Chapter 350: Serrania de la Macarena
The second designated stop for Coop was another settlement that he had seen on the temporary event leaderboards, the so-called Serrania de la Macarena. Like La Piedra, it had climbed the ranks when the residents of Ghost Reef had ventured through the underground, hunting the armies of Primal Constructs that had appeared during the Underlayer Event.
In a way, every uncontacted settlement had been exposed when their designated control points were liberated from the invaders, but only a few were large enough to climb into the top ranks through monster eliminations alone. Serrania de la Macarena was one example of a large settlement that had no representation in the underground, but enough alien enemies to score high. Judging by the points that had been accumulated at the time, Coop thought it should have been roughly three times the size of La Piedra. An estimated population of four million might have been on the conservative side of things.
As he and Juliana traveled together, his anticipation for visiting a mega settlement was rising. La Piedra had exceeded his expectations, bolstered by nearby populations and owing a debt to the strange natural rock formation that sheltered their civilization shard during the early struggles. He couldn’t wait to see how others had found success.
The assimilation had drawn out the hallmarks of human resilience and adaptability all across the planet. He couldn’t help but feel curious about what had empowered the survivors of another successful settlement. Was it social cooperation, collaborative competition, or maybe alien control? How had natural environmental factors affected their development? He was eager to find out.
No matter what kind of society had withstood the crisis, he thought there might be lessons to learn and take home. He anticipated a complex development that demonstrated the extent of human ingenuity or steadfast fortitude, and he’d happily spend an afternoon familiarizing himself with the atmosphere to better understand the situation and potentially make new friends.
After a long trip across mountains and then through rejuvenated forests, as they pushed through underbrush into a final open clearing, he got his first sight of the settlement in the distance. His lofty expectations were unmet. He could instantly determine that the development was significantly smaller than it should have been, making La Piedra seem like a regional metropolis when compared to the tiny village below them.
Instead of a thriving city filled with millions of people, there was only a meager enclave of ramshackle huts tucked into the edge of the lush forest, facing a shallow river. The buildings stood on narrow wooden stilts that leaned every which way, making each structure seem like they were on the verge of collapse. They were nestled amidst much more impressive, towering, mana-infused trees, with thin canopies and large branches that allowed the sun to reach the ground, all overlooking a series of short cascading waterfalls. It was a nice spot, but it wasn’t even close to what he was expecting.
Rather than a stronghold, it was a tiny refuge with only a few resilient survivors, perhaps less than ten thousand, who had found sanctuary in a remote location even for the Primal Constructs. The fortifications he expected were completely absent, instead replaced by what seemed like a series of neglected wilderness cabins, designed to be as wild as possible to provide an authentic experience for adventurous tourists, then further eroded by the introduction of mana. Unless he was missing something, he had no idea how they had made it beyond the first settlement event, let alone hundreds of days into the assimilation.
Even compared to Ghost Reef’s stone fort, the whole developed area was small, more like what would have been left if the Siege Event had permanently destroyed the island’s walls and only left them with space along the canal streets. It was like these people had been pushed to the brink and were unable to recover, instead just waiting to be finished off. Coop thought it was good that he was visiting, because it seemed like they needed any help they could get.
At first Coop frowned, not seeing how they could have survived at all and wondering what disaster had fallen upon them. Then he froze in horror as he took a closer look at the natural surroundings, specifically beyond the blocky, dark colored, granitic rock slabs that served as the foundation of the huts, bordering the rushing river. He scowled as he realized that the water was bright red.
His thoughts that something catastrophic had happened in the recent past changed to the fear that some disaster was currently happening to the people that lived there. The river at the base of the last short waterfall looked like it was overflowing with blood. He couldn’t explain the lack of shelter for the millions of people he thought he would find, but the water had him assuming the worst for those who had called this place home.
“What happened here?” He whispered, aghast, squeezing the spear in his right hand as he prepared to fight some existential horror. Either something was currently in the process of destroying the population he had anticipated, or there was some nefarious ritual taking place, which might explain the lack of security. Whatever the case, he leapt to the conclusion that there would be a fight soon, feeling his adrenaline surge and heat rise from his shoulders as his aura spread.