Unchosen Champion

Charlie and Camila spent the night in Charlie’s childhood bedroom, sharing a bed and sleeping for the first time in 10 days with a pile of stuffed animals keeping watch. When they woke, Charlie’s father had prepared them a simple breakfast. Despite the modest offerings, it was one of the best meals either of them had ever eaten. It was also the first time in those 10 days that they had any food. They had missed both sleeping and eating far more than they had realized, Camila even teared up while savoring a bowl of dry cereal.

Afterwards, they taught Charlie’s father about the various factions and systems that they had learned about during their training. They wanted his input on their immediate plans. He was supportive of their plan to find a settlement, confirm it was safe, and return with its location so that he could make his way there. Of course, he wouldn’t budge from his wife’s side, but he anticipated that they would join the settlement once she returned. She was always one for the big cities and helping people in them.

The girls parted ways with Emmanuel before they accidentally led the rest of their party to his home. The next step was to find a settlement and return with the news of its status. After that was done, they would organize their own expedition under the guise of the official mission of the Empire.

Charlie and Camila headed toward where the downtown area used to be, unsure of what they would find, but searching for signs of a settlement. Charlie felt like she was on a true adventure, like the characters from the novels she had been loaning Coop, but Camila quickly spoiled the feeling by gushing about how incredibly hot she found Emmanuel. The vulnerability he showed and the devotion to his wife, it was so moving, she exclaimed to an embarrassed Charlie. She pulled her hooded cloak tighter as they walked down the abandoned streets into the city. Camila, skipping with enthusiasm, didn’t spare a thought toward Charlie’s embarrassment.

Camila’s mood was next on the chopping block, though, her skipping ceased when the pair were stopped by a group of what Charlie could only describe as bandits. They looked, appropriately, like the remnants of a society thrown back into the past by the demands of survival. Five of them stood side by side, armed with blades and blocking the road while half a dozen sat on the roof of a nearby building, some with bows and others warming up spells.

They appeared to be using an old bank as a base of sorts, barricading the corner lot with a wall of overturned cars and adopting the drive thru canopy as a lookout tower. Charlie had to admit that she was impressed. It worked as an excellent vantage point to monitor all four directions of the intersection. The bank made an ideal location for a checkpoint, but they obviously didn’t have a civilization shard, and were merely using their numbers and location to take advantage of passersby. It wouldn’t last long.

The leader of the group of five spoke up from 25 yards away, “Stop right there! If you wanna keep goin’ ya gotta pay the toll!” he announced to the amusement of his lackeys.

Camila scoffed, “Shouldn’t you be trying that from under a bridge?” She wasn’t willing to entertain the demands of a group of level 10 and below bandits. He had made a grave error in assuming he could command anything from Camila in the first place.

“We could just go around,” Charlie offered quietly to Camila, she'd still prefer to avoid confrontation. “What would we even pay with anyway?”

“You’re too sweet, Charlie.” She whispered back, then yelled at the bandits, loud enough for all of them to hear. “If you don’t crawl back into your hole, I’m gonna break your legs.” The absolute confidence she displayed while she made such a threatening declaration caused a few of the bandits to glance at each other with doubt. The leader was unmoved.

“Oh, give it up, girl, it don’t matter what your level is when you’re outnumbered!” The leader demanded while gesturing to his ranged support. The ones with bows readied their arrows.

Camila didn’t waste any more time 'negotiating' and signaled to Charlie that she was initiating with a subtle movement. Charlie raised her hand above her head and snapped her fingers, deploying a wall of invisible wind in front of the group of ranged bandits, who twitched at the snapping sound, but were none the wiser to the barrier.

While the fingersnap was a part of her spell, it was also a starter pistol for Camila, who burst forward with such incredible speed she turned into a blur, closing the distance between her and the lead bandit in the blink of an eye.

She poured her momentum into a low kick that shattered the leader’s legs and sent him careening into two of his fellow bandits. The combination of her skills, Body Acceleration and Maximum Velocity, incapacitated three of the bandits before anyone else could react.

One of the bandits was composed enough to retaliate by swinging a sword toward Camila's neck. She comfortably sidestepped the attack, proving a mountain of difference in their speeds. When he swung again, she shocked the bandits by stepping into the sword’s arc to meet the blow with the knuckles of her closed fist.

The punch activated another of her passive skills, Perfect Counter, to reverse the energy of the bandit’s attack back to him, preventing any damage to Camila. The punch colliding with the sword sounded like a homerun being hit, and the bandit went down like a ragdoll, as his sword sailed across the street, defeated by his own kinetic energy being redirected to his jaw.

The ranged support also joined the fight, but were proven completely ineffective when four arrows and two magical projectiles entered the wind wall. All six attacks were slammed into the ground by the downdraft created by Charlie’s skill after only traveling forward a few feet.

The last of the five bandits on the ground raised his hands up in surrender when faced with the obviously annoyed Camila.

“What did you guys want in payment?” Camila asked with a serious tone, releasing an unmistakable killing intent.

“I dunno! I’m just a follower!” When Camila narrowed her eyes, not believing his claim of ignorance, he quickly added, “I think maybe he hoped to recruit you to the gang! To trick you into working for us! Ya know to pay off a debt… like that… You’re the highest level we’ve seen!”

Camila gave a non-committal grunt and beckoned Charlie to join her as they continued down the street. Charlie was glad they didn’t end up killing anyone, but could tell that they had come close. Camila was prepared to execute them depending on the bandit’s answer. Charlie hoped they wouldn’t have more encounters like that. She spared a glance at the groaning heap of injured bandits. She thought that they'd be fine once their health fully regenerated.

They traveled through the outskirts of the devastated city. Entire blocks had become completely dilapidated and others seemed like they were on the verge of being overrun by plantlife. The lowrise apartment buildings that comprised most of this part of the city still stood, but none were undamaged. It was like walking through an old warzone, the once familiar city unrecognizable to either of them. Charlie spotted faces in several of the apartments, peeking out their windows, through leaves and cracked glass, presumably in similar holding patterns to her father.

Charlie couldn’t believe this all happened just from the introduction of mana. The damage seemed older and more extreme than what was described by the instructors of the Endless Empire. She thought the damage must have been compounded by mana disabling all the infrastructure as well. From what she had learned, most planets weren’t as developed as Earth was when assimilation began, so the aliens might also have underestimated the effects of mana on structures in the first place.

They kept making their way toward the city center, through the increasingly dense development, looking for any clues of a civilization shard. They planned to continue all the way through the downtown into the more expensive waterfront. If they didn’t find a settlement, they could scout out some boats for later.

They saw plenty of people, but they quickly scattered as soon as they noticed the pair, not interested in exchanging greetings. Still, the number of people was no comparison to the millions that lived in the city prior to the assimilation of mana. Charlie was worried about so many people lingering in places like this, they should have been in the territory of a settlement for safety.

The next time they were stopped, it was by a group of the mechanical wolves that Charlie’s father had described in the suburbs. There were six of them who appeared in an arc that threatened both flanks of their prey. Unfortunately for them, they overestimated themselves just like the bandits had, and Charlie didn’t mind killing monsters. Especially not the same ones that had threatened her family.

This time Charlie started the fight. With a twirl of one of her fingers and Camila at her side, she summoned a small dust devil in the middle of the wolves that started to drag newspapers and small debris into the street. The metal wolves ignored the feeble winds, unthreatened, but it grew rapidly as she fed it with her mana.

The twisting winds grew to half the width of a car and rose toward the sky, not yet high enough to even exceed the roofs of the five story buildings, let alone meet the clouds. With the gathering winds becoming too strong to ignore, the wolves tried to make distance.

They had reacted too late as the winds continued to intensify, the wolves were dragged toward the swirling core. Five of the wolves scraped the pavement as they tried to escape, but they were each captured and torn to pieces by the miniature tornado.

The final wolf lunged toward Charlie, but Camila stepped into its path, took a half step backwards to find the ideal spot, and landed a Perfect Counter into its snout, launching it back into the tornado where it only lasted a few more seconds before it joined the rest of its pack.

With a wave, the winds ceased, but there was no hiding Charlie’s tousled hair. Camila giggled and skipped over to run her fingers through it before Charlie was able to put her hood up.

The wolves had all been less than level 10, but both girls received a level for completing the first quest in the chain to hunt them. Snagging a level after a quick encounter was a nice treat, but traveling to hunt small numbers of regular monsters in different regions was not considered a viable way to level. The general consensus was that the best way to level, outside of simulation training, was to hunt elite monsters in organized groups, or, grimly, to fight in wars. The elite monsters were found in special regions, like Dungeons or Mana Wells, or during special events that would occur both around settlements and in the wild.

As it got dark, Charlie and Camila decided they would prefer to make camp rather than travel through the ominous remains of the city at night. They chose an intact high rise office building and climbed a dozen floors. They found a cubicle farm where they were confident they wouldn’t be found and definitely couldn’t be snuck up on.

They didn’t sleep, instead passing the night discussing the state of Earth and what they thought the future held for them individually and for humans as a whole. The revelations that there was an entire universe of life out there had really been relegated to a footnote by the need to adapt to a new system in order to survive. The downtown office district had been even emptier than the residential areas.

As depressing as the situation was, they still enjoyed chatting late into the night, pretending that they were pre-teens staying up late during a sleepover. When Charlie lamented the lack of junk food, Camila ran off and returned only a minute later with her arms full of bags of chips, candy bars, and sodas. She had raided some vending machines in a breakroom. Charlie hadn’t had a best friend like Camila since early in high school before friend groups started drifting apart as they developed different interests with time and age. They cuddled together underneath Charlie’s heavy cloak, telling stories and eating junk food.

There was something about being abducted by aliens together that established bonds that would last forever.

—

Coop sat on the roof of the fort with his legs dangling over the inner edge, gazing at the outline of the planned city from above. The two buildings they had constructed fit in perfectly with the fort, but seemed lonely without more buildings, streets, and people. Balor hadn’t started on the city, yet, as he was still busy reinforcing the fort walls with mana. It would be some time before he was ready to work on the bridge to the other half of the fort, at which point he would start repairing and reinforcing the other half. The stonemason had his work cut out for him.

Coop admired the peaceful nighttime scene before he reviewed his status.

[Status]

HP - 312/950

MP - 1700/1700

Class - Revenant (Level 20)

Profession - Basic Scavenging (Level 12)

Affinity - Spectral

Race - Human (Rank 1)

Faction - None

Strength - 10 (+170)

Agility - 10 (+85)

Body - 10 (+85)

Mind - 170

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 Prowlers IV (825/5000), Defeat Primal Kites II (11/25), Defeat Ancient Defenders IV (2572/5000), Upgrade Camp to Outpost

Basic Credits - 17,044

Ever since he had seen the leaderboards he had been feeling the motivation to grind. He had made some major progress over the last two days because of it, gaining six class levels and four profession levels. Two of the class levels came from completing the second and third stages of the Defeat Ancient Prowlers quest chain, and the other four had come from grinding Ancient Defenders during the day and Ancient Prowlers at night.

After consulting with Jones about weapons to use against the dexterous Ancient Prowlers, he had decided to try another polearm before switching to a sword. He felt most comfortable with the spear, and thought that a transition to another polearm would be more convenient. If he tried the sword, he wanted to fight something safer to garner some experience before challenging the more dangerous Prowlers, but with a polearm he was ready to give it a shot right away.

The polearm they decided on was the glaive. It was the same length as his spear, but instead of the narrow pointy speartip, there was almost two feet of blade on the end. He could still poke with it, but the real strength was in sweeping attacks that utilized the dangerous edge of the blade. The downsides were that he couldn’t use it as an effective throwing weapon and he couldn’t use his shield.

It was a solid trade-off when fighting the Ancient Prowlers, as he was able to cleave them before their backup arrived, and keep them at bay with wide swings that were still deadly. The packs of five Prowlers never engaged with their full numbers, instead relying on an unbroken chain of one or two who would tag team into the fight when an opportunity appeared.

After he had seen the leaderboards for the first time, he made use of his first Well-Fed buff and hunted the Ancient Defenders with his spear. His kill efficiency was continuing to improve and once the mana cost of his spearjump was reduced enough, he would have to measure his kills by the minute instead of the hour. Thanks to the Mana Regeneration provided by the Well-Fed buff he could get a taste of how efficient his hunts would be when he could teleport every engagement. He guessed he would be able to push above 300 kills an hour.

Unfortunately, there was still a massive distance to cover before he was at that stage. He would probably be done with the Defeat Ancient Defenders quest chain before his teleport had its cost reduced by enough to use it on every monster. It still cost 46 mana per jump, even with his excessive use. He would need the cost reduced even further before he challenged the Primal Kites with any seriousness as well.

Before the kites, he had added different monster rotation to his repertoire by hunting the Ancient Prowlers early in the night with his glaive. It was easy to be constantly engaged in combat with them quite literally throwing themselves at him until he retreated. The limiting factor when hunting the Prowlers was always his own health. The stacking Vulnerable debuff forced him to take regular breaks, to allow it to expire, and his nights always ended after only a few hours with his health dipping low enough to compel him to retreat.

His health would barely regenerate enough for the next night while he slept and while he fought the much less dangerous Ancient Defenders during the following day. His skill option at level 25 would be an important one, there were a lot of utility options he hoped to find, but what he really wanted was some way to regenerate his health. It took way too long to recover passively.

In two days he had managed to defeat almost 2,000 Ancient Defenders, reduce the mana cost of his teleport by two, kill 1,100 Ancient Prowlers, completing two stages of their quest chain, and completely finish off his basic scavenging quest to loot 1,000 defeated monsters. He was feeling comfortable with his second weapon, though he took a shortcut by using another polearm, and he had gained 50 more Mind attribute points. Checking the leaderboard, his progress was readily apparent.

His position was 98,612,003.

He had passed almost one hundred million people. This was huge progress when keeping in mind that the factions were releasing their Chosen constantly, and most of them would still be ahead of him, further suppressing his rank. Checking the top 10 was proof of new Chosen arriving constantly, with half of the top rankers being new entrants.

Day 12

The Lich (Level 44)

Banshee (Level 38)

Zombie Lord (Level 36)

Hai Yun (Level 27)

Michael Williams (Level 27)

Wangmo Thaye (Level 27)

Tzultacaj (Level 26)

Pan Cheng (Level 26)

Kitwana (Level 26)

Na Ho-Jung (Level 26)

Hai Yun had retained position in fourth place, gaining a level before Michael Williams and Wangmo Thaye joined the leaderboard. Interestingly, Tzultacaj kept their position by gaining a level before the factions released all of their level 26s which appeared to be the next baseline for the faction’s power leveling after two more days. The only other change was that Banshee gained three levels and jumped ahead of Zombie Lord. How Banshee gained three levels in the time it took the other top rankers of a much lower level to gain just one was yet another mystery of the undead.

Coop had one more task before he went to bed. He was going to spend 15,000 basic credits on a Brewery, which would allow the Tavern to serve more drinks each day with a wider variety of offerings. The Tavern had been cleaned out of ale both days of its existence thanks to Balor’s insatiable thirst. Coop figured since he was getting a kickback, he might as well maximize the settlement’s lone source of passive income. Eventually, it would pay for itself, even if Balor was the only customer, with how much he drank.

He strolled down the future Main Street toward the civilization shard and considered how effective Basic Scavenging had actually been. Completing the final quest in the profession quest chain had given him an upgrade to Rarity, adding potential Rare drops to the scavenged loot. The item drops hadn’t amounted to much yet, but the yield bonuses had made collecting Basic Credits incredibly fast. In two days, he had made enough for an advanced industry building just from the scavenged credits.

During Coop’s last visit to the Tavern, Desmond had given him the impression that a mere camp being able to afford more than one of the most basic service buildings was already impressive. The Tavern cost 50 times the basic service buildings, and the Brewery was triple even that. Coop had to give the credit to the scavenging profession. At least when it was combined for his tactic of hunting thousands of monsters it was extremely profitable.

He arrived at the shard and selected the Brewery. He chose an independent proprietor and had the building constructed on one of the side streets rather than the main, adjacent to the Clumsy Shark Tavern. He watched as a small wooden building appeared and went inside to meet the new resident.

He entered what was essentially a barn that was filled with barrels. There were mechanisms and ovens along the back wall and what he assumed were stills. Coop didn’t know the process and he was sure mana would make it unfamiliar anyway. He didn’t spot any aliens. At least until one of the machines called out to him.

“Welcome, Champion. Thank you for accepting this one.” A robotic voice called to Coop.

When he identified the source he was surprised to see the shape of a robot forming out of steel and copper that he had assumed was a brewing apparatus. Coop guessed it would be more accurately described as a golem, but it was very shiny.

“No problem, I hope you enjoy it here.” Coop responded after a brief pause.

“This one will do its best.” The golem stated, not sounding particularly lifelike, before it returned its attention to the barrels.

Coop shrugged and said goodbye before letting himself out. It was time for bed. Tomorrow he had another full day of grinding lined up. Then the following day he would be able to upgrade the settlement to an outpost, christening it Ghost Reef, and appearing on the settlement leaderboards. He hoped the next settlement upgrade would be something they could complete with their limitations.

He looked forward to another productive day in paradise.