Chapter 394: Demon Hunter
Coop fought every single battle like it might be his last. Whether his opponent was a Hellhound, Boxing Golem, or the more advanced variants of the Demons, he put everything on the line and engaged them with all of his skills. Anything less would have been unacceptable negligence, especially inside the tower.
He was no prizefighter and he had no preconceived notions of fair play. He had never undergone the type of structured training that a professional might experience, instead fighting for survival from the start. That meant that the style he had developed was mostly raw and brutal, centered on instinct, aggression, resilience, and adaptability. He was a warrior of necessity, unencumbered by fear or honor, facing death with nothing but a will to live. If not for his Haunted title magnifying his sense of accomplishment with proper technique, he might have fought more like a caveman throughout the assimilation. His body, or really his mana, remembered what it was like with or without the system.
He was unwilling to cede even an inch of his hard won progress. It didn’t matter if he was confident he could defeat any of the monsters on an individual basis, he was also competing with their near infinite numbers, the absurd distances he had to cover, and time itself. There was no room to slack off or feel comfortable. The Ark Tower represented the most important grind he might ever face. He was advancing to new heights, both figuratively and literally, but he refused to forget his journey.
The moment to moment actions accumulated, altering the time-to-kill of each monster by fractions of a second, but collectively adding up to meaningful amounts of time. If he did something a million times with half a second delay each time, he’d burn 16 days that he could have reclaimed with more efficiency. These were the unconscious considerations that dictated his approach for the overall challenge. Ruthless practicality was the goal.
The difference between a one time break to assess the tower or discuss something with Lyriel for a few minutes was nothing compared to the amassing quantities of combat time. Of course, Coop already knew it thanks to his enthusiasm for the grind, so these were natural considerations in his mind. His experience may have been with comparatively shorter grinds than what was presented by the tower, but the desire for refinement was the same all around.
His opponents were covered in Fathomless Chains, weakening them with every portion of damage they received from his weapons, making them less deadly and slightly slower, shaving fractions of a second toward their defeats. At the same time, the Clarity of Purpose passive effect stacked up and reduced their defenses, giving his attacks an ethereal property that bypassed their protection in tiny increments that added up on the most tenacious opponents so that they would be defeated progressively sooner. Rather than be an automatic function provided by the system, it was an exhibition of his ambition, his mana applying true damage as he sincerely sought victory. Everything was through his personal mana control.
If the monsters were dangerous, he was able to be a bit more aggressive by weakening them, and if they were tough he could destroy them that much faster. Few monsters could withstand his onslaught for long and none could oppose him forever. They only had two options: kill him or try to hinder his climb. He cooperated with neither while mastering his previous skills.
The hexagonal platforms were blanketed by his Fog of War, spilling over the outer edges like misty waterfalls before dissipating as ethereal ribbons in the stagnant atmosphere. As he grew more comfortable controlling his channels without the system, the domains grew more expansive.
The monsters dragged their feet, sloshing through illusory abyssal waters when they were ensnared by the Awakened Depths effect of his domain, all while contending with the Revenant hidden in the mists. Even if they were not impacted by the ensnarement, all of the different effects stacked up, transforming the environment into a domain more fitting for a ghostly shipwrecked champion bound to a reef than a bunch of stone and fire demons, providing yet another small advantage for his intrusion.
Like a wraith on some kind of ancient haunted shoal, he danced between corporeality with Vaporform, effectively eliminating intra-platform travel times. He reappeared wherever he was least expected, proving himself to be an adequate demon hunter if he needed to be.