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Chapter 353: Earthly Expanse
🕑 Added 2025-03-05 16:11:03 +0000 UTCCoop planned to follow the contour of the South American coast as his adventure continued, starting from the Orinoco delta, due north of Mount Roraima.
The Tempest Fleet was sailing up through the many winding rivers to penetrate the interior, but Coop could move as the crow flies, as long as the landmarks were conspicuous enough to be seen as he flickered back into reality. He would be incorporating the ocean for guidance on this leg of the journey, relying on its presence to avoid getting lost. There wasn’t anything more conspicuous than the ocean itself, so he was feeling a bit more confident after his jungle expedition had turned out to be more demanding than expected. If he needed to venture into the interior, he would always be within a few mistjumps of returning to his path. It was foolproof, basically.
First, he skipped into Trinidad and Tobago, where the Tempest Fleet’s South Atlantic convoys harbored, and destroyed a massive nest of Elites supporting an ambitious Field Boss that threatened their pylon territory toward the Gulf of Paria. The Constructs had made their nests around a series of shallow caves at the base of the Northern Range, which if Coop squinted, seemed like an extension of the Andes mountains that he was repeatedly climbing. The invaders couldn’t secure the caves themselves because of populations of nocturnal Oilbirds that aggressively protected their colonies, leaving them exposed to someone like Coop and enabling his rapid movements.
Clearing out the Infestation of Primal Constructs finalized an island skipping route that connected Venezuela back to Ghost Reef. The human survivors on the islands had previously been contacted through the early efforts of the pirates, starting all the way back when Elder Olani had drifted to Ghost Reef. The territory they had fled was reclaimed and mana pylons were installed once the island settlement began to expand. At this point, the entire Caribbean Sea was integrated into Ghost Reef’s network, with the perimeter passing from Grand Bahama through Puerto Rico, around to Barbados, and down to Trinidad. The Caribbean Sea joined the Gulf of Mexico as their faction influence spread.
Coop continued south, following the coast, for what ended up being the start of an extremely long portion of his trip. Unfortunately, while he encountered many different variants of the Primal Constructs throughout his trip across South America, a surprising number of them were repeated, and not just within the individual regions.
He encountered invaders that he had seen as far as Florida existing in great numbers within locations as far as Venezuela and Brazil. It should have been expected, given the complete coverage granted to the planetary sponsor. He imagined it would have taken hundreds of thousands of variants to fully encompass a planet like Earth. He doubted there were many factions out there that could support such a diversified force. The fact that he was able to continue collecting Slayer titles as the count rose was a testament to the Primal Constructs and their aptitude for invasions.
As he scoured the environments the hours turned to days, and the days to weeks. While mistjumping in what had become a rather casual pace, he uncovered enough unique enemies to maintain his desired progress all while interfacing with hidden communities of survivors. They helpfully pointed out problematic areas so that the levels kept coming, and more importantly, the stats really piled on.
Since the start of the third phase of his re-levelling plan, he had gained eight more Slayer titles while in South America after the five he cleaned out in what had remained around Ghost Reef. His status reflected his progress.
[Status]
HP - 80150/80150
MP - 312600/312600
Class - Revenant (Level 478)
Profession - Scavenging (Level 552)
Affinity - Spectral, Abyssal
Race - Human (Icon)
Faction - The Lighthouse
Strength - 200 (+15630)
Agility - 200 (+7815)
Body - 200 (+7815)
Mind - 10420 (+5210)
Intelligence - 200 (+15630)
Acumen - 200 (+7815)
Unallocated - 0
Titles - Champion V, Haunted, Ethereal, Reaper II, Slayer XXVII, Dauntless, Defiant, Stalwart, Reckless, Stacked, Valor XXIV, Siegebreaker, Underking, Mindbender, Insane
Skills (Active) - Mistwalking
Skills (Passive) - Depths of Madness
Quests - Fortune Seeker (43/50), Upgrade Metropolis to Global Capital
Basic Credits - 255,040,105
When he surpassed 10,000 Mind, he thought it was reasonable to expect another title or for the assimilation to react in some other way, but nothing had happened. Most builds would have to invest 2,000 entire levels into a single stat before rising to such heights, and most would never have become such one trick ponies without diversifying their investments, meaning he didn’t think it was unreasonable to imagine it requiring double or triple the raw levels to hit such a threshold. The Revenant was a bit special, and he meant that in multiple ways.
Slayer XXVII was crazy. After he surpassed 22 Slayer titles, he acquired another 5% stat bonus, further boosting his stats, but more importantly, it confirmed that he could continue progressing through the accumulation of titles. The evidence that every 11 titles would further boost the multiplier left him with the sense that he had made the right choice in seeking new hunting grounds. The raw levels weren’t particularly impressive considering the time spent traveling, but it was close to the rate he could have gained with a pure grind in the Coral Forest mana well, and would only improve in relative performance over time. Still, it was his stat growth that was the real story, sidestepping the reduction that would have followed diminishing returns in experience.
He had gained three more titles as he rounded the Northeast section of South America, through the coasts of Guyana, Suriname, and French Guiana until he was back in Brazil. Macapa was the next major settlement, at the mouth of the Amazon river, and what would have been his destination had he continued along the waterway from Manaus. Residents of Ghost Reef eagerly awaited his approach, doing their best to document his progress without impeding his movement. He continued south from there, aiming for what was rumored to be the largest human settlement in the lower portion of the continent.
Coop regularly spotted phantom ships as he went, tracing the coast back and forth, carrying diplomats or what would become new residents of Ghost Reef. They were sailing at all hours of the day, regardless of the conditions. The ships weren’t always in pristine shape, sometimes exhibiting damage from weather or monsters, but he had never seen any of them in distress. They basically established checkpoints all along the coast, whether there were settlements or not, where the vessels regrouped, shifted crews, and shared resources. Coop regularly joined them rather than spend the nights in uncomfortable makeshift camps or continue traveling when visibility was low and he would risk missing hidden enemies.
Along the way, Coop also ran into dozens of individuals, families, and communal groups, all who had survived on their own in the wilds. The action of the Tempest Fleet had drawn many of them out, and Coop encouraged them to hitch a ride and check Ghost Reef out. For the most part, they reminded him of the general population protected by the Jaguar Sun. The assimilation had been a true apocalypse scenario for people with less luck than himself and Jones, turning their lives completely upside down and never letting up. If it wasn’t for the bolstering effects of mana, he suspected that many of them would have died as resources dwindled, but they were still forced to fight for their lives as the tides of monsters rose and fell. The survivors limped through, barely succeeding for long enough to reunite with the societies that were rising from the ashes of pre-mana civilization.
Coop spent twice as many days following the coastline compared to his foray along the Amazon river, despite the relative ease in travel. It was because of the pure amount of ground he was covering. The phantoms estimated it was 7,000 miles from the start of his coastal exploration at the Orinoco delta to the end, near the south of Brazil.
Meanwhile, his competition had been holed up inside of the Coral Forest for nearly a month and a half. Coop checked the leaderboards, still feeling a tiny bit of pressure in the back of his mind, though these days he was more concerned with his personal progression.
Day 248
1. Coop (Level 478)
2. Charlie Seraphin (Level 435)
3. Camila Alvarez (Level 434)
4. Platinum (Level 434)
5. Sila Tupua (Level 433)
6. Hai Yun (Level 433)
7. Shane Peters (Level 433)
8. Imara (Level 433)
9. Arthur Anonymous (Level 433)
10. Gibson (Level 433)
It had been a long grind, taken as a whole, but the amount of power he accumulated through stats couldn’t be underestimated. Coop nodded to himself, looking forward to more.
In terms of ground to cover, he was barely halfway through South America, and he had really only given large swathes of unexplored territory a cursory probe, remaining at the edges of different ecosystems, letting Presence of Mind and his overcharged manasight detect potential enemies while heeding the rumors he picked up from locals.
The others seemed to have settled into the fabric of Ghost Reef, matching his companions in their routines. The leaderboards were bunching up even further, with the entire top 1000 separated by less than five levels, as long as Coop ignored his personal ranking. It seemed like individuals from all over the world were reaching the point where they might be able to match some of his hunting ability, but not many could also incorporate the movement necessary to make Slayer titles a viable alternative to bypass diminishing returns.
He suspected that it was only a matter of time before the Lighthouse could effectively sponsor international tours to mimic Coop’s current journey. Hopefully, humanity had the time to continue innovating ways to conquer the assimilation.
Coop looked ahead, recognizing that the best thing for him to do was focus on himself, just as his allies intended. He was on the peak of a small mountain, where there once was a huge statue that had been blasted by one of the mana meteors at the start of the assimilation. Below, a city continued to thrive, though it had been permanently altered by the encroachment of wild nature and erosive mana.
Rio de Janeiro would have been near the top of the settlement leaderboards, except that it actually lacked a civilization shard. That didn’t stop the people from establishing a fortified city centered around the Maracanã stadium, incorporating the ruins of buildings into a series of barriers to withstand Primal Constructs. 200,000 people occupied the complex, like a beachhead against the untamed wilds, and another two million people extended from the stadium to the actual beaches, having gathered from São Paulo and all along the coasts to resist the metallic aliens.
When Coop arrived, they were having an enormous party. Whatever they were celebrating, Coop was immediately on board, finding the energy infectious, especially once he laid eyes upon the sand. If there was anything that might turn Coop into a proper imperial expansionist, it was a nice beach.
Rio had been one of the earliest places in contact with the Tempest Fleet, just by virtue of the challenges faced in reaching the Pacific and actually crossing the Atlantic. They already had more than a dozen mana pylons installed, receiving them only after Belize and Florida. Rio might have been the largest Outpost on the planet, and even though Coop was unaware, was fully a part of the Lighthouse faction long before his arrival.
He would have stayed if they didn’t encourage him to keep going, eagerly guiding his adventure toward their allies to the south. Coop was almost reluctant to leave, but he was already realizing that the party was more exhausting than the fighting. There was nothing lazy about the beaches in Brazil, at least compared to what Coop was used to.
He kept the hunt moving, traveling all the way into Uruguay, where he met individual cowboy-esque horse riders patrolling grassy plains. They dressed in weathered leathers with wide-brimmed hats adorned with feathers or animal teeth, while wielding lassos and boleadores. They called themselves the Gaucho Reborn, and they were extremely skilled wandering hunters among the open grasslands that were on the interior from the coast. They had heard of Ghost Reef from the coastal corsairs that maintained the smaller settlements that had networked with the Tempest Fleet along Uruguay’s coast.
They showed him where to hunt and pointed him toward the ominous sounding settlement known simply as The Graveyard. Coop had a long history with assuming the worst when it came to the undead, but this was a purely human settlement with a civilization shard that had landed in La Recoleta Cemetery of Buenos Aires.
The settlement was tiny, but eerily peaceful. The residents were comfortable among mausoleums to the dead, resting beneath statues of angels and depictions of ancestors. It was clearly a settlement with a distinct affinity, much like Ghost Reef, but they hadn’t developed the mana as clearly as he had through his adventures. The locals told Coop that some benevolent leader called the Emperor had kept the rest of Argentina and Chile safe to the point that if he wanted to continue hunting, he needed to move north again.
While following their directions, he traced the margins of Gaucho territory, eventually stumbling upon a Siege Boss that had hidden itself within the froth of a massive waterfall system. It was barely a fight, with Coop planning his attack for longer than it took to actually execute, but he had to credit the invader with its choice of venue.
The Prime Construct had occupied the staircase-like layers of Iguazu Falls, transforming the basalt steps into a temporary throne. It somehow avoided the attention of native wildlife and local humans alike, but Coop’s enhanced mana sight had made it seem like a spotlight illuminating the water. It was a promising start to his hunt, but he hadn’t actually reached the destination outlined by the residents of the Graveyard just yet.
Coop ended up traveling all the way to a place called the Pantanal, further north from the falls. His mind was blown when he entered a wetland environment not too dissimilar to the Everglades.The Pantanal covered Paraguay and parts of Brazil and Bolivia with a tropical wetland that at a glance must have been 10 or 20 times the size of the revitalized Everglades. It was a completely absurd network of sprawling floodplains that he had never even heard of.
Rather than a slow-moving river of grass, characterized by sheets of shallow water following a vast, flat landscape, the Pantanal was defined by seasonal flooding, with floodwaters submerging the area during the rainy season, but leaving a mosaic of lake-like depressions during the current dry season. Serpents and the ant-like Vanguards were equally present, representing the Primal Constructs. There weren’t as many of the islands of trees that dotted the Everglades and created isolated environments in the Pantanal, instead presenting low-lying hills, grasslands, savannas, and even forests interspersed within the wetlands themselves.
The animals were also different enough to give Coop the feeling of dissonance. Instead of Florida panthers, there were jaguars, and instead of alligators, there were caiman. Then he spotted some weird dinosaur-like birds with auras that claimed they were greater rhea, and tons of the laziest creatures he had ever seen. Capybara just didn’t seem to care about potential predators or Coop himself, literally climbing over other animals for no reason other than deciding they wanted to lay in a different section of grass.
Coop spent almost ten days hunting wild boss ranked monsters and destroying masses of elites that occupied individual sections of the wetlands before he continued toward the next rumored settlement. But before he arrived, he got a bit more lost than usual. He knew it would happen when he left the coast, but the accuracy of his prediction didn’t help.
Coop stood in the middle of another dimension. At least, that’s what it felt like in the center of the Salar de Uyuni. The world’s largest salt flat left him feeling a combination of awe, disorientation, and otherworldly serenity. When his mistjump planted him in the middle of nothing, he spent several moments waiting for the exit from the Spectral plane, the world of monochromatic mists, to appear, but it never did.
The sheer scale, as the salt flat stretched to the horizon in every direction had Coop literally spinning, further confusing his sense of direction. It was just an endless expanse of blinding white, like he was standing on the edge of a flat world, peering beyond solid ground. There were no trees, no hills, and no landmarks of any kind to break the horizon, but when he slid his foot over a particularly hard part, he revealed a dessicated Primal Construct that disintegrated into dust with the slightest exposure. It seemed like the salt had prevented their efforts to create a Fallen Zone in the otherwise empty region.
With no visual cues for distance or perspective, Coop’s sense of scale was destroyed. If he picked a spot to move to, and mistjumped toward it, he would reappear with no progress being made. If he tried again, he would overshoot the spot by hundreds of yards. He felt like he had been sent completely adrift.
The silence was profound, different from the Underlayer, but equally stifling. There was no wind, no rustling leaves, no calm waves, no birds singing, nothing. His gladiator sandals crunching through the salt crust and his erratic breathing were the only accompaniment to his heartbeat and thoughts. It was a shockingly isolating experience that didn’t seem to rely on mana at all.
The whiteness forced him to squint, eventually leading to adjusting his bandana to provide some small protection from the bright reflection of the intense sunlight. The dazzling light played tricks on his eyes, further complicating the judgment of distance.
Then there was the sky. So much sky, that all seemed impossibly blue compared to the sharp white salt ground. The clouds felt close enough to hug, and the complete lack of visual landmarks made it all seem more immense, like standing on the highest mountain peak with a panoramic view of nothing but sky.
Coop’s surreal experience only became more confusing when it briefly started to rain. Afterwards, the ground became a giant, natural mirror as a thin layer of water spread across the surface, creating a perfect reflection of the still blue sky. If Coop looked at his feet, he felt the dizziness of standing at a great height, with his stomach flipping like he was about to fall.
Instead of a white ground, it was absorbed by blue after the shower ended, then started to fade as the sun set. Vibrant colors exploded after just a few minutes, painting the thin layer of water with hues of red, orange, pink, and purple to match the sky. Every movement that Coop made sent subtle ripples across the glassy surface, distorting the reflections of the fiery sunset in the craziest ways.
Finally, with the addition of a bit of water, Coop spotted what at first seemed like islands in the sky, but were actually small rocks breaking the surface of the mirror-like reflection, no larger than his toes.
It actually took him the entire night to escape the illusory domain, though there was nothing actually magical about it. It was a purely natural phenomenon, only expanded with the alterations done to the planet. It was a wild, bizarrely psychedelic experience that lingered in his mind as he moved on.
Comments
андрей ткач
Thanks for the chapter!
