Unchosen Champion

Coop woke with a start and sighed dramatically as his blurry vision revealed the old wooden ceiling in his bedroom within the lighthouse. The excitement of whatever he dreamed about lingered, but the details had already slipped his mind.

He rubbed the sleep out of his eyes and lazily stretched his arms above his head. The covers were already shoved off of his torso, but he needed to shift Jett off of his chest before he rolled out of bed. She didn’t protest, or even wake up, like a purring weighted blanket, when he placed her against his pillow.

“Today should be a big day…” Coop reminded himself as he shook the remnants of a deep slumber from his consciousness. One more hunting session with the Ruin Excavators would be enough to complete the quest chain. That meant another Slayer title was on the horizon. He hopped out of bed, invigorated by the prospect of progressing past yet another threshold.

He was astonished that he had fully recovered from the intensity of the previous day. The fact that he wasn’t sore at all, despite bench pressing for the first time in months, was a miracle. And that was ignoring the actual inhuman amount of weight he had moved. By all conventional logic he should need more time to recover, but mana broke his sense of reason.

Then, there was all the sparring. He and Ledwidge contended with each other for hours. The treant trainer had put Coop through the wringer, slowly isolating his weakest techniques by eliminating his most proficient weapons from Coop’s quick swaps, one at a time. Coop was forced into drawn out combat with each of his selected weapons which gave the trainer plenty of time to analyze his weaknesses.

Coop was still able to land a glancing blow without his spear, but Ledwidge dismissed Coop’s ethereal glaive second. Without his spear and glaive, Coop already couldn’t win the basic challenge of landing a single blow. He had even fallen back onto his ethereal swordsmanship with additional misleading double mistjumps that incorporated his shield, but it hadn’t been enough.

Ultimately, his sword techniques were mostly defensive in nature, relying on deceptive movements to avoid damage while exposing his opponent to surprise attacks, but Ledwidge was completely passive, dodging and blocking without ever counterattacking. It was impossible to ignore that the treant was also unambiguously faster than any human on Earth. Coop envied the raw stats that such a higher level accumulated. It further fueled his drive to keep leveling. Being slower than a literal tree landed with a twinge of shame.

The difference in attributes was obvious when Ledwidge was able to react to Coop’s mistjumps. There was simply no way to time his teleports to catch Ledwidge off guard. Ledwidge was able to respond to the forming mists before Coop was fully transported. It was a reminder of the difference in speed Coop had enjoyed when he returned to the Ancient Prowlers and no longer needed to guess at their ambushes, he could simply dodge out of the way as soon as they engaged.

Ledwidge was particularly disappointed with Coop’s swordsmanship. He spent a significant amount of time trying to adjust Coop’s form. It seemed like the Haunted title had guided Coop into a savage barbarian style that contrasted with the more formal, fencing style Ledwidge promoted. At least, Coop assumed it was due to his title’s guidance. It was also possible it was his own personal inclination manifesting through his technique and the title just nudged him along the course that he chose himself.

While Coop accepted the tips he received from Ledwidge, he really preferred the brutal hack and slash approach that he had already settled into. Coop was a brawler at heart, but maybe he would be prepared for a more formal duel if it ever came to it. His glaive techniques had benefited from acquiring the skills to adjust his pace after grinding the Primal Trackers, so he fully embraced the idea of alternating between a formal style with brutish assaults. If nothing else, it would make him unpredictable when he faced more sophisticated opponents that attempted to get a read on him.

There was less to say about the morning star as the challenge in wielding the weapon was almost entirely based on decision making rather than technique. Choosing the right time to commit to a heavy slam was the essence of the combat style with his two-handed mace. Out of all of Coop’s weapons, the morning star’s style benefitted the most from Coop’s highest physical stat in Strength. Ledwidge tried to correct his understanding of what the weapon even was, pointing out that Coop was using an oversized one-handed weapon rather than an actual two-hander, but it was just one of the limitations of his Retribution skill. Larger and heavier two-handers simply couldn’t be summoned. Perhaps if he was a Reaver rather than a Revenant it would be different.

Coop’s trident was a surprise highlight. His experience with the spear carried over to a significant degree, providing Coop with a high propensity for the weapon. It may have been the weapon he had practiced with the least, but Ledwidge claimed that his aptitude was on par with his sword and morning star. His spear and glaive were both a step above, but that combination of experience actually helped assimilate into a solid trident technique. Coop accepted that it was a spear with the ability to leverage orientation. It was a stylistic parallel with the glaive and only his lack of experience held it back from joining his other polearms in terms of effectiveness.