Chapter 220: The Great Pyramid of Chakyum
“Zero levels.” Coop huffed with agitation.
He had lost count of how many of Chakyum’s Cultists he and his phantasms had defeated, but there had been no signs that the enemies provided any experience at all. After an extended battle where he and his ghostly summons waded through untold numbers of Oathsworn, he had received zero levels.
It seemed like the only thing that changed throughout the battle was the mass of the stone monument that he drove toward. The cultists were limitless and the settlement was enormous, but the monument in the center loomed higher and higher the more he approached the centerpiece of the city.
The pyramids of the region were relatively uniform in size, whether they were ancient constructions swallowed up by jungle or the fresh and partially dismantled buildings that dotted the settlement’s streets. They were short, squat ziggurats, wider than they were tall, but still reaching several floors above the ground. However, the one that rose from the center of the lake was far larger than the rest. It exceeded the height of the Great Pyramid of Giza in Egypt and was even wider than the Great Pyramid of Cholula in Mexico. It was more of a mountain than a building. Its flat top approached the clouds in the sky and its wide base threatened to consume the lake that it was built within.
Coop imagined that Chakyum’s Pyramid was rising with the death of every Oathsworn. He knew it was just the tricks of perspective as he drew closer to the monumental structure. It wasn’t actually growing, but all of the experience was going somewhere, and the times that he caught sight of a cloud of mana zipping toward the structure fed his imagination. The more he neared the giant ominous stone temple in the middle of the Yucatan settlement, the less he gained, and the bigger it seemed.
When he defeated Chakyum’s Envoy all the way back on Ghost Reef, a thousand miles away, there hadn’t been anything overly problematic with only receiving a single level. The Envoy had been a lower level opponent when compared to Coop. The cultist’s boost hadn’t been able to catch up with the gains Coop made while he was grinding inside the Mana Well, so even one level felt appropriate due to Coop’s advantage.
It wasn’t until he reached the shores of Belize and fought High Priests merely hundreds of miles from the focal point of their territory that his suspicions were roused. The experience he should have been gaining from much higher leveled opponents was clearly diminished, but he waved it away as simple oddities presented by the Cult or even limitations placed by the System itself. However, by the time he entered the Yucatan settlement’s territory, and was therefore in even closer proximity to the temple, the Oathsworn gave no experience at all.
Coop shook his head in a combination of disappointment and disgust. Looking at his progression in isolation, he was better off leisurely grinding Ancient Defenders on the beach back home, rather than fighting the Cult of Chakyum. Instead, he was in the humid rainforests of Guatemala, enduring the brutal task of killing countless vicious people, a task he was loath to do in the first place, no matter the justification. Previously, he had tried to find solace when he crossed the line necessary to preserve the sanctuary he protected by concentrating on his own progression, but even that minimal relief was absent in his current situation.
His last ditch effort to gain another advantage in one final skill choice before he sought out Chakyum had been an abject failure, though no one could claim he shirked his assumed duties to the Jaguar Sun. He had joined his silent ghostly companions as they engaged in extraordinary feats to defeat their innumerable enemies, but his reward was only a growing agitation and further delay to his confrontation with the leaders of the Cult.
He diverted his attention from his frustration to acknowledge his phantasms. The mass summon of 99 ghostly companions was the lone bright spot in an otherwise dark day. Instead of individual fighters that Coop mentally appointed to simple tasks as he summoned them, the company of ancient Greek warriors were coordinated combatants that required minimal direction. Previously, the coordination had always been facilitated by his own initial, if basic, orders, but the current iterations of Legacy of the Mists proved to understand tactics beyond his expectations.