Unchosen Champion-Chapter 334: Experience Sponge
The route to the fourth layer of the Coral Forest was about as straightforward as it could get. It required minimal active involvement, unlike the previous long hikes and challenging descents. All they had to do was go a bit further down and they would arrive at their destination. It sounded easy enough.
Hai Yun directed Coop to just let himself sink through one of the nearby gaps in the algae, adjacent to the primary coral column, where the boggy mat had been dispersed by previous Adventurers. Before he took the plunge, they only warned him that while it was the quickest way down, it was unpleasant and he should brace himself for the landing.
Coop shrugged at the explanation, feeling like no matter how much they tried to elaborate, he would have to experience it for himself. It was enough that they assured him that it really was the way. They didn’t seem like the type to try and play pranks. He surprised them by volunteering to go first, eager to satisfy his sense of adventure and see things for himself.
When he gave the passage a shot, attempting to test the gap experimentally, he was immediately confronted with the fact that he couldn’t even tread water within the completely insubstantial barrier. Coop did his best not to panic as he was pulled below and fully engulfed in a soup of mana. It was more like the clouds at the top of the Underlayer than the pool that he expected. He couldn’t imagine how any Adventurers had pioneered the path as his face submerged and he completely lost sight of the third layer.
The thick stratified pools beneath the layer of algae weren’t exactly liquid, despite their apparent density, and flailing limbs did nothing to provide leverage. There was no buoyancy to be had when sinking through the almost foam-like mana that the algae and the Gulpers both feasted on. Without any breeze or friction, blinded by the environment, his actual velocity was completely up in the air, and without any perspective, he couldn’t determine if he was moving at all.
He had to imagine himself sinking, and without either the sense of gravity or any buoyancy whatsoever he almost immediately lost his sense of direction. It was disorienting, to say the least. Simple as the path was physically, it was a mental challenge that simulated drowning in a milky bath of condensed mana.
Coop had enjoyed free-diving among the reefs of Ghost Reefs before the assimilation began, and he hadn’t shied away from pushing himself to go relatively deep as he explored old shipwrecks and curious coral formations during the more peaceful times. Passing through the mana barrier reminded him of reaching the depth where his body would achieve neutral buoyancy.
While swimming, it was a distressing sensation to suddenly realize he wasn’t floating anymore, especially because it only occurred once he was approaching 30 meters down in the deep blue ocean. It always made the surface suddenly seem too far and his breath too limited. To immediately have that sensation combined with being effectively blind and deaf within the mana pool was the kind of scenario that gave people nightmares.
It wasn’t until Coop was sinking through the layer that he actually understood the algae mats above. The boggy fields were the Coral Forest equivalent of a thick, mana-infused sargassum patch. The mana that floated up from the lower levels was forced to pass through a giant strainer of floating seaweed, causing a build up underneath the barrier. There was nothing substantial below the surface, providing a foundation for the rootless algae, meaning that Coop was actually falling.
When Coop emerged on the opposite side after just a few seconds of blind descent, he almost face planted onto the ground, flipped around as he had been by the barrier and his ineffectual struggles. He caught himself with his arms, feeling the slight springiness beneath his palms, and pushed himself back to his feet. His ethereal shield solidified first, only to find himself presented with almost pitch darkness when he cast his eyes forward and found his footing.
He squinted into the abyss, listening for any sounds as his eyes failed to detect anything beyond the subtle turquoise wisps that drifted from his shield and still manifesting sword. His ears contributed little, as the fourth level was nearly as silent as it was dark.
A low hum permeated the air, a bit like central air moving through large commercial ducts, but it was otherwise completely quiet. No hissing, no clicking, and no dripping could be heard in these caverns: just the ambient thrum of air flowing through seemingly vacant spaces. Coop’s relieved breathing after escaping the mana cloud was almost too loud in comparison.
The area would have been completely black, except that as he peered into the shadows, a pulse of grayish, silver light burst along the walls of his new environment. It faded like the flash powder used in old-timey cameras, almost as fast as it had appeared, moving deeper into countless grottos throughout the structure that he had landed within. It wasn’t quite bright enough to blind his darkness acclimating eyes, but it had revealed more than he could see before.
The tremor of light gave him a vague impression of the space that was aided by residual radiance scattered upon specific surfaces. Certain sections of the environment seemed to absorb the light deeper than others, immediately darkening, while a contrasting framework casted a subtly glowing mesh, lingering a few moments longer. The dim, fading illumination reminded him of the glow in the dark stickers that never really worked when he was a kid. Coop blinked a few times, feeling the urge to investigate further. It was yet another exotic location that begged him to explore. He loved it.
Coop wandered forward as others from Hai Yun’s entourage joined him, managing to comfortably land on their feet, unlike himself. Coop let Fog of War supplement Presence of Mind as he investigated their surroundings, but his misty domain was almost immediately pulled away by a subtle but insistent current. Still, it helped him get a better sense of the area.
Above his head was something like an open cave entrance that buried itself into the familiar clouds of mana that had dominated the third level’s borders. When he looked up, he felt the notion that he was an ant peering beyond nested tunnels in the ground as thunderclouds thickened above.
The foggy mana was a dull gunmetal gray when viewed at this depth, but the slightly brighter shade did nothing to illuminate the cave and its many porous openings. Thin strips of the mana were being siphoned away from the ceiling, drawn through the narrowest tunnels like some kind of physics lesson on passive ventilation. The caves were like strange varieties of overlapping straws sipping on the ice cream float of mana above, eventually building up to another pulse that scattered his Fog of War completely.
“Weird.” Coop muttered to himself as the second burst faded, unable to contain his observation as he re-channeled more mists.
It wasn’t like any cave he had seen or heard about, and since the assimilation began he had explored more examples than in the rest of his lifetime. If not for the evidence left behind by the Adventurer Guild in the form of ladders and ropes, he would once again be questioning if he had ended up in the right place. Everything was so alien.
The caverns didn’t seem like they had been formed by lava, ice, or water, but instead appeared rather organic. As he took a better look with the aid of his other skills, he realized that rather than being inside a cavern or a cave, it would have been better categorized as a large cavity within some kind of asymmetrical growth.
The shape of the openings were more like the tunnels of an anthill and rather than incidental openings to the outside, it was completely porous, with smaller and smaller hollows, as if the entire purpose was to absorb and funnel mana from its exterior deeper into its core. From openings large enough for himself and the entire entourage to stand in, to pinhole sized spots, every surface was a jumble of intertwined cavities. Meanwhile, the interior walls were encrusted with a fibrous skeleton that intersected like the threads of a hammock, revealing the spongy porous surface of the habitat beneath while glowing ever so slightly.
In fact, spongy was the perfect description. Coop remembered one of Charlie’s past projects, where she described how sea sponges survived in the waters around Ghost Reef and it finally clicked.
Coop investigated further, running his hand along the nearest wall, and came to the conclusion that the fourth level of the mana well was dominated by the sessile filter feeding marine invertebrates that had previously been tucked among the corals on the surface. He and the others were inside an absolutely gargantuan living sea sponge, bordered by other individual growths. It wasn't just anchored to any particular substrate either: it was the substrate, occupying a massive space within the Coral Forest and large enough to claim its own level. He was standing within a giant maze of spongy walls, with cavities that dared him to explore the darkness, but he remembered that there were monsters skulking about and impatiently waited for the rest of his companions to arrive.
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He was eventually joined at the front by Hai Yun and a handful of her bodyguards as they were funneled into the interior of the gigantic porous sea sponge after sinking through the thick mana clouds. In the periodic flashing lights, he caught sight of the gray mana flowing through thousands of different cavities, revealing just what the sponge was feeding on. He was thankful that it wasn’t carnivorous, shuddering as he imagined how they had offered themselves up to the simple creature. The functional cavities varied in size dramatically, some large enough for a dozen people to stand side by side while others were too narrow to even fit his forearm.
His eyelids were pinned as wide as they could go as he struggled to fully take in his surroundings. Hai Yun warned him to be wary of the many porous tunnels as their next opponents hid in the darkness, waiting for them to get close enough to launch an ambush, and he took the message to heart.
Her bodyguards demonstrated, keeping quiet as they took the lead in baiting the first monsters from their cubby holes. In doing so, they caused the creatures to break the silence, revealing a horrendous jaw of snapping teeth that easily rivaled the worst of the Ones That Hunt on the top layer of the Coral Forest. They were nasty, jagged things, built like a vicious trap rather than a proper mouth, following irregular lines like the thorns of a plant more than teeth meant for chewing. Every attempted bite was accompanied by a growling release of air, like a dog trying to bark with its snout held shut.
Worse yet, the so-called Chompers were much larger creatures than necessary, with elongated bodies that had adapted to fit within narrow crevices while completely filling them, like corks in a bottle sealing as much mana for themselves as possible. They had narrow pointy limbs that were only necessary due to being out of the water that they kept tucked in before exiting their burrows.
Other than the spindly little legs, Coop could easily see how they must have mutated from moray eels. Some were close to the size that he expected from such an animal, with the largest specimens approximately 8 feet long and maybe 75 pounds, but then there were individuals that exceeded his imagination after inhabiting the densest mana currents within the habitat, mutating into unnaturally large abominations.
A 30 foot, 1,000 pound beast shattered the bodyguard’s tactical formation, causing their array to fail when it shot from its tunnel-sized burrow and smashed into the shield manifestation, like a missile of teeth and slime. Coop was forced to get involved while Hai Yun staked out her party’s position, and as Coop stared into its gullet he forgot about eels and imagined the largest anacondas ever recorded. It was massive and clearly willing to swallow them up if given the chance.
Within their gaping maws, past the first row of teeth, was another jaw, clearly designed to prevent anything caught from escaping, and as they jousted, he was forced to contend with smaller snapping bites as the interior teeth reached forward as if trying to get a premature taste. He wouldn’t be surprised if there were even more sets of teeth within these creatures, not that he had any intention of finding out. Though they seemed to have adapted to eat each other, where size mattered most, it didn’t mean that a human couldn’t be consumed.
Coop ended up spinning away to get the leverage necessary to cleave the monster’s head, using his superior Agility to leap off the wall after the creature pushed forward with the loss of resistance. Despite its abnormal size, its actual level wasn’t too far beyond the other specimens. Coop was able to defeat it with relative ease, but only after he worked out a way to contend with its bulk and send its mana swirling through the rest of the sea sponge.
These monsters were like a living embodiment of a spear thrust and Coop, of all people, was familiar with the mechanics behind such an attack. As long as he could bypass the initial bite, he could see a clear path to victory, but that was only possible if the arena was wide enough, and these monsters clearly had a tendency to find a suitably sized cavity for their physical specifications. Or rather, they grew to fill the space they occupied. He’d hate to meet one large enough to fill the main tunnel that they followed as it would be like a steamroller of teeth. He had no idea how they would overcome it. Running away seemed like the best choice.
After the first oversized monster was defeated, Coop took the lead as they sought the specific chamber Hai Yun’s entourage sought to inhabit. While they moved, Coop was already focused on developing the strategy of his grind.
There was no way for him to land an opening strike on the Chompers as they stayed deep within their hideyholes, so he would need to use himself as bait, drawing them out before counter attacking. This was a place where someone with liquid or gas based abilities could thrive, but a straightforward duel was out of the question due to the narrow confines of the sea sponge cavities.
It wouldn’t be a problem for the Revenant, as he was plenty durable, so long as the largest specimens didn’t catch him by surprise. With his shield, he caught their lunging assaults, their teeth sending sparks into the darkness, adding another set of flashing lights within the internal cavities of the giant sea sponge. Otherwise, from the others’ perspective, Coop’s swings were only highlighted by brief exposures of lights, like what would happen if a camera was operating at very low frame rates, revealing a timelapse of the action but missing the finer detail.
Once they were settled in and the bodyguards finally started to carefully fill the silence with some hushed conversations and prepare their rotations, Coop wandered the tunnels on his own, planning his routes while keeping the base in mind. He found the Chompers to be a more straightforward puzzle than the Gulpers, mostly because the challenge was primarily in how to deal with their sudden, powerful attacks, and how to counter attack them before they escaped into other narrow channels. The physical demand was something he was far more familiar with. Countering a monster that preferred to ambush was well within his wheelhouse thanks to the habits of many different variants of the Primal Constructs.
The field of floating algae on the third layer was just too much of a unique environment in comparison. The inside of a giant sponge was similar enough to other caves that Coop was already mentally prepared to adapt. He permitted himself to be aggressive in the darkness, recognizing that once he defeated the most dangerous of the monsters, his rotation would only speed up as weaker specimens claimed territory.
The creatures of the Coral Forest probably respawned as fast as those from any other domain, following cryptic rules established by the physics of mana itself, but the difference was in how they were distributed throughout the region. Instead of spawning within the territory that they occupied, they mostly spawned elsewhere, migrating before they fought to claim real estate, finding a balance between the locations they were naturally best suited for and the places with the most mana flowing throughout. The end result was something similar to specific levels, but it wasn’t as stratified as he and the Adventurer Guild tried to make it out to be.
Any of the monsters could potentially establish itself elsewhere in the mana well, but they each had natural advantages that landed them in specific habitats. The Chompers borrowed many characteristics from real eels that provided key adaptations to dominate the interior of the giant sponge. Their elongated bodies allowed for movement through tight spaces, their slimy skin reduced friction within the narrow crevices, their powerful jaws and teeth gave them an advantage in forward facing ambushes, and their nocturnal habits eliminated the negatives regarding the otherwise detrimental darkness.
Coop could imagine finding them on the coral platforms, but they would be exposed to flanking while bathing in the mana currents, lacking the surprise factor of the smaller crevices, and would basically lose too many advantages to succeed. The Ones That Hunt might get eaten within the sponge, but they would have a much better chance against the Chompers out in the open.
The Coral Forest really was like a natural ecosystem. In the oceans of Earth, it was normal for different species to spend different stages of their lives in a variety of habitats. Mangroves, for instance, notoriously served as fish nurseries. Coop wouldn’t be surprised to learn that the juvenile creatures of the mana well were more evenly distributed than the fully matured individuals indicated, riding the currents in planktonic forms before having the opportunity to grow.
But the stratification of the mana well didn’t only represent changes in environmental factors. It also meant changes in mana density. The monsters of the mana well were growing at variable rates depending on their location, based on macro and micro variables like fluid dynamics and meteorological conditions that were insurmountably complicated for someone like Coop to put together. He could see it within the sponge itself, following the flow with his own Fog of War would lead him to the best possible locations, but he couldn’t imagine analyzing the entire domain and making forecasts.
Coop cleared monsters out, taking his time at first before settling into a proper grind with a route that kept him moving through the darkened tunnels for hours. It was only a matter of time before the returning Chompers would be low enough that he would seek out untouched hunting areas, but until then the giant sponge actually ended up leaking a combination of mists and mana clouds rather than absorbing it all. Coop was on the hunt.
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