Chapter 121: The Ravenous
Coop followed what was becoming a familiar route through the coral maze. The winding trail continued until he reached a massive junction of spiraling pathways. The reddish pink and violet corals opened into a space that held dozens of shrimp monsters that were around level 60, evenly spaced and idling in their positions while sending challenging clicks at each other, warding each other off from their claimed territory. Coop had previously cleared the area, but the vacant spots had already been refilled. It seemed as though the area was in high demand. He assumed that meant the quality of the mana currents was increasing as he traversed the pathways toward the central core of the upper colony.
He ignored the respawns to concentrate on his destination. There was only one trail he had yet to follow. Once he cleared the final pathway, it would mark the end of his self-imposed expedition. Defeating every overleveled One That Hunts was a mission that had proven to be too ambitious, so he had reluctantly compromised with his sense of completion and opted for a reduced goal. Instead of ridding the entire coral colony of every single higher level shrimp, Coop had adjusted his mission so that he was only ridding the top portion of the pyramid of the more threatening enemies. The residents would be able to use the initial coral platform that Coop used to rest as a jump off point, as long as they didn’t decide to venture lower into the depths. Sometimes adjustments were necessary, so he conceded part of his mission, confident that he could return later and pick up where he left off.
Pushing past a curtain of waving anemones, Coop followed the last path as it ramped into the exact center of the gargantuan foliose coral. Coop expected to find a large enclosure that could easily hold dozens of monsters based on his trips around the perimeter pathways. The mana currents that flowed through the passageways all led to the central core, so he prepared to face a slightly more difficult challenge than the previous few thousand shrimp. Maybe they would be closer to his current level and reward him with some undiminished experience.
“Fingers crossed.” Coop whispered to himself. He wouldn’t say no to a few more levels before he temporarily wrapped things up in the mana well.
Coop carefully chose his footing as he stepped into the dimly lit coral passage. The flowing bioluminescence revealed a tunnel that reminded him of the ones created by Felrog. The interior pathway was flat on the bottom with a perfectly symmetrical horseshoe shaped top, and large enough for a full-sized train to comfortably pass through. In this case, the walls weren’t smooth, nor were they iridescent, contrasting with the pearlescent chambers. The corals had naturally formed the tunnel, layer upon layer of mana-reinforced calcium carbonate.
The feat of construction was especially dramatic when considering the tiny polyps remained their pre-mana, miniscule size. The main oddity caused by the presence of mana was that the polyps were excreting their exoskeleton bases in the opposite direction from the surface of the colonies. They were growing inwards instead of upwards without the sun to guide them. The result was that none of the fragile marine invertebrates were exposed on the external surfaces of the coral. Instead of filter feeding on ocean currents, they were capturing pockets of mana and bathing themselves in the unusual energy in safety and seclusion. That was why they had been unusually resistant to damage.
Coop considered if there was a lesson to be learned from the way the mana well’s coral polyps had adapted to being inundated in excess mana. They weren’t Chosen, but they were effectively utilizing mana in a way that normally would only be possible through tools that the system provided. The presence of the mana well was an unusual situation, but the fact that the simple invertebrates almost seemed to hijack mana was interesting. It was the sort of adaptation that he believed could have been produced by millions of years of evolution. Coop wondered if mana’s presence had already influenced some species’ development even before it had been activated, or if rapid mutations within the Coral Forest had been the culprit of the coral polyps’ adaptation. Coop suspected that it was the latter.
As he walked along the path, a light breeze provided a gentle tailwind, ruffling his hair and carrying tiny specks of bioluminescence and the occasional abnormally large radiolarian. The tiny geometric creatures with silicate shells were normally too tiny to see, but inside the mana well all sorts of rules were broken. Everything he witnessed was normally underwater, for starters.
The coral tunnel gradually began to expand as Coop kept walking toward the core of the colony. Other tunnels connected to the growing space, each providing its own gentle breeze, joining the main funnel in traveling inward. It was a bit like walking through some sort of passive wind tunnel, like his aerodynamics were being observed and tested.
Coop remembered one of the times Charlie visited him at Ghost Reef, she had been excited to tell him about an article she had written for the park, needing him to get some underwater pictures. The subject had been the different species of porifera, sea sponges, that were native to the local reefs. She explained that the structure of the sponges passively adapted to local currents in order to take maximum advantage of filtering the water. Coop felt like a similar phenomenon was occurring inside the coral colony, but with mana instead of water.