Chapter 151: Keystone Species (Patreon)

Coop was taking time to decompress while the girls cleared the golf course one fairway at a time. Finding a way to distract Charlie from her lingering thoughts of the previous battle had actually been the distraction he needed for himself. While the girls fought monsters, Coop explored his abilities. The pair made quick work of hundreds of Primal Trackers with each of their engagements once they established their strategy.

While Coop was impressed by the efficacy of their massive pulls, he was absolutely not willing to exchange his consistent grinding style for one that had requirements for downtime.

“No chance.” He mumbled to himself as he considered the trade off.

The Coral Forest had completely rid him of any inclination for that sort of bargain. In the girls’ case, the downtime allowed them to constantly provide feedback to one another, or otherwise entertain themselves with small breaks, while iterating on their tactics. However, Coop was a solo grinder and the mandatory breaks in between pulls didn’t take long to become more of a mental challenge than the actual fighting. He felt like momentum was too important for his own state of mind, and on some level, the repetition was what he subconsciously latched onto. When he fought, he chased the feeling of being in the zone which was further heightened by the guidance given by his Haunted title. The girls had developed their own cadence.

Camila expertly corralled the wolf-like monster packs, dodging their attacks and preventing them from establishing a consistent battle-line. They wanted to encircle her and allow their formations to aid them in striking out, but she was too spry, gracefully weaving through gaps between parties that even Coop barely spotted. She maintained a steady perimeter around them instead of the other way around, forcing all of the aggressively pursuing packs into a centralized cluster where Charlie’s tornadoes would inevitably spawn. From outside the crowd, Camila was able to use her perfect counters to prevent any stragglers from escaping, living up to her class name by intercepting them as they endeavored to avoid the tearing storms.

Charlie’s abilities had developed such that her Aeromancer spells, which normally had fixed formation times in exchange for absolutely no cast time, were still able to establish deadly atmospheric disturbances at a much faster pace than when she first received her skills. Practice had given her better insights into manipulating the wind to both conserve her own resources while more efficiently summoning storms. She wasn’t just shoving the wind around, but actually working with the geography and recognizing the local weather in order to cooperate with the natural patterns instead of blasting her way through heavy expenditures of mana. A gust of wind would kick start an attack or a steady breeze would become the foundation of a ramping pressure. Her cast time was unchanged, but she had enhanced her speed all the same. He suspected that she was maintaining smaller formations, creating them when they were convenient, then stacking slightly larger ones, utilizing each previous entity as a building block to boost the next until she reached her desired result. She moved like a conductor directing an orchestra of wind.

Coop admired the improvements that both of the girls had slowly incorporated into their fighting-styles, and he was slightly jealous how they had formed such a tight pair that could work together so smoothly. For his part, though, he wasn’t just watching them fight. He spent almost every minute with a new ghostly companion.

None of the phantasms communicated with him, but he strongly suspected that they understood him. Maybe it was intuition based on his experience with his Haunted title, or perhaps due to his many animal acquaintances, but he was under the impression that even if they comprehended nothing else, they still grasped his words, and more importantly, his intentions.

The fact that the phantasms appeared to have some comprehension went against how Coop recognized the limitations on ‘minions’ as designated by the system. It was even a bit disconcerting at first, considering they would simply cease to exist after a matter of seconds, returning to the mists. Coop rationalized the peculiarities by remembering that even though they were minions, they were summoned by him specifically. The phantasms had a special connection to him. He figured most minions needed the ability to interact with their summoner on some level. If the minions started having conversations with either of the girls, then his thin level of understanding would go out the window. Thankfully, nothing of the sort had happened yet.

Charlie summoned a slightly different tornado to finish off the eighth hole’s final group of Primal Trackers. The girls were having no trouble clearing the monsters, even in the densest portion of their spawn area. The Trackers had nearly doubled in level since the girls had faced off against them to complete the first few stages of the Slayer quest chain, but that was nothing compared to what the girls had become. Coop doubted there were many challenges that they would need his help with anymore, at least when it came to the Primal Constructs.

The new tornado was a narrow, stringy thing, but significantly taller than most of her more efficient tornadoes, reaching all the way into the fluffy clouds of the bright blue sky. Instead of being a solid funnel of wind, it was a crooked dagger that Charlie was able to shift, giving her more precise lines of attack. The tighter circulation increased the velocity of the wind, but also seemed to lower the duration of the formation. She wasn’t letting the fights drag on, though. In addition to tearing gales, she had launched blades of water before she started manipulating the wind, and those blades were being wielded by gusts that were reaching out and mowing down the Primal Trackers that were putting every effort into avoiding being swept up by the storm.

The limited initial coverage from the thinner tornado was more than made up for with the deadly striking power of her normally slow moving water blades, and of course, Camila was supremely reliable in filling in the gaps. When one of the Primal Trackers was bisected with an even cleaner cut than what Coop’s bladed weapons could produce, he angled his head, impressed by the water’s edge.

“Charlie’s skills are pretty brutal.” Coop observed speaking to the ghostly sentinel that stood at his side. He saw its eyes shift toward him before returning its attention to the tall grasses on the opposite side of the fairway without any change in its expression.

Coop had previously considered Charlie’s skill set to be primarily focused on area crowd control. The addition of her lightning affinity had been a massive jump in her lethality, but the experimentation during the siege event, where her winds had become a deadly base for others’ skills, had opened her mind up to even more possibilities. If she had the mana to spare, she didn’t need anyone else to create a deadly blender. Charlie had been forced to grow even beyond what earned her Aeromancer class’s legendary respect from the Endless Empire.

With the last set of monsters clear, Coop joined the girls as they found the path to the tee box of the next hole. It was the same hole that he had found the first Field Boss, Andamarius. He was hoping it had respawned, especially since his Scavenging had leveled up to the point that he could acquire Unique items when he defeated bosses. The golf course remained outside of the settlement territory of Empress City thanks to the Empire’s utter failure to acquire upgrades and properly develop. That meant there was as good a chance as any to find another Field Boss.

“If there’s a boss, it isn’t going anywhere.” Camila observed as Coop eagerly led the way, impatient to see what they would find. “Who else would be killing them around here? The Empire would probably have lost half of its army trying, and the resistance didn’t have anyone to spare.”

“You never know.” Coop still thought there could be groups out there that were specializing in boss hunting, though he had no evidence to back up his claim. Some of those that maintained their positions on the leaderboards would certainly have the capacity to take on a Field Boss if they had proper support. If he wasn’t so attached to Ghost Reef he thought he could probably follow that route for levels himself.

The cart path was still paved with smooth concrete, but both sides had grass so tall they intertwined directly above the path. They were walking through a green tunnel with streams of sunlight breaking through the leafy blades above. Yellow and orange butterflies flew between the towering blades, from one side to the other as the trio passed. The grass seemed happy to continue to grow up toward the sky rather than across the pavement, but that might have been due to a constant stream of Primal Trackers migrating through the golf course and into the city.

When they broke out of the lush passageway, back into the sunlight, the ninth hole appeared just as Coop remembered it. Devoid of Primal Trackers, with a massive desolate space in the central area of the fairway where blight had turned the grass brown and the dirt to dust. He expected the grass to have recovered, at least, especially with mana present. He found it a bit strange that it was pretty much the same after so much time.

Near the edge of the brown deadened area was a large muddy crater filled with rain water where the Field Boss had been defeated by Coop so many days ago. Dirt had been pushed up, creating a dry rim around most of the hole that reminded him of a giant anthill. Coop’s shoulders sagged as they didn’t find any boss waiting for them nearby. He was dreaming of Andamarius lounging in the middle of the fairway, just waiting for a challenger like Coop to come along, but that obviously wasn’t the case.

“Sorry, Coop.” Camila consoled him with a pat on the shoulder. “Looks like our grind continues. We’re almost done with the fourth stage, though. Just a few more big groups.” She took the lead toward the green, planning on repeating Coop’s pattern from when he chased the Slayer title, concentrating on the middle holes where the respawns were the densest in order to speed up their progress.

“Isn't it kinda weird that there aren’t even elites?” Charlie pondered. “Everything we’ve learned about mana concentrations would indicate that this should be a spot where monsters developed faster, but this area is completely empty.”

Camila wasn’t concerned. “Maybe the mana flow, or whatever, shifted.” She turned to Coop. “Maybe you’ll find a Field Boss somewhere nearby.” She suggested optimistically.

“I don’t think mana is supposed to be like the weather.” Charlie continued as she followed Camila, with Coop by her side. “I think it’s supposed to be more like the ocean, with major currents and stuff like that. They wouldn’t just change. That’s what Shalatha says anyway.”

“Maybe there are tides, then?” Camila offered, unconcerned with getting bogged down in the details.

Coop was just placing all of his hopes on the mana well. His opinion on hunting Field Bosses had flipped with his inability to figure out their spawn patterns. Tracking down bosses in the world, while considering the evolution of settlement territories, would be such a drag, he didn’t want anything to do with it. He was reconsidering his priorities for when he eventually did start branching out on adventures. Before he was thinking he would prioritize collecting the necessary materials to slowly equip as many people as possible in the absolute best gear that the grandmasters could craft, but if the bosses were this sporadic, he would revert back to ranking his Slayer title grinds at the top of his agenda.

He was absently gazing into the muddy pond that had formed in the middle of the fairway, like a poorly planned water hazard, as the three of them strolled through the grass and made their way to the green. It really was more of a pond than the site of a detonation. He wondered if it had always been as large as it was, considering the bus-sized field boss could have drowned inside of it. There were even tadpoles and what appeared to be small fish turning the crater into their home.

“Where’d those even come from?” He wondered out loud. It wasn’t like the little lake was connected to any other bodies of water. Charlie started to answer, but she was interrupted.

A deep, breathy hiss, like air being pushed through a wide open duct, brought their attention back toward the rough. Camila gasped, caught by surprise, just as Coop spotted a portion of the tall grass that had been pressed down by frequent passage of something large. Very large. Something that had been traveling to and from the crater with enough regularity to turn the overgrown grass into a smooth bed that lay flat against the ground.

Even before Coop could react, Camila stepped forward, toward the grassy trail and lifted her fists protectively, like she was suddenly ready to box. Judging by her stance, she wasn’t convinced her perfect counter would be enough to stop whatever she had spotted. Then he saw it as well, and he understood her doubt.

Emerging from the tall grass was an enormous, broad, dark green snout that was slightly ajar, revealing dozens of teeth, each the length of Coop’s forearm. Coop immediately recognized a dinosaur, just from seeing the mouth, thanks to a natural childhood obsession. How would Camila counter a set of jaws snapping shut?

He cast Legacy of the Mists, sending a shieldbearer phantasm to catch the ambusher and replace Camila as its target, utilizing Presence of Mind to see what they had walked into at the same time as he provided the summoned minion with his intent: defend and distract.

[American Alligator (Level 122)]

[Apex Predator (Body)]

[Primordial (Dauntless)]

Before the phantasm burst out of the mists, Camila stepped forward unhesitatingly. Her fist connected underneath the bottom of the jaw with an uppercut that shifted her own body out of the way more than it slowed the forward charge of the huge reptilian monster. The creature had come from their left, and Camila moved herself to the opposite side from Coop and Charlie, further toward the green.

The alligator was massive, but still smaller than the Field Boss they had expected to find. Where Andamarius was actually the size of a bus, the alligator was more like an unreasonably large pick-up truck, and it stood just as tall. Camila had been forced to uppercut the creature as its stature held it that far above her head.

Charlie launched herself high into the air with a gust of wind that whipped up dust while Camila somersaulted to her feet. Coop leapt forward, with his shield and spear leading the way, like he was charging into a battlefield. He could feel the wind pressing down on him as Charlie liberally spent her mana, temporarily flying high above the ground. It felt like he was running underneath a rocket engine. The pond was suddenly full of waves that threatened to spill over the rim.

Charlie hovered in the air with both arms held out from her sides, with both wrists curled up toward the sky, with her fingers bent into rigid formations. Her hair was whipping in the air, while also slowly rising. The air crackled.

The alligator twisted its neck in order to turn its jaw on its side. The phantasm that Coop had summoned directly in front of it connected with its own tower shield, smashing the oversized protective equipment against the tip of the alligator’s snout. The phantasm thrust its spear forward in order to counter attack, aiming it down the throat, but the alligator’s jaw slammed shut with a snap. The abruptness of the attack was shocking, sending a wave of pressure across the fairway and causing the grass to bend on both sides.

Mists leaked from between its teeth as it returned its head to its natural orientation just in time for Coop’s spear to jab it in the side, driving through the thick skin at the base of its neck, leaving a gaping wound. Coop yanked his spear out, prepared to thrust again and noted that the wound didn’t bleed the way he expected. In fact, there was no blood at all, as if he had merely pierced armor rather than any flesh. A phantasm burst out of the mists above Coop, even while he was retracting his spear, following up with a precise combination blow, seeking to deal magic damage when physical might not be ideal.

The phantasm lunged and stabbed with its own ghostly replica of Coop’s spear, landing what would have been a devastating blow against the mana well’s first boss, but the alligator essentially shrugged it off, proving itself to be a proper tank. The phantasm landed next to Coop, having dealt as little damage as he had with its own attack. The reptile whipped its head toward Coop in response to the dual blows while simultaneously adding a skill that emanated from its body in waves.

Dark brown pulses of muddy energy radiated from the alligator’s body and Coop found himself afflicted by some sort of crowd control. He could still move, but it was like he had his attention forcefully applied to the gator’s eyes. It was like an unspoken challenge that he hadn’t been able to resist, even with his completely ridiculous magic defense, though it may not have been an attack exactly, more like a taunt. He was staring into the reptilian eyes when the alligator’s jaw sought to swipe his body, with teeth bared.

Coop met the challenge with his shield, raising it and smashing it forward. When the shield and teeth met, Coop’s feet were driven into the ground, leaving divots through the slightly overgrown fairway and deep into the dirt, but he had easily been strong enough to counter the alligator’s power.

A tooth flew from the creature’s mouth, up and behind Coop, the phantasm stabbed at the roof of the alligator’s mouth, and at the same time the sound of Camila’s Perfect Counter rang out. The satisfying ring of a metal bat dinging a baseball for a home run was actually Camila’s fist catching the tail as it whipped toward her when the gator attacked Coop.

The combination of Coop’s shield bash, the phantasm’s attack, and Camila’s counter lifted the animal into the air in spite of its bulk. It looked like it would land on its side, as it spun counter-clockwise, not agile enough to correct its orientation and lacking the physical attributes that would help, given its relatively stubby legs compared to its thick body.

Its back right leg was the first to touch the ground, kicking up clods of dirt and grass as it barely scraped the surface with webbed claws. Coop prepared to follow up, seizing the momentum in the fight when it was presented as had become natural in so many other conflicts. But before he attacked again, a blinding light exploded through the gator’s back, dead center, where the armored scales were the largest.

A massive pillar of lightning, looking more like a spike of blindingly white energy, smashed into the alligator, causing its muscles to immediately seize up and forcing its landing to be even more awkward than it would have been otherwise. Coop stumbled backwards, deafened by the thunder, with his phantasm turning back into mists. The alligator’s back had arched, jaw snapped shut, and all four legs splayed out rigidly as it was flung a dozen feet up into the air.

When it landed with a crash, it was still stiffened. Steam and smoke radiated from the skin of the alligator, floating up into the sky. Finally able to tear his eyes away from the gator’s eyes, Coop belatedly noticed that they were cast in deep shadows, almost as dark as night, as a huge thunder cloud pressed down above them, seeming to be far too low. The cloud was already disappearing, losing its density like cotton candy dropped into water. As the light of day returned, he realized Charlie was falling.

Dropping his spear, he shifted to the side and managed to catch Charlie with one arm. A split second later Camila was there. “I’ve got her.” Camila stated in a muffled voice that barely registered as a whisper after the thunder had deafened them. Coop passed the Aeromancer over, eyes reverting back to the alligator.

Resummoning his spear to his hand, he stepped toward the animal knowing it was still alive, but unsure if it wanted to continue to fight. The alligator was clearly hurt, dazed from the massive amount of electricity that had just run through its body. It dragged itself across the fairway and slid into the muddy crater, seeking refuge inside the small body of water that it had created.

Now Coop understood that the crater had become a gator hole, which explained the slightly different appearance from what he remembered. The animal had altered it to be more comfortable, establishing a tiny refuge of its own. Judging by its Dauntless title, it had been responsible for defeating the Field Boss at least once. Coop suspected that it easily had a Slayer title from chomping on Primal Trackers, given its extraordinary level. In order to gain that much experience from lower level monsters, it must have been busy. He thought it was interesting that the Primal Trackers applied a debuff that let them pursue a fight while the alligator had an ability that taunted things into fighting it. The animal hadn’t taken a class that ran from fights, making it a natural counter to the Trackers main gimmick.

Coop cautiously approached the edge of the pond, letting a thin Fog of War cover the surface, as he respected the ability of the alligator when it came to ambushes after it caught them by surprise once.

“You alright in there?” Coop tried talking to it. “Can you even hear underwater?” He wondered aloud, but Fog of War answered his question when the tiny fish scattered away from the surface, leaving ripples across the top of the water. The pair of reptilian eyes that breached the surface and locked onto Coop were evidence that it was aware of his presence. The gator continued hiding its bulk in the muddy water, but it stared straight at Coop, from the other side of the pond.

“We don’t need to fight.” Coop tried negotiating, imagining that the alligator was feeling properly contrite after biting off more than it could chew.