Chapter 268: The Azure Colossus
Time spent alone in the Underlayer was like being placed in some sort of stasis. Coop felt as though reality had broken as he landed on the same dirt plain over and over. Each massive mistjump failed to break him out of the illusion. No matter how hard he threw his spear, fully incorporating all of his ridiculous Strength while shifting the rest of his bonus stats with Mindbender, he ended up in the same place. Everytime he landed, he was vaguely surprised he didn’t see his own footprints somewhere in the dirt.
“Like running on a treadmill.” He muttered to himself as he waited for his spear to transform into a tiny speck beyond the horizon before he teleported forward, yet again. If it wasn’t for the occasional stone pillar acting as an unmistakable landmark he really would have begun to question the influence of ley lines on his travel skill.
On his way north from the four freshly claimed control points around Empress City, he crossed paths with another three of the giant uneroded rock columns. Each was more or less the same, though they varied in their exact position within the Underlayer’s caverns. Thankfully, there was enough variance in their relative locations to confirm that he wasn’t visiting the same pillar repeatedly. None of them were exactly centered, though Coop was beginning to believe their approximate spots in the underground had more to do with the geography on the surface of the planet than any intelligent design on the part of mana.
The enormous columns almost seemed to be the demarcations for peaks within the Underlayer. The points that were closest to the surface were occupied by giant guideposts, but they weren’t necessarily for a traveler like him. Instead, a small portion of the mana that flowed through the ley lines was guided up toward the surface at what must have been the most convenient locations.
Based on the distance he traveled, he suspected that the last of the pillars that crossed his path would link to the bottom of Bobby Jon’s missile silo. If Coop hadn’t taken it as a sign that he was close to Neptune’s Bridge, he would have stopped to pay a visit to the Swamp Lord’s home base and get an update on the efforts to take the Everglades. The monotony and loneliness of the Underlayer was already starting to eat away at him, so sharing a beer with the alligator wrestler and catching up with the petting zoo would have been a welcome diversion.
Of course, what he really wanted was to kill more monsters, so he refrained from delaying his arrival to the next subordinate settlement even for a bit of relaxation. Though it wasn’t his settlement on the line anymore, for many others, it was, and he was taking his presumed role more seriously than ever.
If Coop didn’t stretch his coverage, even people outside of shard territory, like Bobby Jon, would have a much harder time in the future. They would have to deal with potential Fallen Zones forming all across the planet, giving the Primal Constructs the footholds that they needed to reestablish themselves as an existential threat to the future of humanity. Coop thought there were already enough of those to go around.
When he landed, sending a splash of dirt in all directions, and finally spotted Primal Constructs in the distance, he was genuinely relieved. It felt like he was escaping a glitch in reality. He took a deep breath and stretched his neck, tilting his head from side to side in an effort to relieve the build up of anxiety he felt between his shoulder blades. As he got himself back into fighting shape, he observed his target, happy to get some more action.
The Underlayer was a strange place. He was simultaneously covering an unbelievable amount of ground without it being nearly enough. Rather than having an issue with distances, he knew his mind was playing tricks on him with respect to time. It was only the first real day of the event, despite feeling like ages, and all of the travel was making him feel wistful towards the memories of unending waves of monsters.
“Back in my day, the monsters came to me.” He joked, from less than a quarter of a mile away from an army of targets.
Ahead, four fortresses were positioned in much closer proximity than either of the previous examples he had already witnessed. Three were aligned in a row, while one was positioned behind the central structure, like a three-man offensive line protecting a quarterback.
The invaders stuck out like a sore thumb against the monotonous backdrop of dirt. The monotonous scenery continued in all directions with nothing else of note to distract from their metal surfaces. Thanks to the consistently dark landscape and steady illumination, the Primal Constructs stood out enough that they would be obvious from miles and miles away. If that wasn’t enough, the control points emitted a subtle spotlight of red light that extended all the way to the ceiling of the tunnels, indicating that they were controlled by the aliens.