Coop stepped into the citadel that protected Ghost Reef’s civilization shard and found Jones patiently waiting on one of the smooth stone benches with so surprising company at his side. Derek had joined the old caretaker, and despite the two having what Coop assud were completely mismatched personalities, they were engaged in what appeared to be a productive conversation. Jones had Derek nodding with wide eyes as he explained how one of the berms adjacent to the citadel was full of yellow wildflowers, a type of oxalis, that opened and closed depending on the ti of day. As fascinating as the subject was, it just wasn’t sothing Coop would expect to be within Derek’s wheelhouse. Maybe if the flower was used as so kind of garnish for alcoholic beverages, he could have anticipated Derek’s interest, but that wasn’t the case.
Once again, Coop felt like he had underestimated Jones’s charm. The man could capture anyone with his passionate discourse about Ghost Reef. Even soone who would otherwise be antipathetic to such details. Apparently, Derek was seeking Coop out as well, and had been enticed into a classic Jones presentation as he waited. Coop didn’t think he had ti to entertain the Virtuoso, but he could at least spare a conversation before he got on with his business. It just seed like there was so much he needed to do, every ti he finished one task another two or three popped up. He had to imagine this would be another example.
“There you are, buddy!” Derek stood up as Coop approached, excited to see him. He put his hand on Coop’s shoulder to get a good look at him. “You’re looking good!” He exclaid like an uncle at a holiday party seeing a distant nephew for the first ti since the previous intermittent family gathering. “The old man insinuated that you were in rough shape, but I don’t see it at all.” He flattered the Champion, transparently buttering him up. Derek looked over at Jones and pointed at Coop. “He looks great.”
“The magic of mana wielded by an expert.” Jones asserted, glad to see Coop recovered and attributing Coop’s healthy state to his visit with Madison.
“It wasn’t that serious.” Coop dismissed their concern with his typical carefree assessnt. He ignored their worried looks as they imagined what could have incapacitated their Champion, changing the subject. “What have you been up to, Derek?” Coop asked, anticipating the answer would be lots of drinking with anyone that had so credits. “You’re not in so kind of trouble are you?”
“Hey, what’s with the doubt? I happen to try very hard to avoid trouble.” Derek insisted.
“Considering how we t, I think we might have different definitions of trouble.” Coop noted. “You might even be mixing it up with work.”
“Actually, that’s what I wanted to talk about. This is purely a work eting! Honest!” Derek did his best to be convincing, but he had the weight of his entire personality working against him. Coop wasn’t swayed. “We could use your help with sothing in the mana well.” Derek stated, calming his hands and placing one on the back of his own neck.
“The mana well?” Coop asked, wondering what had happened, and why Derek of all people was bringing news of the dangerous domain. The man’s request hadn’t gone the direction Coop expected. He was imagining sothing more along the lines of the island exceeding the Brewery’s capacity to distill alcohol and he would need to upgrade the service sohow.
“What? Why do you look so shocked? Didn’t you know I took over the Dungeon Delving Departnt of the Adventurer’s Guild? I swear I told you… I definitely told Marcus, he shoulda told you, right?” Derek continued, clearly proud of his newfound purpose and confident that he would have bragged to anyone that had the ti to listen.
“...Dungeon Delving Departnt?” Coop muttered, confused by the existence of such a specific thing and the fact that Derek had accepted any responsibilities at all.
“Of course! You know how much I love-”
“No.” Coop cut him off, putting his hand up in the universal sign to stop, not wanting Derek to ruin his own slightly improved image. “Just tell what you need help with. I might have a dozen other things I need to handle first, depending on what it is.”
“Alright, alright. Sheesh.” Derek whined before presenting a surprisingly serious expression. “So, we’ve successfully cleared the second level up to the next floor boss, but we also skipped the first level boss when it returned. I was hoping you could clear it out for us. I think that if we catch it as soon as it respawns our top ranked groups can handle it, but it’s been there for at least a couple of weeks already, and without either Gibson’s party or Shane’s party, I’m not confident in sending anyone to test it. Those shrimp can pack a punch, and the one that took over is a really big one.”
“Oh?” Coop was mildly shocked that Derek wasn’t asking him for so other nonsense as a favor. It actually seed like he had been seriously considering things, with the welfare of the Adventurer’s at the forefront of his thoughts. “You’ve actually been working hard?” Coop asked without hiding his surprise.
“Yes!” Derek confird before hesitating. “Well, I just hang out in the Last Chance Cantina we built outside of the Coral Colony and provide buffs to the Adventurer’s while I drink, so it’s kinda the sa as before.” He admitted unashadly. “But I keep track of everyone’s progress and make sure they all return on ti. They know how much I hate joining the rescue parties, so they know not to overextend themselves. If they do, they have to pay for my tab.” He nudged Coop with his elbow.
Coop shook his head. Derek was slightly less hopeless than before, but Coop would definitely not be considering him soone in the upper echelons of contributing mbers of Ghost Reef. At least it seed like even beyond physical developnt, the residents were getting organized in other ways as well. The Adventurer’s Guild seed prid to beco a fixture of post-mana society with the way it was expanding in both Ghost Reef and Empress City. “I’ll check it out before I leave.” Coop promised, not wanting to discourage the improvent.
“Ah, that’d be great. I knew I could count on you.” Derek seed relieved. “We can grab drinks afterwards.”
“I have to head back to the Outpost.” Coop presented his convenient excuse. “I gotta make sure so other faction doesn’t co and try to eat us again.”
Derek’s smile made Coop nervous. “I heard you were in Cancun or sothing. Let know when you need help delving into a dungeon over there. I’m your man when it cos to that.” he declared, jabbing a thumb at himself to punctuate his boast, though he was clearly angling for a vacation. “Just, you know, after you’ve taken care of Chumyum and his goons.”
“Sure, sure.” Coop waved him away much like Madison had waved at him to get lost. “Get back to work then. I need to upgrade the settlent so I can get back to it myself.”
“Oh nice!” Derek exclaid. “I’ll keep an eye on the rankings. Catch ya’ later.”
Coop shook his head and received a sympathetic look from Jones. At least Derek was being relatively productive. If he was the least efficient resident, they were in exceptionally good shape.
Coop went to the center of the citadel before soone else could demand his attention. The shard humd with mana as he approached, emitting a gentle red glow that did little to light the interior of the citadel. Instead, the modest sunlight leaking through elevated gaps cast a calm radiance across the stone patterns and the red light served to highlight the intricate designs that had been carefully crafted by Balor. Coop had never been one to go to church, but that was the impression that the inner sanctum of the stone citadel gave him. A solid and safe construction that didn’t ignore the opportunity for so artistic flourishes with light and patterns while maintaining an emphasis on the central feature.
Touching the civilization shard presented him with a notification to pay the cost of the upgrade. The cost for the settlent upgrades was really growing into hefty amounts, with this one requiring two million basic credits to progress. The previous quests had been much less. The first one had only required one thousand, though he rembered the need to save credits being a major factor in the first construction projects they chose.
Coop easily paid the magnified cost, having earned even more just from grinding the Elite Ruin Nebulas. He completed the settlent upgrade quest and planned to make up for the expense, and so, during his next grind sessions. He nodded in satisfaction with the job done. It had simultaneously been the most difficult Champion quest while being the simplest thus far.
The system hardly provided any feedback for the achievent. As usual, the omnipresent interface rely reacted with a few simple notifications. This ti, the quest had been for upgrading the settlent from a Town to a City and the requirent was simple. All they needed to do was claim a subordinate settlent and the prerequisite condition would be complete.
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Simple tasks weren’t always easy, and in this case, considering what a settlent represented to the people who relied on them for safety, taking one away from another group would almost always necessitate conflict. It was a task that Coop hadn’t believed he would be up for when they first began, and he worried that other settlents would take the bait and jump to unnecessary violence against their neighbors.
The truth was even Coop’s pessimistic assessnt back then had been slightly too naive. People were fighting with or without external incentives, and Ghost Reef was dragged into others’ conflict without the upgrade as provocation. No matter how hesitant Coop had been to go to war, he truly understood that it had been inevitable.
The task of claiming a subordinate settlent had been accomplished when they interfered in the Endless Empire’s civil war, choosing to side against the alien faction’s Chosen and turn the tide on behalf of the rebels. In the end, he had completed the upgrade objective when he claid Empress City in the na of Ghost Reef.
However, in order to complete the optional bonus objective, they had to claim a subordinate settlent with more than one hundred thousand residents at the ti of the upgrade. Unfortunately, that ant that claiming Empress City was not enough to complete the bonus objective unless it received an impossible influx of around twenty thousand citizens. The population of the once large city had been severely diminished over the course of the assimilation, to the point that they didn’t et the threshold to qualify for the bonus.
The Sapphire Armada, on the other hand, presented themselves on a silver platter, displaying a much larger population that was capable of establishing a massive army to invade the islands with the goal of conquering the world’s oceans. They targeted Ghost Reef in order to establish themselves as the dominant nautical force, but they were soundly beaten when they attempted their naval siege. When Coop’s advisors claid their settlent, Neptune’s Bridge was large enough to fulfill the more difficult population objective and set Ghost Reef up for its upgrade, bonus and all.
After the upgrade, Ghost Reef was officially a City. The basic reward for the upgrade had Coop subconsciously recoiling as it expanded in his vision. It was comprehensive, to say the least, and reminded him of the initial choices when he needed to choose his class and first set of skills. The permanent decision had put him on track to reach his current state, but he wasn’t sure how successful he would have been if he had done things differently. There was no doubt that his build would look completely different if he had started with an alternative choice. If he had to make the sa kind of choice for his settlent, he wanted to make sure he didn’t ss it up. There was even more pressure due to all of the residents counting on the settlent’s success and laboring to make it all possible. Coop took a deep breath.
Cities appeared to be the threshold where a settlent began to generate its own passive bonuses. The upgrade awarded Ghost Reef with what were essentially City titles, and there were quite a few listed. Each one represented a specialization that was based on the residents and their accomplishnts throughout the developnt of the settlent, providing further bonuses on the very sa paths.
Ghost Reef had more than a dozen different listings, and Coop felt a surge of anxiety as he feared he was being ambushed with what could amount to a monuntal decision. Would he be finalizing the settlent’s focus with this decision? He froze in the face of a choice that might shape the permanent future of the settlent’s disciplines, like a crossroads in Ghost Reef’s path, but upon looking closer he breathed a sigh of relief.
There wouldn’t have to be a selection to the exclusion of the others. They had simply collected all of them. The list was informing him of the entire catalog of bonuses granted to Ghost Reef. The fact that they applied to every resident of the settlent ant that small bonuses would be far more significant, multiplying with the resident population. Coop’s mouth was practically watering at the idea of synergistic buffs enhancing their territory to untold levels, giving them an even greater ho field advantage.
“What happened?” Jones wondered from where he spectated Coop’s interaction with the shard. Coop’s face must have gone through a range of expressions, from satisfaction, to panic, relief, and finally anticipation.
“Looks like Ghost Reef got so titles.” Coop answered as he looked closer himself, feeling better about the upgrade with every passing second. Jones humd as he looked for himself.
The first City title in the list was The Thunderwall, based on the most potent siege weapons utilized by the settlent’s residents in its repeated successful defense. Coop chuckled to himself at what an aweso title Thunderwall was as it perfectly described the cannon barrages from the fort walls. The bonuses provided were more abstract than a flat increase to numbers, but the end result was the sa. Cannons would be more lethal and also be more mana efficient when fired by residents while inside the settlent’s territory. The cannoneer team’s mana affinities would now influence the attack type of the siege weapons, providing variety in their destructive capabilities. Coop didn’t find any exclusion for the ship cannons either. The prospect of a single title improving both their navy and the fort at once encouraged his growing optimism for the rest of the City titles.
The Thunderwall bonus would have been a worthy reward all by itself, but there were so many more. The Eternal Spear was another martial title they had received. Coop thought that made sense given his own appreciation for the weapon and how many others had adopted it. Spears would enjoy increased potency and primarily beco more durable for the residents of Ghost Reef while inside the settlent’s territory.
Coop hadn’t forgotten that the number of phantasms he could summon with Legacy of the Mists was limited by two things. The first limitation was the mana cost, but that was steadily decreasing based on his continued use while grinding. It was only a matter of ti before he reduced the cost to zero. The other limitation on his phantasms was the weapon’s durability. Each individual summon reserved a single durability from his weapon. He had recently received increased durability for his own spear summons after upgrading his summoning skills, Retribution and Salvation, and having them fuse into Invocation. It was the reason he could summon his Battle Axe with Invocation. Previously, he couldn’t summon two-handed weapons when Retribution was independent. Ultimately, durability would be the primary factor preventing him from summoning unlimited ghosts to fight by his side, but the thods to improve it seed few and far between. A City title was an unexpected avenue that could yield exceptional results.
The titles ca in a wide variety, applying to more aspects of their experience than just the martial ones. The settlent was also titled The Coral Crown as well as the Sunstone Sanctuary for the paradise within its territory, appreciated and admired by the residents who sought to preserve its future. The settlent would expand its protection over the area to honor the dedication of its residents. Coop wondered if their environntal mitigation efforts on the dunes after the siege event had sothing to do with the pair of titles.
They had another label called the Haven of Twilight which implied that enough residents had embraced paths that naturally contrasted with each other. Darkness on one side and Light on the other. While Coop imdiately thought of Sunny’s Harbinger of Dawn class literally recreating the sun and Jett’s mastery of shadows eclipsing it, he wondered if the system could also be implying sothing more taphorical about the phantoms and his mists bridging the living and dead.
They received The Citadel of Lore for the residents’ focus on scholarship and archiving knowledge. He had to give credit to the library purchase, and people like Charlie and Jones for that one. Not to ntion Laurie and her mom support group for making sure that they built the school and started classes for all the kids that had moved to the island. The Citadel of Lore would have an improved information collection rate. The effect puzzled Coop, but he was still happy with the title. He had to imagine that the title would be rare considering the volatile nature of assimilations and the fact that settlents only ford during the ti of flux. Others wouldn’t have the opportunity to invest valuable resources into anything beyond survival, and therefore wouldn’t et the qualifications for what Ghost Reef received.
The Bazaar of Unlimited Deals was obviously for the market and its apparent economic success, adding so subsidization of retail sales. The Crucible of Industry had to co from Garod and the other crafters who had been consistently producing arms, armor, and custom orders for the residents. Production inspiration was increased for all crafting projects within Ghost Reef. Coop raised his eyes as it settled in that the aliens were really considered equal residents as well. They were like a cheat code for unlocking higher level requirents for these titles. So many of their rewards were due to fostering a community that allowed them to thrive.
Ghost Reef was called a Trendsetting Marvel thanks to the efforts of their Clothier and the adoption of various fashions, and a Gastronomic Hub due to the variety of cuisine. They had titles that improved the purity of distillations, increased the beneficial bonuses applied by hospitality, enhanced the potency of alchemical concoctions, precision in baking, the efficiency of healing, the health of gardens, and the resistance to erosion. Basically all of the contracted residents had been working hard enough to unlock a title with the human residents providing enough demand to keep them busy.
The best part was that the bonuses, while small, also overlapped. The resistance to erosion wasn’t only for Balor’s stone, but would also impact the tals used by Garod as he crafted their armor. Precision in baking would apply to anything that utilized heat and fire to cook sothing. Garod’s forging would benefit, but so would Desmond’s cooking, and potentially anyone using heat or fire in their spells. Even Laurie’s coffee shop would benefit from at least three or four titles. Coop had to imagine that the diversification of their settlent was unusual, even throughout the galactic community, given how early it had all occurred.
Ghost Reef was officially called a Blessed City, a term he had heard from the Avatar of the System. It was granted based on the settlent having mbers from several high-profile species. The title didn’t actually do anything, but since it was for rely existing, he thought that was fair enough. There were bound to be a few freebies if the titles were for a basic upgrade reward. He assud every settlent to reach the City level had to get sothing.
The Cradle of Progress was awarded for the average levels gained for each resident. Coop was thankful that the settlent upgrade had been slightly delayed as it had given all of the Empress City refugees from the cruise ship ti to get sucked into the settlent zeitgeist of leveling. The bonus would be one of Coop’s favorites, increasing experience gains for residents within the territory.
Many, if not all of these City titles were unique to one settlent on each assimilating planet. That they had claid so many was certainly a feat that would be difficult to match.
“That’s a huge upgrade.” Coop decided, nodding his head like he slled sothing good.
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