Chapter 128: Trap and Key (Patreon)

The red-rimmed black portal consumed the mana from the ritual’s torrent with a voracious appetite. The siphon cleared the room of the vaporous energy in a matter of seconds. Coop’s Fog of War went along with the torrent of mana and his domain was shredded by the dark vacuum. Coop braced himself for something big as the wind whipped up within the chamber, even pulling himself forward as it desperately sought more mana, before he steadied himself against the fine grains on the floor. Then, the vacuum abruptly stopped and he stumbled a step backwards when the pressure suddenly let up.

For a moment, everything seemed to calm down. The ritual had ceased and the thin beams of light stopped pulsing, the torrent had disappeared, the air cleared, and the dark circle stilled. However, the red-rimmed black circle remained in the center of the room.

Coop could hear himself taking deep breaths against the back of his shield as he waited for something else to happen. His eyes were glued to the fixture of darkness at the bottom of the gentle slope.

The brief moment of relative silence was shattered when the vivid red barrier surrounding the blackness cracked, jolting his hearing with the clear snapping sound. A web of breaks crawled along the narrow strip, building up to a clamor of chaotic sounds. It was like bubble wrap popping, if each cell also unleashed a shriek. The entire circle released a red spotlight of hazy energy straight to the ceiling when the shattering concluded. The blood red mana slowly faded and Coop looked back down at the dark portal.

A pair of elongated, curling horns slowly emerged from the darkness below, extending four feet from the ground before curving another few feet down and forward. A pitch black stone head followed, marred with scars and scrapes as if it had already seen countless battles, and won all of them. Something large was rising from the black void as if it was standing on a gradually elevating platform.

Coop only hesitated long enough for his morning star to solidify in his hands before he smashed it straight down into the head of whatever was coming, right between the horns. Sure, all the demons he had met during the assimilation had been delightful, but none of them had emerged from pitch dark portals leaking blood red energy. The whole scenario reminded him of the final moments with the Prime Construct.

His weapon snapped the emerging creature’s head back, but it didn’t seem to stumble at all, continuing to slowly rise out of the portal. Coop cocked his weapon back to repeat his attack while he applied Presence of Mind to find out exactly what he was dealing with.

[Siege Boss: Monolithic Destiny (Level 100)]

[Monument of Blood]

[Icon of Mana]

Coop scowled as he slammed the monster’s head again. The challenge had ramped up pretty fast, going from a regular level 33 monster to a level 100 Siege Boss, but he wouldn’t back down. In terms of stats, he was pretty confident in matching up with just about any boss lower level than himself.

The monster’s eyes snapped open, revealing blood red orbs that leaked matching mana smoke as it braced against Coop’s strike with a stone grimace and a guttural growl. The entire black stone head had emerged from the dark portal by the time Coop struck again, and it was huge. It opened its mouth and roared at Coop in response to the second strike, sending blood red spittle flying across the room. Behind its sharp stone teeth, shaped like stalactites and stalagmites, an abyss of blood red extended down its throat, but Coop was only lashed by hot air as he backed away again. He had expected a blast, but nothing more dangerous than gross came from the maw.

This monster would be able to swallow Coop like a bite-sized morsel if it could get ahold of him. Coop imagined an oversized stone and blood Balrog climbing out of the medical center and wreaking havoc within the fort’s courtyard. He adjusted his grip, not planning on allowing something like that to happen.

A claw suddenly gripped the edge of the portal, gouging three strips through part of Madison’s carefully constructed pattern. Coop noted that the claw didn’t really seem to be connected to the rest of the monster. It was more like it was forming as it exited the black barrier, rather than existing on the other side of it. Mana was condensing as the monster rose, establishing its form as it continued to get higher, exactly like a system service being constructed in the settlement. Coop realized he was spawn camping, but he felt no remorse if that was the case.

“Shouldn’t have spawned right in front of me.” Coop muttered as he raised the morning star over his head.

Coop smashed the middle stone claw with his ethereal weapon, with a rush of wind and a grunt, crushing the finger underneath his Strength. It turned into dust under the force of the impact.

The Icon of Mana roared again, frustrated that it couldn’t force itself through the too narrow circle any faster than it was rising, limited as the mana was so early in the assimilation. Coop thought it had overburdened the initial mana it had available and was so slow to form because it was relying on the ambient mana rather than the temporarily concentrated mass that the ritual had produced. Unlike the previous Icon, it didn’t have hundreds of thousands of monsters worth of mana smoke trapped in the event’s dome to work with, increasing the ambient density to simulate years of accumulation. Instead, it only had what Madison’s ritual had been able to siphon into the chamber.

“Party hasn’t started yet.” Coop confirmed as he adjusted his position to increase his onslaught.

The monster leaned its neck against one side of the circle and shifted so that a massive gargoyle wing suddenly emerged from the opposite side. The wing extended 25 feet into the room, unfurling nearly straight up as the monster struggled to squeeze out of the void. Coop smashed another finger and the claw slipped back beneath the monster’s torso, disappearing.

Coop slid forward and firmly planted his foot on the gouged floor to slam his morning star into the cheek of the monster with all of his Strength. He felt a growing sense of urgency as he really wanted to prevent this thing from fully emerging. With a twitch of concentration, he cast Legacy of the Mists, timing it with his own swing.

A phantasm crashed its own ghostly weapon into the eye of the monster as its head whipped to the side from the force of Coop’s attack. Blood red mana exploded from the crater that formed and the monster redoubled its efforts to extract and form itself fully. The crater bled like a waterfall, splashing against the floor of the chamber and causing Coop to sidestep. He wasn’t sure if the curse was still in play, but Madison’s warning remained in the back of his mind, so he avoided the blood.

With his own shout, Coop leapt onto the head of the monster, grasping one of the horns, and stabbed his freshly summoned war fork through the top of the stone skull while another phantasm severed the gargoyle wing at the base of the monster’s emerging shoulder. The monster roared with fury as its partially formed, and obviously weak, body was being picked apart. The wing stub shot a fountain of blood that reached the wall of the large chamber before splashing against the floor.

Coop swapped to his trident and stabbed again, reaching deeper into the stone head, earning his own gout of blood. A phantasm simultaneously drove through the back of the monster’s neck with its ghostly prongs emerging from the gaping maw of the Icon while it continued to bellow in frustration.

Coop switched his weapon again, back to the morning star, and slammed it against the base of the horn. The vibration the collision sent through both his weapon and the horn threw him off balance, forcing him to leap back onto the chamber’s floor, behind the Icon. The monster was whipping its head back and forth, desperately avoiding another blow to its horn, so Coop summoned a series of phantasms, one after the other, letting them repeatedly slam their ghostly weapons into the base of the horn from different angles while he danced around the newly materialized neck of the distracted monster. After a series of blows, the horn cracked and broke apart like bloody volcanic ash.

A second wing emerged, but Coop dumped mana into summoning phantasms, attacking the remaining horn while he faced the monster head on. It had rotated to use its teeth against him, frustrated by the ghosts, but Coop smashed his morning star against its chin, shutting its mouth with a crash, then bashed the reeling head while multiple phantasms beat a constant rhythm against the remaining horn.

He swung a brutal slam into the right side of the monster’s jaw, and the Icon retaliated with its wing. Coop ducked underneath the swipe while he summoned another phantasm and launched an attack from the reverse side, catching the left side of the monster’s jaw while it attempted to wield its wing like a spiked tail.

Coop attacked the black stone skull again, beneath the horn, and while he was in his backswing, summoned another phantasm to execute a lunging attack. This wasn’t a fight of attrition, but a race to deal enough damage before the Icon could reach its full magnitude, so Coop was frontloading his damage, testing what his burst window had evolved into. The consecutive attacks left no downtime between his damaging strikes. His skirmishing had always been about snatching momentum and not letting up, and now he could cascade his attacks at an even greater pace when he coordinated his phantom strikes with his own.

He continued to chain attacks against the exposed Icon, summoning phantasms to strike at the horn or to fill the gaps between his own swings until the monster shuddered in its death. It had only extended down to its collar bone in the time Coop had conjured 25 phantasms.

When the other horn finally eroded into dust and dirt, leaking more blood red mana, the monster’s head went slack. The one gargoyle wing spasmed before the monster dissipated into a dramatic flood of mana smoke that refilled the room in a dense miasma.

Coop stood near the center of the ritual chamber and caught his breath while the glow of his level increasing faded away. The fight had gone well, and the increase in his potency thanks to Legacy of the Mists was obvious. He could magnify his damage by multiplying the summons. The ceiling was only limited by his mana pool and the cost of Legacy. When the mana cost was reduced to zero, it would be ridiculous, only temporarily limited by his weapon durability.

He checked his notifications to confirm his kill.

[Y~# !ef#ted…

“What? This again?” Coop grimaced as the chamber was flooded with white light that dispersed the mana smoke and immediately overwhelmed the golden spotlight, crashing through the ceiling. The bright light forced him to clench his eyes shut, hiding them behind his forearm. His ethereal armor and weapon vanished and he clenched his fists, preparing himself to fight without his skills if he needed to. The mana suppression prevented him from accessing his Scavenging provided spatial storage, so Garod’s weapons remained unavailable.

When he was able to squint beneath his eyelids into the fading light, he watched as yet another entity spawned in. This time, it wasn’t suppressed by whatever limitations the dark portal had placed on the second Icon of Mana. From the ground up, white blocks combined into silken-wrapped feet.

Coop breathed a small sigh of relief that it wasn’t a completely different alien with its own agenda to further complicate matters during their assimilation. He still considered throwing another haymaker as the Avatar’s recognizable long legs manifested and she drained the mana from the settlement. Coop looked at the brightside. At least the Icon hadn’t been the one to absorb all of their mana, but it was a small consolation when he had been waiting more than 10 days to resurrect the phantoms.

As the Avatar’s angelic form completed, Coop bit the inside of his cheek to avoid the inevitable feelings of reverence her appearance engendered. When it came to their temporary visitor, Coop’s feelings battled between unmitigated respect and exasperation. He still wasn’t sure how much of it was her aura and how much was due to her physical presence.

The pair stared at each other for a moment, the Avatar from behind her golden runed blindfold, and Coop from beneath furrowed brows.

“You again.” They both stated dryly.

“Jinx.” Coop swiftly responded as if she would owe him a drink. He immediately felt better thanks to his own frivolity.

“You dare to attack me again?!” The Avatar spoke slowly through gritted teeth and clenched jaw. She seemed to be quickly deciding on a fitting punishment.

“What? No, that’s just a saying.” Coop waved away her growing agitation like an annoying bug, which of course, caused her irritation to visibly rise. “What are you here for this time?” He asked, trying to break the tension before it erupted into violence that left him inside of another mana bubble, or worse.

The Avatar floated haughtily as she considered the situation before she visibly relaxed, slouching in a casual way that completely erased the godly image she cultivated in her first visit. Coop smirked at seeing her in a different light. He liked her better when she didn’t seem to be looking down on them like a giant among ants, even if she really was essentially doing that.

“You have defeated another Icon of Mana.” She observed, apparently fishing for confirmation. When he didn’t answer her non question right away, she fired off a few more. “By yourself?” Her head snapped in the direction of the civilization shard before she returned her attention to Coop. “Why have you not applied the Purification Chip? Why has another Icon appeared? Has the Eradication already begun? Which Icon was it?”

Coop raised his hands to slow her back down. “One at a time, lady. We’ve got a minute since you don’t need to do your whole spiel again, right?” She crossed her arms with a scowl and waited for Coop to answer her questions. He sighed and answered. “It was called Monolithic Destiny. Do the names have some significance we should be aware of?”

“It won’t change your struggle.” She responded as she contemplated the name of the Icon.

Coop frowned, not enjoying being left in the dark. “Is everything going to be a Siege Boss as things pop off?”

“No, they require too many resources to form legions of Icons.” She frowned as Coop looked unsatisfied, and she decided to explain a bit more. “They can be used as indicators for what shape the armies may take. I’m sure you noticed differences between Irrevocable Condemnation and Monolithic Destiny.”

Coop nodded. He supposed it made sense for mana itself to be more variable than enemies manifested by a singular force like the Primal Constructs. The first Icon was like a parasite in the invaders, hijacking and mutating their form, but this last one was basically a huge demon of blood and stone. As Coop wrapped his head around the potential enemies, he thought the variety would be yet another challenge to consider.

“The Eradication Protocol hasn’t begun, and the Icon spawned after I defeated a cursed manifestation. We did a ritual to remove a blood curse.” Coop answered a few more of her questions.

“That clarifies the extraordinary mana build up.” The Avatar looked around the ritual chamber a bit closer. “This is inspirational work. With some repairs and refinements it could serve even more. Did your Sage do this?” She seemed genuinely impressed.

“She did. I’ll be sure to let Madison know you complimented her. Maybe she’ll let go of some of her animosity.” Coop smiled, proud of the work on her behalf.

“She… dislikes me?” For a moment the Avatar seemed surprisingly worried.

“Well, you keep showing up unannounced and draining all of our mana…” Coop explained, letting some of his own frustration slip into his voice, but not mentioning what they all viewed as manipulations.

“It is a necessity for my visit. And it is not unannounced… At least the settlement will recover its resources when you upgrade it.” She explained away the results of her appearance to defend herself.

Coop shrugged, if the settlement’s mana refilled when they upgraded, that was fine actually. They were only a few days away from the upgrade at this point, so they weren’t set back at all. Moving on, he had his own questions. “If we did the ritual again, would another Icon show up?” He had another idea for farmable bosses.

“No.” She shut his idea down right away. “Icons behave like a force of nature, like mana itself, but they will diversify their tactics each time it fails. You won’t have them appearing repeatedly unless the conditions of mana develop significantly. They can take all the time they would ever need to accomplish their directive as they will override the assimilation completely.” She paused as if she was reading into Coop’s question. “You will need to continue to challenge more difficult enemies if you wish to open the path for me again, for it is still much too early.”

Coop wasn’t exactly worried about that. “How do you use the disc you dropped off last time?” Answering her last question with his own.

The Avatar hung her head in sudden disappointment, letting her long golden blonde bangs block her face as she realized that part of the reason the faction hadn’t been established was that Coop didn’t even know how to start it. “For a moment I forgot this was the frontier.” She whispered beneath her hair in exasperation before she used both hands to part her bangs and took a deep breath. “You place it underneath the civilization shard. It will designate the settlement as a faction capital and simulate a true faction for territory and mana control.” She explained patiently, though the impact was lost after she made her annoyance so obvious.

“So it really doesn’t make a faction?” Coop asked, confirming what they had learned about factions and settlement buffs.

She frowned sadly, like she was revealing that fairy tales were make-believe to a child. “Only the natural functions of the system itself can create a true faction. A judgment of failure from mana makes such a thing impossible, for your planet will not be inducted into the galactic community.”

“It doesn’t prevent a true faction from being established, does it?” Coop questioned, though her explanation already added more things he wished to ask.

The Avatar scoffed. “Don’t get ahead of yourself. There are innumerable trials to overcome before you could even deign to dream of establishing a true faction, not the least of which includes the Eradication Protocol. But no, in theory, the Purification Chip would work in tandem with a true faction, enhancing the territory even.”

“Cool.” Coop nodded, filing the information away for later, and switched gears. “So, my turn. What is it you really want from us?”

The Avatar paused for a moment, contemplating how to carefully navigate the question, but her hesitation gave it away to Coop. “Of course, I am here to empower your survival so that you may join us when the assimilation is complete and we have the opportunity to retrieve you.” She tilted her head slightly to the side, letting her golden pony tail sweep to the side. She resumed her godly demeanor after slipping into more casual conversation with Coop.

“If your group developed the system itself, surely you could save us right away.” Coop pointed out. “You’ve overstated your position, or you’re testing us the same way you claim mana is. Neither option makes you trustworthy.”

She scowled at Coop’s resistance to her explanation, but it was enough to get her to change her answer. “Alright. I’ll level with you, human, only because I see potential in you. To have already defeated two Icons is a noteworthy achievement, worthy of this much. Not since my own assimilation have I witnessed someone progress as quickly.” Her scowl transformed to a grimace, like bad memories she hadn’t meant to dredge up had returned to her thoughts.

She let herself descend to the floor, and she stood on her own two feet for the first time he had seen. After a deep breath, she spoke more casually. “We are but exiles, permanently branded with the judgment of mana, and unable to formally join the galactic community in any real capacity lest mana continue its crusade to eradicate us. We seek others who would share our fate to bolster ourselves and search for a solution. We do not do more than this because we cannot. Eradication chases us.”

Coop frowned, recontextualizing his visitor. “So you don’t control the system?” Coop confirmed.

“We do not control it. Those who did are long gone, like those who created mana. Presumably, they were the original resistance as they created such a tool of empowerment.”

Coop thought they could have just as easily been another group seeking to dominate and subjugate, given the whole process of the assimilation, and the structure of the galactic community, but he didn’t vocalize his further doubts. It wasn’t like he cared beyond what happened to Earth.

“We are merely the remnants left in the wake of our predecessors, toiling among their ashes. At most we have improvised tools using system framework, like the Purification Chip, crafted from extremely limited resources, and more accurate knowledge than the galactic community thanks to our prior awareness and technological development. None of us needed an uplift.” The Avatar admitted. “Among the exiles, we have a variety of goals, but the one we share is to find a better solution for the current balance between system and mana.”

Coop wasn’t exactly surprised. He hadn’t trusted her completely in the first place, but he found her current revelations honest. His main take away was that there wouldn’t be an easy way out. “That makes more sense.” He muttered to himself.

The Avatar pursed her lips and pouted at his easy acceptance, probably realizing he had been more skeptical in the first place than she realized, meaning she hadn’t impressed them as she intended.

“Avatar of the System, huh? What’s your actual name, then?” Coop ventured.

She huffed before responding in a quiet voice. “Lyriel.”

“Nice to finally meet you, Lyriel. I’m Coop. Champion of Ghost Reef” Coop greeted her with a practiced ambassadorial smile, just like when he welcomed the alien contractors after they first arrived.

“Is that what qualifies as a name on this planet?” Lyriel wondered.

Coop shrugged. “Not really.”

She frowned slightly, thinking for a moment, before continuing. “There is something else; an opportunity only during both an assimilation and an eradication. Something I wish I had known when I was in your position.” She stepped toward him and reached a hand forward, towards his face, and smiled a reassuring grin. “If you continue to survive, I will give you a key. You will have the chance to unshackle us all.”