Unchosen Champion-Chapter 360: All the King’s Men

Coop forged ahead, ambitious enough to believe he could complete dozens more Slayer quest chains before the Eradication Protocol began. The confidence he had built in himself hadn’t faded, but he could sense opposing sentiments warring in the back of his mind. Would his actions be enough?

The Lighthouse was working just as hard as he was, and on a thousand different projects. He tried not to be nervous about the future and the limited time they might have left to prepare, but every time he thought about Lyriel’s predictions, he could feel his throat get dry and his palms a bit sweaty.

If the timelines were shifting around, the only thing he could do was keep his head down and make use of whatever amount they had left. With a nebulous deadline, it was the only thing any of them could do. They had essentially one chance to get it right, so he hoped they could all rise to the occasion.

Meanwhile, the beach called to him, practically singing his name, but he knew he wouldn’t fully enjoy downtime until safety was earned. Instead, he set forth, embracing the yearning to hunt instead. Coop was aware that, above all else, he was most in control of his own performance, and that meant doing what he could to ready himself for battle. He wanted more training, more levels, and more practice with new abilities.

Almost as soon as his spear landed on the edge of another continent, he was presented with a more complicated political situation than he had encountered in all of South America. It was exactly the opposite of what he was looking for. He envisioned a training montage, where he bounced between monster nests, highlighted in the spotlights of increasing levels. Instead, he stepped into the type of mess that only humans could create.

In South America, the forced isolation of the settlements in the north due to the empowered natural environment, and the calming effect of a centralized power in the south had established a surprising amount of collaboration throughout the continent. Such restrained and cooperative populations might have actually been a rarity, if his initial experience in Cape Town was anything to go by.

The first African settlement he officially visited was a fractured network of individual communities. To say they were loosely connected would have been an exaggeration. They were solely united through existing within the same settlement territory and nothing more. There would have been a dozen individual settlements within the ruins of Cape Town if they had the civilization shards to go around, and only a few of them would have been working together at all.

Coop wasn’t happy with what he saw, and the explanations he eventually received only made him feel marginally more optimistic about the state of the region. He stumbled upon a political knot when he wanted to mindlessly grind across the wilderness. There wasn’t time to untangle the tangles that humans could make.

The different groups hadn’t broken apart so much as they had never really joined together in the first place. Several coastal locations independently became strongholds against the early Primal Constructs, bracing against the shoreline all at the same time. They were essentially independent, despite existing in the same pre-mana city to the point that they could have all counted as residents.

As the assimilation went on, the group that controlled the civilization shard had grown the most. They openly accepted displaced groups from elsewhere in the city, but instead of joining existing communities, many of the displaced groups preferred to reform elsewhere rather than submitting themselves to new leaders. Their growth was marginal at best, but at least it had trended in the positive direction.

Many of the other communities were openly hostile toward the ones who controlled the shard. The rivals lead violent raids in an effort to claim the official settlement for themselves and even the ones that didn’t resort to open conflict would have been happy to take over if they had the chance.

The shard was in a location with extraordinary natural fortifications, called Table Mountain, with sheer cliffs that made it an ideal refuge for those seeking stability at the top. The whole reason they hadn’t lost the shard was its geographic location rather than popular support.

When Coop arrived, following the directions of his companions and using his mana sight to triangulate his first point of interest the same way he had dozens of times before, he found himself at what might best be called a refugee camp rather than a settlement. They weren’t exactly aggressive toward his presence, but they were definitely suspicious toward his presence and it was clear they had reason to be.

An outsider breaching the natural barriers was typically a problem for them, but Coop was a disarming enough stranger to get a chance to speak before things escalated. It was a large contrast to the more hospitable receptions he had received all across South America, but he thought it was to be expected given they lacked any proper forewarning of his arrival. The South Americans might have been less welcoming if the Lighthouse hadn’t already been networking ahead of him. He had heard the rumors of early violence in places like Peru and Argentina before the assimilation forced them into calmer positions.

This time, he had to do a more thorough job explaining why he was there and what his goals were before they were willing to converse, let alone cooperate with his mission. Luckily, Coop had a little bit of experience as a sort of amateur ambassador, though he’d say his specialty, if he had one, was in merely avoiding the desire to gawk at strangely shaped aliens when they first arrived on Earth. Most of the time, human to human relations was best left to his colleagues.

Still, he could at least manage enough persuasion to have the local humans consider him a helpful tourist rather than a direct threat. Once they understood who he was and what he was doing, they were willing enough to explain the lay of the land to him. If the cooperation was actually a simple instinct of self-preservation, given his overwhelming strength relative to theirs, it worked just as well, but it at least seemed like the core group of the territory was led by reasonable individuals.

Cape Town had several notable communities of survivors, but also several places they suggested Coop avoid unless he was looking for a fight. Clifton, Bantry Bay, and Sea Point were enemy vassals centered around Billionaires’ Row, which also had a string of unofficial subordinates along the coast toward the north. They formed a sort of post-modern feudal society that was in direct opposition to the current arrangement, with each location fortified in its own unique way and vaguely behaving independently.

Camps Bay was a choke point that formed through the stalemate between the main rivals. On the other side of Signal Hill, the city center was a convergence of active conflicts between both forces with the additional complication of Primal Constructs entering the fray and outnumbering everyone else combined. Both places were active battlegrounds where Coop was as likely to be attacked by either side simply by being an unfamiliar face.

Nearby Hout Bay was an ally to the Table Mountain shard. Muizenberg, Fish Hoek, and Glencairn were cooperative, along with virtually all the smaller communities even further south through Cape Point. Muizenberg in particular was consistently raided by invaders after the communities further east had fallen and evacuated to the Cape Peninsula.

The largest community was on Table Mountain, boasting almost 10,000 people, while most of the other big groups hovered around 5,000. Combined, the settlement was closer to the size of Empress City before their civil war than even Neptune’s Bridge, meaning it was quite small on a broader scale, but even that population was fractured into dozens of individual groups.

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If it was monsters he wanted, he needed only to travel further inland, to the east. Even within the shard’s territory, the monsters had been able to fully establish themselves, forcing most of the survivors of South Africa into the various coastal strongholds due to the human conflicts that had been ongoing. The original population had essentially been forced to shift west as the invaders encroached on the city limits.

In a sick twist that actually aligned with the design of the assimilation, the fact that the humans had been fighting each other meant that they had gained levels fast enough to keep up with the evolving monsters. Rather than taming their lands, they were progressing in parallel, and if the system had its way, Coop was sure that just one of the many communities would be standing as the settlement events continued.

While it didn’t sound like a proper Fallen Zone had taken root, he was sure to find the preliminary territory quests that delineated Infestations and Hives. They might not be Slayer quests, but they were worth a visit given how quickly he could chew through enemies. The fact that they typically guaranteed at least a level if not title upgrades was not lost on him.

In turn, Coop shared his own information regarding himself, Ghost Reef, the Lighthouse, and the Eradication Protocol. He warned them that his allies would inevitably come to visit and suggested they prepare to make some decisions regarding the apocalypse. It didn’t matter if they believed him or not, the important thing was to give his words enough credence to make a back up plan. To him, it seemed like they were on a collision course with annihilation, and he said as much. They seemed to get the message, giving him credence simply because of his position on the leaderboards, but he imagined they would have a long road before they would be allowed into Ghost Reef.

The population of his home settlement had grown exponentially, but there were a few basic principles they enforced on anyone that wished to participate. Cooperation with other people and animals was firmly at the top of the list. freёwebnoѵel.com

Before he moved on to the monsters, his conscience got the better of him and he decided it was only fair to provide a similar warning to the other communities. The ones that had aligned with the main shard to the south were cordial enough, but as soon as he tried to reach Billionaires’ Row, something like a border patrol tried to shake him down for basic credits. His approach from above had bypassed the perimeter, and that alone had the guards assuming he not only had permission to be within their territory, but that he would also immediately fold to their demands as they represented the central power of the neighborhoods.

Coop couldn’t help but laugh at the inanity. It was almost 275 days into the assimilation and a group of people with funny accents were trying to mug him. To send the situation even further off the rails, they took his incredulous reaction for an insult at their expense, and got a bit more hostile before he unleashed Presence of Mind and sent them scrambling away. He should have accepted the encounter as a bad omen, but he just casually walked deeper into their territory. It wasn’t like he hadn’t anticipated a headache from the fractured settlement.

He quickly found the leader holding court within what Coop assumed had been a rugby stadium based on the field goals and large unkempt field of dry dusty grass. There were crowds of people lined up waiting for an audience, unwilling or not, and just a handful of lackadaisical security guards making sure they behaved.

The leader was actually wearing a crown. He prominently displayed himself at the front edge of a fan section right above a tunnel that led into the interior of the structure. A large entourage flanked him, filling the seats and enjoying themselves like they were the king’s personal supporter group. The rest of the stands seemed to be open for the public, but the crowds weren’t particularly impressive. Most of the stadium was empty and unkempt, with portions already eroded away, giving the whole place a post-apocalyptic vibe. If the stadium was meant to be a king’s palace, it left something to be desired.

Coop’s expression sank as he took in the scenes, eventually firmly settling into a scowl. What they were cheering for disgusted him.

He had entered from the opposite side from the apparent king, just strolling past guards who seemed to have been there to force people in rather than to keep people out. He took a deep breath, wishing he could feel more like an athlete warming up in front of a jubilant crowd, instead of a gladiator putting lives on the line for some sick entertainment.

To his right and left were a few scattered bodies waiting to be discarded like death was a daily occurrence in this place. He could see that these weren’t the heartbreaking measures demanded by desperate times, but rather a form of systemic state violence designed to keep its population scared and controlled. The injustice of a handful killed for what seemed like petty reasons, when the total population was already so small, burned a fire in his chest.

Coop spent about ten seconds trying to come up with the most charitable explanation for such medieval justice, but even then, he couldn’t explain the line of people awaiting their own judgment. Coop stared at the man in the crown and pegged him as a petty tyrant, the kind that need not exist any longer if humanity were to survive into the future. The way he laughed and sipped on his drink among like-minded socialites while people in the worn field kept their eyes downcast had Coop’s spear in his palm before his mind caught up. The leader was so clearly a man that had never known struggle, before or after mana had activated on planet Earth, that it only made him angrier.

It seemed like almost the entire group that controlled Billionaires’ Row was present within the stadium, given the crowds, but even then, the stadium wasn’t even a quarter full. They were all watching the current display of an individual citizen begging on his knees, hands clasped and raised toward the leader, pleading to be spared. The companions of the petty monarch pestered him with asinine questions about why he wasn’t grateful enough for their protection and the crowd laughed away. They accused him of lacking in appreciation such that they couldn’t afford him clemency.

No matter how the man tried to respond they shouted over him before the wannabe king grew bored of the show and assigned one of his men to mete out punishment. The man he chose happily skipped down to the bottom of the stands where he retrieved a makeshift sword made of a combination of lawn equipment and sports gear. To Coop, he seemed overly excited for what amounted to a bit of unjustly earned experience, as if he would enjoy it for other reasons.

The king’s supporter walked toward the man who begged for mercy, claiming he had only needed help because the alien domain had encroached on their neighborhood, still promising to pay them back as soon as he was able.

Before the chosen headsman made it three steps onto the dead grass, a wave of fog filled the entire stadium, manifesting straight from the air all around them. It thickened, bordering on becoming suffocating as it unfolded. It climbed higher and higher through the stands until it was pouring out of the top of the partial dome. It leaked beyond the edges of the stadium, onto the exterior before finally reaching its limit on the grounds surrounding the building.

Coop’s presence wasn’t even noticed before he turned the execution around on every person in the stadium who had flashed their bloodthirsty smiles at the impending violence. He and dozens of phantasms cleared out roughly 1,200 people, which had been enough to keep ten times as many under control so long as they were unable to get organized. In 20 seconds the oppressive force was gone, and so was he, leaving the line of confused petitioners in the grass with an audience that would never cheer again.

He was back at the civilization shard before his Fog of War had dissipated, letting the locals know that the king and his men were dead. It had been a long time since he felt it was necessary, but he left them with a warning that he wasn’t messing around when it came to the harmony of his settlement. They should think hard about their future.

As he left them behind, he shook his head at himself, unsure if he was really that different from the king he had killed. Eventually, he came to the conclusion that they weren’t actually different at all. Like the Zombie Lord and the Lich, the Champion of the Endless Empire and so many others, they were all fundamentally human.

Going forward, he decided it might be best to avoid approaching just any civilization shard, preferring to let his perfectly capable army of diplomats and soldiers evaluate potential allies. It had been a while since he had truly fought humans, if that’s really what it could even be called when he turned his abilities on other people, and he really didn’t feel like it was worth it.

He gained a mere handful of levels while it felt like a small part of his soul withered and died. Coop refocused on the sense of adventure that he hoped would never let him down, going on his own personal, custom safari while he avoided making such future trades with his conscience on the line.

If the Lighthouse would give rise to a better version of humanity that expanded into the cosmos, Earth would have to survive first. Coop would do what he could to pave the way, holding onto the hope that they really could transcend their history. He only had to focus on getting more experience, more levels, and more attributes. Time would tell if his actions would be enough to give humanity a chance.