Unchosen Champion

Every time Coop made purchases for the settlement, Jones was there. It was Coop’s fault he wasn’t with him this time. Coop shook his head in an effort to ward off the wayward thought. Instead, he recalled all of the things he wanted to purchase but couldn’t until he saved enough credits.

He had almost 200,000 credits to spend now.

The quest to upgrade the settlement from an Outpost to a Village required one defensive building and three other buildings, a population greater than 10, and 25,000 credits. It also had an optional objective to retrieve a relic, which he had completed on the offshore oil platform.

After upgrading the settlement, the quest was completed. He hadn’t even checked the quest rewards yet. The previous upgrade gave them the ability to recruit five workers. This upgrade had added an advisor slot and a subordinate shard slot.

Coop could claim a second civilization shard and have it become a vassal city as long as it was lower in development than his primary settlement. The subordinate city would retain its own standing, but the primary city would receive a small bonus. The Empire had just been greedily trying to gobble up his settlement before they had advanced their own to the point that they could have vassals. Coop wondered if Ghost Reef’s superior development would have reversed the roles of primary and subordinate cities.

He shook his head at the empty advisor slot. Obviously, it would have gone to Jones. He would have been granted more access to the shard’s menus and been given more freedom to act on behalf of the settlement without being the Champion. Coop would leave it open for him, but he’d talk to Olani about it. He didn’t think she was interested in taking over development of the settlement, but she might be interested in managing the residents. It seemed like that was more or less her role in her village.

His new quest, to upgrade the settlement from a Village to a Town, was another step up in difficulty. He needed one public building and ten total buildings, stability for 22 days, and 150,000 basic credits. How the system determined stability was unclear, but his quest had a countdown that was currently ticking down so he guessed the settlement was stable at the moment.

There was also a new optional objective. He knew that Jones would advocate for prioritizing the optional portion and Coop was inclined to agree with his reasoning. As long as it was feasibly done, Coop would chase the optional objectives. The new optional objective was to collect a ‘siege boss’ trophy. Coop had at least 22 days to figure out what a siege boss was before he would need to weigh the pros and cons of delaying the settlement’s upgrade in favor of the optional objective. Unlike the previous quest, this one didn’t declare any particular reward, which would make the calculus slightly more difficult.

For now, Coop scanned the list of buildings and noted that, while many had become available for purchase, many still demanded further settlement upgrades. A Village wasn’t enough to impress most of the alien contractors. Coop reckoned it was their loss. He was willing to bet that Ghost Reef would be a paradise even on a galactic scale.

His first choice was easy enough. He purchased a second apartment building to match the first. He placed the second building next to the previous one and watched the construction process take place. All of the new residents swung their heads and watched in astonishment as the walls manifested themselves on top of the foundations.

“All of you can have an apartment in one of those two buildings,” Coop told them while pointing toward the apartment buildings. “Each one has 12 units, and the first one only had four occupied, so there’s enough room for everybody.”

“You’re ready to move in together right?” Mikey B asked Amanda, nudging her with an elbow. “Not too soon?”