Chapter 200: Fighting Fair
Coop’s ethereal spear blasted through the mana vortex, tip gleaming with the calm blue glow of scattered bioluminescence. A gentle tornado in the center of the cavern was already in the process of collapsing, smothering the arena with a blanket of thick mana. It was beautiful, as if the northern lights were forming at knee height, deep underground. Visible waves of mana, lit by tiny motes of soothing light, rolled across the coral ground, and reflected off the iridescent walls. When the light highlighted the mother-of-pearl hidden within the jagged ceiling, it revealed cloudy rainbows trapped beneath the smooth surfaces.
The path of the spear was traced by a lingering glow of mana-infused diatoms, spotlighting the perfectly straight trajectory from the mouth of a tunnel to the center of the coral chamber. Rather than a thrown object, the weapon seemed like a hazy laser beam, burning through the briny fog of mana that swirled around the room. A moment later, the missile struck the outer carapace of the still unfurling boss, adding a dramatic crash to the steady strumming of a guitar that had risen within the chamber upon the arrival of outsiders.
The Ravenous barely had time to assess the intruders that disturbed its mana bath before Coop had opened up his assault.While the monster stretched to its full height, a full 10 feet taller than its previous 25 foot iteration, Coop mistjumped into melee range, finding himself about the size of the creature’s head. He swapped his spear for a pair of his one-handed warhammers, confident in their efficacy. The weapon type had proven itself against the shrimp more than a month and 50 of his levels earlier.
Using his mainhand, he struck the monster in the mandibles, providing the oversized shrimp with a violent introduction to the guests in its throne room. While Coop prepared to pummel the boss of the first level in the Coral Forest Mana Well, he simultaneously cast Legacy of the Mists to summon a squad of phantasms at the creature’s flank.
After the long grind sessions in the Yucatan Peninsula, Legacy’s mana cost had decreased to nearly 300 mana per cast. Practical Application, his Agility passive, was steadily bringing the price of each phantasm down, with Coop randomly bringing phantasms into existence even while traveling. At this point Coop’s mana pool could sustain more than 80 phantasms at once.
Each phantasm also claimed a single point of durability from his weapons, so the cost couldn’t become completely eliminated with mana cost reductions, and soon, Coop would need to be considerate of the strength of his weapons. The last time he had seen the stats on his summoned weapons, the maximum durability was 100, but they had received a few upgrades since then, including one that he was testing against The Ravenous shrimp boss inside the Coral Colony of the mana well.
Coop was dual wielding weapons for the first time. A pair of identical warhammers were firmly held in his fists, but only one was pummeling the dazed boss as the creature struggled to identify the intruders while regaining its footing. Coop wasn’t nearly coordinated enough to immediately pick up a weapon in his offhand and use it with remotely the same effectiveness as his mainhand, but that hadn’t been its purpose in the first place. He was actually testing whether or not he could utilize one weapon for himself and one for casting Legacy of the Mists, like a magical focus with a pool of durability that he willingly sacrificed to summon his allies, saving his actual weapon for himself.
When the phantasms began leaping through the swirls of increasingly turbulent mana, streaming a mixture of mists and microscopic plankton in their wakes, they smashed the limbs of the massive shrimp monster, utilizing dual warhammers as well. Unfortunately, Coop’s little experiment hadn’t had the result he hoped for, as the skill utilized both weapons rather than one, but the fact that he was still hypothesizing new ways to apply his skills was a testament to the seemingly unlimited possibilities that lay in his build.
A dozen of the dual-wielding Phantasmal Breakers swarmed the wavering boss. Coop witnessed a stout bearded ghost spin his off-hand hammer around so that he could use the spiked end to pierce the shiny carapace and provide himself with leverage as he smashed with his mainhand. Another muscle-bound phantasm simply smashed with both weapons simultaneously, raising them above his head and crossing their shafts like he was offering a sacrifice to some unseen god before letting the heads of the hammers crash into the armored segmented abdomen. A third, fully armored ghost chained his swings with both hands, displaying a level of ambidexterity and coordination that Coop wasn’t ready for.
Instead, Coop flipped his offhand hammer and used the spike to smash into the top of the monster’s head, imitating at least one of the phantasm’s tactics. Rather than use the second weapon as a proper offhand weapon, he was bracing himself like an ice climber and letting muscle memory take over with his other.
The shrimp reared itself up, thrashing in a panic as it was ambushed by shockingly powerful enemies. Coop hung from his weapon, being lifted more than thirty feet off the ground while he hammered at the side of the monster’s head with his mainhand.
When the one undamaged mandible nearly pierced his stomach after the boss flicked its body to the side, he let go of his embedded hammer and was flung across the chamber. But a moment later, he was back in the monster’s face, mistjumping to his released weapon with his mainhand already cocked back for another crushing attack against the armored creature. Coop wasn’t so easy to get rid of.