Unchosen Champion

Coop continued to be amazed by the settlement’s upgrade. He was leaning one hand against the civilization shard with Jones by his side. The old caretaker was gazing at his own status as the pair theorized how the passive bonuses gained by Ghost Reef would improve their territory. It wasn’t completely unlike the discussions they shared when they were planning the very first upgrades for the settlement. It made Coop strangely nostalgic.

The catalog of City titles was a reward that had been building ever since the very first challenges of the assimilation, back when it was just the pair of them considering the best ways to survive. Now that the early investments were bearing fruit, they were discovering that they had an exceptional harvest. They were in significantly better shape than they had been a few hours before, and even at that point they couldn’t have envisioned a more comfortable position for Ghost Reef to face the challenges of a turbulent future.

If they hadn’t been forced into difficult situations early on, where he and Jones had angled to rely on the fort itself out of necessity, they wouldn’t have accumulated the rewards that enabled investments back into the settlement. The preliminary recruitment of Balor was what had revealed the feasibility of relying on contracted residents for key enhancements of their settlement. The dwarf-like stonemason had been integral in setting them up for success. Then, the gambit of sending Coop to the oil rig to pursue the bonus objective when the opportunity arose had resulted in extra rewards that kept building upon each other. With the phantoms they were able to succeed in the face of escalating threats during the siege event, which rewarded them even further with more recruitment opportunities.

They might have only received one or two titles under different circumstances. Instead, they had the opposite situation, where they were happily overwhelmed by the initial influx of territory and resident bonuses. Coop never thought he’d see the day that he was looking back at the siege event with so much gratitude.

Recognizing the contributions of the phantoms reminded him to check for more reinforcements. The number of phantoms had nearly doubled after the previous upgrade, so he had some reasonable expectations that the ghost army would grow once again. Unfortunately, he was left scratching his head when he found the reinforcements button unavailable.

At first, he thought it was due to simply having zero casualties. Honestly, the fact that they hadn’t lost a single phantom since the previous settlement upgrade was an even bigger shock than the system refusing to elaborate. However, taking a moment to consider the tribulations they had faced, Coop thought something must have been wrong. Was it really true that they hadn’t lost even a single pirate during the Sapphire Armada’s blockade? He knew that several of the ships had taken damage, but none were sunk and no one had informed him of any losses.

As he shifted his attention to Jones to ask for confirmation, he noticed a number tick up near the bottom of the menu he had been browsing. He squinted at the number and watched as a counter grew by one, moving from 15,502 to 15,503.

Coop recognized the figure as the number of phantom residents in Ghost Reef, more or less. There were 15,000 phantoms in the army, and 500 phantoms in the navy. The fact that the number had grown by a few had him peeking into the courtyard of the fort, searching for fresh level one phantoms, but it was business as usual outside the citadel. None of the residents that were strolling along the stone roads appeared lost. There weren’t any new level one phantoms bewildered by their new setting.

“What the hell is this?” Coop finally asked, before asking Jones about the number as well.

After a moment where they were both silently investigating the limited information provided by the system, Jones responded. “Moments of Twilight?”

Coop raised an eyebrow. “Twilight? Like from the title?”

Jones frowned, equally confused. “Is it possible for a City title to have had some kind of reaction to one of the previous upgrades?”