Unchosen Champion-Chapter 299: New High Score

With no more enemies remaining in the Underlayer, Coop flopped to the ground and laid on his back in the middle of the transitioning control point. He released himself from the Inheritance of the Mists, bidding the Apparition of the Pillar of Heaven farewell, though with the way Coop was connected to the mists, it seemed like they were never really gone.

The massive sigh that escaped Coop’s lungs caught him by surprise. He knew he was tired, but he hadn’t realized just how much the exhaustion had permeated to his core. It should have been obvious, given the mission he had accepted for the Underlayer Event, but the power disparity had deceived him.

It didn’t exactly help that the comedown from wielding the strength of Atlas hit him like a truck. He groaned as the hangover sapped his strength and thin mists leaked from the reopened wounds in his skin. He felt haggard. Thankfully, the other objectives had been captured by the crowds of people brave enough to witness his battles, but the last one was his to claim.

He took a few seconds, just watching the ring of light gradually change colors while glittering debris fell across the underground. The vaporous mana clouds of the Underlayer were slowly recovering after experiencing unprecedented levels of turbulence from his slams all the way on the ground. For a while, there were no thoughts running through his mind.

His shallow breaths were the only sound to reach his ears. They were urgent, like he had been on the verge of drowning, though he felt no discomfort. WIth no more monsters on his agenda, the agitated energy he hadn’t realized he was holding onto seeped out of him. He had no more strength to suppress it.

It took a few minutes, but eventually, his body calmed down. Coop, feeling like the dirt was surprisingly comfortable, decided to relax for a while longer. There was no more rush, right? Without moving, he checked the leaderboards, finally at a point where they wouldn’t change again until the event completed.

Underlayer Event Settlement Scores:

Ghost Reef - 147,344,759 (x1) Neon Park - 5,819,973 (x13) Nyiragongo - 5,765,266 (x13) Shinjuku Gardens - 5,713,684 (x25) Aotearoa New Zealand - 5,229,358 (x5) Silvervalley - 5,121,756 (x11) Gangcheon - 5,105,138 (x15) Can Gio - 4,496,012 (x11) Englischer Garten - 4,460,000 (x8) Ordesa - 4,150,000 (x7) First, Coop double checked his math, making sure that Ghost Reef had overcome the challenge assessment of Shinjuku Gardens. He had decided in the middle of battle that he was all clear, but without taking the time to count, he wasn’t completely confident in his arithmetic.

“Barely.” He muttered after calculating Shinjuku Garden’s final score.

In the end, it had actually come down to the last army of Primal Constructs. Coop breathed a sigh of relief that it had worked out.

The only way Coop could have improved their score would have been to move even faster, but the speed that they had completed the Underlayer Event was already absurd. According to the timer that had been ticking down in the background, there were 387 hours remaining. They still had roughly one third of the original 1111 hour timer to go.

Scrolling through the list of settlements, Coop decided he really couldn’t find any significant faults with the progress of his own shard. Ghost Reef’s raw score was shockingly close to the total of all the other settlements on the entire planet combined. The difference was essentially a few million here and there from factions like Neon Park and the Assembly of Settlements that had forces gaining their own points before he arrived. The small settlements across Asia accounted for another small chunk, but the largest difference came from New Zealand.

He moved on to the individual scores, still waiting for his final control point to convert to blue.

Underlayer Event Individual Scores:

Coop - 104,026,482 (+18,505,578) Charlie Seraphin - 3,216,957 (+687,861) Camila Alvarez - 1,645,328 (+459,316) Gibson - 1,532,711 (+356,736) Emmanuel Seraphin - 1,409,957 (+277,393) Jessica Littenberg - 1,377,410 (+289,584) Buck Cleary - 1,278,823 (+0) Jose Molina - 1,182,841 (+215,713) George Prado - 1,074,785 (+177,316) Tiny Cleary - 971,559 (+0) Coop raised his eyebrows in surprise at his own score. Compared to the settlement overall, it was actually lower than expected, though either way, it was objectively insane. In retrospect, he hadn’t realized just how much of an event the residents of Ghost Reef were having. They really had been sharing the burden.

Without their significant contributions, he would be rushing to reach the next continent and make up ground on Shinjuku Gardens. He shuddered at the thought, fatigued enough as it was, still lying in the dirt.

He supposed that if the human geography of Asia had been different, and more of the surviving population had been residents of various settlements, he would have been able to run the score up significantly more. That the largest continent on the planet had nearly the smallest resident count messed with expectations. Without the score he had accumulated in Africa, he would only have gained like 15 million more points than the residents of Ghost Reef.

As it was, the group that had gone up the west coast of North America hadn’t had anything to do for quite some time. Shane’s party and the Cleary brothers must have been back home by the time Coop reached Vietnam.

The other group had cleaned up two or three settlements since he had last checked on them, but even they were probably on their way back. He supposed it was his turn to head home. The thought made the relief finally settle in.

When the control point pulsed blue, Coop smiled to himself and sat up. His intermission had concluded. He initiated a stretch, but as soon as he got to his feet, a new set of notifications appeared, halting his motion. They were messages that he wasn’t expecting so soon.

“Huh?” He expressed his surprise as he scrolled through them. “What’s this?”

[Settlement Event: Underlayer - Complete]

[Temporary Leaderboards Finalized]

[Settlement Winner - Ghost Reef]

[Score - 147,344,759]

[Individual Winner - Coop]

[Score - 104,026,482]

[Rewards - Distributed]

“Dang, already?” Coop questioned as a pair of spotlights highlighted his position in the dirt, the only ones visible in the entire region.

Coop was caught standing in the middle of the last control point as the settlement event abruptly ended. Previously, the Siege Event had waited for him to essentially declare victory by touching Ghost Reef’s civilization shard and confirm the end, but the Underlayer Event was done as soon as the Primal Constructs lost control of the final objective.

He supposed that made sense, given that the civilization shards weren’t the subject of the conflict this time around. The Underlayer had been a challenge to defeat or weaken future invasion on the surface of their territory. By taking complete control of the underground layer, humans had completely prevented the Primal Constructs from establishing their strongholds.

It hadn’t occurred to him until the moment the event ended, but it was possible that failing to achieve a total victory over the aliens would have triggered another, different event on the surface. The scenario of back to back events that build off of each other seemed entirely within the realm of possibilities for the assimilation. Without Primal Construct strongholds manifesting on the surface, maybe a little vacation was starting instead.

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Coop certainly hoped for some downtime, but in the back of his mind, he thought he might be asking for too much. One settlement event did not represent the entire assimilation.

Was the event ending without his input even convenient? Coop wasn’t sure. He still had to figure out how to get home. He couldn’t help but feel a bit crestfallen that if they were getting a vacation, he would waste a portion of it on even more travel. He’d had enough with the endless dirt and barren caverns. If the event was ongoing, he definitely could have captured several days for rest.

Worse yet, he wasn’t with his friends as they undoubtedly celebrated. He closed his eyes and imagined the cheers rising across Ghost Reef and sighed.

Coop shook his head at his relatively weak complaints, considering the alternative of planetary invasion or humans being unable to conclude the battles before the timers expired. He was just tired and looking for reasons to grumble. The minor dilemma of his travel plans wasn’t something to get hung up on and he could always encourage his own celebration.

For the moment his concerns were irrelevant because the pair of spotlights, representing the rewards for himself and Ghost Reef, intensified. The lights isolated him in the dirt and as he focused on the beams, his eagerness ramped up. The prizes for his endeavors were manifesting right before his eyes.

Before he received the honors, he tried to temper his expectations for the Underlayer Event rewards. The Siege Event had been a unique case, where the rewards were disproportionate to the standard thanks to the excessive challenge that Ghost Reef underwent. The equivalent of a Faction Founding Chip simply wasn’t in the cards. In fact, there simply were no equivalents within the galactic community. Ghost Reef had already received the ultimate prize.

The main bonus of the settlement events was buried within the experience gained from combat, and Coop had absolutely done an extraordinary amount of digging. In one month he had practically doubled his level, which had previously been accumulated over the course of more than four months, and it wasn’t like he had been taking it easy during the first period. The rate that he had gained levels was already unprecedented. It was that advantage that had allowed him to move even further into pioneering heights.

But still, even with all the experience gained, Coop greedily watched as the reward manifested in front of him. Any additional advantages would be welcomed. As the frontrunner, the pressure to maintain his pace was just as high, if not higher, since he had no points of comparison anymore.

He hummed, hoping for the best. A small portion of the beam of light blurred, growing brighter as it became opaque, then melted into a small bubble before revealing an object. A miniature disk solidified in the air, hovering in front of him while slowly rotating as if it was on display. It was close enough in front of his chest that he could reach out and grab it, which he did, as soon as it seemed ready.

Coop was already Identifying the small disk as he carefully grasped it in his fingers, unable to suppress his excitement for another upgrade to the settlement. Ghost Reef had been stacking them up throughout the assimilation, and they would certainly be handy if they were really going to accomplish becoming a proper bastion for humanity.

The disk had red and blue swirls on its flat surface, matching the now faded control points that had been scattered throughout the Underlayer. The settlement reward for first place in the Underlayer Event was a territory buff called Mana Funnel. Once applied to a civilization shard it would alter the settlement so that it would actively draw mana from the Underlayer instead of passively.

Coop grunted, feeling like it wasn’t the best thing they could have received. He supposed it could come in handy if they needed to develop a lot of structures through the system at once. They would be able to avoid the bottleneck that Empress City had pressed through.

If the population of Ghost Reef continued to expand, they would have needed to keep up with production demands by constructing additional mana generators. It seemed like this would eliminate one of the major limitations on growth. It might not be a flashy reward, but Coop could see it being practical in a way that made it more valuable than anticipated.

He continued analyzing his notifications, seeking out his personal rewards.

[+1000000 Basic Credits]

[You have acquired a new title!]

Coop passed right over the now unimpressive one million credit prize, but his eyebrows shot up at the title. He had forgotten how good the first place title had been the first time around. He hoped it was the same. Unable to keep his expectations suppressed when it came to increasing his stats, he hurriedly reviewed the title, ‘Underking.’

Underking - First Place during an Underlayer Event.

Adds +10% to Selected Attribute.

“Yes!” Coop exclaimed.

It was huge! Coop pumped his fist as he directed the title to apply to his Mind attribute. Aside from all of his passive skills redistributing additional bonus stats based on how much he invested into Mind, putting points into Mind was also becoming more and more efficient. Another +10% pushed his multiplier up to +35%. Every three levels of investment into Mind was basically giving him four levels worth of stats which were then multiplied throughout the other five attributes.

Coop opened up his status, feeling rejuvenated by an increase in hundreds of attribute points at once.

[Status]

HP - 14849/31760

MP - 10592/61020

Class - Revenant (Level 482)

Profession - Scavenging (Level 181)

Affinity - Spectral, Abyssal

Race - Human (Rank 1)

Faction - The Lighthouse

Strength - 125 (+6102)

Agility - 125 (+3051)

Body - 125 (+3051)

Mind - 4520 (+1582)

Intelligence - 125 (+6102)

Acumen - 125 (+3051)

Unallocated - 0

Titles - Champion IV, Haunted, Ethereal, Reaper II, Slayer XI, Dauntless, Stacked, Defiant, Siegebreaker, Mindbender, Valor XXIV, Dedicated, Dynamo, Underking

Skills (Active) - Mistwalking

Skills (Passive) - Mind Over Matter, Adamance, Practical Application, Arcane Comprehension, Clarity of Purpose, Reverence (Rank 10)

Quests - Fortune Seeker (22/50), Upgrade City to Metropolis

Basic Credits - 16,111,836

Coop couldn’t help but giddily laugh as he added up his stats. There were over 28,000 in total. By the end of the Underlayer Event he reached 5,600 levels worth of stats. He had, without a doubt, realized his goal of pushing his stats so high that his baseline would rise to those granted by skill multipliers.

The Underking title had piled on 400 additional levels of stats in one go. It was no wonder he felt refreshed. The most immediate burden had been lifted with the conclusion of the event and now he had his stats boosted more than any single time before. Normally, he felt like looking at his stats was basically meaningless beyond making sure the numbers were going up, but putting them into the context of levels really changed his perspective. He was a monster.

He opened up the regular leaderboards, curious how the others had fared relative to his own gains.

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Day 153

Coop (Level 482) Charlie Seraphin (Level 325) Camila Alvarez (Level 319) Gibson (Level 304) Buck Cleary (Level 296) Jacqueline ‘Jackie’ Simpson (Level 292) Emmanuel Seraphin (Level 290) Shane Peters (Level 290) Madison Seraphin (Level 290) Jessica Littenberg (Level 289) Despite defeating exponentially more enemies, Coop’s overall lead had barely changed. While he had nearly doubled his level, the other residents of Ghost Reef actually more than doubled theirs. They were approaching the extreme pace of two levels a day over the course of the assimilation that he had been so proud of before.

Coop scrolled through the list, finding familiar names all throughout the top 1,000. Other than Ghost Reef’s residents, only select individual powerhouses of settlements across the world held onto their ranks. Platinum, Tzultacaj, Jackson Hobbs, Sila Tupua, and Safiri were all there, but others like Alex Nova, Hai Yun, and the Kitawa pair had fallen behind Edith Buford and the other regular residents that had joined Ghost Reef over time.

“Crazy…” He observed, feeling proud and impressed not just with his own progress but with all of his friends as well.

While he went through the different system windows, his audience drew closer. They were keeping their distance, but the exiled members of Shinjuku Gardens were observing him, watching him shake his head and pump his fist to himself in the middle of nowhere. They probably thought he had lost his mind.

All the objectives had disappeared, emptying the Underlayer of one its only defining features. Coop took a long look at the way he came, having to imagine the edges of a tunnel given the width of the cavern.

It was definitely time to head out. He turned toward the blind old hermit and his followers, considering his options. Should he double back and reconnect with all the people he had briefly met, now without the urgency of defeating monsters, or should he forge ahead and hopefully arrive home sooner? He supposed either way, he would take these exiles for a stroll, at least for the first segment as he tried to go home.