Coop squeezed the handle of his morning star with a white knuckle grip. He was straining his eyes as he stared into the darkness of the hive tunnel, doing his best to spot any threats. There weren’t any of the red lights that would denote a Primal Construct was waiting in the depths, but he was still nervous. When he and Jett stumbled upon Felrog the Soul Snatcher the first time around, they were both caught by surprise when the Field Boss launched itself through the tunnel like the bullet from a gun.
This time, Coop was just leaning around the edge of the tunnel, not willing to put his entire body in the firing range of the boss. When he didn’t see anything after a few more seconds, he turned back to Jett to see what she wanted to do. He certainly didn’t want to blindly climb into the tunnel and not have any way to escape the line of fire.
Jett was gone again. Either she was already tired of getting her paws wet, or she was busy defeating the Frenzied Excavators that wandered into the shadows. The monsters seemed to like the darkness since it allowed them to hide their ambushes, but the shadows were already claimed by the territorial cat.
Coop sighed, realizing he was alone in the near pitch black basement, about to do something reckless in order to fight a Field Boss. Again.
At least he was a lot stronger this time around when compared to when he challenged Andamarius the Blight Howler, the Primal Tracker Field Boss in his golf course dungeon, just to test the strength of a boss.
Acknowledging his own growth, Coop used his newest ability to try and scout the tunnel without putting himself in too much danger. He activated his Fog of War ability and watched as a thin layer of misty white vapor gradually materialized on top of the shallow water that covered the floor. He remembered the light breeze that had been flowing out of the darkness during his first visit, but helpfully, the direction had changed so that the breeze was flowing into the tunnel this time. Perhaps it had found another exit.
He kept his Fog of War ability activated as he mentally pushed the fog in the direction of the hive. Manipulating his ability was a skill he had yet to develop but he had a huge mana pool to draw on as he fumbled around.
After consuming a few thousand mana, a sheet of fog that was only a few inches thick began to gradually flow into the darkness of the tunnel. Gravity helped, since the tunnel was angled slightly downward as it extended toward the interior of the island.
Coop waited as the fog slowly left the room. It was a surprise when he no longer received the overwhelming amount of sensory information that normally came with the ability. Once he was outside of the fog himself, he only had a limited connection that seemed to leave vague impressions of what was inside the fog rather than the deluge of information that he got when he was also inside.
There wasn’t any chance of him missing a Field Boss, even with just a fuzzy notion of what was inside the fog, so he stuck to the plan of letting it flow through the tunnel. Unfortunately, he found that his ability to discern anything useful got worse with the increasing distance. He needed to follow behind his Fog of War to keep it from becoming useless before it faded away.
With another sigh, he surrendered himself to heading into the hive himself. He hadn’t detected any monsters hiding along the smooth walls, so the only danger he was aware of was from the Field Boss if it was waiting at the other end. The fog moved forward like a cloud drifting with the breeze, languidly flowing through the tunnel. It was such a slow pace that Coop found his attention turning to the tunnel itself.
The walls themselves left an acrid taste in the air. The glassy interior consisted of melted coral rock, but he didn’t think it was heat that smoothed it out. Even in the dim light, he could see that the tunnel walls were quite pretty, like the pearlescent interior of a seashell.
He slid his hands along the side as he went, impressed with the precision that the hive had been created. There hadn’t been any branching tunnels, visible hatches, or trap doors interrupting the surface of the main path, just the smooth walls and a light breeze that followed along with him. Hopefully, the tunnels wouldn’t be so extensive that he ended up wandering around in the gloom while the rest of the settlement fought on without him.
The tunnels remained dark and empty aside from the slight mist that his depleted Fog of War had become. The mist still led Coop along the corridor, but he had allowed it to slowly fade away. There was no point in continuing to expend mana when using his eyes was just as effective.
While it didn’t take him all day to navigate the dark tunnels, it did take some time before the darkness started to diminish and he noticed it slowly getting brighter. He estimated it was already evening when he reached the source of the light.
The tunnel connected to an open chamber that was at least as large as one of the blocks on the surface. It was big enough to comfortably fill with service buildings and not feel claustrophobic despite being underground. The walls and the ceiling were completely cloaked in darkness, but there were several pearlescent columns that emanated gentle blue light in slow waves at their bases. Coop felt like he was underwater or visiting a massive aquarium with the way the blue light trickled across the floor.
Frenzied Excavators were scuttling out of the darkness at the edges, massing in the center, and climbing up solid columns that led into the darkness above. Surely, he had found their spawn points. He might not have found the Field Boss, but maybe this was better. He adjusted his grip on the ethereal morning star, briefly considering how to approach the situation.
Coop had been worried that he was leaving his army and the residents high and dry while he strolled through the darkness, but he could contribute here. The more monsters he defeated the easier time his settlement would have. He didn’t think much more about it, he just picked his first victim and started bashing away with his heavy weapon.
The reaction was immediate. Not only did the Frenzied Excavators turn their attention to him, swarming aggressively, but Elite Ruin Excavators crashed from their concealed positions in the darkness of the ceiling. Coop didn’t have time to reconsider his positioning as he blasted his way deeper into the army of monsters. He knew from experience that leaving the elites alone was a dangerous proposition. If they were allowed to chuck projectiles at him from behind the rest of the swarm, he would be risking a losing fight as he accumulated the dangerous Excavator debuffs.
He let his Fog of War spread freely, intending to fill as much of the room as he could, as fast as possible. If he caught any stacks of the Soul Degradation affliction from any of their claws, the mana cost of his skills would become prohibitively high, preventing him from being able to cast later. Plus, if he concealed himself in the fog he wouldn’t have to worry about the elite’s projectile attacks catching him off guard. If the fog was thick enough, they might not even shoot at all.
The stingers from all of the monsters’ tails would apply the debilitating Soul Rot debuff. If Coop received too many stacks and ended up stunned, he really might not recover in time, alone as he was in the underground area. Countering them with fog was a priority.
Coop dodged a series of spiked projectiles, launched by elites, as he smashed their comrades. He found it easier to really exert his Strength and didn’t hold back from doing so. He already had the attention of the entire chamber anyway. His notifications continued to stack up, adding to the previous few days of constant fighting and he blindly dropped unallocated points into Mind.
Fog of War eventually consumed most of his mana, a bit more than 7,000 gone in his initial setup, but it laid a thick fog across the bottom of a large portion of the chamber that rose to Coop’s head. The much smaller creatures were completely drowned in it.
Coop was able to stop and take stock of the situation while the monsters struggled with the swirling clouds. They completely lost him in the fog. The Elite Ruin Excavators joined the Frenzied Excavators in skittering around searching for their target and the source of the disorienting mist, but it was in vain. Coop was able to watch it all at once, or rather just understand everything that was happening. The way Fog of War fed Presence of Mind information went beyond observing.
When he walked through the mist, he was able to watch the monsters struggle as the fog manipulated their senses, tricking them into spotting glimpses of him with whatever their equivalent of peripheral vision was in random directions.
Coop came up beyond an elite and swung his weapon. In the brief moment before his morning star crushed the monster it displayed recognition of Coop’s presence. There wasn't nearly enough time to react, but it seemed like the Fog of War was momentarily lifted for the monster as Coop smashed it. A sufficiently quick enemy might have the reaction time necessary to retaliate, but these weren’t such an opponent.
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The crushing slam that sounded through the chamber did nothing to help the other monsters solve their predicament. If anything, they were further confused by the warped sounds reverberating through the mist, just like with real fog.
Coop’s Fog of War had utterly taken over the arena, turning the area of the interior chamber into his personal domain. The Excavators that found themselves lost in his ability simply had no counter. They couldn’t escape, couldn’t find him, and couldn’t get rid of the blanket of fog.
He went to work.
Coop defeated a thousand monsters and still more were constantly flowing into his misty realm. He was having an out of body experience. His senses perceived the entire domain of fog with equal fidelity. It didn’t matter if he was on the north side or the south side, he was simply aware of everything that was happening inside the fog.
He hadn’t maximized his ability to use Presence of Mind, despite a few clumsy attempts to weaponize it as an oppressive intimidation move, but he realized now that it was like a force multiplier on Fog of War, giving the skill a way to stream information directly into his subconscious, like reading an aura, he was reading the fog.
The mana cost to maintain the realm was reasonable, especially considering what a game changer it was. The upkeep didn’t even exceed his natural regeneration. He could keep his domain active indefinitely, as long as he didn’t need to spend any mana for anything else. Taking damage would diminish his capacity to keep the Fog of War going, as it would consume some mana through Mind over Matter, but he couldn’t imagine a scenario where he allowed himself to be struck given his complete perception.
When an elite randomly fired projectiles, Coop knew as soon as it took aim and could predict exactly what the trajectory would be. It was just up to his Agility to keep up with the information that he was being fed. So far, his stats were up to the task.
Another thousand monsters were defeated under the crushing blows of his spiked morning star, he had run out of elites to fight already, so only the Frenzied Excavators remained. The chamber’s light columns continued pulsating a gentle blue light that tinged the fog, giving it all a dreamlike quality.
Coop’s ability combination was completely nasty. He almost felt bad for his opponents, remembering the disorientation he felt when he was caught inside the Zombie Lord’s area skill. His only regret was lacking an equivalent of the devastating lightning that had dealt so much damage back then.
He’d just have to create his own. As things stood, he couldn’t spend any mana if he wanted to keep his domain going. That meant he couldn’t apply his mistjumps since they had a mana cost. Imagining the ability to teleport around the fog made him want to force Practical Application to reduce the mana cost to zero as soon as possible.
In the meantime, he made do with hunting the monsters down on foot, moving like a predator through jungle mists.
It wasn’t like he would need to maintain Fog of War indefinitely for every fight. There wasn’t anything stopping him from using it briefly, mistjumping to his heart’s content, with no intention of keeping the domain active afterwards. Establishing the zone of fog would be a massive mana expense, but he could look at it like an “I win” button. He wouldn’t need to maintain the fog if the fight was already over. It would be an effective tactic as long as the fog couldn’t be dispersed or otherwise countered by his opponent.
Coop kept smashing monsters with strength that belied the precision of his attacks. He was still actively pushing himself to truly utilize all of his Strength, not just what his mind thought he was capable of, but what mana had made possible. Meanwhile, his Presence of Mind and Fog of War abilities made it so that the exactness of his strikes would be difficult to replicate, even under ideal conditions.
Eventually, after thousands more Frenzied Excavators met their demise, the inevitable happened.
A mechanical screech, like a train’s emergency brakes tore across the chamber, reverberating painfully in Coop’s actual ears, not just his perception of the sound granted by his abilities.
Felrog the Soul Snatcher announced its presence as it marched out of the darkness from a hole in one of the side chambers, huge spider legs gleaming in the gentle blue illumination. The massive mechanical scorpion-like Field Boss was searching for Coop.
[Field Boss: Ruin Excavator (Level 40)]
[Felrog the Soul Snatcher (Body)]
[Manifestation of the Primal Constructs]
He watched as Felrog faced his foggy domain. The monster crouched with its body and lowered its multi pronged tail before it lifted its oversized claws in front of its two dozen red light eyes.
The sound of an enormous pneumatic cannon firing echoed as the FIeld Boss used its tail to shoot itself forward, across half of the chamber in an instant, directly into Coop’s Fog of War. The blast of wind that was pushed by the rocket speed of the monster was enough to disperse the carefully maintained domain that had already lasted for half a day at least.
Coop didn’t even have time to get out of the way as the Field Boss launched itself through his domain. He knew it the instant the monster lined up its charge. Without his shield and no time to summon it, exposed as he was in the middle of the open chamber, he only saw one real option.
Meet the Field Boss’s charge head-on.
The sound of Coop’s two-handed overhand strike as it met the monster’s rocket speed charge was thoroughly deafening. He had threaded the needle, barely slipping between the extended claws of the monster, and slammed his morning star into the center of the giant Excavator’s face.
The force of the blow, properly exercising all of his Strength combined with his huge Dauntless title bonus, was enough to drive the boss monster’s breakneck charge off its original trajectory.
Felrog wound up driving into the pearlescent ground, as if it was starting another tunnel right at Coop’s feet. The boss was way too big to be completely avoided, as it was easily 12 feet tall and three times as long, and the blow only turned it 45 degrees down, at most, so Coop wasn’t spared from the collision. His feet were taken out from underneath him and the monster’s armored back slammed into him a split second afterwards as the monster’s enormous body plowed the ground.
Coop slid backwards on his own back, along the smooth ground, until he came to a stop among the tangled limbs of the hundreds of Frenzied Excavators that had been lost in his fog. They were mangled and defeated, dissipating into mana smoke after being thrown across the room due to being too close to the collision between the titanic field boss and Coop’s full strength morning star swing.
Coop pulled himself out of the heap as it turned to smoke, still holding his weapon, feeling ready to go. He was back on his feet before Felrog had pulled itself out of the rocky ground. Coop ran back to the monster, ready to keep testing his Strength on the bus-sized boss.
The monster extricated itself before Coop was able to take advantage of its compromised position, but Coop was pleased to see the monster’s caved in face. It had lost at least eight of its eyes with the single blow, and was now leaking what Coop imagined must be oil in spurts that spoiled the reflections of the pearlescent chamber floor.
Felrog lifted both of its claws and screeched again, scrambling to meet Coop’s charge, this time using its legs to rush forward. The monster weaved back and forth, teasing its ability to move laterally with its many legs. In the last second, Coop tried to spin around the nearest oversized claw to smash more of the red eyes, using the rotation’s momentum to increase his damage, but his morning star met the opposite claw instead.
Another bone rattling collision shattered the silence that had claimed the chamber without the regular monsters skittering around.
This time both contenders remained upright. Coop’s morning star had driven the extended claw backwards and into the ground while the one that he dodged snapped shut behind him, whiffing a guillotine strike on Coop’s previously telegraphed path. Felrog’s body actually lifted into the air like a truck running into a permanent bollard that wouldn’t be budged. Its spider legs flailed in an effort to find purchase in the air while Coop prepared to slam his weapon again.
Coop smashed his morning star into Felrog’s face a second time. The crunch of his morning star further marring the metal face of the field boss was immediately followed by the sound of the monster’s head and body colliding with the ground.
Coop raised his morning star again, but Felrog retaliated first, swinging its first claw into Coop’s torso and sending him flying. The ethereal armor that protected his torso held strong, but he lost his grip on the morning star while it was in his backswing.
Felrog gave chase, unrelenting with its rushing charges, clattering along the ground erratically. Coop rolled across the ground and immediately mistjumped to his weapon, spending extra mana due to the Soul Degradation affliction applied by the claws.
The teleport took him behind the field boss. He thought he would at least get out of the way of the charging attack, but found himself nearly trampled by the monster as its long body scrambled past their previous point of engagement.
He didn’t hesitate in using the opportunity to slam his morning star into the back left leg of the boss. The leg crumpled under the blow and snapped off, causing Felrog to spin with surprising agility.
Coop leapt backwards in an effort to avoid a swiping attack from the pair of claws. He prepared himself to counter another charge, but the field boss lifted its claws up into the air and jumped. All of its remaining spider legs splayed outwards as it attempted to belly flop onto Coop.
Coop had enough time to slide out of the way, but when Felrog landed, a wave of blue energy emanated from the bodyslam, passing through Coop and leaving him stunned with an immediate activation of several Soul Rot stacks. Coop was helpless for a few seconds as he waited for the inevitable free attack, but it didn’t come.
Felrog actually fled toward the darkness of the walls, seeking a tunnel. Coop couldn’t do anything but watch while he was incapacitated by the debilitating Soul Rot affliction and Felrog attempted to reset the fight.
The first round of the Revenant versus the Soul Snatcher clearly went to the Revenant.