Chapter 196: The Thunderwall (Patreon)

Coop stepped into the citadel that protected Ghost Reef’s civilization shard and found Jones patiently waiting on one of the smooth stone benches with some surprising company at his side. Derek had joined the old caretaker, and despite the two having what Coop assumed were completely mismatched personalities, they were engaged in what appeared to be a productive conversation. Jones had Derek nodding with wide eyes as he explained how one of the berms adjacent to the citadel was full of yellow wildflowers, a type of oxalis, that opened and closed depending on the time of day. As fascinating as the subject was, it just wasn’t something Coop would expect to be within Derek’s wheelhouse. Maybe if the flower was used as some kind of garnish for alcoholic beverages, he could have anticipated Derek’s interest, but that wasn’t the case.

Once again, Coop felt like he had underestimated Jones’s charm. The man could capture anyone with his passionate discourse about Ghost Reef. Even someone who would otherwise be antipathetic to such details. Apparently, Derek was seeking Coop out as well, and had been enticed into a classic Jones presentation as he waited. Coop didn’t think he had time to entertain the Virtuoso, but he could at least spare a conversation before he got on with his business. It just seemed like there was so much he needed to do, every time he finished one task another two or three popped up. He had to imagine this would be another example.

“There you are, buddy!” Derek stood up as Coop approached, excited to see him. He put his hand on Coop’s shoulder to get a good look at him. “You’re looking good!” He exclaimed like an uncle at a holiday party seeing a distant nephew for the first time since the previous intermittent family gathering. “The old man insinuated that you were in rough shape, but I don’t see it at all.” He flattered the Champion, transparently buttering him up. Derek looked over at Jones and pointed at Coop. “He looks great.”

“The magic of mana wielded by an expert.” Jones asserted, glad to see Coop recovered and attributing Coop’s healthy state to his visit with Madison.

“It wasn’t that serious.” Coop dismissed their concern with his typical carefree assessment. He ignored their worried looks as they imagined what could have incapacitated their Champion, changing the subject. “What have you been up to, Derek?” Coop asked, anticipating the answer would be lots of drinking with anyone that had some credits. “You’re not in some kind of trouble are you?”

“Hey, what’s with the doubt? I happen to try very hard to avoid trouble.” Derek insisted.

“Considering how we met, I think we might have different definitions of trouble.” Coop noted. “You might even be mixing it up with work.”

“Actually, that’s what I wanted to talk about. This is purely a work meeting! Honest!” Derek did his best to be convincing, but he had the weight of his entire personality working against him. Coop wasn’t swayed. “We could use your help with something in the mana well.” Derek stated, calming his hands and placing one on the back of his own neck.

“The mana well?” Coop asked, wondering what had happened, and why Derek of all people was bringing news of the dangerous domain. The man’s request hadn’t gone the direction Coop expected. He was imagining something more along the lines of the island exceeding the Brewery’s capacity to distill alcohol and he would need to upgrade the service somehow.

“What? Why do you look so shocked? Didn’t you know I took over the Dungeon Delving Department of the Adventurer’s Guild? I swear I told you… I definitely told Marcus, he shoulda told you, right?” Derek continued, clearly proud of his newfound purpose and confident that he would have bragged to anyone that had the time to listen.

“...Dungeon Delving Department?” Coop muttered, confused by the existence of such a specific thing and the fact that Derek had accepted any responsibilities at all.

“Of course! You know how much I love-”

“No.” Coop cut him off, putting his hand up in the universal sign to stop, not wanting Derek to ruin his own slightly improved image. “Just tell me what you need help with. I might have a dozen other things I need to handle first, depending on what it is.”

“Alright, alright. Sheesh.” Derek whined before presenting a surprisingly serious expression. “So, we’ve successfully cleared the second level up to the next floor boss, but we also skipped the first level boss when it returned. I was hoping you could clear it out for us. I think that if we catch it as soon as it respawns our top ranked groups can handle it, but it’s been there for at least a couple of weeks already, and without either Gibson’s party or Shane’s party, I’m not confident in sending anyone to test it. Those shrimp can pack a punch, and the one that took over is a really big one.”

“Oh?” Coop was mildly shocked that Derek wasn’t asking him for some other nonsense as a favor. It actually seemed like he had been seriously considering things, with the welfare of the Adventurer’s at the forefront of his thoughts. “You’ve actually been working hard?” Coop asked without hiding his surprise.

“Yes!” Derek confirmed before hesitating. “Well, I just hang out in the Last Chance Cantina we built outside of the Coral Colony and provide buffs to the Adventurer’s while I drink, so it’s kinda the same as before.” He admitted unashamedly. “But I keep track of everyone’s progress and make sure they all return on time. They know how much I hate joining the rescue parties, so they know not to overextend themselves. If they do, they have to pay for my tab.” He nudged Coop with his elbow.

Coop shook his head. Derek was slightly less hopeless than before, but Coop would definitely not be considering him someone in the upper echelons of contributing members of Ghost Reef. At least it seemed like even beyond physical development, the residents were getting organized in other ways as well. The Adventurer’s Guild seemed primed to become a fixture of post-mana society with the way it was expanding in both Ghost Reef and Empress City. “I’ll check it out before I leave.” Coop promised, not wanting to discourage the improvement.

“Ah, that’d be great. I knew I could count on you.” Derek seemed relieved. “We can grab drinks afterwards.”

“I have to head back to the Outpost.” Coop presented his convenient excuse. “I gotta make sure some other faction doesn’t come and try to eat us again.”

Derek’s smile made Coop nervous. “I heard you were in Cancun or something. Let me know when you need help delving into a dungeon over there. I’m your man when it comes to that.” he declared, jabbing a thumb at himself to punctuate his boast, though he was clearly angling for a vacation. “Just, you know, after you’ve taken care of Chumyum and his goons.”

“Sure, sure.” Coop waved him away much like Madison had waved at him to get lost. “Get back to work then. I need to upgrade the settlement so I can get back to it myself.”

“Oh nice!” Derek exclaimed. “I’ll keep an eye on the rankings. Catch ya’ later.”

Coop shook his head and received a sympathetic look from Jones. At least Derek was being relatively productive. If he was the least efficient resident, they were in exceptionally good shape.

Coop went to the center of the citadel before someone else could demand his attention. The shard hummed with mana as he approached, emitting a gentle red glow that did little to light the interior of the citadel. Instead, the modest sunlight leaking through elevated gaps cast a calm radiance across the stone patterns and the red light served to highlight the intricate designs that had been carefully crafted by Balor. Coop had never been one to go to church, but that was the impression that the inner sanctum of the stone citadel gave him. A solid and safe construction that didn’t ignore the opportunity for some artistic flourishes with light and patterns while maintaining an emphasis on the central feature.

Touching the civilization shard presented him with a notification to pay the cost of the upgrade. The cost for the settlement upgrades was really growing into hefty amounts, with this one requiring two million basic credits to progress. The previous quests had been much less. The first one had only required one thousand, though he remembered the need to save credits being a major factor in the first construction projects they chose.

Coop easily paid the magnified cost, having earned even more just from grinding the Elite Ruin Nebulas. He completed the settlement upgrade quest and planned to make up for the expense, and some, during his next grind sessions. He nodded in satisfaction with the job done. It had simultaneously been the most difficult Champion quest while being the simplest thus far.

The system hardly provided any feedback for the achievement. As usual, the omnipresent interface merely reacted with a few simple notifications. This time, the quest had been for upgrading the settlement from a Town to a City and the requirement was simple. All they needed to do was claim a subordinate settlement and the prerequisite condition would be complete.

Simple tasks weren’t always easy, and in this case, considering what a settlement represented to the people who relied on them for safety, taking one away from another group would almost always necessitate conflict. It was a task that Coop hadn’t believed he would be up for when they first began, and he worried that other settlements would take the bait and jump to unnecessary violence against their neighbors.

The truth was even Coop’s pessimistic assessment back then had been slightly too naive. People were fighting with or without external incentives, and Ghost Reef was dragged into others’ conflict without the upgrade as provocation. No matter how hesitant Coop had been to go to war, he truly understood that it had been inevitable.

The task of claiming a subordinate settlement had been accomplished when they interfered in the Endless Empire’s civil war, choosing to side against the alien faction’s Chosen and turn the tide on behalf of the rebels. In the end, he had completed the upgrade objective when he claimed Empress City in the name of Ghost Reef.

However, in order to complete the optional bonus objective, they had to claim a subordinate settlement with more than one hundred thousand residents at the time of the upgrade. Unfortunately, that meant that claiming Empress City was not enough to complete the bonus objective unless it received an impossible influx of around twenty thousand citizens. The population of the once large city had been severely diminished over the course of the assimilation, to the point that they didn’t meet the threshold to qualify for the bonus.

The Sapphire Armada, on the other hand, presented themselves on a silver platter, displaying a much larger population that was capable of establishing a massive army to invade the islands with the goal of conquering the world’s oceans. They targeted Ghost Reef in order to establish themselves as the dominant nautical force, but they were soundly beaten when they attempted their naval siege. When Coop’s advisors claimed their settlement, Neptune’s Bridge was large enough to fulfill the more difficult population objective and set Ghost Reef up for its upgrade, bonus and all.

After the upgrade, Ghost Reef was officially a City. The basic reward for the upgrade had Coop subconsciously recoiling as it expanded in his vision. It was comprehensive, to say the least, and reminded him of the initial choices when he needed to choose his class and first set of skills. The permanent decision had put him on track to reach his current state, but he wasn’t sure how successful he would have been if he had done things differently. There was no doubt that his build would look completely different if he had started with an alternative choice. If he had to make the same kind of choice for his settlement, he wanted to make sure he didn’t mess it up. There was even more pressure due to all of the residents counting on the settlement’s success and laboring to make it all possible. Coop took a deep breath.

Cities appeared to be the threshold where a settlement began to generate its own passive bonuses. The upgrade awarded Ghost Reef with what were essentially City titles, and there were quite a few listed. Each one represented a specialization that was based on the residents and their accomplishments throughout the development of the settlement, providing further bonuses on the very same paths.

Ghost Reef had more than a dozen different listings, and Coop felt a surge of anxiety as he feared he was being ambushed with what could amount to a monumental decision. Would he be finalizing the settlement’s focus with this decision? He froze in the face of a choice that might shape the permanent future of the settlement’s disciplines, like a crossroads in Ghost Reef’s path, but upon looking closer he breathed a sigh of relief.

There wouldn’t have to be a selection to the exclusion of the others. They had simply collected all of them. The list was informing him of the entire catalog of bonuses granted to Ghost Reef. The fact that they applied to every resident of the settlement meant that small bonuses would be far more significant, multiplying with the resident population. Coop’s mouth was practically watering at the idea of synergistic buffs enhancing their territory to untold levels, giving them an even greater home field advantage.

“What happened?” Jones wondered from where he spectated Coop’s interaction with the shard. Coop’s face must have gone through a range of expressions, from satisfaction, to panic, relief, and finally anticipation.

“Looks like Ghost Reef got some titles.” Coop answered as he looked closer himself, feeling better about the upgrade with every passing second. Jones hummed as he looked for himself.

The first City title in the list was The Thunderwall, based on the most potent siege weapons utilized by the settlement’s residents in its repeated successful defense. Coop chuckled to himself at what an awesome title Thunderwall was as it perfectly described the cannon barrages from the fort walls. The bonuses provided were more abstract than a flat increase to numbers, but the end result was the same. Cannons would be more lethal and also be more mana efficient when fired by residents while inside the settlement’s territory. The cannoneer team’s mana affinities would now influence the attack type of the siege weapons, providing variety in their destructive capabilities. Coop didn’t find any exclusion for the ship cannons either. The prospect of a single title improving both their navy and the fort at once encouraged his growing optimism for the rest of the City titles.

The Thunderwall bonus would have been a worthy reward all by itself, but there were so many more. The Eternal Spear was another martial title they had received. Coop thought that made sense given his own appreciation for the weapon and how many others had adopted it. Spears would enjoy increased potency and primarily become more durable for the residents of Ghost Reef while inside the settlement’s territory.

Coop hadn’t forgotten that the number of phantasms he could summon with Legacy of the Mists was limited by two things. The first limitation was the mana cost, but that was steadily decreasing based on his continued use while grinding. It was only a matter of time before he reduced the cost to zero. The other limitation on his phantasms was the weapon’s durability. Each individual summon reserved a single durability from his weapon. He had recently received increased durability for his own spear summons after upgrading his summoning skills, Retribution and Salvation, and having them fuse into Invocation. It was the reason he could summon his Battle Axe with Invocation. Previously, he couldn’t summon two-handed weapons when Retribution was independent. Ultimately, durability would be the primary factor preventing him from summoning unlimited ghosts to fight by his side, but the methods to improve it seemed few and far between. A City title was an unexpected avenue that could yield exceptional results.

The titles came in a wide variety, applying to more aspects of their experience than just the martial ones. The settlement was also titled The Coral Crown as well as the Sunstone Sanctuary for the paradise within its territory, appreciated and admired by the residents who sought to preserve its future. The settlement would expand its protection over the area to honor the dedication of its residents. Coop wondered if their environmental mitigation efforts on the dunes after the siege event had something to do with the pair of titles.

They had another label called the Haven of Twilight which implied that enough residents had embraced paths that naturally contrasted with each other. Darkness on one side and Light on the other. While Coop immediately thought of Sunny’s Harbinger of Dawn class literally recreating the sun and Jett’s mastery of shadows eclipsing it, he wondered if the system could also be implying something more metaphorical about the phantoms and his mists bridging the living and dead.

They received The Citadel of Lore for the residents’ focus on scholarship and archiving knowledge. He had to give credit to the library purchase, and people like Charlie and Jones for that one. Not to mention Laurie and her mom support group for making sure that they built the school and started classes for all the kids that had moved to the island. The Citadel of Lore would have an improved information collection rate. The effect puzzled Coop, but he was still happy with the title. He had to imagine that the title would be rare considering the volatile nature of assimilations and the fact that settlements only formed during the time of flux. Others wouldn’t have the opportunity to invest valuable resources into anything beyond survival, and therefore wouldn’t meet the qualifications for what Ghost Reef received.

The Bazaar of Unlimited Deals was obviously for the market and its apparent economic success, adding some subsidization of retail sales. The Crucible of Industry had to come from Garod and the other crafters who had been consistently producing arms, armor, and custom orders for the residents. Production inspiration was increased for all crafting projects within Ghost Reef. Coop raised his eyes as it settled in that the aliens were really considered equal residents as well. They were like a cheat code for unlocking higher level requirements for these titles. So many of their rewards were due to fostering a community that allowed them to thrive.

Ghost Reef was called a Trendsetting Marvel thanks to the efforts of their Clothier and the adoption of various fashions, and a Gastronomic Hub due to the variety of cuisine. They had titles that improved the purity of distillations, increased the beneficial bonuses applied by hospitality, enhanced the potency of alchemical concoctions, precision in baking, the efficiency of healing, the health of gardens, and the resistance to erosion. Basically all of the contracted residents had been working hard enough to unlock a title with the human residents providing enough demand to keep them busy.

The best part was that the bonuses, while small, also overlapped. The resistance to erosion wasn’t only for Balor’s stone, but would also impact the metals used by Garod as he crafted their armor. Precision in baking would apply to anything that utilized heat and fire to cook something. Garod’s forging would benefit, but so would Desmond’s cooking, and potentially anyone using heat or fire in their spells. Even Laurie’s coffee shop would benefit from at least three or four titles. Coop had to imagine that the diversification of their settlement was unusual, even throughout the galactic community, given how early it had all occurred.

Ghost Reef was officially called a Blessed City, a term he had heard from the Avatar of the System. It was granted based on the settlement having members from several high-profile species. The title didn’t actually do anything, but since it was for merely existing, he thought that was fair enough. There were bound to be a few freebies if the titles were for a basic upgrade reward. He assumed every settlement to reach the City level had to get something.

The Cradle of Progress was awarded for the average levels gained for each resident. Coop was thankful that the settlement upgrade had been slightly delayed as it had given all of the Empress City refugees from the cruise ship time to get sucked into the settlement zeitgeist of leveling. The bonus would be one of Coop’s favorites, increasing experience gains for residents within the territory.

Many, if not all of these City titles were unique to one settlement on each assimilating planet. That they had claimed so many was certainly a feat that would be difficult to match.

“That’s a huge upgrade.” Coop decided, nodding his head like he smelled something good.