Chapter 87: Paths
The Rabid Carriers weren’t as simple as they had first appeared. He expected the Carriers to be easy pickings without the support of other more agile monsters. They moved sluggishly, but with purpose, and when they took damage they weren’t deterred until they were defeated. Coop initially assumed they had nothing else going on outside of hauling the swarm of smaller monsters inside of them, but they had their own abilities that aided them in their function as well.
When the Foul Rippers finally ceased spawning, Coop eagerly left the walls and entered the sandy, cratered battlefield to hunt the Carriers as they slowly crossed the scarred dunes. After he completed his role in defending the vulnerable casters on the battlements from the Rippers he was finally free to be more aggressive. He was enthusiastic about letting loose since he had been holding back in order to fulfill specific roles for the defenders during the previous several waves.
When he found himself excited to leap into the battlefield like some kind of battle junkie he had a momentary flash of concern for his mental state, but he recognized that part of his bloodthirst was from being enthusiastic about unlocking his next skill. He was super close!
Once Coop started to engage with the Carriers, he quickly discovered they weren’t quite so basic. He easily worked around their lobbed ranged attacks and defensive abilities, but they still had one skill he needed to pay attention to. It was a type of self-destruct that launched the harbored Swarmers in all directions. If the monsters were able to burst before he defeated them, the fights ended up being unnecessarily extended. Not only would the Swarmers spread, making it inconvenient at best to track them all down, but the secondary monsters also received buffs that caused them to swell in size with improved stats.
A buffed Swarmer still wasn’t much of a threat on an individual basis, but a hundred of them were an annoyance that made each of the fights take much longer, and Coop was in a hurry to get experience.
The Rabid Carriers were slow, lumbering, grub-like monsters and they arrived in such small numbers that Coop would have been able to clear their respawns in a matter of minutes, but the Swarmers were another matter. They were quick and chaotic, but hardly rewarding. Every Carrier represented more than one fight. The worst case was having a Carrier expel the Swarmers with a self-destruct after receiving critical damage, forcing a hundred individual engagements with erratic Swarmers before he could move on to the next.
As long as Coop managed to defeat the initial Carrier monsters himself, he had a good chance of crushing the mass of Swarmers in just a few heavy swings of his morning star. The result of a Carrier bursting or not was whether he was slamming his morning star three times or a hundred times.
The combination of his morning star and Fog of War provided an effective way in defeating the Rabid Carriers along with the Swarmers that appeared afterwards. His was a rare case that could individually handle both. The rest of the monsters were being dealt with by small coordinated groups that staggered specific abilities. A spike of damage to deal with the defense oriented Carriers, then a barrage to deal with the many Swarmers. This was a wave that invited the group oriented structure that factions developed, and several new parties were hastily formed to add to Shane and Gibson’s previously established groups.
Coop was careful to efficiently defeat the monster packs until he flashed with the light of the level he was waiting for. When he hit level 75 he headed straight back to the fort and left the rest of the monsters to the coordinated defenders.
Coop made his way down the main street, grabbing a biscuit from the table that Vronk had set up outside, and snacked on it as he headed underneath his second favorite palm tree. It was the same one that he had sat under when he originally selected his class, so it felt appropriate for the occasion of selecting his next path. He checked his notifications as he wiped his fingers.
[You defeated Rabid Swarmer (Level 56)]
[+59 Basic Credits]