Chapter 83: The Veiled Blade
As soon as the sun rose, Coop’s False-Light Eye buff dropped off. The sudden expiration was as if the natural light had actively dispelled it from his status. Coop wasn’t seeing the world in green wireframe anymore, though he still had green stripes temporarily burned into his vision. It wasn’t enough to blink them away, but they were slowly disappearing while he continued to fight the pursuing Crazed Serpents.
The stimulant had also gradually faded during the night. Coop had feared a hangover or some other withdrawal symptoms, but he felt normal instead, maybe even a bit refreshed when the buff expired. Coop was practically as good as new when they started the eleventh day of the siege event.
As he mistjumped across the shallows, using his ethereal trident to harpoon the chasing Crazed Serpents, he tried to differentiate between the days that had already gone by. It was difficult, since the days and nights bled together with the waves overlapping, especially when he spent days underground, but he could at least distinguish between the monsters that arrived with each timer.
The siege started with the unusually aggressive Enraged Defenders and the first twist was the Marauding Prowlers arriving before the first wave had completed. The second surprise was when the Frenzied Excavators began their assault from inside the fort, spawning underground along with Felrog, the Field Boss joining in.
Compared to the second and third waves, the Tormenting Kites had been an absolute vacation. They were admittedly a threat to individuals, with their ranged attacks and evasive maneuvers, but they were weak against the fort itself and they were unhurried in their assault. The fact that they were spread over such a wide area while maintaining similar numbers to the other waves also made them easier to deal with, even if it thinned the resident’s numbers as well. At this point, he’d bet on any of the residents being able to deal with a single Kite in a duel, so he thought a wider battlefield benefited Ghost Reef overall.
The fifth wave of Crazed Serpents presented a similar situation to the Kites, with their wave spread around almost the entire fort, but they made up for the sweeping onslaught with speed and aggression that elevated the challenge beyond what the Kites offered. Coop was lucky to have been able to adapt his tactics to counter the rapid assaults of the Serpents, but the rest of the fort was struggling with them.
The problem at the other walls was that no one could match Coop’s role as bait for the surging monsters. The pirates attempted to fill in, but were relegated to sailing circuits in front of the walls, attracting as many Serpents as they could with each pass, but they weren’t nearly as nimble as Coop could be with his mistjumps, and they were constantly taking damage or letting some monsters through. Without Coop’s mobility, it was problematic to establish a clear focal point for the conflict.
The Serpents had been gouging chunks out of the other walls all night to the point that Coop was tasked with rotating walls periodically. Shane was trying to spread the inevitable damage more evenly across the fort by having Coop pull the monsters away from the more damaged areas. The additional burden meant that Coop was drawing quite the crowd of invaders.
Still, fighting the Crazed Serpents from the ships had some advantages over what Coop was doing. For one, they were able to fight while moving when Coop had to consider whether he needed to reposition or if he could stand and fight at any given moment. It was a balancing act between competing the basic instinct of fight or flight, but the ships avoided any compromise. The outcome was that the ships were able to defeat monsters at a much more consistent pace and Coop was forced into maintaining maximum concentration at all times.
The monsters still never made it beyond the entrances to the channel as each end had become the focus for non-ranged fighters. Both sides of the channel were major choke points that quickly eliminated any Serpents greedy enough to try to reach the fort’s interior.
As the arrows were depleted, melee fighters left the walls and jumped at another chance to contribute. When given the opportunity they rotated, either by riding a ship or protecting the channel on the side not already protected by the pig. The last two waves hadn’t been very melee friendly and they were already sufficiently rested after being rotated for breaks, so they were eager to pitch in.
Coop had experimented with Fog of War, but because it failed to sufficiently penetrate the water, it wasn’t a viable deterrent for the Serpents. The disorientation effect couldn’t be applied to the submerged monsters, and they were attacking from such a wide angle, he wouldn’t be able to cut them off by establishing a domain anyway. The nature of the wave called for constant movement.