Unchosen Champion

Sometimes Alex Nova missed sleeping, but on a comfortable night like this, he was perfectly content to enjoy the midnight ambience. The cool breeze flowed across the shallow sea of wheat, sending rippling waves across the surface. His windswept blonde hair followed suit. If he closed his eyes and used his imagination, the gentle rustling of the leaves and shoots almost sounded like the ocean caressing a beach. He grasped at the mental image of a pleasant vacation while he relaxed. The temperature tended to fluctuate between comfortable, if a little chilly, to freezing, this early in the year. Tonight was just right.

It was a nice time to be off shift. The Hatfields were making sure the wild Primal Golems on the edges of their territory didn’t keep growing into elites, so he was free to take a breather from the constant combat that had been thrust upon his remote community. It had taken a while for some of the neighbors to come around to the new reality, hiding out in their basements or bunkers by themselves, fearing the end of the world, but the siege event had brought all two dozen families together in order to survive. All the families that hadn’t made a run for it, anyway.

Alex sat at the edge of the main field, chewing on a stem, with his butt in the dirt, muddying his dusty jeans while he gazed across the property. It would have been a good crop, planted in the fall, if the apocalypse hadn’t come. The plants were still in the early stages of growth, but they were almost uniformly over a foot tall. He wondered what would come of them after mana changed the natural order. They had been completely neglected compared to the care his family would have shown if not for the constant stream of monster raids keeping them busy.

His was a huge family farm, as were most of the neighbors, though the majority of them focused on livestock, leaving his family’s wheat fields as an island between pastures. Some of the largest ranchers in the country were nearby, with herds upwards of twenty thousand heads of cattle. There were more than 5,000 cows per person in his settlement, but the system made the rules that said they counted, not him.

He sighed as he leaned back, interlocking his fingers behind his head, to stare up at the broad night sky. The stars were crystal clear, even compared to the pre-mana times. It wasn’t like there was any light pollution, other than an army of fireflies flitting through the air, but whatever the aliens did made it feel like he was looking at the Milky Way through a magnifying glass. He wondered what was actually out there.

He nearly jumped out of his skin when the tornado siren’s wail crashed the calm night, completely overpowering the crickets and the rustling leaves. The piercing two-toned scream startled him right up to his feet, loud as it was to overpower wind and rain that weren’t currently present.

The last time they used the sirens had been the beginning of a desperate fight with a monstrous creature that killed a dozen men before it went down. He wasn’t likely to forget the first encounter with a Field Boss, especially not with the permanent reminder in the form of a title: Dauntless VIII. The whole settlement got it just a week after the siege event ended, meaning there had been other huge monsters out there even before theirs.

He grabbed his raggedy old baseball cap off the ground, slapping it against his thigh to get the dirt off, and sprinted toward the homestead, saving his abilities for the unknown emergency. As he ran up toward the barn, he prayed it wouldn’t be a repeat of that previous fight. Maybe just a horde of elites would be alright. Alex thought those were the secret to maintaining a spot on the leaderboards.

“Alex!” A shout from the loft of the barn snapped him back to attention.

“What is it, Ma?” He responded urgently. Glancing up to her and 15 of his siblings, cousins, nieces, and nephews, who were helping keep watch from the top floor.

“We got a real fast mover coming in from the East! Shiny like a dang disco ball!” She yelled from her perch overlooking the flat plains that extended all the way to the horizon in every direction. “It’s goin’ right down the middle of the territory, already past the first three boundaries! The Johnsons barely moved before it got past ‘em and the Hatfields didn’t even notice it! You better get over there or you’ll miss it!”

Alex took action right away, the urgency made clear. Alex’s skin lit up as he empowered himself with three skills, all essence infusions that buffed him in various ways, the primary one, Reckless Haste, quadrupled his Agility and Acumen, putting his quickness up to levels that nothing had been able to match just yet. Dirt and pebbles hovered off the ground around his feet as his aura’s power grew immensely and he turned to go.