Chapter 174: The Crossroads
Coop spent another warm night sleeping in a gently swaying hammock. In all honesty, he wouldn't have minded if the pattern continued throughout his journey. Working hard in the day, navigating difficult terrain and fighting Primal Constructs followed by pleasantly calm nights, but the odds were against maintaining such a consistent schedule. While he was on his expedition, sleep would be something he embraced when he had the opportunity, and it was unlikely that the chances would keep coming.
He thought he’d embrace his tourist qualities and ask Fernando to craft him a hammock to take home as a souvenir. There were plenty of candidates for napping spots among the palm trees on the beaches of Ghost Reef. The particular hammock he was using may not have been created by someone with almost 500 levels in the weaving profession, but Coop was off to dreamland in a matter of minutes regardless, swept away by the panoramic sounds of the jungle.
This time around, he didn’t receive his own private cabana the way he had in Corozal. Instead, he was surrounded by more than two dozen of the local residents who shared a communal sleeping place. It was like an open air barracks that was lined with the colorful hanging hammocks rather than bunks. A large portion of the residents were resting while others guarded the village. Coop could almost imagine he was attending an immersive summer retreat with a bunch of other campers while the counselors stayed up late. Unfortunately, it reminded him more of the siege event schedule the residents of Ghost Reef had adopted than a pleasant vacation, where guards were constantly on shift, barely maintaining their survival.
The Crossroads, as the village was called, was an incredibly small settlement that had been situated deep within the overgrown jungle hills at the edge of the lowlands. Structurally, it only consisted of a group of four large communal buildings that surrounded a centralized cooking area. Ringing the cooking area were auditorium benches where people relaxed at all hours, like it was a living room, with enough seating for the entire village to be present at once. Those who were present when Coop arrived were working on smaller projects, carving with worn metal tools or repairing clothes and weapons while chatting with others who kept their hands busy with their own work.
At first he suspected they would also have extraordinarily high profession levels, maybe not on the same level as Corozal, but still high. Then he realized none of them would have professions at all. If they never left their village, they never had an opportunity to interact with a civilization shard. He needed to invite them to visit Ghost Reef.
Each of the main structures were constructed from simple materials, primarily wood and thatch, but they were intricately detailed and gave the sense of being far older than their individual parts. Coop wondered how many times sections were repaired or replaced to accommodate the changing population of the village. Smaller camps were scattered around the edges, hidden by the all-encompassing rainforest, but the residents seemed happy to share what was essentially a fully cooperative community.
As it turned out, The Crossroads had over 100 residents. Coop would have been shocked to find such a populated village in its place, even without the assimilation. It was practically inaccessible, so the fact that people had settled there was somewhat surprising. There certainly weren’t any roads, so he thought the name was ironic.
The village was totally remote, tucked away deep in the jungle on top of a ridge jutting from the lowlands. The defining feature, other than the thick jungle, was an adjacent shallow stream of rushing water. The stream was only ankle deep, but it led to a small pond on the edge of the ridge that he and the tracker had climbed to arrive in the village in the first place. A trickling waterfall of escaped water from the pond cascaded down the rocky cliff and contributed to a larger river that snaked all the way across the lowlands until it eventually reached the ocean. There wasn’t a single road that reached the location, let alone two to intersect and make the name more appropriate.
However, Coop learned that the village was actually named for the crossroads between the Path of the Eagle and the Path of the Jaguar. It had been named that way 3,000 years prior to his visit. Coop imagined there was some story that had been passed down over the generations until it morphed into legend, but rather than share tales, the villagers were only interested in exchanging information. They had minimal contact outside of their village, and virtually none after the Primal Constructs had discouraged the few who even knew they were there.
At first, they were extremely suspicious of Coop. He wasn’t recognized, and the only other unknown people they ever encountered with question marks for levels were priests from the Cult of Chakyum. The priests hadn’t discovered the exact location of the village, but they were constantly roaming the lands, and the warriors of the village had skirmishes with them on more than one occasion. The fact that Coop was right there in the village made them nervous, and at first, they were unhappy that the tracker had led him to their enclave. Luckily, the tracker was a known quantity who had visited frequently in the past. After their journey together, he was more than willing to sing Coop’s praises. And he really sang.