Unchosen Champion

“Hah!” Coop laughed, feeling like his hope for some celebratory spectacle at each settlement milestone was finally fulfilled. It didn’t matter that the burst of firework-esque magic was for the event instead. He admired the white sparkles as they drifted across the open sky and wondered why they didn’t get a show like this before.

“Stingy system.” He muttered, but he couldn’t hide his smile.

While he was watching, bursts of light shone directly on each of the residents, matching the beam that initiated the fireworks as if it was being reflected back down. It was almost like they would all be abducted by a more classic interpretation of aliens, but instead they were all receiving rewards for their contributions in the siege.

Coop was targeted by a pair of spotlights. One white light distributed his personal rewards, which triggered notifications as they arrived, and a second, glittering gold beam, placed the settlement reward in front of him so that he could reach out and take it.

The settlement reward was another miniature disk, almost identical to the one the Avatar of the System gave him, except instead of red, this one was royal blue. His notifications, in a rare moment of helpfulness, explained that he had received a Faction Founding Chip. Coop extracted the Purification Chip from his spatial storage and held it in his other hand to compare side-by-side.

He chuckled at the redundancy of having two of the things. Maybe it was easier to establish a faction than he thought, but he doubted it. The settlement must have earned something quite special after going through their tribulations, to the point that they broke the system’s scoring.

He wondered if he could use both to create two separate factions, or maybe combine them into a super faction. Was the Purification Chip even the real deal? What were the normal benefits of establishing a faction anyway?

Coop paused and realized he didn’t even know how to create the faction in the first place. The only information he had was that he needed to use the disk. He held back before he started playing with the items like toys, lest he accidentally apply them while he tried to figure them out. Shrugging, he shoved them both into his spatial storage for safekeeping.

He decided he would research factions in the library himself. Now that he didn’t have anything looming over his neck in the form of settlement events or threatening enemies, he could freely spend time pursuing such information, and he was excited to do it. Out of all the residents of Ghost Reef, he had been one of the most infrequent visitors to the library, but that would finally change.

Establishing his own faction seemed like a big step, and it was slightly different from what his primary goals had been in establishing Ghost Reef and representing the factionless, but it wasn’t completely in opposition. The idea of being factionless was really to better represent human interests in the face of the galactic community, without outside influence, but a human faction could easily fulfill that same role. They could unite and endure the Primal Constructs together, denying any of the invaders control over Earth and refusing to be subjugated by outside forces.

If they really decided to start a faction themselves, the question would shift to which chip to use. Ultimately, it would come down to whether or not they believed what the Avatar of the System had to say. Coop felt like she had tried to manipulate them into respecting her from the start, which was why he attacked to try and break the spell. Admittedly, he couldn’t be sure that his intuition was correct, but the fact that Mind was his primary stat meant he should be more sensitive to such machinations compared to any of his companions. He was suspicious of her for some reason, and now that he had a second, real faction chip, he felt like they had a nice backup plan.

That left the consideration of the Avatar’s words; that they were facing the judgment of mana, and failing. Coop didn’t like the sound of an eradication protocol, and no matter what the details were, it sounded like something they would need to prepare for. It would be difficult, if not impossible, to ignore the stranger’s words, even if Coop wasn’t sure if they came from a trustworthy source.