Unchosen Champion

Coop’s mana was completely drained trying to maintain the massive blanket of fog that had been conjured by Fog of War. The cost of maintaining the skill escalated exponentially with the area covered, and he hadn’t held back when he dumped his mana into the channel. As the ocean breeze and the consistent waves chewed away at the borders, along with curious residents who scooped and tested the edge, the skill constantly demanded more mana to replenish its losses. It was completely unsustainable.

However, even without feeding the mists with more mana, it remained a dense bank that only shrank gradually. All of the various threats to its stability could only chip away at the totality of the domain. The fog would remain for quite some time thanks to the massive initial expenditure. In the meantime, he completely stifled the wave of Rabid Carriers that were lost in the foggy dunes. They were disoriented by the vapors that turned a portion of the island into an illusory barrier.

There was zero visibility inside the fog, sound was muffled and warped, and smell and taste were stifled. It was like being inside of a sensory deprivation tank, even for Coop, but Presence of Mind completely took over for his muted senses. Based on his own experience inside the Zombie Lord’s cloud, Coop didn’t expect the fog to smother aura skills, but when it came to physical senses it appeared to suppress them all.

When Coop slammed his morning star on an unsuspecting monster, the only glimpse it could hope for would be of the end of the weapon in the moment before it struck. The spikes cut through the fog, leaving tiny trails of turbulence that were immediately absorbed into the rest. Coop didn’t leave any trail himself as he stalked through the mist.

Coop wandered from monster to monster preventing even a single one from progressing across the dunes. The Rabid Carriers had resorted to meandering randomly with no hope of escaping his domain. Where other monsters would be able to flail against the fog, the Carriers weren’t built for any sort of meaningful resistance and the Swarmers were too small to make a significant effort against the mists. Shane allowed the remaining defenders a break as Coop temporarily shut down the threat of monsters for the first time since the siege event began. They prepared for the next wave instead with hasty repairs and some extra rest.

Coop had selected Arcane Comprehension and taken the Path of the Mistwalker anticipating the future options. He had not expected to turn Fog of War into such an excessive instrument of area denial right away. Coop had to admit he was just inexperienced when it came to actual active skills.

The way his previous skills had interacted with his stats had been entirely passive. Retribution and Salvation determined his weapon power and armor durability based on his Mind stat, giving him gear that scaled as he improved his stats, but as far as Coop was concerned, they barely counted as active skills. Most active skills would multiply their effect based on the user’s stats. Coop had experienced this many times in enemies, and knew inherently that skills could empower even a much weaker monster for at least one attack. He might have 1,000 Strength, but a monster with 100 Strength and a skill that utilizes Strength multiplied by 10 would, at least momentarily, match up against him.

Coop’s approach had always been one that concentrated on sustainability. He wasn’t chasing power spikes, so if someone with 100 Strength could briefly match his 1,000, Coop would make his target 2,000 raw Strength instead, pushing the limit further and further. He’d really need to keep snowballing his stats if he wanted to keep it up, but that was the deal he accepted at the beginning of his journey; ramping his stats by any means necessary.

From the very start, Jones had anticipated skills being the primary aspect behind individual power, but Coop was essentially becoming an edge case where his raw stats could match up with others’ skill multipliers. That meant that when Coop did use active skills with multipliers they could end up having ridiculous scaling, like Fog of War’s domain expansion.

If the multipliers were combined with his other absurdly scaled stats, like his unethically large mana pool, the interactions transcended the expectations for their level range. The skill just became busted when so much fuel was poured into it. A balanced caster simply wouldn’t invest as much into Mind as he had, and now he gained an even larger investment into Intelligence than they could hope for, on top of the already extreme mana pool. The whole situation made him wonder what some of the contracted residents could do with their ridiculous levels. Maybe he was already scratching the surface.

As he drifted through the mists he considered how to properly make use of Fog of War. It could encompass a much larger area than before, it was far more robust against disruption, and it was quicker to stabilize itself, but it still had a long cooldown, and if anything, the mana cost had gone up when considering the additional maintenance cost as the surface area increased.

It would take a bit of experimentation, but the next time he used it, he planned on reining it in so that he could concentrate on controlling a smaller area. He’d be ready to give it a shot once the next wave began. The morning was going by quickly while Coop handled the wave of Rabid Carriers. The rising sun added its own pressure to the domain, burning away the mists at the top, but Coop made no effort to keep maintaining the entire fog bank.