Chapter 243: Business as Usual
“Achoo!” Coop’s sneeze caught him by surprise, though he managed to cover his mouth despite hurtling through the air.
“Someone’s probably talking about me.” He muttered into the wind.
It was an easy guess considering his name had been broadcast to the entire universe. They’d probably be disappointed by the fact that he wouldn’t be changing his routine just because some aliens saw them as the freshmen to be hazed. Thanks to the volunteer alien allies, it was business as usual for the Champion of Ghost Reef.
Coop was still struggling to wrap his head around the basic existence of factions. Even though he had been exposed to them through babysteps, he found that their form and function was difficult to reconcile with the limitations imposed by mana.
It seemed like nonsense that he wasn’t allowed to use Salvation to summon modern body armor and they had to use magic to fire Ghost Reef’s cannons due to restrictions on technological level, but aliens could wage war for control of planets from across the galaxy. None of the members of the galactic community had developed space travel, but they could be transported across the vastness of space in an instant so that they could fight each other with sticks and clubs.
“Bizarre universe.” He mumbled into the breeze as he ‘mistwalked’ above the regrown Everglades. The grassy prairies had given way to rivers of grass as water encroached on the state.
He launched his spear north, over Central Florida, watching the projectile until it was far enough away to justify another mistjump. His movement ability had evolved with his upgraded and merged active skills. The process remained the same, requiring an anchor point for his destination, but rather than being dragged through the monochromatic world of mists, he flickered in and out of existence while inside the dimension of Spectral mana. The main limitation on his mode of travel had shifted to the speed of his spear throws. The end result was that his teleports were significantly faster.
Coop recalled his exposure to factions one step at a time as he crossed miles of marshy swamp and dry pine rocklands in a fraction of the time it would have taken him before.
When the assimilation first began, he had viewed factions from the perspective of an outsider. He was an Unchosen individual that was dismissed as worthless by the powers that be. The minimal bid to sponsor Coop had been too much of an investment for any group in the community to risk, so he was discarded and left in the dark. Where every human was a type of lottery ticket, Coop was a neglected, unpurchased scratch-off left in the gutter.
Luckily, Jones had been appealing enough to be sponsored. The old caretaker collected information to share during his brief orientation. At that early point, factions were amorphous influences that Coop immediately felt animosity toward. They drafted humans to represent unrecognizable organizations on planet Earth in order to grab territory and on the off chance that they hit a jackpot where their Chosen could conquer the world in their name.
Coop didn’t appreciate their claimed authority, especially during a confusing period for the planet’s inhabitants. It was difficult enough to come to terms with mana itself, with or without a sponsor whispering in their ears about the secrets of the universe and their place in it. The whole process was overly manipulative, to say the least.
Then, the end of Ghost Reef’s Siege Event caught Lyriel’s attention. The so-called Avatar of the System revealed another wrinkle in the hierarchy of the galaxy. Factions may have been the top dogs over living beings, dictating how they interacted with each other on a societal level, claiming settlements and planets, and providing the aliens with civilization in general, but factions were only granted that position by the system. The system itself only existed as a sort of interface for mana, and mana was what had effectively altered reality by activating.