Unchosen Champion

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The next wave was coming.

Coop had spent an uninterrupted 25 hours hunting the Tormenting Kites. The shallow waters around the patch reefs outside of the west side of the settlement had become his personal roaming grounds. How much the fifth wave would shake up the new status quo was yet to be determined.

The west side of the hexagonal fort was really the two walls on the northwest and the southwest of the structure. The two sections were separated by the channel splitting the northern and southern sides of the courtyard, so Coop was covering a lot of ground, or water in this case, by protecting the entire western side. He wasn’t able to eliminate all of the Kites that made their way from the edges of the mana dome, but he was supported by ranged casters that occupied the battlements at the top of the walls and of course the giant wild pig remained in his position at the entrance to the channel between the two walls. Together, they were enough.

The rest of Ghost Reef’s fighting force was spread along the rest of the fort with Captain Kayla’s corvettes occupying a similar role as Coop, engaging the Kites at sea and preventing them from besieging the ranged fighters on the walls with significant numbers. The name of the game thus far was to prevent the monsters from developing a critical mass at any specific place.

Coop’s tactics in thinning the invader numbers had ended up being even more effective than he anticipated. When he was calculating how many mistjumps he would be able to do, he severely underestimated. He failed to account for his Reaper title recovering mana from his kills and the further reduction in mana costs from continued use with Practical Application kicking in.

Normally, the mana recovered from monsters was completely negligible, but Kites were one of the few exceptions. They were essentially caster monster variants and had decent enough mana pools for him to sustain rapid mistjumps the entire 25 hours that he had been engaging them. Even at the start, as long as he occasionally killed more than one before a second mistjump, he was able to keep his strategy going indefinitely.

The cost of his mistjumps had also dropped dramatically, thanks to Practical Application. He was nearly realizing the dream of having no cost mistjumps. They were down to 10 mana already, which was essentially free at this point, considering his massive mana pool, mana’s relatively quick regeneration rate, and Reaper’s recovery.

Throwing his shield had also become much more natural. Thousands of repetitions was certainly an effective method of improving proficiency in something, though he was a little concerned about embedding bad habits into his muscle memory. For now, he was just happy to be able to hit targets reliably when throwing with his left arm.

He was comfortable with two different shield throws. The first was a shorter ranged pitch that kept the shield vertical and would deal more damage when he struck a target. The second was the sidearm frisbee throw. He could get a lot more distance with the sidearm, but it relied on aerodynamic lift and drag forces that let it glide, but made it slower and less damaging. With his Strength, it was possible to catch a Kite that didn’t see it coming, and defeat it, but most of the time it would be a better mistjump target instead. Other designs for his shield could improve its long range potency, but his spear would generally remain as his preferred option when it came to ranged attacks.

While Coop practiced his ranged and mobility tactics, the settlement had eased into a steady routine. The residents were certainly more confident in their abilities and those of their peers, but it seemed like everyone was waiting for the other shoe to drop. No one expected the waves to get easier as they went, so a cloud of anticipation hung over the defenders as they engaged with the Tormenting Kites. The previous waves had countered their defenses far more effectively than the Kites, and they couldn’t shake the looming threat of another trick from their minds.

The fact that there hadn’t been another Field Boss appearing with the new enemy type was a source of both relief and trepidation. Having the bosses show up unpredictably was not good news, but avoiding them altogether would be ideal. It would be great if Felrog was an exception due to the presence of a hive, but Andamarius had just been hanging out in his golf course before a hive had formed, so Coop believed other Field Bosses could be in unexplored corners of the territory.

At this point, it was clear that the waves were composed of the local invaders. This event was punishing them for what Coop saw as the settlement’s biggest strength; the variety of monsters around Ghost Reef. He had guessed that other settlements were simply more limited and that was why grinding was being ignored by seemingly everyone else on the leaderboards. Empress City only had the one monster available, but Coop couldn’t confirm how the rest of the settlements were situated.

This event seemed to be supporting his theory. The challenge assessment was clearly based on the number of monster types within the settlement territories, and each wave consisted of just one monster type. Ghost Reef seemed to be the only settlement with more than three monster varieties in its territory. He wasn’t sure if it was a pure advantage anymore, seeing as the event was turning the benefits into a threat. He was just glad that the settlement’s territory hadn’t expanded even further. Who knew how many more varieties were lurking in the region?

Before the next wave of monsters revealed themselves, he checked the event leaderboards.

Siege Event Settlement Scores

Ghost Reef - 5,924,046 (x48828125)

Shinjuku Gardens - 587,912 (x125)

Neon Park - 577,888 (x125)

Lotho - 555,152 (x125)

Windy Coast - 552,224 (x125)

Bakilon - 549,912 (x125)

Loch Bridge - 548,501 (x125)

Acre - 548,058 (x125)

Wintermeer - 547,117 (x125)

Aotearoa New Zealand - 546,900 (x125)

Coop thought if Ghost Reef’s event ended before the next wave, they would probably maintain their position in first place. It seemed like defeating a Field Boss had granted them a significant bonus, but none of the other settlements had done the same. Based on their scores he could guess that the x125 and the x25 settlements had experienced their first waves at this point.

A few familiar settlements remained in the top 10, but Coop grimly noted that the entire list had shrunk from 649 to 525. Empress City went from rank 604 to 480 despite still having zero score. Some probably fell during the initial wave and others that could have held on may have faced a Field Boss that overwhelmed them.

The Primal Constructs were definitely making progress in their attempt to take the planet for themselves. Too many resources were expended jockeying for position instead of securing their collective futures. He frowned as he destroyed another Kite and paused to pull up the individual scores.

Siege Event Individual Scores

Coop - 144,223 (+83,938)

Charlie Seraphin - 104,209 (+43,054)

Jett Black - 71,666 (+66,501)

Camila Alvarez - 71,542 (+63,921)

Madison Seraphin - 65,634 (+61,133)

Sunny Paws - 61,103 (+53,755)

Marcus Rollins - 57,012 (+53,125)

Arthur Anonymous - 55,701 (+48,379)

Frank Goba - 55,694 (+49,835)

Elder Olani - 55,690 (+37,946)

It had already been nearly two waves and a Field Boss since he last updated himself on their individual scores. The split frontline hurt Charlie’s coverage, but she was still dominant even with half as many targets. Meanwhile, Coop’s score was really benefiting from the flexibility offered by his Revenant class. No matter the opponent or the battlefield, he should be able to consistently contribute and his sustain meant that the consistency could continue without breaks.

The bonus from defeating a Field Boss had significantly boosted the settlement score, but the boost to their individual scores wasn’t quite as monumental. Still, other than Charlie, every person who directly fought Felrog had moved into the top of the list.

Marcus’s affliction bomber strategy contributed a lot during the previous two waves, bringing him to the top seven when he hadn’t been near the top at all previously. The rest of the top 1,000 was still dominated by residents of Ghost Reef with a few new exceptions.

Platinum appeared in the top 100 with almost 40,000 points. He had no idea how they could have managed that in a single wave. Even Charlie’s best waves were significantly less. Maybe they solo’d a Field Boss. Coop thought that was a name to keep an eye on.

Hai Yun was the next non-Ghost Reef resident on the list. They had a score of 21,000 which was more like what Coop would expect from a dominant performance during a single wave. Hai Yun was ranked 750. From there, a few more unfamiliar names appeared with some frequency, but it wasn’t like Coop knew every single phantom in Ghost Reef, so they could have been his allies just as much as elites from other settlements.

Coop kept hunting the Kites, even after the buzzer indicated the start of the fifth wave. The invaders were almost leisurely in their assault with their slow, smooth movement. Even though there were just as many of them as any of the other waves, they were spread thin along three cardinal directions, reducing the impact of their overwhelming numbers.

Coop gazed across the sparkling shallow water as Tormenting Kites continued to slowly glide above the reefs toward the fort. The sun was high in the sky, reducing their shadows to their minimum. The aquamarine sea was barely disturbed by the light breeze that seemed to be gently encouraging the water and the Kites toward the shores of Ghost Reef.

However, he noticed several abnormal waves that bulged on the surface, like something was moving just below the water with some speed, like a predator on the hunt.

He was at too low of an angle to see below the surface of the water from a distance, but the waves gave him the impression of sharks or dolphins seeking to trap small prey against the shore, and they were all heading toward him and the fort. The slower Kites were spaced out as they approached the fort, leaving room for additional paths in between which were now filled by the isolated waves.

Coop didn’t wait. He struck first, aiming his next spear throw at the much faster movement. The ethereal spear sliced through the water with barely a splash, exposing the creature for a brief moment before driving it into the sand at the bottom where it was defeated. Coop checked the notifications that appeared.

[You defeated Crazed Serpent (Level 45)]

[+55 Basic Credits]

[+1 Tainted Blade (Rare)]

[Congratulations! Your profession has leveled up!]

[Fortune Seeker (5/50)]

Crazed variants of the Primal Serpents were the next wave, and they were attacking from the sea along with the Kites. Coop was just glad they didn’t need to scramble to realign their defenses again. He could probably keep the same strategy, more or less, protecting the western flank of the fort. The alarm bells started going off as the enemies were detected and the defenders prepared to meet the new challenge.

Coop deliberately made a commotion in the shallow water, testing if he could bait the Serpents in a similar manner to the regular monster variants inside the mangrove forest. Each of the event monsters had demonstrated different priorities, with some blindly seeking to reach the shard while others sought to deal damage to the settlement or to the defenders themselves. He would find out where the Serpents' had their priorities set.

He threw his spear into the nearest Kite to the north, but held his position instead of mistjumping, still splashing as he went through exaggerated motions and resummoned his spear. He repeated the process with a Kite to the south.

For a moment, Coop felt overwhelming unease, as he scanned the surface of the water. Splashing around had been far too effective. The scene from above would look like a thousand guided torpedoes simultaneously locking onto their target, and Coop was in the crosshairs. Coop noted the monsters’ vertical blades extending, breaching the surface of the water and looking like metallic shark fins. It was threatening on an instinctual level.

Coop met the first few head-on. Thrusting his spear as they launched themselves toward him like he was a primitive hunter facing off with another apex predator, fighting over a hunting ground. The Serpents would have made an excellent catch, as large as they were. If they weren’t made of tiny spiked metal scales and didn’t evaporate into mana smoke when he defeated them, they would make a good mantlepiece. They charged at him as if they wanted to spear him themselves and a narrow dodge on his part would still result in catching their extended horizontal blades.

The Serpents were significantly more mobile than he was in the water, but he was quicker and stronger through raw stats. It was simply a matter of them being better adapted to moving in the ocean. Coop still did his best to back away, preventing too many of the monsters from reaching him at once. Of all the monsters they had fought, these were the largest so far. It would only take one or two of them striking him to knock him off balance and give the rest a deadly opening.

When his ethereal spear caught them mid attack, their mass was enough to knock him backwards if he didn’t have his feet firmly planted in the sand. If his spear only grazed the monsters, it was ineffective and they wouldn’t be diverted. He needed to stab them directly as they tried to stab him, or fully dodge them and thrust the spear through their flanks.

In the mangrove forest he had been fighting them outside of the water, on the wide branches, so he had been able to easily dodge their telegraphed attacks and stab them in the sides while they flew through the air. Here, in the shallow water, he couldn’t count on getting out of the way fast enough without exposing himself to their extended blades. Their attacks were quicker since they didn’t need to leap dozens of feet in the air to reach him, and he was slightly slower with the water partially stifling his movement.

Coop made a quick decision and swapped his spear and shield for a new weapon. A polearm that he hadn’t actually used before, but felt would be the perfect tool given the circumstances. It was similar enough to both the spear and glaive to be compatible with his techniques, and he would count on his Haunted title to correct his missteps.

The three-pronged ethereal trident was fully solidified when the next Serpent leapt toward him. With both arms bracing the trident, instead of only using a single arm like with his spear, he was much more comfortable countering the diving charge of the monster. He had a lot more room for effective counter strikes with the multiple prongs increasing his strike zone. The ineffective grazes caused by his spear were now deadly skewerings with the new weapon.

Coop stood against the surge of Serpents, slowly sliding backwards with each kill. He could handle them one at a time, but if they started crowding his flanks he would still be in trouble. Even head-on, when two attacks came simultaneously he was forced into narrow dodges that were made extremely risky by the extended horizontal blades. He ended up with long scratches more often than not when two attacked simultaneously. Then, the surviving of the pair became a monster he needed to deal with from behind as the surge continued from the front.

Eventually, he was forced to move and try to reset the engagement, lest he be surrounded and turned into the target of a feeding frenzy. He did so by throwing the trident just like his spear. He had to hold it a bit closer to the spikes, finding its center of gravity, but otherwise it was the same. It flew with the same practiced arc and annihilated one of the neglected Kites as Coop mistjumped to it. The Serpents twisted to chase him like a school of fish aggressively pursuing a lure as he splashed back into the water.

Coop skewered the quickest ones and continued the pattern. More Crazed Serpents constantly joined his pursuers, refreshing their numbers at least as fast as he reduced them. They were steadily attracted by the commotion of battle.

The pattern that he fell into resulted in a significant number of Tormenting Kites reaching the fort’s walls, but there was only so much he could do. Dealing with the much quicker and significantly more dangerous monsters occupied the majority of his attention.

He gradually returned to his original distance from the fort, a hundred yards away from the walls, and resumed his patrol, back and forth, north and south. He eliminated as many Kites as he could manage while maintaining the attention of nearly every Serpent that approached from the west.

Coop believed he could handle it and he felt relatively in control of the situation, outside of when he was scraped by a Serpent’s blade and was forced to mistjump again. They left him striped with long cuts that bled and mixed with the water until he healed with his Reaper title. From above, it was possible to track his progress based on the small clouds of turbid water that marked his path.

Late in the evening, the sunset turned the ocean red enough to mask his temporary scratches while he kept the precarious balance between fighting and kiting. It wasn’t until the twilight had faded and it got really dark that Coop realized how much more difficult the scenario had become. With nothing but moonlight to watch for the leaping Serpents, he was forced to react with much less warning despite his condition slowly diminishing. Anticipating Ancient Prowler ambushes hadn’t ever been this difficult, even when his stats were much lower.

Thankfully, someone launched flare-like magic into the ocean, all the way around the fort. The magical projectiles landed in the water and emitted a verdant green smoke that illuminated the reef with a surreal dim light. The additional light was barely enough to keep the balance from tipping out of Coop’s favor.

One of the support wraiths showed up some time later and tossed him a care package before teleporting away to avoid any of the monster’s attention. Coop didn’t have time to find out what he was given with the delicate stability he carefully maintained. He drank a greenish yellow elixir from a small flask and shoved a chewy dried stem in his mouth as he continued fighting, mistjumping, and leading the monsters around in pursuit.

He had two new buffs that immediately helped. The first was False-Light Eye. It gave him the ability to see silhouettes of everything in shades of light green as if the world had turned into green wireframes. He could see the Tormented Kites as they glided in the distance, ripples on the surface of the water, and even the Crazed Serpents underneath, all represented in a grid of glowing green lines. Alien night vision revealed more than his eyes could during the day time. He had to stop himself from gawking at the mana dome that was completely exposed in the sky with the enhanced vision. It looked like a neon green mesh wormhole against the black background of space.

The second buff was Dried Hellebore Root. The name of the buff didn’t help him understand what it did, but he immediately knew it was a stimulant. He could physically feel his pupils dilating, and his blood boiled, but he’d never felt so focused on anything in his life. Mistjumping didn’t leave him feeling any dizziness anymore, but it still felt like he was tripping in general.

It promised to be a wild night, hunting floating jellyfish silhouettes with an ethereal trident, being chased by wireframe alien snakes, the ocean burning with glowing smoke, and a mana dome sealing them all in.