Chapter 183: Fizzies (Patreon)

Marcus held his glowing weapon tight with one hand as it dripped with golden mana. Thick drops of metallic liquid leaked through his fingers and he could feel the power flow up his arm and into his shoulder until it warmed his chest. The radiating heat was a welcome contrast to the cold ocean spray that had been constantly battering them on their journey. The golden rod shimmered in the night, sending a gentle light across the deck of the ship that revealed all of the struggles they were enduring.

The five diplomats that accompanied him on the expedition had taken a defensive posture at his rear. They were all equipped in the Ghost Reef Standard Issue equipment, and though they hadn’t concentrated on combat as much as many of the other residents, they stood firmly in the face of the assault. Even they had experienced the worst of the siege event, and they maintained their training with party combat and Ledwidge’s training. Two of them jabbed with spears while another’s flame ball erupted over the ocean like a surface level firework display.

With Marcus’s other hand, he casted a simple blessing on Gabby that would briefly empower her, lasting only for a few seconds or until her next attack connected with a foe. Sign of Awakening would nudge her forward with Divine Guidance. At least, that’s what the skill described. In practice, Marcus’s ability would increase her already profound damage by supplementing her with a golden aura that added a secondary impact to anything she struck for a brief time.

She swung her scuffed baseball bat into the slime green globule that had been belched from the surface of the contaminated ocean with a simple one-handed motion. Golden flecks erupted upon the collision, shooting forward like glittering shrapnel, piercing the liquified intruder. The combined attacks caused the globule to lose form and splash back down onto the deck and dribble back into the sea.

“Hurry!” Carlos shouted from the rear as his stringy shadow tendrils wrapped themselves around and within another globule that had formed on the deck. The tendrils struggled to tear through the watery body, as if they couldn’t find purchase on the liquified minion.

Charlie merely grunted in response from her protected position behind the Shadowdancer, but everyone else felt the gust of wind that filled the sails. Charlie’s wind simultaneously pushed them forward while suppressing the water around the Eye of the Storm. The green malformations bulged like blisters on the surface, but they stopped climbing into the air and splashing corrupting acid on the ghost ship as it rushed beyond their domain. The Fearless and Sea Burial remained at the flag ship’s flanks, the former lighting its own path with unceasing flames, and the latter firing shrapnel bolts at their rear.

Camila’s sweeping kick punted another slime blob over the edge, finding just the right amount of force to prevent it from exploding upon contact, and Ms. Sofia sent a spike of orange energy after it for good measure. The gout of water that exploded into the air was a mixture of green and orange, but the Eye of the Storm was out of range before the droplets fell back down to the sea, leaving the monsters in its wake.

Carlos collapsed onto his back, chest heaving from the short battle, staring at the night sky as they raced north. It had been the last of more than 20 assaults on the ghost ship, but it certainly hadn’t been the worst. Marcus shuddered at the thought of engaging with the leader of the minions they had been encountering in the ocean.

“We should have stayed further offshore…” Carlos complained half-heartedly. None of their options were notably better than any of the others.

“Give it a rest.” Gabby responded. She also took a knee, exhausted by being repeatedly put to task in combat.

Marcus checked on his subordinates, but found all five diplomats unwearied. He wished he could have brought his entire contingent of trainees. Unfortunately, there was only so much manpower available to Ghost Reef, and many of those he had taken under his wing were too valuable in other arenas. On the upside, he could trust each and every one of them to be capable of handling themselves should they need to be dispatched to settlements on their own.

The sight of Admiral Kayla jogging across the deck ceased his musings. “Is the ship okay?” Marcus prompted, worried that their most recent encounter could have deteriorated their transportation enough to force them ashore.

“She’ll be fine. Nothing a bit of deck swabbing won’t fix.” Behind her, pirates were already working on the old ghost wood, making sure none of the acidic slime remained on any surfaces. “How about you?”

Marcus nodded positively. “Ready for another round.” He stated confidently, but the sounds of discontent that came from Carlos said otherwise.

For all the complaining the man did, he was a formidable fighter that would have genuinely been at home among those at Ghost Reef. All three of the Neon Park elites were powerful, and though they lacked stamina compared to what would be expected back on the island, they had been able to hang in the fights even as their cooldowns ebbed.

“Good. We can expect several more of those Slimers, judging by the way the sea bubbles in the distance.” Kayla glanced up at the crow’s nest where a pair of pirates watched each others’ back with weapons drawn as they pointed and shouted out what they spotted with the scouts from the other ships. The untamed Atlantic Ocean was turning out to be at least as dangerous as the wild regions on land, if not more so.

They dared not return to the deep ocean, where the first foe they had encountered dwarfed the ship itself. A black whale that had breached the surface in the distance, revealing gray bone spikes abutting each fin, stained with blood and grime, made its presence known as soon as they approached the continental shelf. A quick inspection had revealed nothing but question marks, even for its stats, and by the way the Fearless captain’s eyes bulged at the sight, it was clear that even the pirates didn’t want to tempt fate by venturing into the creature’s territory. The whale could have simply crashed into their ship and put them out of commission, so they had returned to the coastal waters where they contended with frequent assaults from more alien, but reasonably leveled enemies.

They had been at sea for a few days, long enough for many of them to wish they were back in the precarious safety of Neptune’s Bridge, but they weren’t even halfway done with their voyage. Marcus was growing more and more impressed with the fact that Camila’s family had managed to reach Empress City on their own. They hadn’t gone unscathed, suffering severe injuries on the way, but they had survived in what was proving to be an incredibly difficult journey. He wasn’t sure if they would be able to establish a suitable connection to the northeast with the way the unclaimed territory was developing.

Marcus wasn’t necessarily the man to make such a decision, but from his perspective, he thought they would need to have someone as strong as Coop clear the entire eastern seaboard if they had any hope of creating a safe causeway between their settlement and Neon Park. However, he wasn’t convinced that it would be worth tying up their Champion for such an involved process. The dilemma grew due to the inherent nature of the untamed lands. They were continually getting more dangerous. That meant that if they needed someone as strong as Coop to work his way through them today, they would become something that required an army to take on in the future, and that was only if they didn’t become unconquerable before then.

The assimilation was designed in such a way that it isolated the natives into pockets around civilization shards. First they were pitted against each other through various competitions for territory and control, then they were challenged by settlement events. While they were engaged with themselves, the planetary sponsor had the opportunity to claim everything outside of settlement territory. The whole process seemed rather insidious to Marcus. They had no choice but to play along since to break away from the pattern was risking their very survival.

He was developing even more respect for Coop’s nature. The Champion of Ghost Reef was resisting the assimilation in the most effective way available, but it was one that seemed impossible at first glance. All they needed to do was be too strong to be constrained by the limitations imposed by the system. That way, rather than gatekeeping the invaders, it was actually setting them up to be easy pickings.

Whatever Coop was doing, Marcus hoped it wouldn’t take away from his progression. The residents of Ghost Reef were following in his footsteps, raising their own power levels, and while it seemed like they were in a healthy position for their local environment, the world was a vast place. There were challenges the phantoms or other members of the faction weren’t prepared to face yet, but as long as Coop was ready, they had a chance. More importantly, if Coop could pave the way, they would reach that level as well.

“Fizzies! 12 o’clock!” A voice rang from above, relaying shouts from The Fearless.

The spotters sighted their next fight. Marcus’s short mace started to glow with golden mana as he cycled his resources without even being conscious of it. Liquid gold dribbled down the handle until it was dripping toward the deck, dissipating before it reached the ghostly wood. His left hand started carving blessings in the air as the crew geared up for another fight.

—

Coop strolled through the rainforest with his eyes shut, as if he was in a dream land. Despite squeezing away his sight, not even a leaf grazed against his skin. Fog of War overrode his senses, revealing every branch within his domain. His mind was awash with tiny movements of animals and insects as they found themselves temporarily caught by the mists. The information was far too much if he allowed his own senses to collide with what was provided by Presence of Mind.

He had been exploring the thick wooded areas around Corozal for days without rest.

The thick jungles were becoming his home, and he was taking liberties in controlling the guest list. A thin mist drifted all the way up to the canopy, engulfing palms and underbrush while scouring the branches for the local Primal Constructs. They were slow hunters that relied on the element of surprise to defeat their enemies. They didn’t hide like the ambush variants he had fought, but instead depended on assaulting victims from an unusual vector.

When an Elite Ruin Nebula was caught by the mists, one of Coop’s 20 constant companions would bound through the trees, leaping off of trunks until they were balancing among the broad branches of old growth forest or mana infused reclamations. A series of quick slashes and the Nebulas were no more.

The mists continued to drift, with another victim’s mana consumed, feeding the beast that scrubbed the forest clean. The animals and insects that had their routines interrupted by the obscuring vapors gradually found themselves freed from the smothering embrace, unharmed if a bit spooked by the experience. It wasn’t the worst ordeal they had to endure since the assimilation began, and the hardy survivors were barely fazed.

Coop started his grind by heading inland, west northwest, from Corozal as directed by a handful of the warriors of the Crossroads. He was in the process of securing the Yucatan peninsula, with the first step being to reset the monster population to one that was more tolerable. As he saw it, the main issue was that the Primal Constructs were creating a gap in their power level relative to the local humans. Naturally, the solution he came up with was to slaughter the elites. All of them.

While he maintained his domain, destroying the invaders in a constant series of short battles, refreshing his phantoms as he went, he carefully monitored his own progress. He was defeating monsters at a truly absurd rate. His previous grind sessions had never reached the level he was at when fully exploiting Fog of War, Presence of Mind, and Legacy of the Mists. Forget about calculating progress based on minutes, he was defeating an elite every few seconds.

His misty domain covered an excessively wide area and the phantoms could reach every inch. They were as deadly as he was, untiring, and only limited by their own fragility and temporary duration. When it came to sweeping a large but densely crowded space, he couldn’t think of a more potent combination of skills. Ranged abilities would struggle with target acquisition and obstructions, melee skills would have to contend with the enormous ground to cover, large area skills would either run out of steam or be overkill depending on the monster density, and precision attacks would necessitate unreasonable mobility. Coop’s build overcame every obstacle presented by the rainforest with grace and efficiency.

While he roamed the forest, he was constantly encountering wild animals that had established their own sanctuaries. Most of them relished in the peace that the mists brought, temporarily restricting any of them from being attacked, but wild animals were accustomed to remaining alert. If they relaxed for any period, it was hardly obvious, even to Coop’s magnified senses.

A mixed group of tapirs casually grazed in the forest near a shallow creek. The large mammals were joined by a trio of black vultures who hopped among them as if they were part of the family of mammals. Two pairs of the tapirs had levels over 100, and the vultures were just as high, but the rest were either sub-20 or unleveled. They seemed perfectly content in Coop’s fog, maintaining their territory vigilantly while the lower leveled animals chewed on leaves at the edge of the water.

He also spotted a pair of ocelots slinking through the underbrush as they hunted an Elite Ruin Nebula that was hanging from a low branch, waiting for an opportunity to ambush an unsuspecting passerby. The fog didn’t slow their hunt at all. The cats took turns scooting forward while the other carefully watched their prey in the hazy mists.

When they were close enough to strike, the first to move retreated rather than lunging further ahead, dramatically cutting through the bushes and drawing the attention of the Construct. When the snake-like arms shot forward, the second in the pair leapt forward from another angle, turning into a blur as it used its own body as a missile that flashed straight through the monster and reappeared among the higher branches of the canopy. It bore its fangs as it twisted to confirm its kill.

The most surprising of the native combatants was a singular amphibious reptile. At first Coop let its presence pass into his subconscious, inoffensive as it seemed, but a Ruin Nebula had taken note of the animal. The small frog seemed oblivious to the danger, and when the Construct attacked, Coop cringed at the inevitable outcome. The frog was impaled by the first fang of the multi-hinged jaw at the end of the Nebula’s arms, not even large enough to justify having the limb snap shut.

However, the frog itself barely reacted to the potentially mortal wound, letting itself be dragged out of the shallow puddle it had been inhabiting. For a few seconds, Coop expected the unusually beautiful bright blue frog to be consumed by the monster as it was drawn into the air, but the blue appeared to spill onto the limb of the Primal Construct, and it slowed its progress.

As Coop watched, the limb was corrupted by the tiny frog, changing from articulating metal to a heap of rust, and finally to dust that disappeared in the wind. The corruption didn’t stop with the limb, extending further until it reached the Nebula’s body, causing the entire monster to evaporate in defeat.

The frog fell to the ground, and after reorienting itself, hopped back into its pond, wiggling its way into a tiny indentation in the mud while its wound rapidly closed. It displayed a healing ability greater than any Coop had seen, including Madison’s. He couldn’t help but go out of his way to properly inspect the frog’s aura.

[Poison Dart Frog (Level 181)]

[Toxicologist of the Unfathomable (Body)]

[Poisonous (Reaper)]

Not only did the small creature have a higher level than Coop, it also had acquired his most valuable title. Coop spent many hours after his encounter with the frog trying to wrap his head around its existence.

Those weren’t the only animals Coop witnessed after scouring a hundred miles of rainforest with his mists. There was also a flock of super aggressive scarlet macaws that mobbed Nebulas with reckless abandon, screeching at each other in a constant stream of communication that egged the frenzy along. A single harpy eagle with claws the size of Coop’s head silently tore through a Nebula in a single swoop, and a group of rodents called agouti swarmed the monsters with a hundred tiny attacks that broke the limbs one at a time.

Coop had been under the mistaken impression that the Primal Constructs were dominating the regions outside of civilization shard territory because they were unpressured by humans. In that sense, the rainforest should have been calm, completely under control of the Constructs, but instead, Coop found a battlefield.