Unchosen Champion

The One That Hunts was swiftly dissolving into dust that further brokedown until nothing but thin wisps of mana smoke remained. The smoke was swept away with the underground currents, being carried off into the unseen depths by the invisible flows of mana. Coop’s phantasm had struck the battered creature with an ethereal bo staff, defeating it with blunt magical force while Coop chained attacks with his own weapon, simultaneously preventing the shrimp from getting close enough to grapple and keeping it off-balance with varied whirling swings.

Coop had cycled through each of his weapons, testing both the weaknesses of the monsters as well as his phantasms. The monsters were proving to be a difficult opponent for his personal abilities. None of his weapons had elevated his effectiveness above the rest by any significant degree and he continued to rely on the phantasms to carry his damage through each engagement. Coop checked his most recent notifications after the last kill of the round.

[You defeated One That Hunts (Elite Level 103)]

[+1004 Basic Credits]

[Congratulations! You have leveled up!]

It had only taken another 45 or so kills before he lit up with another level. The pace would have been excellent, considering the monster density and the speed that he could defeat them, but he was ironically running into the limitation that prevented most others from deeming grinding as a worthwhile pursuit at all: resource management.

The only reason the fights went smoothly was because of Legacy of the Mists, but the phantasms were intensive on his mana pool. The cost was forcing him to stop his grind to recover. It was frustrating, as it was preventing him from getting into a groove, taking him out of his meditative grinding mindset just as it got going. Coop would have abandoned the whole thing until he had a chance to exploit Practical Application into making the skill cheaper if it wasn’t so incredibly satisfying to incorporate the phantasms into his techniques.

Every time he successfully coordinated with Legacy it was significantly more rewarding than properly exercising his own techniques by themselves. The commendations of his Haunted title were put into overdrive when Coop and his phantasms exercised precise combinations as if the act of coordinating multiplied the subconscious rewards. The satisfaction was addicting.

He blasted through most of his mana in about an hour, using a single phantasm for every shrimp, but he got several extra summons through the Reaper title recovering a significant amount of resources for each kill. He told himself he just needed to power through the early parts and the efficiency would come later, but the initial mana cost was discouraging. At least he was diligent enough to avoid draining his mana completely, always maintaining some for Mind over Matter to kick in during an emergency situation.

Coop planned to continue to experiment with his different weapons as he engaged more of the shrimp monsters in the coral colony. He was trying to see if the phantasms came with any of their own particularities when it came to the different weapon types, but so far, every weapon had yielded expert phantasms with incredibly potent magic power. Each one had proven to be capable of perfectly executing precise and devastating attacks, whether their equipment was truly ancient or advanced enough that Coop would be prevented from summoning his own equivalent set by the system’s restrictions.

The shrimp monsters were weak to every type of magic that Coop could bring to the table. It didn’t matter if the phantasm was wielding a sword, a glaive, or a bo staff, every single one had a lethal and often explosive result. Coop was a little curious about both the physics and the mechanics of what was happening when the magical force was transmitted through a physical attack from an incorporeal entity, but he was more than content with the outcome regardless of his own understanding. The monsters themselves were at least partially to blame for the dramatic results, with their odd physiology. It may have made them physically robust, but it came with some other costs that magic damage evidently seized onto.

It did seem like the blunt weapons were slightly more effective when it came to the shrimp monsters. The bo staff and morning star phantasms never failed to take entire chunks out of their targets. While the bladed weapons had better penetrative power, they were more concentrated with their damage. Either way, the monsters were defeated, though.