Chapter 82: The Fifth Wave
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The next wave was coming.
Coop had spent an uninterrupted 25 hours hunting the Tormenting Kites. The shallow waters around the patch reefs outside of the west side of the settlement had become his personal roaming grounds. How much the fifth wave would shake up the new status quo was yet to be determined.
The west side of the hexagonal fort was really the two walls on the northwest and the southwest of the structure. The two sections were separated by the channel splitting the northern and southern sides of the courtyard, so Coop was covering a lot of ground, or water in this case, by protecting the entire western side. He wasn’t able to eliminate all of the Kites that made their way from the edges of the mana dome, but he was supported by ranged casters that occupied the battlements at the top of the walls and of course the giant wild pig remained in his position at the entrance to the channel between the two walls. Together, they were enough.
The rest of Ghost Reef’s fighting force was spread along the rest of the fort with Captain Kayla’s corvettes occupying a similar role as Coop, engaging the Kites at sea and preventing them from besieging the ranged fighters on the walls with significant numbers. The name of the game thus far was to prevent the monsters from developing a critical mass at any specific place.
Coop’s tactics in thinning the invader numbers had ended up being even more effective than he anticipated. When he was calculating how many mistjumps he would be able to do, he severely underestimated. He failed to account for his Reaper title recovering mana from his kills and the further reduction in mana costs from continued use with Practical Application kicking in.
Normally, the mana recovered from monsters was completely negligible, but Kites were one of the few exceptions. They were essentially caster monster variants and had decent enough mana pools for him to sustain rapid mistjumps the entire 25 hours that he had been engaging them. Even at the start, as long as he occasionally killed more than one before a second mistjump, he was able to keep his strategy going indefinitely.
The cost of his mistjumps had also dropped dramatically, thanks to Practical Application. He was nearly realizing the dream of having no cost mistjumps. They were down to 10 mana already, which was essentially free at this point, considering his massive mana pool, mana’s relatively quick regeneration rate, and Reaper’s recovery.