Unchosen Champion

Coop rubbed the sleep from his eyes as he made his way to the Merciful Medical Center. It was a damp morning with air so thick with humidity that a heavy rain would have been a relief. They still had a ways to go before the wet season began, when it would storm twice a day like clockwork, but the weather seemed to be in a hurry to leave the dry season behind.

The stillness of the ocean breeze enveloped the island in silence. Only Coop’s slow footsteps broke the tranquility, with neither the steady waves nor the palm fronds contributing their voices to the regular background noise found on a tropical island. The light gray stone streets glistened with moisture, but the coarse texture prevented them from becoming slippery. Droplets hung from the tips of orchid leaves, threatening to splash down as Coop shuffled beneath them. Once the sun rose above the walls, the dampness would burn away, but for an hour after dawn, the courtyard was a preview for the impacts of future precipitation.

Aside from a handful of phantoms on sentry duty, Coop was alone as he approached the southern town circle where the citadel protected the civilization shard. The succulents lining the outer border of the coffee shop seemed to be thriving despite the humidity. Coop thought they would prefer a drier atmosphere, but a whole series of blooming flowers decorated the perched planters. When he peeked toward the entrance of Laurie and Greg’s cafe, he could only shake his head that they had yet to open. Even access to caffeine was relegated to island time.

The residents of Ghost Reef were developing a schedule that kept them up late into the night, enjoying the cool and comfortable tropical nights. It was Coop’s own fault that they slept at all. Most of the residents had already abandoned sleep completely until they reached Ghost Reef and found themselves with the security and freedom to take up old habits. The few early risers basically had the entire fortress to themselves.

As Coop crossed the canal bridge, he paused to watch gently drifting mists that rose from the cool air, lingering from the night, condensing over the warmer water. The heat of the day hadn’t burned the naturally formed mists away just yet, thanks to the shade provided by the fort’s walls, and they languidly flowed out toward both ends of the canal. The giant pig was barely visible, motionless, like a looming shadow stationed dead center of the western opening.

Coop hadn’t seen any fog outside of what he summoned himself since arriving on the island chain so many months ago. He doubted the ocean normally brought any fog banks outside of a few days out of the year when a cold snap rolled through, but who knew how the natural systems had changed with the introduction of mana.

Coop let out a big yawn and took a moment to stretch and fully wake up before he moved on from the canal bridge. The additional discoveries he had made while grinding during the night had kept him out later than expected. Adding Legacy of the Mists with Fog of War and Presence of Mind into his grind rotation had established a new dimension to his attacks that kept him experimenting and refining later than he intended.

He suspected that he had already experienced the additional range provided by Fog of War, both when he fought The Ravenous Stage Boss as well as when he fought the Oathsworn Envoy. Each fight had been within his domain of mists, but they had been close enough that he hadn’t noticed the fact that his phantasms were appearing an extra dozen feet away, concentrated as he was on the fights themselves. In retrospect, the size of the Stage Boss alone should have given the synergy away.

It was only when he was left to his grind that the changes to Legacy’s range really became obvious. The results for his quest chain hadn’t been significantly better than just spear throwing, since he ended up severely restricted by his mana recovery, while making sure to keep enough to maintain the fog, but he was progressing in other ways as well.

The Primal Kites yielded an unusual amount of mana through his Reaper title, but Legacy of the Mists was an extremely expensive ability compared to everything else he had seen. Practical Application had brought the cost down to 485 mana per cast, and Coop’s mana pool was almost 19,000, but the recovery from the Kites was still mostly only in the single digits with a few generous individuals granting mana in the teens. The astronomical cost of Legacy relative to his title recovery just further motivated him to chase cost reductions.

The phantasms were essentially as strong as he was, but distinct with their magic damage, so Coop was looking at them like a force multiplier. The more he could cast, the more he could enhance his potential and magnify the effect of his attributes, and that was ignoring the fact that the magic damage was an alternative to his own physical damage and that they could attack from more directions than he could by himself.

“Good morning, Champ.” Emmanuel greeted him from the edge of the lobby to the medical center, pulling Coop from his distracted power fantasies. Charlie’s father was leaning against an exterior column, just keeping an eye on things. The protectiveness he had for his family couldn’t be overstated.