Unchosen Champion

“You there! What do you think you’re doing?” The voice of a man pierced through the renewed silence of the Underlayer once the sounds of combat faded. The man seemed to be the leader of a little group that had spectated as Coop fought. Coop watched them from his peripheral vision, still undecided on how to interact with their unusual posturing.

“This is a restricted area, and you are not a registered actor! Why was I not informed of this operation?” The man huffed, shadowed by what were clearly his loyal underlings.

Coop had no idea what this guy was talking about. Did they really not see what he was doing? They had been watching as Coop cleared the last control point of the fifth settlement since he passed beneath Iceland. It was the first to have any other people around, and they started off by saying some weird things.

A quick inspection of their auras when they first showed up revealed that they weren’t a threat to the Champion of Ghost Reef, so he had been happy to ignore them until his battle with the invaders was over. None of them had reached level 100, putting them far below the threshold necessary to contribute to the Underlayer Event, let alone challenge Coop for his kills, and yet the man spoke with far more authority than would be expected. They were certainly confident in their action of approaching Coop, despite the level difference surely weighing on their subconscious.

They had arrived while Coop was cleaning up the Primal Constructs that were protecting the control points beneath a place called Chee Dale. Somehow, a place that sounded even faker than Gwydir Forest had generated an allotment of 3,000,000 Elite Primal Constructs, 100 Field Bosses, and 3 Siege Bosses. The invasion force was approaching the size of Neon Park’s, which seemed crazy, but Coop’s expectations had been based on the early estimates using data from the relatively small Florida settlements. The number of invaders he expected to find might have been slightly off for the mid-sized territories.

He called them mid-sized, but he was considering all the settlements with a Challenge Assessment above x1 that weren’t in the top 10 or so to be in that category. Nearly half of the existing settlements fit in that segment, with populations between 2 and 6 million. There were almost 100 examples, revealing humanity’s ability to coalesce against common enemies.

Places that Coop had never heard of, like Chee Dale and Gwydir Forest were large enough to invite one or more Siege Bosses into the Underlayer Event, but none had previous experience dealing with them. As Coop saw it, protecting such places would be a valuable endeavor for the sake of humanity.

Without him, he could easily imagine a scenario where only the absolute largest settlements were able to win, and at great cost of life, while the rest slid toward their downfall, assuming they were all forced to contend with invasions on their own. A gradual reduction in settlements until only the largest and most secure were fighting for their survival was exactly how the assimilation was meant to go, but Coop was throwing a wrench into that progression.

The group of onlookers kept their distance until Coop was finished fighting, standing off to the side while clearly wanting to be noticed. He didn’t pay them any attention, preferring to keep his grind’s momentum while imagining all the Siege Bosses he was going to kill during his underground adventure.

When he did notice their body language, it felt like Coop had somehow slighted the local homeowner’s association, so he was already dreading the point when the last monster was defeated. He anticipated something annoying, like he would be scolded for some misbehavior. If he didn’t need to capture the control points, he would have mistjumped past what would clearly become a headache.

Instead, Coop sat down in the middle of the control point after dismissing his equipment, letting the strangers come to him while he rested. He leaned back on his hands, as if he was people-watching on the beach, waiting to see how they would proceed. From their perspective, he was obviously the one in the wrong, based on some structure he wasn’t aware of, but even if he knew it, that didn’t mean he felt the need to play along. It was the apocalypse, after all.

Surprisingly, they weren’t overly concerned with his aura, nor the feats of strength he had demonstrated while defeating the last 1,000,000 or so Elite Primal Constructs, despite having front row seats to witness his abilities. Unfortunately, the Siege Bosses were the first to go, so they didn’t get the chance to see them fall over, but somehow, he doubted the experience would have diminished the apparent bolstering effect of cultural or social authority. The system would need to work harder to force humans into its hierarchy because even with concrete examples demonstrating how dangerous he was, some people wouldn’t be swayed from speaking their mind if they believed they had a good enough reason.