Unchosen Champion-Chapter 349: The Scenic Route
Champion Ramona of La Piedra helpfully pointed out the main combat zones around her settlement. If she was skeptical of Coop, she hid it well, willingly pointing out the weakest areas of her territory. There would be no skin off her back if he failed, but if he succeeded, it would further establish the influence of the Lighthouse. She had already had time to interact with Juliana and other members of the Jaguar Sun, and they had set the stage for his arrival, vouching for both his legitimacy and his capability.
In between events, La Piedra had to deal with numerous monster areas, each more or less the equivalent of the Primal Tracker golf course near Empress City. The invaders spawned, gathered, and eventually spilled out, accumulating territory for the planetary sponsor. She pointed at the problematic areas of the past, sweeping her hands across the landscape to demonstrate the extent of the worst of the Infestations they had been forced to overcome in order to survive. Their elevated position, at the top of the rock, was perfect for a presentation of the settlement.
For the most part the invaders were adequately contained, with monster expansion curtailed by a combination of defensive combat and the taming effect of settlement territory. It seemed like settlements in an assimilation naturally entrenched themselves in such a way, dealing with raids as they came, by naturally following the path of least resistance. However, the further their territory expanded, the more they had invaders pressuring the perimeter and chipping away at their progress. Eventually, their expansion would stall out. At that point, they would be lucky to maintain their accumulated territory, and that was all assuming nothing catastrophic occurred during the periodic settlement events. He supposed he should be thankful that the events were designed to be spread across the entire duration of the assimilation rather than hammering them repeatedly at the start.
Ramona revealed that, like the hunting zones around Ghost Reef, the monsters elsewhere tended to occupy relatively small sub-regions for themselves, concentrating into secluded locales before advancing and expanding if given the opportunity. However, unlike Coop’s island settlement, there was significantly more ground for the monsters to attempt to seize. Fractured monster zones ended up appearing all over the place, where the same variant inhabited multiple places, slowly evolving into their own boss types and establishing Infestations and Hives if left unattended.
While the territory of La Piedra was vast, with hundreds of dangerous areas, it was only home to three different Primal Construct variants, and only one of them was new to Coop. Despite the challenge of more expansive threats, La Piedra had yet to be threatened by natural Siege Boss ranked enemies, but the residents regularly handled Field Bosses that pushed into settlement territory. At this stage of the assimilation, most human forces had to defeat at least one Field Boss to continue to survive and for the larger settlements, such threats would have to be routine.
Rather than designate the areas by monster variant, like the Adventurer Guild had done on Ghost Reef, the locals named the individual spawn zones the way a community might nickname specific neighborhoods. Orange Strip currently had a Field Boss expanding its reach, Tobogan Island was in the process of resetting, and the Sonia Pier was next in line for a counter-assault led by the Champion’s guards. All three were places with the same type of monsters, but they were each in different stages of evolution. On the whole, the entire dynamic was closer to the underground layers of Ghost Reef, where areas with the same enemies naturally stratified based on human activity and proximity to concentrations of mana.
Then, beyond their territory, the wild lands produced more difficult challenges that mostly only became a problem when Elite raids threatened the boundaries of the settlement, some even approaching numbers that rivaled individual waves of the Siege Event. For the most part, the residents rarely ventured too far outside for fear of running into such a development unprepared, and if they did leave, it was usually only when they had a specific destination in mind. The neighbors were far, and the vast majority of independent survivors had long since coalesced into the grander settlements. The assimilation steered them into a purely defensive posture, isolating them further over time. It was clearly all by design.
Ramona had already given several suggestions to Juliana regarding potential hunting grounds, happy to send Coop to the most problematic areas in their territory, if he was truly such a game changer. However, Coop offered to roam even further, easing the burden on the settlement by taking care of areas that hadn’t been previously culled. A tame hunting ground within settlement territory was a bit too easy for the Revenant of Ghost Reef and was better left to others. Once his intentions were established, she better elucidated the broader region, unable to give him a specific waypoint and instead providing a general picture of their part of the world.
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Basically, the forest that Coop had taken for a single connected biome actually encompassed dozens of specific ecoregions, and each was further broken down into smaller areas where natural concentrations of mana ebbed and flowed. From what he could understand, the broader factor was the underlying Andes mountain range and how it impacted interior rainfall. Of course, in nature there weren’t necessarily clearly defined boundaries between such environments, so Coop hadn’t recognized the gradual change that was occurring as he traveled across mountains and valleys to arrive at La Piedra.
Ramona explained that the Ruin Tracers tended to prefer the Pacific humid forests that extended through Central America and into the South, further to their west. These were habitats that were defined by extremely high rainfall and relatively moderate temperatures. They had been the dominant ecosystems during the cross country run with the warriors of the Crossroads. If Coop looked back, he would have recognized the jungle specifically surrounding the Yucatan settlement as a similar environment.
Ruin Nebulas were more dominant in the dry broadleaf and subtropical forests, which had distinct wet and dry seasons, like many of the forests he had explored in Belize, from Corozal to the low mountain ranges in the center of the territory. Similar environments were also present in Colombia.
The ones that Coop wanted were in what she described as Andean mountain forests. The elevation would be the main difference compared to what he had already explored, and she kindly warned him that it might take him some time to acclimate before he would be comfortable doing physical activities, as he was someone who had spent almost all of his time at sea level. If anything, he was more adapted for the depths below sea level than above considering the periods he spent underground.
The elevation of La Piedra was already 5,000 feet above sea level, which was part of the reason why the warriors of the Crossroads were beaten so badly by the cross country run. They were more accustomed to the lower elevation of their home in Belize. While Coop had fared better, the monsters Coop wanted to fight would be most easily found on one of a dozen nearby mountains that rose closer to 10,000 feet above sea level.
He couldn’t help but laugh at his lack of preparation when Ramona explained the situation. Coop had headed for South America with the specific idea that the environment would be his biggest challenge, but he had only envisioned one specific place: the Amazon rainforest. Someone really should have told him about the mountains!
If acclimatization was what he needed, he figured there was only one way to do it. He bid the Champion farewell, understanding that the residents of La Piedra were eagerly waiting for the Lighthouse to better establish a connection to Ghost Reef. It would require the scouts that were exploring the Underlayer to figure out the nearest locations, but in the meantime the only official human faction was making its first inroads into South America through its Central American representatives.
Juliana had previously been given a thorough tour of the settlement as she and other warriors from the Jaguar Sun made first contact with what had ended up being some extremely remote locations relative to the Lighthouse. A lack of convenient waterways was proving to be Ghost Reef’s biggest challenge, but the Jaguar Sun had done an excellent job acting as overland proxies as time went on.
Juliana and Felix joined Coop on his hunt, leading him to a series of untamed mountain peaks another 100 miles south of La Piedra. Even though most of the region was tamed by shard territory, many of the monsters had been untouched by the human residents. While most weren’t evolved to higher ranks, they were still relatively high level for the assimilation. Coop noted hundreds of normal-ranked monsters that ranged up to level 300 mixed in with the elites.
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By the time they reached their destination, Coop was honestly exhausted, and he hadn’t engaged in a single fight since concluding the Slayer chains on Ghost Reef. It was a simple matter of sensory overload, and he hadn’t even been overcharging his senses. Visiting new places over and over, one after the other, with hardly a pause had kept him fully engaged across hundreds of miles. He was the type of person that wanted to stop and appreciate every flower, tree, bug, and animal, but he had probably bypassed a billion opportunities along the way.
The solution to his fatigue was in the grind. He enthusiastically engaged with a new Construct variant, the Primal Crushers, and let his mind unwind while his muscles coiled. The alien invaders could never have understood their role in Coop’s lifestyle, but if they did, he was sure they wouldn’t be happy about it.
The particular nest that he crashed had mostly evolved into Elites, but had not yet reached the point where it was recognized by the system as an official domain. Rather than an Infestation, it was simply a dense spawn of regular and elite Crushers, lacking a boss.
The terrain was absurd, being thick mountainous jungle, elevated high enough for clouds to engulf the area as they formed. Coop abandoned the idea of physically navigating the region on his own two feet, quickly recognizing it as near impossible without slowing down his grind far below what would be acceptable.
Instead, he added to the naturally forming clouds, channeling Fog of War, and used Vaporform to mistwalk into range of his opponents. There was no need to mountain climb through the jungle when the Mists were so perfectly at home on peaks that were higher than the clouds. Unlike so many other places, where Fog of War struggled to exist in wind and heat, he was actually granted a bonus that kept his mists coherent for longer than normal.
It was nice that some part of his build benefited from the environment, because he was challenged in several other ways. It wasn’t just the difficult terrain, but the elevation as well. He had debuffs applied that reduced his regeneration or caused subtle crowd controls. The fact that he had practiced holding his breath while hunting in the mana well came in handy, but it only partially alleviated the impacts of existing at such high elevations. Still, they weren’t enough to slow him down significantly, and as he roamed across the mountain he had brief opportunities to recover.
For more than eight hours of the night, one mountain peak defied the others, hidden within a cloud of fog while the rest let theirs drift across the landscape and blanketed the forested valleys. Inside, the ethereal fog, Crushers were repeatedly extinguished.
They reminded Coop of the Scarabs that emerged from the Primal Carriers back on Ghost Reef, except they were larger and rather than swarming, they were solitary monsters. They backed themselves into the darkness within bunches of leaves, branches, and vines, clinging to rock faces before rushing forward with heads lowered if a target came into range. The simple collision could have sent an unaware explorer crashing through the steeply angled underbrush in a fall that would have done more damage than the initial attack.
The Primal Crushers weren’t exactly ambushers, as they didn’t really hide that well, but their first strike was dangerous. Coop imagined they were more like angry feral pigs, equipped with a metal battering ram on the top of their skulls.
After one or two engagements, Coop simply appeared where they didn’t expect, approaching from angles that would have caused anything afflicted by gravity to start a rockslide, tearing trees from their roots in the momentum. He attacked from the mists, barely existing outside of the haunting vapors for more than a split second.
The night was violent, but Coop was rewarded with a complete Slayer quest chain and a bonus level through experience gained from elite kills, as well as seven profession levels. It was an excellent haul even factoring in travel times. A Slayer title every five days would probably be enough to maintain his exceptional progress. The title itself was essentially 20 levels worth of stats, 10 after Quantum Insanity doubled his gains, plus he gained five class levels from the quests themselves. It was a ton of raw progress that was not necessarily reflected on the leaderboards.
The sun had hardly risen when he returned to his companions, who were already prepared to leave. Juliana understood her assignment, and Coop’s next destination was locked in, but before they left Coop made them wait, recognizing that a single Slayer title boosted him enough that he didn’t need to be in such an extreme rush all the time.
The start of his South American adventure had felt like one of those trips where the vacationers tried to fit way too many things into their itinerary, and in doing so, failed to allow themselves to enjoy any individual part. They would just return home from their holiday exhausted, rather than refreshed.
Coop may not have been on vacation, technically, but he wasn’t going to let a similar situation happen to himself. He sat in between Juliana and Felix, on an exposed granitic bluff, rubbing the jaguar’s enormous head, and watched as the red sunrise scattered the night’s cloudiness while listening to his purrs.
It was the perfect start to his first day on another continent. He hoped it would better set the tone for the rest of his trip, though he couldn’t help but feel a little uncomfortable with just how crimson the sky had grown over time. It was a constant reminder that the Eradication Protocol was unavoidable. Still, it wasn’t enough to take away from the natural beauty of the landscape. It just made the scenes a bit more vivid, giving a unique perspective that would invite Coop to return when the circumstances changed, so that he could compare and contrast aesthetics.
“Alright.” Coop finally spoke as the last of the natural jungle mists dissipated in the rising sun. “Now, I’m satisfied.”
Juliana shook her head with an amused look on her face, fixing her hair as she rose to her feet. She had spent a long time with Tzultacaj and had grown used to his insistent personality. When she and Coop had led half of the rebellious army toward the Yucatan settlement, Coop had seemed like a kindred spirit to the leader of the Jaguar Sun. A single-minded warrior unable to switch off or give up. Instead, Coop wanted to stop and smell the flowers. He would make up for any wasted time with enthusiastic combat and consistency, but it was important for him to appreciate the little things when he could.
They spent the better part of the day leaving the territory of La Piedra behind, and though Juliana was equipped to navigate the jungle even faster than the warriors of the Crossroads, Coop voluntarily slowed them down. He took the time to observe wildlife, noting how different species were succeeding where the alien invasion was not.
They veered to stop at every waterfall Coop could find, and he made a point to swim in each one for at least a few minutes, whether the water landed in a shallow and rocky creek or deep, cold pool. Instead of bypassing the invaders, Coop brought squads of phantasms to cut wide swathes through the wilds, defeating Elites that hardly moved the needle in terms of his personal experience, but still marginally slowed down the doomed invasion. He played tag with Felix, swinging through the trees in order to keep up with the agile feline, winning more often than not.
Between mistjumps, he spent hours chatting with Juliana about her hopes and plans, and was surprised to learn that the Jaguar Sun had already been in the process of moving to the fifth level of the underground beneath Ghost Reef. The fighters followed the lead of the profession masters in Corozal, who were among the first to settle in the expanding settlement. She invited him to visit when he finished leveling, though they both knew that his commitment to progression was unlikely to have an actual end.
They rounded snow capped volcanoes, crossed clear cut valleys, and bypassed a handful of cities filled with empty ruins gradually being reclaimed by nature. Coop had to stop and admire the landscapes when they rose above the timberline and he was met with an environment he never imagined. Clouds rolled across the terrain and the complete lack of trees threw his senses off. It was cold, foggy, and full of cacti; a combination he had definitely never expected. Juliana told him it was known as the Sumapaz Páramo and it meant they were more than halfway to the next settlement.
There were signs of rather large battles that had taken place in the past, with massive craters that had since filled with water, and long tracts of scoured land, as if giant talons had stripped the surface. He couldn’t tell who had fought, but given the lack of significant Primal Construct presence, he could only assume the aliens had lost.
They still arrived at his second stop before they were expected, despite all of his detours and diversions. Coop suspected that he would quickly overtake any imagined schedule, making up for enjoying the scenic route whenever it was time to grind. He figured fast grinds in exchange for an enjoyable trip would be a reasonable compromise. He’d earned at least that much and he could tell that Juliana and Felix had a better time than the warriors of the Crossroads.
