Unchosen Champion

Coop was sitting cross-legged in the fluffy dirt with a playful frown plastered onto his face. The unused Champion was doing his best to pout dramatically and make his supposed grievances apparent. He was situated in the middle of the furthest control point, arms folded across his chest, openly sulking while the threatening red lights slowly transitioned to a less harsh shade of blue.

A crowd of defenders had assembled within the artificial confines of the final control point as it transferred into Ghost Reef’s possession. They were decompressing in groups, not completely sure if it was truly appropriate to relax so soon. Coop was right there with them, finding the opening of the event to be nothing but jarring.

No matter what they concluded, it seemed as though they had no choice. Their uncertainties were reflected in the semi-serious conversations that were taking place between themselves, briefly recalling the battle while wondering if that was really it. They were braced for significantly more conflict than they had experienced and all of that intensity was difficult to ease out of.

Coop went through similar feelings every time he started farming Primal Constructs. There was something about momentum in combat that drove him forward and reinforced his grind. It was always difficult to let the impulse to keep going fade away. He thought he understood what they were feeling. They had generated all this motivation, but lacked an outlet.

The build up and preparation for the event had been substantially more arduous than the event itself. They spent weeks hyping themselves up, readying themselves for a repeat of the Siege Event, not to mention the months of calculated progression, but Ghost Reef had essentially been given a freebie for the Underlayer Event. They didn’t really know how to react. All of that potential energy didn’t want to go unrealized.

For Coop, when a grind ended in such a way, it usually motivated him to chase the next one as soon as possible. It was a bit scary how much he mirrored the habits of an addict, but as long as he occasionally stopped to smell the roses, he was able to convince himself that he didn’t have a problem.

He shook his head at the scene. It seemed like their tiny island settlement was an anomaly that even the system struggled to properly manage. The wild swings in difficulty between events were wild. Coop wasn’t alone in finding the whole situation surreal.

The diversity of invaders around Ghost Reef had empowered the original residents considerably, but the side-effect was in the staggering number of waves during the siege. Those waves further conditioned the population, preparing them to contribute far more than should have been expected on a person-to-person basis. Then, the Underlayer Event based its challenge on raw population numbers without consideration of individual strength. The end result was an island prepared to fight the most difficult battles, but only confronted with the most minimal of assaults. The difference in expectations versus reality was staggering, but it could be to their advantage.

The Primal Constructs were logically distributing their forces across the assimilation, but logic failed to account for Ghost Reef’s experience. It made perfect sense to assess settlements by population when the purpose of the event was to establish bulwarks within settlement territory. The primary contributor to territory was population, after all. The largest settlements would naturally end up with the widest areas and the most defenders.

Coop would see for himself exactly how the Primal Constructs dispensed their forces soon enough. In the long run, the residents of Ghost Reef intended to prove that the invaders had made a mistake in failing to occupy their tiny settlement. They would be free to influence other assaults, at least once they were liberated from Shane’s supervision.

At the moment, he was sitting with Charlie and Camila in the middle of the fourth control point. They were being subjected to another round of experiments. This time, Shane was testing for differences in capture rate based on location within the control point itself. It was boring work. Coop was distracting himself by acting up with the girls.

“You know, I try pretty hard to make sure I’m prepared to deal with whatever gets thrown at us.” He complained, still brooding. “And this is how you guys reward me? By making me completely redundant? Why am I even here?” He asked dramatically.