of view. He wasn’t sure how he would have convinced a bunch of strangers to grind from the start if he couldn’t point out the specific monsters to start with, how to fight them, and the significance of the benefits without using Ghost Reef and himself as examples. The factions didn’t know which monsters were located where, and for the most part there just weren’t the same varieties for their Chosen to hunt. It would be much easier to rely on global settlement events, mana wells, and maybe more powerful monster concentrations later.

Thankfully, Coop didn’t need to keep considering things because his mana was recovered. Coop hopped up, excited to return to the action. He chose the same starting path and followed it to the natural courtyard with the intention of trying a different path at the crossroads.

However, he found a respawn of sorts. A fire engine red shrimp was waiting where there had previously been a brownish shrimp. Coop inspected the newcomer.

[One That Hunts (Elite Level 101)]

[(Agility)]

[Of The Feast]

Apparently, Coop had left a gap for the other shrimp faction to fill. As interesting as it was that the coral colony was dynamically populated by the shrimp, he proceeded to fight the monster because he was far more interested in the experience they could give him.

He threw his brittle shield, allowing it to be annihilated by the defensive claw strikes, and mistjumped into range. The head of his one-handed warhammer clobbered the shrimp as he struck it in the right temple, forcing it to stumble to the left. A phantasm appeared on the left to deliver the killing blow, taking advantage of the shrimp’s shift to maximize the damage with a crossing strike.

Coop continued with his new route, finding monsters waiting like sentries. Another level lit him up in a hazy white spotlight when his mana pool was a third of the way depleted.

[Congratulations! You have leveled up!]

He shook his head at how rapidly the levels were coming despite the obstacles preventing a smoother grind. A dozen more phantasms and he was ready to head back to wait for his recovery.

On his third run to the courtyard, he was finally presented with an issue that might require more patience to overcome than he currently had. A bright red shrimp was grappling with a brown shrimp where previously he had found an individual of one or the other for him to engage with. They slammed each other with their claws, barely dealing any visible damage despite the force of the blows. The fact that there were two wasn’t the problem, it was what his aura had revealed when he inspected them that caused him to rethink the viability of a perpetual grind in the coral colony.

[One That Hunts (Level 56)]

[(Agility)]

[Of The Feast]

[One That Hunts (Level 56)]

[(Agility)]

[Of The Hunger]

The levels of these opponents were unacceptable. They even lost the ‘Elite’ designation before their level. There would be no progress for Coop in defeating monsters that far below his current state. He was already level 106. He was definitely better off completing quest chains, no matter how much lower the quest monsters would be. At least the quests themselves would offer guaranteed levels along with the Slayer stats at the end.

Coop shook his head as he ascertained what was happening. The monsters respawned in a much weaker state, then seemed to grow by accumulating mana, evolving into Elites and advancing in levels. These two individuals were hardly half the size of the ones that Coop had previously been hunting and they only had two claws each, instead of four.

The two factions appeared to be fighting over ideal locations that would enable their progress, but that meant that Coop wouldn’t be able to simply fight the respawns. He would need them to spend some time growing before it would be worth it for him to swoop in and harvest the experience. On the other hand, this meant that Shane’s party and other residents of Ghost Reef would be able to take advantage of the lower level opportunities. That would also call for Coop to cull the monsters that had already developed into challenges that were too difficult, and for him to venture forward into alternate hunting grounds for himself.

Coop pushed away the disappointment at finding lower level monsters and accepted that he found a new goal before he returned to the surface and reported his findings. He just needed to defeat every single One That Hunts one time, then he could leave and let his companions claim the coral colony as a leveling zone. Since he didn’t have a quest tracker, he wasn’t keeping track of his total kills, but he was sure he had only defeated a few hundred of the shrimps at most. He was giving himself permission to kill thousands more. He shrugged, it wouldn’t be any good to leave any shrimp over level 100. It would be a nasty surprise for his residents to find.

“The experience is just a bonus.” Coop tried fooling himself about what he really wanted.

Remembering how the exploitation of the mana wells was described by the factions, he thought it made more sense. They had always mentioned ‘occupying’ or ‘monopolizing’ the mana wells. The terminology had actually been deliberate all this time. He had mistakenly assumed they meant the words as exclusionary ideas, blocking others from benefiting, but he admitted he could have been wrong. The mana wells needed periodic attention or they could get out of control. Coop imagined that there were others around the world that had been allowed to grow too much, and only someone overleveled would be able to clear them out.

Given that it was Day 56 and the fresh monsters were level 56, he wondered if that was also why the factions had dictated that only the exceptional would exceed a level a day. He shook his head, realizing he was going too far in crediting the aliens. There was no way they had accurately predicted mana concentrations and densities when they varied across the planet. Not a chance.

He reevaluated his thoughts, and came up with several of his own theories for why the alignment in days and levels. The top option being that the stage closest to the surface was closest to the standard that the factions were actually familiar with. After all, levels were supposed to slow down as the assimilation progressed and people reached higher echelons. The one day, one level rule wouldn’t make sense for a sliding scale.

Coop watched the shrimp wrestle with one another, slamming their claws against carapaces with brutal wet slaps and snagging the smaller forearms with their graspers. They really had an even match of physical defense and striking power. Whichever one of these two specimens won, Coop could only say that it would take a long time to determine the victor.

He was forced to bypass the belligerent pair and head down another unexplored trail. One of the last branches from this particular crossroads. Coop had given himself a new mission, and he would take it on with gusto. Cull the shrimp.