Chapter 125: Kinetic Bombardment (Patreon)

Coop positioned himself in the middle of a large sandbar near the entrance of the mana well and carefully scanned the shallows. The sun was directly overhead and only a few thin clouds obstructed the intense midday heat with partial shadows. He hoped it wouldn’t become a problem.

Starting earlier in the morning would have been ideal, but after a good night’s rest he had been eager to get back into his routine. A few days inside the mana well with endless cycles between fighting for a few hours interrupted by forced mana recovery had been more mentally draining than any endless grind. Every break made him antsy, like he was wasting time, even though he could clearly see that the results were extremely efficient.

It was a strange contrast with the more leisurely schedule he followed around the settlement. He may accumulate less experience, but it still felt like he was getting more done. So, after sleeping in his lighthouse with the gentle rain tapping away at the lightroom, he took Sunny on a run around the perimeter road in the courtyard while dawn burned away the dampness, he lifted weights with the Cleary brothers in the early morning, showered, and ate breakfast in the Clumsy Shark with Marcus, all before escorting Shane’s party into the Coral Forest.

Technically, he hadn’t actually accomplished anything in terms of his own progression, but he still felt far more fulfilled. Accomplishing small tasks had that effect. Now, he was getting back into the grind, filled with renewed vigor that had been slowly sapped by frequent interruptions preventing him from getting into a groove as he challenged the Ones That Hunt. Coop could admit he was a little weird, but a nice smooth grinding session was essentially his happy place.

After a moment more of sweeping his gaze back and forth and gauging the distances, he decided he was in the perfect spot. The strip of empty sand was bordered by seagrass patches along with small groupings of various corals that eventually gave way to the reef. It was a relatively barren area, at least compared to the tropical island and the reef itself. The corals tended to prefer clear, undisturbed habitats, and the sand bars that stretched along the islands had enough turbidity to discourage all but the most pioneering of individuals from settling in, and even then, they stuck to the edges of existing reefs before expanding further. The shifting sands may not have been subjected to significant wave pressure, due to the barrier reef, but the tides still pulled them back and forth twice a day, creating a dynamic habitat that wasn’t ideal for most immobile species.

However, Coop wasn’t in search of corals. He was on the hunt for Primal Kites. Their spawn locations tended to be in exactly the type of sandy habitat that the sandbar represented. Previously, he had been able to find Kites in the sand approaching the entrance of the Coral Forest and off the eastern beach between the first two islands of the Ghost Reef chain. Both were sandy areas, free from established corals and seagrass meadows. The western sandbar he was surveying was on the edge of where he had already consistently found the ambushing monsters, but it was a much larger area than either of the already confirmed spawn zones.

The Primal Kites had been spared for too long thanks to their obnoxious tactics that ruined the basis of Coop’s sustained grind strategy.

“Not anymore.” Coop murmured to the sandbar as he carefully channeled Fog of War. He had a specific plan that he was supremely confident would work thanks to the additional skills he had gained since the previous times he tried hunting the Kites. As the fog appeared, he concentrated on executing his plan perfectly, to leave no room for doubt about the feasibility of his idea.

Fog of War was being smothered against the surface of the water. Coop was forcing it down, but since it couldn’t penetrate the sea, it was spreading out. As long as he channeled it slowly, he could gradually build a solid layer of mists from his position on the sandbar out across the ocean. If he could extend it across the sandbars around the entire island chain, he would, but even with his extremely large mana pool, he would need to settle for a smaller portion instead.

The ocean was like glass, so there was no deterioration of his fog from waves, but the afternoon sun relentlessly burned the mists from above. The thin layer of fog was particularly susceptible to the effects of the heat because of the massive surface area the fog bank was establishing, but Coop was creating a dense carpet that would last long enough for his purpose. The improvements to his skill from increasing his effective Intelligence stat meant that even the compact layer of fog was robust enough to avoid burning away. Without the investment into Intelligence, he doubted he would even be able to establish the layer of fog at all. He kept channeling the skill until his mana reached zero.

By the time his Fog of War had been fully channeled, the ocean had transformed into something out of a strange dream. The mists blurred the barrier between the sea and sky so that the horizon appeared undefined. No matter how much he pressed his fog, it still drifted into the sky so that the edges blended together with a smooth gradient punctuated by wisps of mist drifting away.

Coop couldn’t tell exactly how much area his skill covered, but it was more than enough to suit his strategy. Closing his eyes, he immersed himself in the information provided by Presence of Mind and sought the subtle streams of bubbles that the Kites allowed to escape from their ambush positions as well as the galvanic detection fields that they used to target their prey. Fog of War only yielded information from within its domain, but even with a narrow layer, he was able to find the Kites. Today, they were the ones that would be ambushed.

Coop opened his eyes and hefted his ethereal spear, already heavier than his normal summons for this purpose, and prepared to launch it toward the nearest Primal Kite. He aimed to have the spear fall straight down, penetrating the Kite’s burrow from above, so he needed a high arcing throw. He launched the spear with plenty of Strength, willing it to work, and watched as it rose into the sky.

His enthusiasm had been a little too much. The spear kept climbing and he was forced to wait for it to come back down. Coop raised a hand to shield his eyes from the blazing sun as he tracked his spear’s trajectory to its zenith, then continued to wait for it to fall toward his target. After more than 30 seconds it was clear that a shallower arc would be better.

When the spear finally shot through the waist deep water and slammed into the oblivious Primal Kite with a thunk, the splash was surprisingly minimal. It was like an olympic diver executing a dive with perfect form, slicing through the water and sand vertically, with hardly any disturbance. The result was less destructive than if the Primal Kite had been allowed to launch its own ambush, as every time they shot out of the water they launched debris in an explosive outburst, applying shock and awe tactics to their initial salvo.

The damage dealt to the monster wasn’t diminished by the lack of erupting water and sand. The pointed end of his spear was all that mattered in that department, and it had firmly impaled the Kite, evidenced by his notifications.

[You defeated Primal Kite (Level 18)]

[+15 Basic Credits]

[+1 Charged Metallic Scale (Uncommon)]

[Defeat Primal Kites III (6/250)]

“Hah!” Coop laughed in amazed satisfaction as he resummoned his spear back to his hand.

He hadn’t expected to land a bullseye on his first attempt. Just confirming that his strategy could work was enough, but he’d nailed the first target in one go. There was something to be said about repetition, and at this point, spear throws were definitely one of his most frequently exerted attacks. Hopefully, that level of accuracy wouldn’t end up as a fluke.

There was an obvious problem that he would need to address, though. The single attack had taken almost a full minute to defeat an individual enemy. He still needed to kill over 16,000 Primal Kites. Coop didn’t need to do the math to know that he would need to find a way to speed up his kills if he didn’t want to spend the greater part of a month standing around in waist high water on the sandbar.

It wasn’t something he had planned for, so he aimed his spear for another dormant Kite, and launched it while he considered what to change. The spear whistled through the air with a less dramatic arc than the first throw, and smashed another Kite. The attack still took too long, but at least he confirmed his first on-target spear throw wasn’t a stroke of luck.

He dismissed his spear and resummoned another. This time, he really pumped up the mist’s density, demanding a heavier weapon than ever before, hoping to reduce the flight time with a shallower arc while maintaining the destructive vertical landing.

Notably, the spear took significantly longer to solidify, but when it did, it was weighty. Normally, his ethereal summons imitated the materials used in their real weapon equivalents, but the spear he held felt wrong, like it was too heavy for any object of its size, despite being conjured from solidified mists. Coop wondered what mana was doing to create the material.

Coop hefted the ponderous spear, realizing that it would be less than useless in actual combat, even with his excessive strength, with how much it slowed him down. He stepped forward and tossed it toward the next Primal Kite, one of the nearest targets he had available. Instead of launching like a javelin, it felt more like slinging a shot put. There was no whistling as his spear lurched in a sad arc, but it ended up with the point down and on target.

When the spear struck the ground, everything exploded with an abrupt boom that disturbed the quiet seclusion of the empty ocean. The water erupted in a cascade of churning violence, sand blasted in all directions, and a crater formed where the Primal Kite had been waiting. Ethereal fragments flew in all directions, among the chaos, as even his weapon was completely destroyed.

“What the heck?” Coop wondered as he gaped at the sudden destruction.

Coop waded through the sea, toward the area of stirred water and collapsed sand. As he smoothed out the bottom with his feet, feeling a bit guilty about accidentally destroying part of the sandbar, he considered why it had happened at all while waiting for the fog to fill the newly formed gap.

It was like his spear had contacted some old naval explosives, just beneath the surface of the sand, but that didn’t seem right. As far as he knew, there had never been any bomb testing in this particular region. He knew other islands had beaches that were dangerous due to unexploded ordnance, but not Ghost Reef, and the Kite would have been where the explosives should have been.

The only other idea he could come up with was that the spear itself had exploded. Had he put the ethereal mists under enough pressure to create such a violent result? It wasn’t like conjuring the weapon had required additional mana, although it defaulted to free at this point, thanks to Practical Application, so he wasn’t sure how pressure would build. Maybe tension was involved? Coop had no idea. He had ended up as a junior caretaker living in a lighthouse for a reason, and it wasn’t his knowledge of physics.

He summoned another spear, recreated the previous weapon in terms of weight, to try again. He shifted back toward his ideal spot in the center of the sandbar, and identified his next target. The shot put toss left something to be desired, and the slow arc was embarrassing, but when the spear slammed into the ground, it exploded again.

Coop pressed his fingers against his forehead. The shame of his mostly failed ethereal grenades during the siege event was burning from within. He had gone the opposite direction with his brittle shields, making them less substantial so that they would easily shatter and the result was almost useless. They worked for creating flak for the Ones That Hunt and for giving him a more flexible one-time mistjump target, but that was a pretty unique scenario. If he had gone with making the shield more substantial, forcing the density to its maximum, he could have had a pressure bomb for his shield.

Coop winced at the idea, realizing that it would be easy to hurt himself with a pressurized shield. Both styles of shield would be pretty useless for defense, but at least the brittle shield didn’t hurt when it broke. Casting Retribution, he resummoned his spear, back to just a regular heavy one, as opposed to a pressurized conjuration.

A potential new idea for his arsenal, but not something that helped him defeat the Primal Kites any faster. He didn’t have any other immediate ideas, so he just continued launching surgical strikes on the Primal Kites. There was plenty of refinement to do before he really needed to go back to the drawing board. For now, he would repeat the throws until he found the ideal arc for efficient kills. High enough to defeat the monsters from directly above, but low enough to cut the hangtime down to a more reasonable amount.

Spears continued to fall, destroying Primal Kites, one after the other. The speed may have left something to be desired, but the efficacy of high arcing spears piercing the hidden burrows of the monsters was undeniable. Coop leveled a few hours after he began, so he paused to check his notifications as the glow faded away.

[You defeated Primal Kite (Level 17)]

[+16 Basic Credits]

[Quest Complete! Defeat Primal Kites III]

[You have a new quest!]

[Congratulations! You have leveled up!]

[Defeat Primal Kites IV (0/5000)]

The grind was just beginning, and it was starting to look like the Primal Kites would be a long one. At least it was finally feasible to defeat them en masse with the combination of Fog of War, Presence of Mind, and spear bombardment. They had been an impossible challenge previously.

With another spear throw, he kept at it. There was nothing preventing him from pushing on. There was plenty of daylight remaining, and his obligations continued to be noncritical, more or less. At least the critical ones were buffered by preliminary objectives, like timers or ascertaining locations, before he could act on them. Maybe a different grind target would be more efficient, but Coop wouldn’t be leaving any of the quest chains on the table if he didn’t absolutely have to, and in this case, the Primal Kites were already doable.

Coop stopped to refresh his Fog of War. It had visibly diminished underneath the afternoon sun, despite a steady influx of Coop’s regenerating mana. Luckily, the Primal Kites yielded him more than the average amount of mana, even when they were much lower level than so many other invaders, but Coop realized he was at the whim of the weather for this particular grind.

Day 60 had been a windless day, with limited waves, and after the previous night, no rain. Other days might not be as ideal for sustaining a thin layer of mists on the surface of the ocean. Only the sun had challenged the fitness of his fog this time.

Coop shook his head at how annoying the Primal Kites ended up being. Even when he had a good way to detect and eliminate them, he found himself challenged from so many different directions. It was a reminder that not every invader would be easy for him to deal with. The difficulty wasn’t always due to a straight up comparison between stats, so no matter how overpowered he could make himself, he’d still face issues that needed to be solved before he could move forward.

He threw his spear at a dormant Primal Kite and watched it arc into the sky. Challenges were fine, he welcomed them when they were low stakes puzzles like when it came to the Primal Constructs. The previous threat to the entire planet was almost quaint after the Avatar of the System had revealed their potential future dangers. The life or death challenges that loomed on the horizon were something else that made him apprehensive, but there was only one way to go. Forward.

“More stats, more levels, more skills.” Coop reminded himself.