Unchosen Champion

Coop drifted away from the High Priest’s hidden base in a commandeered rowboat. The watercraft had been pulled ashore near the wooden dock and secured by a frayed piece of rope that practically disintegrated upon touch. Coop finished the job by tearing the tattered line and dragging the boat into the edge of the water. He gingerly stepped inside, testing the partially rotted wooden planks before fully committing his weight to the vessel. The boat had been neglected for some time, showing significant signs of deterioration, but it floated well enough. That was all Coop needed from it. Behind him, the priest’s fungiculture project was smoldering. Flames consumed what hadn’t rotted away upon the defeat of the mushroom boss, wiping the caves clean of the last disgusting bits of cultist influence.

The subterranean lake was clear and deep. Leaning over the edge of the boat and peering into the depths in the center of the channel made it almost seem like he was floating on a bottomless basin. The limited fire light was gradually swallowed by the turquoise depths, revealing nothing but an underground abyss. Coop felt an involuntary fear for what might be lurking on the bottom, so he tried not to think about it.

Waterfalls were scattered throughout the cavern, filling the empty cavern with the steady sounds of splashing water. Combined, they were loud enough to drown out the crackling of flames back on the shore, but the crashing water only churned the pool in their immediate vicinity. The natural cistern was large enough that the waves barely interrupted the calm surface throughout the rest of the area. The waterfalls were quietly swallowed up by the lake’s volume. There weren’t any fish swimming around, which Coop took as a sign that the cave had been thoroughly claimed by death. They knew to stay away, unlike him.

Coop passively steered the vessel, letting the gentle flow of the underground river carry him into one of the dark tunnels. His logic was simple; he assumed that downstream would lead to an exit. It wouldn’t be much of a smuggler’s den if it was completely isolated from the outside world and the presence of the boat in the first place was enough to convince him that there would be an outlet by water. It wasn’t like he believed the High Priest had burrowed her way into the cave either.

Once he had the open sky above his head again, he would find his way through the mountainous forest and navigate back to the original entrance. Tzultacaj and Juliana would be waiting for his reappearance and he fully intended to meet up with them again, even if he needed to deliver bad news. There was no way he would have discovered the butterfly cave without them. If the other priests were as dug in as this, he would need more help in the future just finding them. For the time being, he would lean on Tzultacaj’s expertise to lead him to more of Chakyum’s priests.

Backtracking through the caves would have been a massively difficult undertaking, requiring him to climb up the rocky waterslide that had carried him into the depths. Being carried away from the sight of the mushroom atrocities in the little rowboat was a much more appealing prospect.

Judging by the state of decay among the corpses, the kidnapping victims of the High Priest had been dead for a while. Coop was no expert in forensic pathology, but even he could tell that the victims were dead a long time, certainly before he had even left Ghost Reef. They had been used to feed the mushroom boss in a nasty ritual of cultivation, one that had clearly been done repeatedly in order to consistently grow the mushroom into the boss monster it had become. The High Priest was using people as fertilizer for the mushroom and it appeared to have been working extraordinarily well. She had succeeded in creating a minion that had a level that completely overshot his own.

He wasn’t entirely sure to what end the High Priest had essentially power leveled a separate entity, but he had some theories. The fact that her last act was to try and consume the rotting mushrooms herself was a clue that lined up with what he already knew about the Cult. They were pursuing the experience that others accumulated, concentrating it under their control, and in this case, preserving it before they took it for themselves.

Ever since the beginning, Coop had feared that unsavory people would discover exactly how lucrative of an experience farm humans, and for that matter, animals that were leveling, could be. He expected that the most ruthless individuals would see other people as an opportunity to boost themselves, but he had never imagined anyone would take the concept so many steps further. The Cult of Chakyum appeared to be industrializing the idea. Even Coop would need to be wary of their potential. They were obviously willing to go to lengths that went beyond his imagination.

While he had defeated a High Priest, he had not really progressed in his original mission. However, he didn’t feel like it would be a waste of time to confront the members of the Cult of Chakyum, especially if they were involved in similarly heinous acts. If anything, they were even more deserving of destruction than the Endless Empire had been, and the fact that they were practicing these rituals on an individual basis meant that he would need to hunt them all down lest he leave them to fester and become a much bigger problem in the future.

They were obviously intent on hoarding experience, which was a relatable goal to someone obsessed with grinding like Coop, but their methods were completely off the rails. They had determined that literally farming humans was the way forward. They were crossing lines that demanded attention. If there had been a chance for Coop to negotiate with the Cult, it was long gone already. Any perceived misunderstandings brought by the Envoy were likely incomparable to reality. The Cult of Chakyum was Coop’s enemy.

As Coop let the singular oar drag behind the rowboat, he checked on the result of the infestation quest. The quest had been completed by elimination rather than cultivation. It was almost insulting that the system had given him the option to align with the priest. The Cult would obviously see him as a high priority target rather than any kind of ally and he absolutely felt the same.