Chapter 330: Second Phase
Coop finally made his return to the Coral Forest. It was actually something like the fifth time he had entered the strange natural domain, so he believed he knew what to expect before he leapt beyond the edge. The unfamiliar sights that hailed his arrival had other ideas. His expectations were overwhelmed as soon as he crossed the threshold between Ghost Reef territory and the confines of the mana well. All of his senses were flooded by curiosities, and that feeling extended to his mana sight, sending his new sixth sense into overdrive, making it feel like he was submerged in a sea of clear energy, the density of which actually matched the ocean. The place was unlike any other on the planet.
When Coop leapt down the physics-defying hole in the sea and landed on the first prominent coral platform, he had to stop and admire his surroundings. He stood in the exact center of the waterfall, on top of a rough surface that displayed an impossibly deep purple, pockmarked by vivid shades of blue and green carved throughout, as if revealing more layers hidden within the structure. The whole thing was periodically highlighted with brilliant flashes of neon, like mana was bursting to life from within the formation at random points across its surface, providing focal points of concentrated energy. Before even looking past his feet, he had already caught himself absently oohing and aahing.
The one platform blew his memories away with new fascinations seen from a new perspective. Though the mana well had been physically preserved to almost exactly how he remembered it, he had somehow forgotten the staggering scale and intensely alien sensation of being among the open-air deep-sea environment. Water splashed onto one side of the coral from the waterfall, flooding its spiral pattern and sliding down its edges like an illuminated waterslide, concealing the full extent of its growth below. The water flowed through the flat twists of the platform while falling past the other edges before being caught by other grooved structures of varying shapes and designs.
When he tore his vision away from the surfaces and glanced back up at the sky, following the unbroken cascades of salt water with his eyes, he felt himself shaking his head in awe. The skylight was surrounded by smooth glassy flows of salt water falling until they collided with eager coral heads. It altered his perspective so much, he almost couldn’t recognize the red-streaked heavens. It was the second time he had felt like he was transported to another planet after returning to Ghost Reef, and both times had been an exhibition of Earth itself. Humanity’s home really was special.
When he finally tore himself away from the artful display and moved on from the literal first platform of the Coral Forest, flicking his hair back after crashing through the thin shower of water to enter the domain proper and follow a clearly demarcated path, he continued to be amazed by every structure and motion. Delving into the limestone ceilinged caverns reignited his excitement and admiration just a moment after he thought he had calmed himself down and was ready to move forward.
He was presented with a massive natural promenade filled with fingers of crystalline coral that curved over each other, shimmering and refracting light in unexpected ways at each branch. Eerie patterns of light poured through the thick atmosphere, casting soft dancing shadows along the ceiling and walls after splitting through prisms of translucent coral rock, briefly revealing tiny cutaways and dark narrow tunnels that had been formed by smaller pioneering creatures. The fluctuations of color cascaded through the well like a submerged light in a nighttime pool. The surfaces that caught the light were all layered, with corals growing on top of each other such that the actual limits of the domain were difficult to really discern by sight. Even with the eager, mana-empowered growth, the scale of the domain was completely undiminished. He was a tiny figure in a forest of giants.
If he sought the gaps between towering corals, no matter where he looked, his vision would be interrupted by yet another column, covered in other growths, reminding him in a way of the density of the rainforests in Central America and the competition for canopy real estate. The corals provided a kaleidoscope of colors, always maintaining the palette of Earth’s underwater environments, but in the open air, lacking the refraction of the deep sea, they created a visual feast that nightclubs could have only dreamed of achieving. The scenery was all further bolstered by the thickness of the mana in the atmosphere, providing a tangible depth even to the open air between gargantuan coral structures.
Coop had secretly been expecting to find the mana ignited with power, vibrating throughout the zone, as if it had received its own upgrade after the settlement interacted with the mana well in a new way, but not much had really changed. If anything, it was calmer than he remembered.
Still, as he looked back at the sheer cascade of seawater that rained down in a perfect ring from the connection to the surface, he felt as if his nostalgia for the sense of exploration he had felt when he wandered into the Coral Forest for the first time was fulfilled. The changes that he could detect weren’t caused by the settlement upgrade at all. The Coral Forest was simply a growing, evolving biome, and the Adventurer Guild had left traces of their presence for him to follow.
Filter-feeding tentacle blooms sprouted from glowing anemones beyond the lip of the platforms, pulsating with almost hypnotic patterns of dim light, so subtle, they seemed like hallucinations if witnessed through peripheral vision. Their objective wasn’t to capture smaller organisms, but to maximize the mana harbored in their soft bodies and it seemed as though the undulations were effective in that aspect.
Floating creatures tucked themselves underneath the caps of coral heads like bubbles, embedded in tiny caverns that might have formed small treasures, letting their jellyfish-like tentacles hang in the breeze of the dense atmosphere. They were hosting what must have been symbiotic algae or bacteria that generated energy from mana. Smaller crustaceans and even some cephalopods skittered into hiding places, having found ways to not just survive in the relatively dry undersea environment, but make homes in the coral environments. The surface of the coral platforms, though formed as if they belonged on the bottom of the deep sea, was more like a series of tide pool shallows. They were covered in puddles, formed in exposed coral rock, with sea water constantly dripping from above.
The currents that flowed through the thick domain remained, seeming like wispy gusts of damp wind carrying small clouds of bioluminescent phytoplankton in a soup of concentrated mana. They pushed through giant sea fans that slowly drifted back and forth, large enough to wrap entire buildings, absorbing what they could from the zephyrs sweeping across the abnormal reef. Coop squinted as he watched clouds of light drift into the distance, spinning around each other, combining, then splitting upon the surface of a particular angular coral that could have matched the size of the largest ships in the Tempest Fleet.