Chapter 169: New Lands (Patreon)

Coop leapt from the deck of Windchaser and landed in the clear shallow waters off the shore of Belize. A pair of needlefish fled with the waves to escape his sudden presence, but he paid them no mind. He was focused on the shoreline as he pushed through the water until he was stepping through the edge of a thick treeline. He did his best to be swift, but a few days at sea had left his legs a bit wobbly. Still, other than the fish and a group of unchosen olive-throated parakeets, who chirped at him for his disturbance from their perches in the leafy canopy, he went unnoticed.

Since Coop wanted to remain circumspect for his initial investigation of the Yucatan settlement, he had requested a destination that was well outside of the civilization shard’s territory. The pirates were extremely familiar with the area, as it had been a major haven for buccaneers who set up camps while plundering Spanish settlements all along the coast. The nearby atolls and reefs had proven invaluable for those trying to avoid capture by the colonial powers.

The area wasn’t actually the stomping grounds of the Tempest Fleet specifically, but they had awareness of The Baymen who were the local pirate authority of the time and recognized the area despite the centuries that had passed since their last visit. Coop had the impression that even though it wasn’t the Tempest Fleet’s turf, the pirates of the period were more fluid with their movements. Crews were also less static than he imagined, swapping ships and disembarking whenever a location met their fancy. It was rare to have as loyal a following as Kayla did, but even the Tempest Fleet was adding new faces to replace those who sought what could essentially be seen as a vacation.

The pirates chose to take Coop to the north of Belize, near the border of Mexico, where a protected bay had been a frequent protected stopping point for various crews. They had selected a known neutral location that pirates had used to trade and recruit back in the day. Coop disembarked by himself, leaving Mikey B and Amanda with Sharkbait as they quietly drifted away from the shore. Coop would give them a signal using his ethereal spear once he determined that Corozal would be a safe enough place for the ship to make port. The plan was for them to make a temporary camp before committing to the location to get a feel for the area and its monsters. If it was suitable, they would begin a taxi service, much like what Empress City and Neptune’s Bridge would be receiving, connecting the outpost to the network of territories centered around Ghost Reef. Rather than simply waiting for Coop, the support group would busy themselves by coordinating with the rest of the fleet and relaying messages back to the main settlement regarding the status of the newly claimed territory.

By Amanda’s calculations, Corozal would be over 200 miles away from where she detected the civilization shard. If necessary, they could cut that distance in half by moving to the southern tip of Belize, but Coop preferred to err on the safer side that avoided premature detection. Even though he knew he was signing himself up for a challenging journey through mountainous jungle, they were also looking for a decent place to establish a permanent outpost.

He had only kept a single mana pylon for himself, and even though they could construct additional pylons back home, he didn’t have any inclination to waste one by placing it too close to another growing settlement. Corozal was in a middle point that he considered distant enough from the Yucatan shard to be safe from interference: far enough to have time to establish itself before the larger settlement expanded, but close enough to serve as a launching point for his expeditions. If they ended up with more mana pylons, Cancun would be next, allowing Ghost Reef to take the Yucatan peninsula away from the Yucatan settlement, giving his island settlement a foothold on another landmass should they desire it.

Coop watched as Windchaser headed back into the Corozal Bay, standing among thick mangroves at the edge of what was really only a small town before the assimilation. He cracked his neck, shook his shoulders, and readied himself for combat before slipping deeper among the leaves. Invaders, high level animals, enemy Chosen, he’d face them as they came, one fight at a time. With a brief nod to himself, he started traversing through the stubby mangrove coastline, keeping his eyes open, listening for anything out of place in the jungle ambience. Realistically, his regular senses wouldn’t be able to compare with Presence of Mind, but he watched all the same.

Casting Invocation, his ethereal sword and shield manifested in his hands with haste that greatly exceeded his previous experience. He took a second to admire the responsiveness of the mists as they hardened into his familiar equipment. When Invocation had merged Retribution and Salvation, it also improved their abilities to summon weapons and armor. His equipment felt more robust, and he had to wonder if they had increased stats after his last skill upgrade. They already scaled with his personal growth, but there was no rule that said they couldn’t improve themselves as well. To have them also push forward, better taking advantage of his stats, would compound the benefits of all of his new Slayer titles. After the Sapphire Armada presented a surprising challenge to his own progress, he welcomed any opportunities to leap forward yet again.

It was only around 300 hundred feet before he would arrive at the dirt road that encompassed the perimeter of the town, but the vegetation would make it a challenge to travel directly. His shorter ethereal sword would be preferable for the time being, compared to most of his polearms, though he doubted anything would be waiting in the short section of forest that he would pass through. The thin strip  he was cutting through would certainly minimize the opportunity for a chance encounter.

He was forced to duck and sidestep long branches that struggled to elevate their leaves, reaching for sunlight or rooting into the leafy dirt ground. He considered using his sword like a machete, clearing a path, but decided to take his time, staying relatively quiet until he became familiar with the potential enemies of the region. For all he knew, his next Slayer title target would already be nearby.

“Fingers crossed.” He whispered to himself, though he knew better than to get too distracted from his main mission. Finding Chakyum.

He didn’t even make it 20 feet through the brush before he was attacked. A creature that had been lodged among the branches of the canopy attempted to snatch Coop’s head, striking directly at him from above, and forcing him to eat his words. If it wasn’t for Presence of Mind giving him a window to react, he would have been caught by surprise in spite of remaining alert for exactly such a trap. His regular senses weren’t enough to detect the monster’s ambush point, distracted as he was keeping track of his own footing and all of the thin twigs that threatened his eyes. It wasn’t easy trying to avoid tripping on the rocky ground or getting caught by the twisting roots and dodging all of the branches scraping toward his face. He couldn’t pay enough attention to the area above his head.

Coop caught the gaping maw of the snake-like Primal Construct against the outer portion of his round shield with a ringing clang of metal on metal. Rather than a familiar jaw, the assault had come from a mouth that opened like a three-pronged claw, each with a single nail shaped fang in the center, cruelly angled inwards like the barb on a fish hook that didn’t intend to let its victims escape.

Coop’s Agility allowed him to react at ridiculous speeds and it combined with his constantly building combat experience which prevented him from wasting movements. Even before he had a chance to properly inspect the monster’s aura, Coop countered with a sweeping flourish of his sword, seeking to behead the offender with a practiced reaction that was almost completely unconscious.

While the edge of his shortsword connected just above the elongated snake head, the monster managed to twist itself partially out of the way, displaying a contortionist-like ability to flex and bend. Rather than beheading the monster, the head went with the momentum of his sword and avoided being completely severed. The edge of the mist constructed sword was extraordinarily sharp, but the monster was obviously a step above the regular invaders that Coop engaged within settlement territory.

However, given that the monster had engaged Coop in the thick forest environment, just being pushed by the edge of Coop’s sword wasn’t the salvation that it might have been looking for. Coop’s followthrough smashed the neck of the creature into the trunk of an adjacent mahogany tree, pinning it where it couldn’t continue to escape the deadly blade. The monster’s clever dodge bought it barely a split second of life before it ended up being beheaded two feet beyond the initial strike. The lopped off head stuck to the trunk as Coop yanked his sword back, pulling a chunk of bark with it and causing loose branches to bounce to the ground.

Coop didn’t have a chance to reflect on the new enemy, as he was forced to dodge backwards. He pushed himself into the branches of a flowering bush and disturbed a swarm of tiny white gnats that rose into the air like a cloud. A second snake attempted the same exact ambush as the first, smashing into the damp ground, snatching a pile of leaves and dirt instead of Coop’s flesh. Coop scrunched his face, blowing air out of his nose to fend off the bugs as he repeated his counter attack, this time attacking the snake head-on, giving it no opportunity to noodle its way around his sword, slashing his sword from the ground up. The tip cut through the ground, sending a spray of wet loamy dirt before he connected with the metal monster. The monster’s face was split in half, adding a fourth plane to its alien mouth.

At first he thought he was engaging with a swarm of monsters, like he had stumbled into a nest of snakes, but following the narrow body up into the canopy, Coop finally made note of the actual monster.

[Elite Ruin Nebula (Level 151)]

[(Agility)]

[Minion of the Primal Constructs]

Coop raised his eyebrows even as he stepped into his compressed spear throw. An ethereal spear solidified just in time to blast into the canopy and detonate the offending monster while half a dozen more of the snake claws extended toward him. The snakes weren’t individuals, but limbs extending from a writhing mass. His spear annihilated the central nucleus of the new monster and continued up through the canopy until it erupted into the open air above the forest and Coop resummoned it back to his hand.

Coop was surprised by the level of the monster, but he had to consider the fact that he was far from any dedicated settlements. These were the monsters that had been largely undisturbed in their pursuit of progress, with no civilization shards taming the flow of mana and minimal, if any contact from humans. He supposed high level elites were to be expected, but he was still impressed.

“Gonna take more than an elite though.” Coop asserted, while doing his best to maneuver his spear among all the branches while using his shield to fan away the bugs that he had attracted. If the monsters were going to be out of range, he’d need to keep his most reliable ranged weapon handy, even if it made traversing through the thin slice of forest more difficult.

He kept moving forward, paying closer attention to the canopy, seeking out the tangled mass that represented his first hostile encounter. The Primal Construct had been something like spanish moss made of dozens of the snapping three-hinged snake heads that had attacked him twice. The center had been a dark knotted mass, engulfed in shadow, surrounded by the many limbs, as it engulfed branches and slowly migrated from tree to tree within the canopy.

It was good that he kept an eye above, because in the 300 feet he needed to cross to reach the town, he discovered ten more of the elite monsters. Their levels mostly varied around 90 with the first being the only one near 150, but the density of them was a bit ridiculous. Unfortunately, none of them had been normal variants that would allow him to start the Slayer quest chain that he craved, but the density of invaders was still noteworthy, presenting potential opportunities for experience gains, scavenging levels, and credit farming, though the terrain was not conducive to efficient grinding.

The branches he had to navigate through forced him to adapt multiple times before he settled on a kit that would be most convenient. Rather than trying to continue throwing his spear through the thick branches, he had dismissed his shield, resummoned his short sword, and leaned on Legacy of the Mists to defeat the elevated monsters. Carrying a normal spear in the underbrush was too much of an annoyance, so he settled for something less imposing and seemingly more appropriate for the environment. Without Fog of War, the phantoms were at their more limited range, but they still exceeded the reach of the monsters, and their repeated use would help grant him the mana cost reduction provided by his Agility granting passive skill, Practical Application.

Each of the enemies were defeated by a single phantasm that leapt out of the mists from above and utilized an overhand chop to slice through the center of the monster. The red light eye was located on the top of the central nucleus of the creature, obstructed by the limbs below, but Coop was pretty far beyond requiring weak points to defeat Primal Constructs.

Even with his adjustments, Coop felt slightly pressed by the challenge presented in the natural environment combined with elite monsters. The small journey gave him slightly more respect for the baseline dangers outside of the influence of civilization shards. It was no wonder that settlements were considered mandatory for their survival by the factions. Constantly being alert for monsters that could potentially match those that occupied a mana well while just trying to exist would chip away at anyone’s mental state, and that was if they were even strong enough to keep up in the first place. Humans were resilient, but Coop couldn’t imagine many being able to survive in the wilderness for long.

When he emerged from the forest he was surprised to find that the road maintained its form despite thick brush overlapping its edges. Rather than becoming completely overgrown like the vegetation in sections of Ghost Reef or eroding away like the foundations of Empress City, Corozal just looked slightly neglected, like the population had only recently evacuated in preparation for a storm. The landscaping was seemingly under control, if influenced by mana in other ways. Then again, for all he knew, slightly neglected was just what the road looked like even before mana came and the town may not have gone through many changes at all.

Coop took a few moments to stare down the road in both directions, seeking any signs of habitation, but he saw none. He already suspected that the areas in between settlement territory would be empty of people, but he still expected to find either more undisturbed monsters that had opportunities to level to extremes or wild animals that were unintentionally grinding on those very same monsters.

Given that the coast was clear, Coop started to make his way down the road. He’d check out the center of the town while remaining adjacent to the bay and make an initial assessment if it was worthy of becoming Ghost Reef’s first outpost along with Mikey B and Amanda. The sea wall that ran down one side of the road guided his route from the outskirts to the interior. The waves incessantly splashed against the sea wall’s exterior, but only occasionally exceeded the barrier. The waves kept him company with a steady rhythm. Groups of brown pelicans swam around in the water, following along with Coop, and a handful of turkey vultures circled high overhead, looking like dark specks riding the air currents. He idly wondered if they were watching him back, waiting to see if he would become a meal.

Other than birds and fish who had yet to receive any levels, Coop didn’t detect anything out of the ordinary with Presence of Mind. He thought it was quite strange that the monsters had remained beyond the perimeter of the town. It wasn’t like the Primal Constructs respected the limits of the previous civilization. He supposed the tangled mass that the Ruin Nebulas appeared to be would prefer to remain among the thick branches of the forests, but that didn’t completely negate their ability to cross open spaces.

Coop kept exploring, keeping an eye on the empty structures on the opposite side of the road as he traced the seawall. The buildings were mostly open in design, providing wall-less seating areas to take advantage of the sea breeze. He walked beneath scattered palm trees and patchy grass on the seaside trail and imagined turning it into another settlement. While he could appreciate the coastal vibe, he had to admit he preferred Ghost Reef’s more familiar beaches, and not only because the monsters were relatively harmless compared to what he had already discovered in Belize.

As he considered his preferences, he finally spotted something that gave him pause. A body was lying in the distance on a short pier, motionless, still a few hundred more meters away. It looked like a man was laid out, flat on his back, with one leg casually bent. A fishing rod was propped up underneath his armpit, leaning against his raised knee, and a scraggly straw hat covered his face as if it had tipped off of his head when the brim touched the concrete floor. Coop concentrated on Presence of Mind, crouching to reduce his profile so that he could sneak closer and identify the man before he himself was detected, but as soon as Coop’s weight shifted, the world literally flipped upside down.

Coop was yanked into the air by a snare that pulled him so hard it knocked the breath out of his lungs after slamming his head against the ground. A thin, nearly invisible string had wrapped around his ankle, and in an instant, dragged him until he was hanging beneath the crown of a tall palm tree.

Contorting his torso so that he could glance at the man, Coop saw the man sit up and twist to look toward the commotion. Once he spotted Coop, he grabbed his hat in his hand and stumbled to his feet while holding it against his chest. The man abandoned his fishing rod and rushed into the town clearly intent on warning others of an intruder.