Chapter 192: Human Spirit (Patreon)

Coop woke up with a start after a dreamless sleep. He found himself lying on his back, alone, in the partially collapsed cavern. He was feeling exhausted, as if he had been on an intense bender the likes of which were only depicted in movies for comedic effect.

“Ugh…” He groaned as he tried lifting a hand to his forehead, but his arm didn’t react the way he expected, staying limp at his side, stinging with pins and needles.

The ground all around him was stained with dried blood that could have been the trigger for an adventure full of mystery and intrigue except that it had obviously come from him. Mystery solved, he concluded with a disappointed frown.

He ached enough that he was afraid to try to move any more, preferring to contemplate his life choices while scanning the area with just his eyes instead. There wasn’t anything in his immediate vicinity, so he relaxed slightly, gazing upwards with his freshly scarred limbs splayed out at his sides. He took deep breaths to ease the pounding in his head and waited to regain the feeling in his limbs. Above him was the clear night sky, stars twinkling as if amused by his pitiful display.

He couldn’t lie around forever, and he wasn’t sure how long he had already spent blacked out. His first impulse was to further assess his surroundings for threats. With another groan, he sat up making the pressure in his head increase, but the underground cavern was empty.

A cool breeze tickled the tip of his nose as the night air sank into the valley and flooded the underground cavern that had been opened up by the battle between himself and the Icon of Mana. Huracan’s heat had finally dissipated from the valley. The High Priest’s physical influence was gone, but the result of his actions had left a significant scar on the region. The sand had ceased falling from the gap in the surface, leaving giant piles that formed a rough outline of the edge of the collapse. Coop could see that the crack in the surface snaked far into the distance, following the shadowy contours of the valley as it slid between rocky hills.

The Icon was gone, defeated by the final empowered slash that he had been granted by the Battlemaiden. The attack was powerful enough to nearly defeat Coop just from executing it, so he didn’t think it was too much of a surprise for the equally leveled Siege Boss to have met its demise after being subjected to the direct blow. Coop’s unchecked notifications slowly blinked in his peripheral vision, and he confirmed the kill.

[You defeated Siege Boss: Inevitable Conclusion (Level 175)]

[+242731 Basic Credits]

[+1 Voidstone (Legendary)]

[+1 Eye of Shadow (Unique)]

[Congratulations! You have leveled up!]

[Congratulations! You have leveled up!]

[Congratulations! You have leveled up!]

[Congratulations! Your profession has leveled up!]

[Congratulations! Your profession has leveled up!]

[Congratulations! Your profession has leveled up!]

The rewards were there, but somehow, they didn’t feel adequate. Given the challenge that the Icon of Mana had presented, it really felt like a step up from the previous two Icons, but the rewards were more or less the same. The only scaling appeared to have come from a simple increase in levels.

At least the experience kept coming. Three levels wasn’t that bad. Coop would always be happy with continuing to progress. He preferred the steady growth presented from simple, repetitive grinding, but if he was forced to face new encounters like this, he would make due with continued bursts forward. As his level rose, the levels would be harder to obtain. At least, that was the case since he was unwilling to pace himself in a way that would allow the challenges to keep up. There was a tiny voice in the back of his head that was shouting “Faster! Faster!” because of the existence of the leaderboards even more than future threats.

His health was full, but he was racked with debuffs. He still had the Delusion debuff, so he wouldn’t be able to cast Inheritance of the Mists again, though even if the second time had gone much better than the first, he had no intention of tapping into the mists any time soon. Unless he was pushed to the limit, he would wait until he had progressed further along on his journey, gathering strength as he went. He tried shrugging and winced instead, distracting him from the marginally amusing thought that he needed to be stronger to be strong.

The Battlemaiden had been a lot more forthcoming than the Lightning Lord. She had clearly demonstrated his limitations, first by showing him the upper bound of his current self and evidently using his own capacity for picking apart the Icon that he had struggled with on his own. It was kind of embarrassing to have his lacking talent displayed so blatantly. Then she revealed a tiny sliver of the power he was attempting to wield when he used Inheritance. Just tapping into the Battlemaiden’s power for a single rather basic enhanced attack had been enough to almost kill him.

The experience had opened his eyes to the potential of the Inheritance ability even more than it had exposed his own weakness. Inheritance was more than just borrowed power. He supposed the clue should have been in the name. If other apparitions were more like the Battlemaiden, he might even consider Inheritance of the Mists to be the natural conclusion of the guidance provided by his Haunted title. They were more connected than he anticipated. In a way, he felt like he had been given the opportunity to test drive a supercar, but it had come before he had earned his learner’s permit. He resolved to heed the Battlemaiden’s advice to the best of his ability, finding her attitude palatable, like a long suffering but wise master that realized the pupil wouldn’t learn from words alone. In Coop’s case, it was probably true.

“Refine my blade and spirit… remember my purpose…” Coop recalled her message, inscribing it into his memory. She had certainly given him more to work with than the Lightning Lord.

Coop asked himself what his purpose was. The answer came quickly. He had decided long ago it would be to develop Ghost Reef into a sanctuary, and to make sure he was strong enough to make sure it could remain that way. That one was easily answered. His mission hadn’t changed even after it had expanded and the means had shifted.

How would he refine his blade and spirit? Grinding, obviously. More levels and more stats. He was already committed to that route. That question was even easier to answer than remembering his purpose.

The Battlemaiden had left him with clear directions that were convenient to follow given the path he was already taking. He wished all advice was like that.

But why was she so powerful? Why would the system give anyone a skill that had so much potency? Inheritance of the Mists defied his expectations for ability potential. His companions that had ultimate abilities didn’t reach the heights that he was grasping at, and even those illustrations had broken his perception of the system when they were revealed. Jett’s darkness form was no joke, but he didn’t think it was on the same level as Inheritance might be. Then again, Madison, Charlie, Jett, and the rest had revealed ultimate skills much earlier than he had, and all of them had the control not to overdo it the way he did.

Maybe he overestimated his own skill with subconscious vanity, but the power that he had wielded in the final swing was honestly scary. His body was covered in the evidence of his inadequacy in the face of one single skill. Pink scars criss-crossed his exposed skin where the fabric of his very being seemed to have threatened to tear as he charged the final attack. The side of the cavern that had received the blow was completely destroyed, and a single cut was exposed in the earth, extending an obscene distance through the ground, as if the bedrock of the valley had been as soft as butter.

“The power of the mists, huh?” He mumbled, afraid to move too much more because of the pain. He wasn’t exactly lounging in the hammock he had been hoping for, swaying beneath palm trees with the sound of waves lapping at a sandy shore, but with the exhaustion he felt, even sitting on the rocky floor was agreeable.

All the buffs of empowerment were long gone and he had six other debuffs in addition to the ones applied by Inheritance. They all indicated injuries that required significant rest before they would be healed. They would only heal one at a time, consecutively. Combined, they would put him out of commission for more than a month. It was an unacceptable length of time to be laid up. There was simply too much going on for him to take that kind of time off.

“Huh.” Coop grunted as another realization hit him.

In retrospect, the Lightning Lord had been more considerate than he initially thought. Leaving him with no resources wasn’t so bad when compared to what letting Coop actually take the reins had done to his body. Maybe the arrogant deity had been looking out for him after all. Coop might have burned himself out trying to cast a single lightning bolt to annihilate one Ancient Devourer. Instead, the first apparition had retained control during the possession, accomplishing Coop’s goal without actually putting him out of commission. At the time, being knocked unconscious and drained of resources seemed like a miserable result, but perhaps it was actually the best possible outcome at the time. He might have to reassess the Lightning Lord’s brusque harshness as protective discouragement.

Coop blew air out of his nose at the idea of the benevolent apparitions guiding him with their different personalities, but it wasn’t really that far-fetched; it was basically what he had believed his Haunted title was doing while he wielded his summoned weapons. The title provided him with gentle guidance that flourished with extensive practice and raised his proficiency with several different weapons as long as he applied himself to the rehearsal.

His skill with a handful of his weapons was high enough that an immortal weapon master like Ledwidge had passed on further instruction. There was no way to explain Coop’s mastery without some supernatural element. It wasn’t like he had tutorial videos to follow and the odds of him stumbling into effective movements was probably embarrassingly low. He had accepted the explanation that the title was tapping into the collective human experience to identify appropriate instruction with classic human weapons. Coop’s secret ingredient was simple repetition, just like the profession masters of Corozal had extolled.

In the same vein as his Haunted title, the upgrade to his weapon summoning skill, Retribution, had been Legacy of the Mists. Legacy summoned the phantasms, which Jones had confirmed were accurate representations of ancient warriors wielding those same weapons. Coop would defer to the old caretaker’s academic perspective and accept his conclusions without question. The phantasms were physical manifestations of warriors throughout history. If the system could summon those warriors, who were the culmination of battle experience and talent, then he thought it stood to reason that the system was capable of assessing experience and talent itself. It wasn’t like he had ever summoned a phantasm that was incompetent, but he was sure that throughout history there would be plenty of less-skilled warriors to choose from.

Ghost Reef’s army of actual ghosts seemed like another piece of the puzzle, being real people who had been living and died before the assimilation began. Once again, Jones had been able to confirm the veracity of their memories, concluding that they weren’t just arbitrary creations with implanted histories. If the system could accurately record them in life, then recreate them with mana later, it had to have a database that was incomprehensibly detailed.

Basically, Coop believed his Haunted title, the phantasms from Legacy of the Mists, and the phantoms of Ghost Reef were all based on the same thing. The System’s Records. In order to operate on the level of detail the system had already demonstrated, it would need to be a compendium of not just historical events, but individual thoughts, memories, skill, emotions - basically everything. It was a bit mind boggling, even if he accepted the existence and function of mana itself.

Inheritance of the Mists took his theory on a more esoteric step forward, but it wasn’t completely unsupported. His Haunted title could have been advice from a single master of each weapon, the phantasms were individual warriors, and the phantoms were essentially resurrected people. Rather than individual representations with experience wielding a particular weapon, the apparitions that Inheritence manifested were clearly something more. His sample size was only two, but the first seemed like a culturally significant being, worshiped by many and at least recognized by other societies. He was pretty confident that many different cultures had depictions of the god of lightning. The second had self-described as the coalescence of spirit and went on to describe inspirational figures that had risen beyond the realm of individuals.

Coop wasn’t ready to conclusively define what Inheritance of the Mists specifically called forth, but so far, they had both been ‘more’ than an individual human. They were collective powers. At least, that distinction aligned with the fact that they were significantly more potent, with actual system-provided magic powers rather than ‘merely’ peak warriors with the experience and skill to match. Where the phantasms were realistic as far as the pinnacle of human expertise was concerned, the apparitions were firmly in the realm of imagination; real or imagined figures elevated by cultural respect.

So to try and answer his original question as to why the Battlemaiden is so powerful, he thought it was because she was derived from humanity itself. The apparitions might actually be beyond other system created skills because they were based on human spirit instead of galactic standards.

If he took the testimonies of the contracted residents at face value: none of them would have the same extensive anthology for the system to draw from. No offense to his alien friends, but the fact that they had been uplifted was an inherent limitation that probably wasn’t ever exposed as long as mana succeeded in its job of culling species with the Eradication Protocol.

If he was right, he thought it would be fantastic news for Earth as a whole. While being targeted for eradication was no good, there was no chance that he was the only one with abilities that designed themselves with the help of their collective experience. Heck, he didn’t need to look any farther than the High Priest that took on the moniker of a Mayan deity. Maybe Huracan really was channeling some cultural memory through the System’s Records to empower his abilities, and maybe Chakyum really was the manifestation of death.

Coop sighed. He knew he wouldn’t get an exact answer to his conjectures, but he still pieced together his own theory while procrastinating his journey back to Corozal. One other thing that the Battlemaiden had said stuck out to him. She had suggested he was walking with the mists, but he was no mistwalker, when pointing out his deficiencies. When he considered all of the ghostly phenomenon that surrounded him and his mana affinity along with the flavor of his current Path of the Mistwalker, and even the actual sense provided by Vaproform, he thought he could better understand what the mists represented.

“Why mists?” Coop asked himself.

He had been pretty lost in life in the years leading up to the assimilation. His thoughts had been clouded by fog and he lacked direction. It didn’t seem unreasonable to imagine that the mists were merely his way of perceiving the system’s compendium. It was all just mana, right? It was supposed to be everywhere. Was that how affinities were assigned? Others might see mana differently, but it stood to reason that their minds had to interpret things somehow. When he used Vaporform, it wasn’t really another dimension that he was immersing himself in, it was the current one, seen through a lens of mana. Maybe Jett was way ahead of him, tapping into some collective consciousness of darkness or shadows. Coop shook his head as he imagined the cat naturally figuring out yet another system mechanic long before he did.

His limbs were busted to the point that he wouldn’t be able to mistjump like he planned. It would be a slow painful walk once he got started. Hopefully, the Mender back in Corozal would be able to tend to his wounds. Otherwise, his natural recovery would take long enough that it made sense for him to head back to Ghost Reef and receive treatment from Madison. The round trip plus treatment would end up taking a full week at a minimum, but if he didn’t have the debuffs removed, he could quadruple that estimate for his downtime. With the way healing had worked previously, he had a suspicion that the Mender would be able to set him right physically, but the debuffs would remain until either the time lapsed or a healer removed them.

“Call it a forced intermission.” Coop suggested to the Yucatan in general, inherently promising to continue his expedition as soon as he could. He picked himself up off the ground with an embarrassing amount of difficulty and started searching for an easy way back to the surface.