Chapter 125: Kinetic Bombardment
Coop positioned himself in the middle of a large sandbar near the entrance of the mana well and carefully scanned the shallows. The sun was directly overhead and only a few thin clouds obstructed the intense midday heat with partial shadows. He hoped it wouldn’t become a problem.
Starting earlier in the morning would have been ideal, but after a good night’s rest he had been eager to get back into his routine. A few days inside the mana well with endless cycles between fighting for a few hours interrupted by forced mana recovery had been more mentally draining than any endless grind. Every break made him antsy, like he was wasting time, even though he could clearly see that the results were extremely efficient.
It was a strange contrast with the more leisurely schedule he followed around the settlement. He may accumulate less experience, but it still felt like he was getting more done. So, after sleeping in his lighthouse with the gentle rain tapping away at the lightroom, he took Sunny on a run around the perimeter road in the courtyard while dawn burned away the dampness, he lifted weights with the Cleary brothers in the early morning, showered, and ate breakfast in the Clumsy Shark with Marcus, all before escorting Shane’s party into the Coral Forest.
Technically, he hadn’t actually accomplished anything in terms of his own progression, but he still felt far more fulfilled. Accomplishing small tasks had that effect. Now, he was getting back into the grind, filled with renewed vigor that had been slowly sapped by frequent interruptions preventing him from getting into a groove as he challenged the Ones That Hunt. Coop could admit he was a little weird, but a nice smooth grinding session was essentially his happy place.
After a moment more of sweeping his gaze back and forth and gauging the distances, he decided he was in the perfect spot. The strip of empty sand was bordered by seagrass patches along with small groupings of various corals that eventually gave way to the reef. It was a relatively barren area, at least compared to the tropical island and the reef itself. The corals tended to prefer clear, undisturbed habitats, and the sand bars that stretched along the islands had enough turbidity to discourage all but the most pioneering of individuals from settling in, and even then, they stuck to the edges of existing reefs before expanding further. The shifting sands may not have been subjected to significant wave pressure, due to the barrier reef, but the tides still pulled them back and forth twice a day, creating a dynamic habitat that wasn’t ideal for most immobile species.
However, Coop wasn’t in search of corals. He was on the hunt for Primal Kites. Their spawn locations tended to be in exactly the type of sandy habitat that the sandbar represented. Previously, he had been able to find Kites in the sand approaching the entrance of the Coral Forest and off the eastern beach between the first two islands of the Ghost Reef chain. Both were sandy areas, free from established corals and seagrass meadows. The western sandbar he was surveying was on the edge of where he had already consistently found the ambushing monsters, but it was a much larger area than either of the already confirmed spawn zones.
The Primal Kites had been spared for too long thanks to their obnoxious tactics that ruined the basis of Coop’s sustained grind strategy.
“Not anymore.” Coop murmured to the sandbar as he carefully channeled Fog of War. He had a specific plan that he was supremely confident would work thanks to the additional skills he had gained since the previous times he tried hunting the Kites. As the fog appeared, he concentrated on executing his plan perfectly, to leave no room for doubt about the feasibility of his idea.
Fog of War was being smothered against the surface of the water. Coop was forcing it down, but since it couldn’t penetrate the sea, it was spreading out. As long as he channeled it slowly, he could gradually build a solid layer of mists from his position on the sandbar out across the ocean. If he could extend it across the sandbars around the entire island chain, he would, but even with his extremely large mana pool, he would need to settle for a smaller portion instead.
The ocean was like glass, so there was no deterioration of his fog from waves, but the afternoon sun relentlessly burned the mists from above. The thin layer of fog was particularly susceptible to the effects of the heat because of the massive surface area the fog bank was establishing, but Coop was creating a dense carpet that would last long enough for his purpose. The improvements to his skill from increasing his effective Intelligence stat meant that even the compact layer of fog was robust enough to avoid burning away. Without the investment into Intelligence, he doubted he would even be able to establish the layer of fog at all. He kept channeling the skill until his mana reached zero.
By the time his Fog of War had been fully channeled, the ocean had transformed into something out of a strange dream. The mists blurred the barrier between the sea and sky so that the horizon appeared undefined. No matter how much he pressed his fog, it still drifted into the sky so that the edges blended together with a smooth gradient punctuated by wisps of mist drifting away.
Coop couldn’t tell exactly how much area his skill covered, but it was more than enough to suit his strategy. Closing his eyes, he immersed himself in the information provided by Presence of Mind and sought the subtle streams of bubbles that the Kites allowed to escape from their ambush positions as well as the galvanic detection fields that they used to target their prey. Fog of War only yielded information from within its domain, but even with a narrow layer, he was able to find the Kites. Today, they were the ones that would be ambushed.