Unchosen Champion

Coop targeted the Prime Construct’s remaining weak points, desperate to prevent the Siege Boss from fully charging its ultimate attack. The purple star that continued to expand above Ghost Reef seemed like it would go supernova if the boss wasn’t interrupted. The boss made no effort to continue engaging with Coop, kneeling while concentrating all of its energy on growing the black bead into some kind of mana bomb. Without its counter attacks forcing Coop into wide repositionings, thanks to its bulk, it stood no chance against an onslaught from the Champion.

He threw his spear like a missile, destroying the right shoulder weak point with an explosion of red mana, but the boss didn’t react, absorbing the damage with suicidal determination. Coop quickly destroyed the left shoulder weak point for the third time, with another direct hit, but the boss still didn’t react. Coop became a turret, disabling the remaining good elbow, and the boss just continued facing the growing orb in the sky with both arms limp at its sides as if it had already lost its life, transformed into an enormous mannequin with a red haze of mana leaking into the air around it.

Coop disabled the rest of the weak points on the hips and knees and the boss finally tipped backwards until it was falling toward the beach that it came from, picking up speed like a felled tree as gravity inevitably dragged it down. When it landed, the island trembled. Its head and shoulders landed in the shallows, sending waves out into the ocean, while the rest of the body extended all the way across the dunes and into the scrubland where Coop stood.

He looked up at the giant orb in the sky and observed that it was slowly sinking toward the ground, covering nearly half of the island in a purple glow that drowned out the rest of the light. Coop threw his spear at it, naturally, but his weapon simply evaporated into mists as it approached the core of the target. At most, his attack left ripples on the enormous surface.

Coop frowned, “Should I run?” He considered if he could even escape the massive attack. If defeating the Prime Construct wasn’t enough to make the attack fizzle, he was out of ideas, and he didn’t have any desire to test his magic defense against an alien mana bomb.

Coop summoned a heavy spear and squeezed his grip as he furrowed his brows at the orb. When he heaved the denser weapon into the star, it retained its form until it was absorbed by the surface, but ultimately, it also disappeared into the spell.

“Not good.” He muttered as he made his decision whether or not to retreat and sprinted across the remaining scrubland, toward the boss’s disintegrating body, intent on finding a way to hurry the process along. At least the Prime Construct’s final attack wasn’t continuing to expand.

As he approached the supine monster, he noted that the molded construct torsos were exposed all over the body, thousands of them, facing the mana bomb in the sky. Some were lifting their weapon-limbs, and waving them as if they were empowering the attack themselves, but most were hunched over, clearly exhausted and dead. Coop swapped to his glaive and prepared to harvest their heads. He leapt onto the immobile, partially destroyed leg, and swept his glaive through the molded Constructs that occupied the enormous shin, taking them like he was reaping grain.

He leapt across the collapsing titan, finding solid footing as mana smoke spilled from the gaps in its armored skin, and specifically targeted the few Constructs that had the strength to lift their arms into the air, like they were desperately vying for his attention. His glaive slid through their bodies like a hot knife through butter.

Coop felt the pressure of the impending deadline sinking toward him from the sky as he worked his way across the torso and back down the opposite leg where the last group of weapons were raised to the sky. If there was only one tactic where he reigned supreme, it was efficiently defeating masses of enemies.

The final Construct had its head lopped off and both arms removed while the Prime Construct’s gargantuan body lost enough rigidity to be barely held together by smoke and dreams, like an enormous metal carcass barely more than a skeleton. A flash of extremely bright light made Coop flinch and gaze up at the purple star with concern, worried that it detonated in an air burst with the last of its supporters defeated.

Coop found that the star was clearly collapsing, shrinking in on itself, but the process was disappointingly slow. It seemed like Coop had succeeded, but it wasn’t obvious if the mana bomb would harmlessly dissipate or if it still had something in the tank.

While he watched, thinking if there was more he could do, he slipped through the boss and fell as the metal plates fell apart, eroding into even more smoke. He landed on his feet in the sand, bracing with his glaive and looked around. The boss was finally disintegrating as if it had been completely defeated, but Coop still lacked the system notification he expected to find.

Coop’s vision rippled as the Siege Boss’s mana smoke floated up toward the sky, joining the red mana haze from the demolished weak points until the air was tinged with mana so thick, it was like peering through a new version of Fog of War.

While he squinted through the haze, the purple light emanating from the orb flickered out, like a switch had flipped off. Coop's breath caught and he hesitated, peering at the orb with rapt attention, hoping for the spell to completely fizzle and not do anything destructive.

After the purple light flickered off, the orb had been completely frozen. Staring at it made it seem like the world had been put on pause. The swelling energy along its surface remained completely still, no longer bathing the island in its purple light, until a thin, hairline fracture appeared down its center. Then, the entire orb split into two perfect halves, revealing the inside of the sphere like a textbook diagram of a cross-sectioned star.

Coop wondered if his heavy spear had weakened its shell after all, until a massive black stake shot through the core, or maybe even shot from the core, splitting the orb, and continued until it slammed into the nearly disintegrated body of the Siege Boss on the ground. The stake pulled the two halves of the star as if they had become liquified mana and dragged them along its trajectory like purple vapor trails, mixing with the red haze.

For a moment, Coop stared through the mixture in confusion as the mana whirled toward the projectile, chasing its path like the mists chased his spear throws. The Prime Construct’s barely remaining physical body was impaled like a sleeping vampire and burst in a final explosion of mana smoke that followed into the hole on the beach that the stake created. All of the mana in the atmosphere chased, like bathwater going down the drain.

He looked around, to see if someone like Jett had managed to land another incredible killing blow, but he was the only individual beyond the fort’s walls on the other side of the island. A stake through the Prime Construct’s own metaphorical heart was definitely not the purpose of the incredible attack, so he continued to hesitate while he tried to make sense of the situation.

The Siege Boss was gone, completely transformed into quickly draining mana smoke, but Coop still hadn’t received any notifications. The Prime Construct had been as good as defeated when it abandoned its assault to summon the mana bomb in a final act of defiance, but then, it lingered until it was finally impaled. It seemed like the mana bomb was fizzling before something broke through. That ‘something,’ drew his attention back to the beach.

The mana smoke continued to thin, and he noticed the end of the black stake still peeking from the ground on the edge of the beach, alone in the wet sand, as if it was a pylon marking the deceased boss. The stake was vacuuming the haze of mana from across the entire settlement territory, creating a whirlpool that absorbed directly into the object and cleared the island’s air.

It had absorbed the remains of the failing mana bomb along with the Siege Boss’s mana smoke, and it was insatiably accepting the rest of the available mana floating imperceptibly within the dome. Coop watched as the air became as clear as the first day of the siege, only partially tainted by the red mana dome’s color. He hadn’t even been aware it was accumulating each time they defeated an individual enemy during every single wave.

The stake slowly seemed to grow, gradually extending further and further into the air, revealing dozens of Construct weapon-limbs wrapped and hanging limply from its surface. The limbs seemed to wake up as they reached the air, twitching and fidgeting in a mass of creepy dismembered arms.

Coop realized the pylon was actually being pushed out of the ground when a regular Primal Construct climbed out of the sand, like a zombie escaping a forgotten grave in a cemetery, with the tall Construct totem attached to its back like it was a part of its spine.

This new Construct was similar to the regular elites, but a bit taller, thicker, and instead of a dull gray metallic coloration it was dark blue and black with hints of green and orange on the tips of its limbs. It stomped forward with a casual indifference, not even acknowledging Coop’s presence, seemingly oblivious to everything that had happened up to the point it climbed out of the sand. The new Construct shuffled along, swinging its elongated arms with each step.

Coop took a deep breath, settling himself as he watched the monster. He felt no relief after the mana bomb disappeared, confused as he was with the new entity sucking up all the mana, but it seemed that the crisis had been averted.

Once the monster had moseyed across the sandy beach into the dry sand, Coop stretched Presence of Mind and inspected its aura.

[Siege Boss: Irrevocable Condemnation (Level 75)]

[Melding of Fate]

[Icon of Mana]

“So, you’re not a Primal Construct?” Coop tilted his head and squinted at the creature while he mumbled to himself. Its aura didn’t follow the regular rules Coop had become accustomed to, but it clearly displayed Icon of Mana instead of manifestation or minion of the Primal Constructs. He looked at the Construct limbs attached to the stake like trophies and a scowl crawled onto his face. “Did you steal my kill?”

The new monster wasn’t particularly quick. It dragged its feet across the small dunes and the knuckles on its elongated fingers at the ends of its lanky arms scraped the tops of the ridges in the sand left by the Prime Construct’s fall. Its aura didn’t reveal what its primary stat was, and he couldn’t make any educated guesses based on its appearance.

As Coop got a closer look he had the distinct impression that this boss was different than anything else he had encountered, even ignoring its unusual arrival.

Instead of being a Primal Construct with a different coloration, it actually seemed organic. Its skin was wrinkled in joints and it rippled and pulsed while shining with moisture. It was missing the characteristic metallic scales and red glowing weak points that made the Constructs seem familiar. Coop shook his head, concentrating on preparing for the fight rather than considering the implications of receiving a novel challenger.

On its back, held like a war banner, the stake had become an effigy of Constructs that rose into the air more than 20 feet above the monster. Arms extended from the central totem of the banner, terminating in all sorts of weapons. A seven foot long jagged greataxe, a massive pike, bludgeons, shields, and blades were all present on the effigy. As the monster approached, the arms swung and flexed as if they had minds of their own. It was a bit like the Prime Construct’s molded soldiers, but somehow these limbs seemed even more alien, organic, mutated, and elongated as they were.

This encounter had evolved in an unpredictable way, but Coop came to the simple conclusion that the fight was unfinished, and he needed a quick regroup. His job wasn’t done.

Coop recast Retribution, bringing forth his ethereal spear and shield and dismissing the previously summoned glaive. The equipment rapidly solidified with delicate wisps of ghostly energy emanating from the surfaces while Coop adjusted his grip. He let his spear sail across the island and mistjumped to keep himself in between the monster and the civilization shard. Coop would engage with this new threat just as he had the previous one, solo if possible and with support only if he couldn’t help it.

A single, much smaller, but seemingly more dynamic threat was approaching. They hadn’t lost anything in the initial engagement, other than some of Coop’s already regenerated mana. All of the remaining phantoms stayed with the residents within the walls of the fort. The melee fighters stood on standby in protective formations around small groups of casters and archers, prepared to mobilize if the opportunity presented itself and Shane gave the order. There may have been a single, much less intimidating enemy when compared to the Prime Construct, but they would be fools to expect it to be a victory lap.

Coop was going to face the monster head on. If he could bully it as he had the Prime Construct, he would. If not, hopefully, he would keep its attention and free the residents to safely attack from range.

Of course, he would begin with his most reliable set, but all of the weapon swapping during the previous waves had brought the cost of Retribution down to 15 mana. Given the variety of weapons this Siege Boss was wielding, he thought he’d have opportunities to swap compared to relying on spear throws against the huge boss. While the boss continued its steady approach, he opted to establish another thin layer of mist to empower Presence of Mind, conserving the rest of his mana for Mind over Matter and weapon swaps.

Once he was set, fully regrouped, and nerves calmed, he hopped in place and shook out his arms like an athlete between plays. The Icon of Mana took its time, but it wasn’t moving in slow motion the way the Prime Construct had.

Coop lobbed an overly long distance spear throw, but the smaller boss swiped his weapon away as it arced toward it. Coop tried again, still waiting for the new boss to catch up, but his optimistic heaves didn’t even cause his target to flinch. Eventually, it entered the battlefield Coop had selected and he really restarted the final fight, midway across the island, nearer to the fort compared to the previous battle.

With three steps and a hop to firmly plant his foot on the ground, he launched his spear with as much power as he could muster, as the boss had reached a more optimal range. His mind told him that he would rip his own arm off, but thanks to the practice in applying his strength with his morning star, he was able to break through the mental block completely.

The spear shot from Coop’s arm with another thunderous boom, followed immediately by a second, blurring as it sped toward the still distant Siege Boss. The thin fog that had already spread forward wrapped along the shaft and lingered as a trail of twisting condensation, chasing the spear even beyond the spreading Fog of War. The line of smoke connected Coop’s release to the monster’s raised forearm as it offhandedly attempted to block the long range missile. It obviously didn’t feel threatened, if it felt anything at all.

The Siege Boss didn’t pause its forward march as it swiped at the spear, and when the spear collided with the dark blue, black, and orange speckled limb the projectile was deflected away, spinning into the distance over the beach toward the reef. The monster barely flinched at Coop’s most powerful throw, though its arm was flung backwards by the force of the impact and a bang echoed across the dunes while sand blasted past the point of contact.

Coop scowled in frustration as he resummoned his spear, backing up even further, disappointed by the result after finding so much success against the Prime Construct, but the monster had temporarily stopped to assess the situation. Coop looked closer and realized the protective forearm was leaking black ichor onto the sand. Each drop sizzled while steam drifted into the ocean breeze as the ichor evaporated instead of pooling. The monster paused to look at its injury, apparently surprised to have taken damage at all.

Coop shared the monster’s surprise. His attack hadn’t had the result he was hoping for, but the spear had drawn blood. Primal Constructs never bled. This really was a completely novel enemy, even if it was outwardly an amalgamation of the Constructs of the previous wave and the ones contained by the Prime Construct. Coop mentally classified the Icon of Mana as a mutant until he had more information, and lined up another spear throw.

The Siege Boss finished assessing the damage to its forearm and resumed its steady forward march as Coop launched his spear a second time. There were no features on the smooth mask that formed the monster’s face, but Coop had the impression it hadn’t expected to take damage from the previous attack. The small injury motivated him to put even more effort into slinging his weapon at the monster.

This time, one of the arms from the effigy banner on the monster’s back slammed into the ground to intercept the spear. The limb smashed into the dune and sand exploded in all directions, firmly planting itself in the ground. The arm was shaped like it had a shield beneath its skin, flaring out in a rectangular shape at the forearm that was as wide as Coop was tall. The spear punched into it with a shockwave that caused the rest of the arms in the effigy to blow backwards like strands of hair in a gust of wind.

Coop continued walking backwards and clicked his tongue in disappointment when the dust cleared. The shield arm of the Siege Boss didn’t even have a scratch, and Coop had thrown his spear even harder the second time around. It looked like the monster took his attack seriously, though it didn’t stop walking forward.

Coop resummoned his spear once again, and as the Siege Boss retracted its protective arm, more black ichor leaked from the tip. Coop felt a grin sneak onto his face as he felt like a shark smelling blood. The monster hadn’t been unscathed after all. Coop wasn’t above chipping away at the boss’s health, but he’d need to find a way to stop its forward movement if he wanted to continue.

He threw his shield first the next time, as the distance between the two had shrunk, letting the disc glide like a frisbee with the hope of baiting a defensive move from the monster. Before the shield connected, he launched his spear again. The timing meant that both weapons would arrive at nearly the same time. The monster responded with another one of its effigy limbs, an arm ending in a blunt hammer head. It crashed into Coop’s shield, driving it straight down into the dune, dozens of feet in front of the monster, showcasing a wide range. The shield arm slammed into the ground almost simultaneously, intercepting the spear once again with a clang that echoed across the mana dome, directly in front of the boss.

A split second later, a third arm uncoiled and sprang toward Coop with a spiked, fang shaped tip. Coop tried to dodge and barely succeeded in avoiding being impaled through the neck. The spike clipped his shoulder, wrenching his entire upper body to the side before it recoiled around the banner that held the effigy above the boss’s back. Coop was shocked at the range the monster suddenly displayed. The attack had come so abruptly and with a velocity that nearly matched his spear throws. It was as if the monster was making a point that it could do it too.

Coop watched for another attack as he walked a few more steps backwards along the packed sand and resummoned his spear and shield. He was slowly ceding ground, but there was plenty of real estate before he reached the moat.

When he gripped his resummoned spear, he felt blood trickle down to his finger tips, but he hadn’t lost much health from the glancing blow to his shoulder. It was more the surprise that he was in range of the monster that shook his inflated confidence after seeing the boss injured. He shook the blood off his hand and adjusted his handhold as he planned his next actions, given the new revelation of the Siege Boss’s abilities. Each limb attached to the effigy seemed to be able to operate independently of the rest, while the main body appeared to be singularly focused on assaulting the civilization shard.

Lifting his arm, he readied his spear again, but abandoned the attack in favor of raising his shield and intercepting the monster’s uncoiling spiked limb as it interrupted him. The clang of the spiked limb against his shield rang across the island, but Coop’s arm was steady. He wasn’t overwhelmed by the strength of the monster’s attack.

He waited for a follow up, taking a few more steps back, but none came. The monster seemed to be specifically countering his spear throws with its own long range attack while it continued to slowly close the distance, not particularly caring to address Coop’s harassment. The boss didn’t chase after Coop. It just incessantly trudged toward the main gate of the fort. Coop would need to engage it directly instead of trying to kite it.

The boss was within the dilute mist of Coop’s Fog of War, so Coop aimed his spear another time, baiting an attack from the effigy of Construct limbs. The coiled arm launched itself toward Coop in an effort to disrupt his throw, but Coop was already swapping his weapons for the trident as soon as it sprung his trap. Instead of blocking the attack, Coop fully utilized Presence of Mind to precisely counter the monster. He anticipated the trajectory of the spiked limb and adjusted the trident as quickly as his Agility allowed him.

The extended arm was impaled on all three the prongs of his trident, just like a Crazed Serpent that tried to slash at Coop. He tried to tug the boss off-balance, twisting his weapon with both hands for leverage, but the Siege Boss was at least as strong as he was, and refused to budge beyond continuing its forward progress.

The individual arm wasn’t able to escape Coop either, so he slammed the trident into the ground, pinning the frantically squirming limb as it tried to recoil around the effigy like a panicked snake. Coop stomped on it with his foot to hold it in place while he raised the trident with a jerk that sent black ichor flying into the air. He swapped his weapons again and when his arm came back down, the ethereal sword cut straight through the end of the arm, freeing the bulk of it to retract back to the effigy, but removing the dangerous weapon at its end.

The arm jerked back toward the boss, leaving a trail of black ichor like an uncontrolled firehose. The ichor bubbled like acid when it landed on Coop, but it failed to dissolve his ethereal armor.

Coop confirmed that there were no afflictions. It seemed like the blood was a direct attack that would be mitigated by his layered defenses and that meant he wouldn’t need to be shy about damaging the monster for fear of being corrupted by the ichor.

The Siege Boss stopped its march. It was still facing the fort, and now, it was nearly in range of the casters. Coop finally forced it off of its steady march forward, dealing undeniable damage that the Boss couldn’t simply ignore.

It elevated both of its elongated arms attached to its main body, almost like it was stretching its back, and the effigy on the back of the monster ceased its constant fidgety movement. Coop raised his shield and braced for another attack.