Unchosen Champion

The defenders of Ghost Reef had barely defeated the Unveiled Blade before the next wave began. Coop had been uneasy as the fight dragged on because he was worried that it wouldn’t be over in time. The adversity of the challenges became significantly more demanding as they overlapped each other and having Field Bosses involved simultaneously with two waves was a complication he didn’t think they could afford.

The interior corridor of the fort was a ruined mess of collapsed stone and rubble. A wide open exterior wall, demolished by the Field Boss’s bulk, let sunshine filter inside, through the dust, into what was previously a dimly lit hallway. Coop was surrounded by phantoms and a few residents that were congratulating each other on the victory with big smiles and pats on each other's backs.

Coop let himself relax for a moment, embracing the loosened atmosphere. He felt the tension that had accumulated in his neck gradually release, but he didn’t indulge himself. A few seconds of calm was all he allowed before he put his game face back on.

He jumped through the gap in the wall and mistjumped back into the shallows, crossing the moat with a shield toss. When he landed, he switched his weapon to the ethereal trident and headed toward the west side that had been his temporary territory through the last couple waves.

There was no sign of the fruit bat that had successfully countered Gaol’s assault. He assumed it went to join its unchosen brethren who had fled as soon as the fight reached the wall that housed their roost. Coop couldn’t help but wonder what it had been hunting to get so many levels. It wasn’t like fruit and flowers would have given it the experience to level so much, so he imagined there were other invaders occupying the groves around the island chain.

If it had been active during the day, he was sure someone would have noticed. Jett had been securing the fort from Excavators ever since the beginning, the burrowing owl was defeating Ancient Defenders on the dunes, the pig fought on its island, but the bat must have had a larger range. It probably knew what the unknown waves would be. If only it could share, Coop lamented.

The beeps counting down the next wave started as he sought the Crazed Serpents that had returned to their own assault without the call of Gaol. He heard Shane’s clear voice directing squads back to their positions, hustling the defenders to prepare for the next wave while still dealing with the unfinished Serpent wave.

Coop checked his notifications while he started to gather the Crazed Serpents, before they reached a critical mass.

[You defeated Field Boss: Primal Serpent (Level 45)]

[+91422 Basic Credits]

[+2 Sharp Destruction Gem (Legendary)]

[+3 Sharp Guardian Crystal (Legendary)]

[Congratulations! You have leveled up!]

[Congratulations! Your profession has leveled up!]

[Congratulations! Your profession has leveled up!]

[Trophy Hunter (2/5)]

Defeating bosses continued to be massively rewarding. Even when Coop outleveled them, they managed to give him enough experience to boost his progress, not to mention the Legendary materials and the Scavenging levels that came with them. He passively placed his unallocated attribute points into Mind and was surprised by another notification.

[You have acquired a new title!]

A surprise! Coop stopped gathering Serpents, quickly defeating the ones that had been the most aggressive about attacking him. He wanted to take a look at his status and see what this title was about before he lost his chance.

[Status]

HP - 5500/5500

MP - 9943/10000

Class - Revenant (Level 65)

Profession - Scavenging (Level 69)

Affinity - Spectral

Race - Human (Rank 1)

Faction - None

Strength - 50 (+1000)

Agility - 50 (+500)

Body - 50 (+500)

Mind - 1000

Intelligence - 50

Acumen - 50

Unallocated - 0

Titles - Champion III, Haunted, Ethereal, Reaper, Slayer III, Dauntless, Vanquisher, Stacked

Skills (Active) - Retribution, Salvation, Presence of Mind, Fog of War

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

Quests - Fortune Seeker (5/50), Trophy Hunter (2/5), Defeat Ancient Devourers II (0/25), Defeat Primal Serpents II (4/25), Defeat Ruin Excavators IV (440/5000), Defeat Primal Kites III (0/250), Upgrade Village to Town

Basic Credits - 1,264,211

Coop stopped what he was doing completely. This was clearly a special moment that he should try to savor. All of his attributes were such round numbers, he considered retiring just to keep them the way they were. It was beautiful.

With a contented sigh, he forced himself to move on and check his new Stacked title.

Stacked - The first to reach 1,000 of any stat.

Adds +20 to all other stats.

As usual, Coop was most excited about being first at something. The title was like the cousin of his Slayer titles. Where Slayer granted +100 to his highest stat, Stacked gave +20 to the five other stats. Of course, he’d rather have the points in Mind since his passive bonuses were what defined his build, multiplying the effect of each point, but he wouldn’t be upset about getting free attributes.

Levelwise, the Kites had been extremely stingy, yielding just one level before the Crazed Serpents joined the party. The Serpents had been similar to the Excavator wave in terms of Coop’s experience, and the additional Field Boss had made up for the lesser gains from the Kites while the last day of Excavators also helped smooth his progress out.

Coop’s levels had been steadily growing thanks to the constant fighting, but his level was beginning to exceed the monsters by an unmistakable gap. WIthout quest completions to bolster his gains his class growth might stall out. Coop frowned at the thought, worried that this event would become an opportunity for others to catch back up to him. Coop’s response would be the same as it ever was: grind more.

Coop was so spoiled that he actually felt a little disappointed in only gaining six class levels. The real gains were in his profession levels, where he had gained another 12 in just five days, or 24 in the ten days since the event started. Coop nodded at the insane growth and resolved to keep the grind going if only for boosting his profession to absurd levels. Scavenging was benefiting from fighting a variety of new monsters, fighting tons of monsters, and looting Raid Bosses.

He halfheartedly reminded himself that he really didn’t care about levels themselves outside of the attribute points that they granted him. Admittedly, he also cared about his position on the leaderboards, but he could accept that seeing his name at the top was pure vanity and not actually necessary. A lower level with his exceptional stats would be even better, but that was looking like less of a possibility with every opportunity he found during the assimilation.

A messenger wraith arrived to let him know that the next wave consisted of Defiling Devourers, the siege event equivalent of the Ancient Devourers that had claimed the mangrove forest alongside the Primal Serpents. They were committing a frontal assault and Shane was concentrating the defenders on the southern wall to handle them. Shane intended to leverage the moat to take advantage of the Devourer’s apparent weakness to water.

The wraith continued with Coop’s assignment. He was to continue fighting the Serpents, but he needed to rotate along all of the walls. The northern wall was obviously weakened by Gaol, so he needed to pay special attention up there. They were leaving the majority of the Serpents to him and the pirates.

Coop buckled in for another hunting session with the Crazed Serpents. Really, he was the one being hunted with these monsters, but whatever worked. He’d have less backup and more ground to cover, but he’d do what he could to give them all a better chance at surviving another wave. He reminded the wraith about the False-Light Eye elixir and was promised that one would be delivered before it got dark.

He spun his trident in an experimental flourish and started chasing down Serpents. Once he got enough of their attention they would become an impossible to ignore crowd that attracted more to the chase with their commotion. They would be coming to him soon enough.

Coop patrolled the waters for the rest of the day with just a skeleton crew supporting him on each of the walls. Everyone else was occupied with preventing the Devourer wave from breaching the fort. Coop felt a bit left out, but he didn’t have time to linger on his feelings with the Crazed Serpents aggressively hunting him down.

Physically, he was in good shape. He wasn’t being exhausted, his mana was holding at or near its maximum at all times, and what little damage he took was instantly healed when he retaliated. However, being aggressively pursued by thousands of monsters every second would fray anyone’s nerves. It didn’t matter how strong he was or how much of an advantage he had over the individual monsters when they were an innumerable mass, if he blundered it would be devastating.

The wave continued. By the time night fell he was getting the attention of more than three quarters of all of the Crazed Serpents that attacked the settlement. Countless monsters chased him, churning the water and struggling against each other to be the first to cut open their prey. Coop led them closer to the walls to give his support a chance to thin their numbers, but if they made any difference, no one could tell.

The horror of thousands of worm-like monsters with extended blades rushing toward him every time he stopped was magnified when he was observing the scene through the False-Light Eye elixir. He never dared to defeat more than one at a time before he mistjumped away again. He was minimizing the risks as much as he could, but it also meant that their numbers were constantly growing.

As the sun rose again, Practical Application had finally made mistjumps cost zero mana, but Coop had accumulated such a massive following that the newly spawned monsters had begun to ignore him. There was no time to celebrate another major milestone.

He was forced to make extremely wide turns in order to avoid being cut off and frequently found himself too far from the fort for any of his backup to help. The monsters were chasing him all the way out into the reefs. The commandeered sailboats were his only company during half of his rotation. The pirates filled the same role as the wall’s defenders, thinning the numbers a bit as Coop was chased, but they occasionally got the attention of too many monsters themselves. More than one sailboat was abandoned off the shores of Ghost Reef during the Serpent wave.

It became easier, in theory, when the Crazed Serpent wave finally ended during the day, but even though no more were spawning, he still needed to deal with thousands of them in pursuit. He chipped away at them for hours, glad that he didn’t need to continue tracking the new spawns, at least.

A series of loud impacts shook the island chain once again. He thought they might be cannons until the fort’s cannons responded with a barrage of their own. They were easily distinguished from each other when they fired consecutively. Coop frowned to himself. He had to finish with his task before he could join the other defenders and find out what was going on. The mass of Serpents had become so large he couldn’t even receive messages without putting the phantoms in danger.

Now that he didn’t need to keep collecting new spawns from the Crazed Serpent wave, he was free to drag the train of monsters wherever he pleased. He roamed toward the south, keeping his distance, but giving himself a chance to catch himself up to speed on the situation. He could round the entire island to avoid being cut off by his pursuers.

Once he had line of sight on the battlefield he knew the defenders were struggling. The bridge across the moat had been destroyed. Coop suspected that Shane had ordered its destruction at the start of the wave. The problem was that the moat itself had collapsed on the eastern side of the bridge, with large craters on the border remaining as evidence of the cause. Both edges had fallen into the deep water and combined with enough debris to form several land bridges across the protective barrier of the moat.

The shell that the Devourers carried was also too tough for the casters to sufficiently thin the waves of monsters without concentrated fire. This meant that they were relying entirely on the melee fighters to defeat the incoming Devourers that the ranged fighters could only weaken. Most of the fighting had clearly occurred on the fort side of the moat. The walls had massive areas damaged by the unimpeded Devourers who climbed onto the walls and used their piledriver attack like a sledgehammer. The walls had entire sections that had been pulverized until the interior was exposed. Even now, Coop could see several of the monsters doing their best to chew through the stone and take the walls down completely.

Still, the defenders had been holding on. They were finally thrown back by the arrival of another Field Boss.

[Field Boss: Ancient Devourer (Level 45)]

[Gromokan the Insurmountable Bulwark (Body)]

[Manifestation of the Primal Constructs]

Gromokan was an enormous Devourer that was easily a match for Gaol’s bulk. This Field Boss was basically all shell, but it inched forward on unseen feet underneath its protective covering. The shell had three tubes extended across the top that aimed up at the sky and slightly forward, like mortars. While Coop was watching, one of the tubes fired a steel projectile up into the air with a deep thumping sound. Several seconds later a portion of the fort’s wall exploded as if it had been targeted by artillery.

A section of the wall directly across from the collapsed section of the moat had already been flattened all the way down to the ground level. The fort had finally been breached while Coop dealt with the Serpents. The defenders were retreating into the courtyard and regrouping on the inside of the breach. Shane clearly intended to use the opening as a choke point, but Coop wasn’t sure if it would remain the only gap in the wall for long. The Field Boss was continuing to hammer the fort with an onslaught of artillery.

Coop really wanted to join the battle, but he had his own army of Crazed Serpents still chasing him. He could only watch as another of Gromokan’s mortars fired and another section of the fort’s battlements caved into the top floor.

Gromokan fired again not long after and Coop decided he couldn’t just wait until he whittled down the Crazed Serpents one at a time. By the time he was finished the entire siege would probably be over, and the defenders were already in a desperate position. They were buying time until more waves overwhelmed them at best.

He changed directions and headed straight onto the sandy shore, toward the Field Boss. The defenders had ceded the exterior to the monsters completely, so Gromokan was unharried for the moment. It traveled slowly across the island as if it was a moving fortress itself.

Coop led thousands of Crazed Serpents onto the dry ground, mistjump after mistjump, and approached the boss on the dunes from its left side. Coop ignored the regular Devourers that slowly crawled across the sand toward the vulnerable walls and bypassed them even when they lifted their front halves and charged forward as if they wanted to joust. Instead, he conducted the train of monsters on a collision course with Gromokan.

Another mistjump brought Coop to the back of the Field Boss’s shell. Coop swapped to his sword and shield and struck the Field Boss with a powerful blow, smashing one of the mortar tubes before he turned to face the incoming Serpents.

The Serpents were still pretty agile outside of the water, finally living up to their names and moving like snakes. They followed him like they were attracted by the pied piper. They easily navigated across the sandy surface and leapt toward Coop after coiling like springs. A deluge of monsters flew across Gromokan’s shell as they chased their quarry, blades extended.

Coop’s ethereal swordsmanship allowed him to avoid the lunging monsters and slay his fair share, but the primary result was a swarm of blades that scraped and cut the Field Boss, unleashing streams of sparks that traced their paths. The Crazed Serpents kept their blades extended as they dove across the shell’s surface and when they landed on the opposite side, they tried again. The high-arcing ballistic attacks from the Field Boss had stopped as the boss started taking damage.

Gromokan was inundated with a cascade of blades while Coop danced on a knife’s edge on the back of the shell. He barely spent any time outside of his mistjumps to attack because he was forced to repeat the dodges so frequently. He abandoned the idea of counter attacking the Serpents or doing more direct damage to the boss and concentrated on avoiding damage himself.

He was still struck by glancing blows from the Serpents, but that was nothing compared to the bombardment that the Field Boss was experiencing. Thousands of Crazed Serpents dragged their blades along the surface of the shell as they sought to cut Coop open.

In an effort to give himself some space and avoid the incoming damage he tried to cast Fog of War, but the flying attacks constantly disrupted its formation. His low Intelligence stat made forming a real domain of mist impossible when the conditions weren’t ideal. He had to rely on the quick mistjumps to survive instead.

The Serpents were like a carpet of blades and Coop was forced to temporarily abandon his strategy, retreating from Gromokan, leading the Serpents away before looping back around, just to give himself a breather. He circled the dunes and returned before the Field Boss even dared to try moving again. Gromokan’s previously shiny shell was completely marred by scrapes and gouges, some even smoked from the friction. Coop mistjumped back onto the shell and smashed his weapon against a weakened portion of the shell before he started dodging the Serpents again.

A few more minutes under a second round of attacks and large chunks of the metal plates on the boss’s back fell to the ground, further increasing its vulnerability. The Serpents swarmed with such an intensity it seemed like Gromokan was borrowing Gaol’s protective barrier. The Field Boss had completely given up its own assault on the fort and seemed to be turtling underneath its remaining bulwark. It ceased its progression and lingered in the battlefield like a stalled tank, but that only made the onslaught worse.

For anyone watching from the walls it would seem like the Crazed Serpents had betrayed the Field Boss as they thoroughly blanketed the shell with inadvertent attacks. Coop made two more passes before he was eventually rewarded with the light that indicated he leveled along with some new notifications.

He couldn’t take his attention off the swarm of pursuers he had created, even as the boss’s bulk began its disintegration into mana smoke. He retreated with a long shield throw, and with a swift dodge, mistjumped toward the fort. All he could do was shout a warning that the Serpents were incoming as well, but the defenders were already in place to rain damage on the choke point they had established in the fort wall having seen Coop’s maneuvering on the battlefield.

Hopefully, they were sufficiently prepared.