Chapter 62: The Young Prince (Patreon)

Master was dead. The old pack had abandoned their posts. The mission seemed to be over, but he hadn’t been relieved of his duties yet. He hadn’t been given any new ones either.

He was a good boy, his new pack told him so. They welcomed him and told him to be patient. So he was. He waited for a new assignment. It was tough, he was driven away several times, but he returned anticipating a new schedule each time. Ages went by, but he waited. He was still a good boy, even if no one said so anymore.

He stayed in the shadows, near where the kennels had been. It was where the missions were assigned, but the area had been transformed. The kennels no longer contained dogs. Instead, they were filled with humans who, like him, seemed to be waiting in the dirt for their own assignments.

Eventually, an outsider appeared. He smelled like the beach. The man even knew he was a good boy! He offered a new job, maybe a new purpose. He was meant to be a working dog, so he decided to go with the outsider’s pack.

He wasn’t fully prepared for what came next. Winds that stung his eyes were conjured by one of the outsider’s packmates. He wished she hadn’t, but they were rescuing more of their pack, so he understood and stayed patient.

Another of the packmates revealed speed that made him wish he could chase, but he was a good boy, and he waited with the others. They were much more generous with the ear scratches than he was used to.

They left the airport behind. He couldn’t almost never left before. He had been trained at the airport and then worked everyday. He had the most important job. He chased the birds away from the airplanes. Without him, the whole system would grind to a halt. Only the best dogs were qualified to do what he did.

As they left his whole world behind, he was given a proper name. It felt like he was being reborn. A new master, a new pack, a new home, a new purpose, a new name. Sunny. He loved it. He wanted to shine bright like only a good boy could.

Sunny’s new home was so very different from what he was used to, but everyone he saw was friendly. He didn’t feel like a working dog. He was treated like the special guests that entered through the private entrances of the airport. He even picked his own job. It was a lot of pressure for the one year old to decide his future, but one option called to him. He became a Basic Tracker. He thought it played to his strengths.

They celebrated the master’s return with a feast like he had never tasted before. It was even better than the treats he occasionally received for a job well-done. It was a huge contrast compared to the last few weeks of dirty looks and being ignored or chased away. He was already feeling like he made the right choice in following the outsider to his territory.

Afterwards, the master brought him to what Sunny recognized as the control tower. He wasn’t allowed up the stairs until after the dreaded bath. Sunny was still happy, despite the looming threat. Sleeping there was way better than the stacked kennels with all of the other dogs or the dirt that his previous home had become. He went to sleep at the foot of the stairs, making it impossible for anyone to sneak by. He fell asleep knowing he was a good boy.

He hadn’t slept for long before a shadow smacked him in the face. Sunny jumped up, but couldn’t spot his assailant. He bared his teeth, but it was in vain. The shadows themselves drove him away from the stairs and left him underneath the coffee table. Sunny stayed put, watching for a long time, smelling, and listening, but there was nothing for him to detect. He went back to sleep without leaving his new spot. He still needed to learn more about this territory. It seemed like the shadows themselves were to be respected. He had received their stern warning loud and clear.

In the morning, the master brought him on a run. It was the best! In the glow of dawn, he really had a chance to see how different his new home was. The endless sea around the islands, and there were so many birds to chase! He was so excited until he found out what was coming next.

It was bathtime, but it wasn’t the same as the ones at the airport. Instead of being hosed down by the cold water trucked to the kennels, he was rubbed down in the shallow water at the beach. Sunny didn’t believe that this was the bath, this was playtime, so he waited for the trick. But when they finished, he smelled fresh and no bad surprises waited for him.

He got more details of his assignment afterwards. Apparently, he wasn’t supposed to chase the birds anymore. It was very confusing. The master was very clear that he shouldn’t leave the safe areas of the island. He understood that there were restricted areas that he wasn’t allowed to visit, that much was the same at the airport, but now he was protecting the birds in the territory instead of chasing them away. There were some other pests for him to attack, but he wouldn’t graduate to bigger challenges until he had proven himself. He’d already graduated puppy training school, so this would be a piece of cake. They better have his treats ready.

Outside of his assignment, he was free to do whatever he wanted. So much freedom! He could come and go as he pleased, and as long as he didn’t interrupt other people, he could visit whoever he wanted. Sunny had a good feeling that scratches and treats waited for him around every corner. The future was bright.

—

Coop watched as Sunny zoomed back and forth along the dunes. The dog was obviously feeling good after the bath. He supervised as the retriever tested an Ancient Defender. The dog circled like a wolf stalking its prey and the monster did its best to keep facing its challenger. Sunny sped up and discovered that he was far quicker. He chose an opportune moment to attack the Defender’s flank as soon as he rounded the creature.

The Defender lifted a rear leg in defense, but Sunny chomped onto the raised shield as if it had been presented to him for that purpose. Sunny shook the Defender’s leg like it was a chew toy, wrenching it back and forth until it came off. The dog stayed on the hunt, circling the monster and attacking until the monster was defeated.

Coop was a bit jealous of the natural capability of the canine. Sunny had a much easier time with the Defenders than what he and Jones first experienced. The dog didn’t even need to go for the red eye to defeat its first Defender. He had been able to deal enough damage to overwhelm the Defender’s health pool. Coop hadn’t expected the fight to go so well for the dog, and had been prepared to step in, but he was happy with the result. Sunny would get some levels by hunting the Defenders on his own.

It felt kind of irresponsible to let a dog run wild in the nature preserve, but Coop believed that Chosen animals were intelligent enough to just treat as if they were other people. It seemed like that was the conclusion that the aliens had come to, with the way they served and greeted Jett and Sunny. When he thought about it, he trusted the animals to follow directions even more than people.

Coop’s morning had started productive, and he was going to ride that momentum. He walked over to the east beach and waded into the water. He was going to have a short hunting session himself before heading to the fort. His nearly completed Primal Kite quest had been itching at the back of his mind for a while.

He walked parallel with the beach, in thigh high water, doing his best to get ambushed by a Primal Kite. When he reached the end of the beach, he went ten yards further offshore and walked back the way he came. It took him walking the entire length of the beach before the first Primal Kite took a shot at him.

Coop sidestepped the opening salvo, despite the water restricting his movement, and threw his spear at the monster. His off-balance throw had been accurate, but not strong enough to catch the monster unprepared. It dodged backwards and at an angle, but Coop used 32 mana to mistjump to his flying spear, and redirected its sharpened point into the body of the jellyfish shaped creature. It wasn’t defeated right away, he had to pin it to the ground and stab it in the water once again before it dissolved into mana smoke.

The second monster was quicker to find, but it still took minutes before it attempted to ambush him. It dramatically splashed out of its hiding place and was rewarded with Coop’s ethereal spear catching it before it recovered from its opening attack, defeating it in one hit. Coop mistjumped to his spear even though the fight was over, hoping to improve its mana efficiency with more frequent use.

The Practical Application bonus on his mistjump had barely progressed at all in the last week. His last two grinding targets had been mostly faced with his glaive, which rarely gave him the opportunity to teleport. First the Prowlers and then the Trackers had led him to focus on efficiently controlling space instead of quick travel times. He wondered what type of monster Balor had found inside the fortress and whether his current weapons and tactics would be effective.

The third monster also took too long to find, and the fourth wasn’t any better. Fighting the Primal Kites was an exercise in frustration. Even if he was strong enough to easily defeat them now, the nature of their ambush fighting style made them an absolute pain to grind. After finding the first, it took Coop nearly 20 minutes to kill the rest of the four monsters he needed to complete the stage of the quest chain. He checked his notifications as he waded back to the beach.

[You defeated Primal Kite (Level 13)]

[+5 Basic Credits]

[+1 Charged Metallic Scale (Uncommon)]

[Quest Complete! Defeat Primal Kites II]

[You have a new quest!]

[Congratulations! You have leveled up!]

[Defeat Primal Kites III (0/250)]

He needed to come up with a better way to grind the Primal Kites if he wanted to earn a title from defeating them. Even if his teleport was free, it just wouldn’t help unless he could figure out a way to acquire his targets faster. He just couldn’t think of anything that would work with his current kit. It felt like it had been a while since he desperately needed something from additional skills, but he was now looking forward to his next opportunity to select an ability. Maybe one of the options would help him smoke out ambushers, so he could really hunt the Kites.

Coop put his unallocated attribute points into Mind and checked his status while he walked back to the dunes.

[Status]

HP - 4100/4100

MP - 7600/7600

Class - Revenant (Level 46)

Profession - Basic Scavenging (Level 40)

Affinity - Spectral

Race - Human (Rank 1)

Faction - None

Strength - 30 (+760)

Agility - 30 (+380)

Body - 30 (+380)

Mind - 760

Intelligence - 30

Acumen - 30

Unallocated - 0

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

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

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

Quests - Defeat Primal Kites III (0/250), Upgrade Village to Town

Basic Credits - 361,942

At least the four Primal Kites more or less covered the meals he bought everyone last night. The 500 basic credits from completing the quest stage was a bonus.

The only thing he could say was that his status had become a clean starting point for whatever he undertook next. Even though the hive that Balor warned him about was within the walls of the fort, he was hoping it would be as rewarding as the oil rig.

Next, he checked the leaderboards. He’d waited until he grabbed another level before he checked, hoping it would be enough to climb to the top.

Day 28

1. Banshee (Level 46)
2. Ix-Hau (Level 46)
3. Coop (Level 46)
4. The Lich (Level 45)
5. Un-Hau (Level 41)
6. Xul-Hau (Level 40)
7. Vul-Hau (Level 38)
8. Akari Kitawa (Level 38)
9. Reina Kitawa (Level 38)
10. Ak-Hau (Level 37)

He stopped underneath his favorite palm tree, near where Sunny was hunting. He had expected changes on the leaderboard, but he hadn’t expected it to look like this. He scrolled down a bit.

1. Chel-Hau (Level 37)
2. Platinum (Level 37)
3. Itz-Hau (Level 36)
4. Alex Nova (Level 36)
5. Xba-Hau (Level 35)
6. Ah-Hau (Level 34)
7. Puch-Hau (Level 34)
8. Safiri (Level 34)
9. Kitwana (Level 33)
10. Santiago Torres (Level 33)

Coop was perplexed. It was like a new group meta was found, but he couldn’t gather enough information just based on their identities to figure out what it was. Was Hau a surname and were they a huge party? He didn’t think so, the spread of levels was too much. Akari and Reina Kitawa were clearly a duo, but he didn’t think these others were rolling 10 deep.

There were even a few more if he scrolled further and he couldn’t imagine a raid meta had begun. There just weren’t enough raid targets. Maybe they could fight monsters way above their level, but that would just result in massive casualties every engagement. He didn’t get it.

He couldn’t even enjoy being tied for first and finally getting ahead of The Lich, because one of the newcomers had caught up and passed him. The bottom of the top 10 when he checked on Day 24 was level 31. That meant Ix-Hau had gained over 15 levels in the time Coop gained 10, and Coop had defeated the world first field boss and a full quest chain during that same period. There was no way for him to have leveled any faster than he did, and he was absolutely demolished by Ix-Hau.

He had to admit that he didn’t know every way of gaining experience, but he did know one possibility, and it was horrifying. Killing humans yielded a lot of experience, but to get that much experience for that many different people would require an atrocity.

Coop shook off the idea, recognizing that they could be representing some alien faction that had taught them ways to level that he just hadn’t encountered yet, just like how the undead appeared to siphon experience from their minions.

This was also the first time the top 10 didn’t include Hai Yun. He was worried they had been killed, but he found them, still barely in the top 100, at level 32. It seemed like they had stagnated a bit, with just one level in four days. They’d never slowed that much any previous time, but at least they were still kicking. Honestly, with the way Coop was leveling, it probably seemed like he stagnated when he finished off a quest chain, and then jumped several levels all at once when he started a new one, since the early parts went quickly. Maybe Hai Yun was doing something similar by pursuing a Slayer title.

He found more familiar names a few dozen places below Hai Yun. Camila Alvarez was placed at 112 and Charlie Seraphin at 118. He thought that once they started hunting the monsters around Ghost Reef, they could easily get near the top of the leaderboard. They were only five levels behind and hadn’t even started on the Ancient Defenders yet. Maybe things had changed with whatever the newcomers to the list were doing to level, but Charlie and Camila had room to grow.

Coop was interrupted from his thoughts when a patrol of phantoms saluted him from the path. Coop waved them off.

“Save that stuff for your commanders.” He told them.

“Yes, sir!” They responded in unison.

It was pretty weird being treated so deferentially while relaxing underneath his palm tree, he wasn’t exactly projecting an image that required subservience, but it was something he wouldn’t bother worrying about. He wanted to grind monsters and push the leaderboard, but they only had two days before the settlement events initialized. He needed to support Ghost Reef first.

Priorities.

Sunny caught his eye, flashing in the light of a new level. Coop was extremely jealous of the dog being able to grind as Coop headed to the fort.

He found all three Cleary brothers waiting for him looking like most of the offensive line of a football team.

“Hey, Boss! Congrats on first place.” Either Junior or Tiny greeted him, Coop wasn’t sure which.

“Damn, you guys are watching pretty close, huh?” It had only been maybe 15 minutes since he leveled and tied for first.

“We ain’t got any other sports. And we tried to compete ourselves, but couldn’t keep up while also keeping Elly safe.” The other of either Junior or Tiny admitted. “Oh! But, don’t worry, we’ve been on Team Coop ever since.”

Coop shook his head, amused. “You guys should get back to trying, there’s opportunities on the island. Just don’t bite off more than you can chew.” The younger brothers nodded, taking his advice to heart. “What’s up with these Hau people? The last time I looked I didn’t see any of them, and now they’ve taken over.”

“No idea, boss. They first started leapfrogging their way up top when you were hunting the wolves.” One of the younger brothers started before the other younger brother continued. “It’s weird, boss. One of them will jump up like five levels at a time, but none of the others will get any. We were theorizing that they’re doing something to group up a bunch of monsters and let one person finish them all off for a big boost. What do you think?”

“Like luring all the monsters into a trap, and letting one person pull the trigger?” Coop hadn’t thought of something like that. “Seems plausible, but they don’t seem to be sharing evenly.” They all seemed to be thinking about it until Coop changed the subject and brought them all on task. “Do you guys have jobs yet?”

Buck responded for the brothers. “We were thinking we’d make good doormen.”

Coop had to admit they would, but it was a remote island, doorman was pretty low on their list of needs. “Well, I’ve got something that might be more interesting if you want it.” They all seemed interested, maybe already bored of waiting at the gate after just a couple days. “You guys can be our R&D department.”

They all looked confused. They even thought he meant he wanted to use them as test subjects for something, so Coop explained what he meant. He was inspired by the pirate’s cannons. Why did they work when so many other simple chemical reactions didn’t? He wanted the brothers to try to figure out what mana was physically doing, if anything, and seek out what the limitations were.

Coop wasn’t any kind of engineer, but he thought it was weird that they were allowed to start fires to do something like cook, but he couldn’t get the gas generator to start at all.

When he put it that way, the brothers were on board. They’d need a workshop before they really got started, but they all had plenty of experience taking things apart and putting them back together, troubleshooting farm equipment and other tools. Coop left them to discuss how they would get started, but he suggested they find a way to test all the cannons around the fort first.

He was worried that they might need them in a couple days.