Unchosen Champion

The settlement had been successfully upgraded and was officially named Ghost Reef. Judging by the leaderboards, they were in excellent shape.

They had also welcomed their first three residents who had arrived on nothing more than a raft. If it wasn’t for mana, they would have been dehydrated and starving. Instead a nice bath and a quick meal was enough to get them back into shape. As he approached his refined hunting route to begin his grind, he wondered what the limitations of mana would be.

Coop was primed to grind Ancient Defenders. It was early in the afternoon and the sun was shining bright. He began his familiar hunting cycle, killing the monsters with minimal resistance, and he concentrated on the accuracy of his spear throws and the timing of his teleports.

The mysterious pleasant feelings whenever he properly executed techniques continued, even while fighting the weak monsters with his most proficient weapon. He wondered if he was being conditioned to enjoy battle by some outside power. He had to admit it was also possible he had just never discovered a passion for martial combat, but that wouldn’t explain how he subconsciously recognized when his technique was correct.

The repetition of his actions had helped him refine his technique quite a bit. When he remembered his clumsy attacks from only a week earlier he could only feel encouraged by his progress, and yet, there was still so much he could improve. It took a lot more practice and experience to properly develop skill with a weapon. Despite the good feelings he had while fighting, he couldn’t forget he was essentially a very enthusiastic amateur.

He thought it might be a good idea to add one of the weapon training facilities to the settlement for some proper instruction, but he also needed to get some housing for the trio as well as future laborers. He could provide facilities for Olani’s selected profession, alchemy, and he wondered if Jones’s Archaeology would benefit from anything. There was also the more urgent task of finding a way to the spectral relic, which might require some other ship building related construction. He’d also have to save a larger amount for the settlement upgrade itself, with the requirement increased to 25,000 basic credits.

His primary source of income were the credits he received from scavenging, but the demands seemed to be escalating faster than his income. He probably needed to investigate some ways to leverage the settlement itself into making credits. They wouldn’t be able to establish trade routes, at least in the foreseeable future, but the Tavern had already shown him a way to add a passive income. If the population was higher, it would probably be a lot easier to bring a business plan together.

As he went round and round, he noticed Jones and Olani defeating Ancient Defenders together near the fort. It looked like Jones was providing some power leveling to unlock her class and affinity. Olani was wielding the trusty rake instead of her driftwood staff. She gently poked the monsters before Jones blasted them with stone spikes, boulders, or rock bullets. It had been a while since he Identified Jones, so he checked his progress.

[Human (Level 12)]

Coop was surprised, he had assumed that Jones was concentrating on his profession entirely. Jones spent his days helping Balor with the fort. He never saw Jones fighting, and yet he had made some pretty impressive progress.

Jones was actually unable to grind the same way that Coop had been, he was pretty severely limited by mana. He killed the monsters with devastating rock attacks, but he had to stop to regenerate constantly. The spells were just too expensive to maintain at a steady rate. He must have been popping out of the fort periodically to defeat a dozen enemies before returning to some other task while his mana regenerated. It made Coop appreciate his own skill choices all the more when thinking about such limitations.

He figured that most people wouldn’t be able to grind at the same pace he did, since they would be utilizing active skills to defeat the monsters. They would be a lot more limited by cooldowns and mana. He had just barely realized focusing on his basic attacks rather than active skills was a possibility when he was selecting his skills and now it appeared that would be the key to his success.