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Chapter 351: Quito to Iquitos
🕑 Added 2025-02-28 16:11:01 +0000 UTCOn the fourth day, Coop, Juliana, Felix, and Sierra passed between a pair of snow-capped volcanoes and finally spotted their next destination. The view opened up to reveal yet another massive city, large enough to once again catch Coop by surprise with its magnitude. In fact, Quito, Ecuador might have been the largest individual metropolis he had seen in his entire life. The buildings just went on and on for as far as his eyes could see, as if it was genuinely endless.
He spent a few minutes contemplating the city skyline, noting how the streets contoured with the geography in between impressive mountains on either side. Unless mana had caused the tallest buildings to already collapse, there were no real skyscrapers, but unlike most of the previous cities he had visited, the high rises weren’t completely engulfed in overgrowth.
Instead of being reabsorbed by jungle, the streets were decorated with ichu grass bundles and chuquiraga shrubs that bent with the wind. Stubby polylepis trees established the only prominent leaf canopies, just enough to give some of the boulevards and colonial cathedrals a truly enchanting feeling, but not quite conquering the overall urban sprawl.
Eventually, he concluded that Quito seemed particularly enormous because development was forced into a long corridor by the commanding mountain range. It was already ridiculously high, to the point that Coop had a mild headache and some slight dizziness, symptoms of altitude sickness that all of his companions were experiencing more severely.
The change in elevation actually forced them to slow down during the last section of their journey, but Coop didn’t mind. At the end of the day, he was an uncultured tourist, seeing places he never imagined. The three Slayer titles he had already collected made the pace of his whole journey more than acceptable so far. He was already off to a running start. In the meantime, he would be a witness to some of South America’s wonders, before the Eradication Protocol indelibly altered the world.
He might not have been the perfect guy for the job, but he would mentally chronicle the sights and sounds of each location, just in case the perfect person didn’t get a chance to do the same. For him, it was motivation to progress, to protect what he could, but no one would wish for anything to be completely forgotten, no matter what happened.
Coop felt a bit of a chill as he took in the views, catching sight of his breath, despite the season. He had the idle thought that it was still summer, but then he wondered if they were actually already in the southern hemisphere. Wouldn’t that mean it was suddenly winter? Coop had no idea. If a place had more than a wet and dry season he was already out of his element.
Either way, the cold was exacerbated by a light drizzle that was so fine, the wind actually carried it back into the air instead of letting it fall. The whole city was damp with mist, just wet enough for smooth surfaces of various plazas to reflect a bit of sunlight. It wasn’t necessarily what he expected for the first point of interest in a country literally named equator in Spanish.
Instead of seasons, he really should have been paying attention to elevation. Three quarters of their trip had been a rapid trek across hundreds of miles of cattle ranches and low hills, dotted by individual trees that had exploded in size such that they seemed like green islands floating in the sky. It was terrain where both Juliana and Sierra could truly maximize their speed. Coop would mistjump into the distance, covering miles in seconds, then have a few minutes to mingle with the local fauna or explore wild meadows and climb the extraordinary trees. As far as he could tell, they were near enough to sea level the entire time.
Surprisingly, the cows remained, and Coop had identified more than one bull that wasn’t just leveling, but Chosen as well. As a result there were few Primal Constructs to distract from their hike before they reentered the mountains, and of those monsters they did encounter, they were familiar variants, too underleveled to slow any of them down. Coop may not have been specifically grinding, but he still managed to defeat tens of thousands of monsters while traveling.
Coop expected things to change as they started to climb, but the trip maintained its relative peacefulness as they went. They each had their own theories as to why, considering proximity to shard territory and other unseen animal populations, but Coop suspected that the Primal Constructs were struggling with the altitude itself, just like them. Even he felt lightheaded at times when they reentered the Andes mountains, but the elite alien invaders that they did run into were positively lethargic.
It was the wild animals that ended up threatening their party the most, with Felix getting into hissing matches with local pumas that nearly matched his level, and Andean condors curiously checking them out from above. The already enormous birds had expanded their wingspans so that when one hovered over, it felt like being buzzed by a commercial passenger plane. Despite the attention, they made it the rest of the way without any serious incidents.
It was the first visit to Quito for all of them, but Sierra confidently led the way into the city until they found the promised settlement. In spite of the huge city, only a small portion was still inhabited, and the territory was so small it didn’t actually encompass the nearby mountains. There, they connected with a local contact who had been on the lookout for Coop in particular and had specific instructions for him to continue his journey should he arrive in Ecuador.
Coop, Juliana, and Sierra didn’t intend to stay long, though they rested a bit and Coop was bombarded with questions about Ghost Reef by the locals. During the exchange of information, he was informed that there was a variant of the Ancient Defenders near Quito, but thanks to the taming shard territory and challenging elevation, the residents hardly considered the Defenders invaders, considering how passive and weak they were.
Regardless, Coop went on the hunt, exploring the colonial old city in central Quito while defeating monsters that were barely scraping level 100. The Slayer quests didn’t discriminate and neither would he. Both Juliana and Sierra joined in on the grind with a handful of residents, gaining their own levels in the process while probing Coop’s obsession and mingling with new allies.
When he was done with his grind, they left to visit a place called Guayaquil, where the man who had spread word of Coop’s journey in Quito was actually from. It apparently didn’t have a civilization shard, but it did have a holdout of people who had interacted with some of Ghost Reef’s scouts and was familiar to those in the city.
After another day and a half after their initial arrival amidst the volcanoes, they made it, spotting an unfamiliar outpost with hundreds of familiar ships anchored in its port. The Tempest Fleet had arrived ahead of them, and in fact, had first made contact with the local residents months in advance, when they were first scouting coastlines. Guayaquil was already utilizing a mana pylon and had since become more of a sister settlement to Quito than a satellite stronghold.
Coop was still underestimating the reach of Ghost Reef, finding the fleet of phantoms completely unexpected. Even Sierra and Juliana had anticipated some ships, as they had always been planning to rendezvous in what had been described to them as a port near the Quito settlement, but the actual naval presence was significantly beyond expectations.
The two Jaguar Elites would be returning to their territory by ship, but Coop was given multiple options for the next leg of his journey. He could move south, following the mountain range to visit a handful of other already contacted settlements with the phantom ships and other scouts accompanying him, or he could go back across the continent and venture into the interior of the Amazon rainforest where they had made much less progress.
Coop felt like no trip to South America would be complete without visiting what he believed was the most famous river in the world, so his next stop was to the east, in Iquitos, Peru. He waved the Jaguar Elites goodbye before heading off on his own, this time with just landmarks to guide him.
South of Guayaquil, all along the coast were vast expanses of ponds. There were thousands of rectangular or square shaped pools dominating the landscape, stretching for miles. They varied in size, from what must have been small-scale operations to large industrial systems, but they all served the same purpose. They were inland shrimp farms.
The ponds were constructed with earthen banks and still held clear water, though it seemed the stock had escaped at some point early in the assimilation when mangroves began reclaiming the shorelines. They formed an oddly grid-shaped mangrove forest after the natural environment took over.
Coop was meant to follow paths along the embankments until he encountered one of the many rivers that fed the system before emptying into the Pacific Ocean. Supposedly, any of them would do, each eventually connecting to Iquitos. The lack of specifics made Coop unworried, believing it would be impossible to miss his destination.
Other than the rejuvenated mangroves, the land surrounding the ponds was sparsely vegetated, making it all seem rather barren, despite the hedge-like strips of trees. It didn’t seem like the natural environment had given up, and mangroves were restoring larger portions of the landscape, but for the most part, Coop walked along slightly elevated dirt trails, weaving between mangrove roots that crawled into the pools.
There were many birds, such as herons and egrets, the cousins of species he was accustomed to seeing back home. They seemed attracted to the ponds, and as Coop went, he spooked the occasional reptile, but none of them impressed him with their levels. It seemed like this particular habitat had retained some of its pre-mana characteristics, and Primal Constructs had struggled to establish their own niche. The birds and caimans easily overwhelmed the modest alien presence.
Coop left the coast behind, free to mistjump without any companions. He shot across the mountains once again feeling like he was going up and down over and over. That was part of the reason he had decided to go into the interior, but his impatience caused him to be a bit over eager with his spear.
He hadn’t anticipated so many rivers to be flowing across the mountain range, and had assumed it would be easy to pick up the one he needed to follow, but at the end of his mistjumps he ended up confused. When he stopped to recalibrate, he was overwhelmed with choices.
The guidance he had received implied that any river would do, but was it really possible for dozens of rivers to all flow to the same place? He would have understood if he was looking for an ocean, but he understood Iquitos to be on the shore of yet another river. He gave it a shot, thinking he had nothing to lose besides a small amount of time relative to his overall itinerary. He just peeked through his Soul Shroud every once in a while to try and spot a civilization shard. Even if he got completely lost, he would still be covering ground and it wasn’t like he would stop hunting as he went.
After what he estimated was a thousand miles, he discovered the answer to his question was yes, all the rivers could join together. On the way to Iquitos the various rivers twisted their way through the jungle, repeatedly combining until he neared his destination. Despite his growing doubts, he never felt the need to turn back and start again with a different river because they just kept joining together.
On the way, he encountered several Construct variants, most of which had already evolved into higher ranks. The invaders had struck a curious balance within the local environment. Rather than finding nests and infestations, it seemed like only lucky individual monsters survived for long, leading to situations where Coop would find an individual level 300 Field Boss, but literally zero normal enemies. It was as if they were being imperfectly culled. While thousands were defeated, one or two would survive. They would advance to the point that they became individually dangerous, but they were unable to establish the domains that they sought without the support of lower ranked specimens. It was really only the edge of the vast environment, but it was still leaving him curious about the dynamics between aliens and wildlife.
Coop struggled to get a proper grind as he traveled, even on the variants he hadn’t seen before. The native wildlife was hogging most of the experience by destroying the weakest of the invaders. He looked forward to reaching other humans, so that they could provide some information on their territory and hopefully send him to a problematic area or two.
The actual city of Iquitos was impossible to discern from above, but all along the banks of the Amazon River, there were lodges peeking from the forest where the edge of the city should have been, wetting their stilts in the steadily flowing murky waters. Each lodge was built with natural materials, but their thatch roofs stood out against the green canopies.
The city proper was composed of terraced roads, completely engulfed by trees, without a single abandoned car to be found. Instead, there were some dirt bikes and a huge variety of tuk tuks forever parked outside of shops and homes, throughout narrow alleys, all in the complete shade of the rainforest.
Coop landed near the edge of the city, intending to walk up to the more active seeming shoreline, but a surprised guard stopped him. “Welcome!” The man exclaimed, surprising Coop with his apparent friendliness. “It’s been a long time since anyone made it from the west, are you from Quito?”
“No, I’m actu-” Coop started before he was suddenly interrupted by a blaring alarm that caused the guard to practically leap out of his modest armor. At the same time other warriors rushed out from the lodges in a panic, guiding civilians away and rushing toward the edges of the forest in search of a threat.
“Come with me!” The guard shouted, grabbing Coop by the forearm. He took it upon himself to take Coop to safety, but Coop didn’t budge.
“Wait, what’s going on?” Coop wondered calmly, willing to offer his help.
“Something big has breached our territory. That alarm is reserved for the more advanced enemies. Come on, I’ll take you to the shelter.” The guard continued.
“Whatever it is, I can help.” Coop promised.
The guard paused, probably inspecting Coop’s level before he responded. “I can see you’re strong, that is a very high level, but it’s best to leave this to us. We get many boss ranked enemies here.”
Coop eschewed his normal modesty for a moment. ‘It’s not just high. It’s the highest.”
“Right…” The guard mumbled, struggling to come to terms with Coop’s presence while the alarms blared. “Let me take you to the mayor.” He finally decided.
Coop shrugged, figuring that was good enough. Of course, the mayor was in the shelter, so he ended up in the same place the guard had wanted to take him either way.
The mayor was what they called the Champion of Iquitos and the shelter was where they kept the civilization shard. There was some panic as their alarm system warned them that the overwhelmingly powerful monster had further crashed through their perimeter. Supposedly it had to have been an unknown rank with thousands of levels, but they eventually discovered the culprit. Coop himself.
They claimed his repeated apologies were unnecessary, but he had definitely set the entire settlement into a frenzy with his sudden arrival. It was interesting that the residents of this settlement had specialized in a different type of combat compared to virtually everyone else he had encountered.
Due to the extensive wildlife culling what they assumed to be 99% of the monsters, they only had to contend with higher level, evolved forms. That meant they focused on defeating bosses, with skills that may have consumed high action economy, but would deal extreme damage. Wasting any of their abilities on regular monsters would result in the type of overkill that would ruin efficiency. Still, their levels were high and their confidence was unparalleled.
Apparently, word of Coop’s adventure had not reached the Iquitos settlement, but they were keen to ingratiate themselves with him anyway. After they gifted him with some homemade consumables and a fruit platter, he got the information he wanted while exchanging war stories.
There were several monster havens nearby, in specific locations that were difficult to access, and there was another human stronghold deeper in the jungle. They warned him that it was exceptionally distant, and no one who successfully made the trip did it twice. As far as they believed, it was too difficult and too dangerous to return.
All he had to do was continue following the Amazon, but they tried to discourage him, worried that they would lose the potential connection they had just made with Ghost Reef and the Lighthouse. Coop was only able to leave after promising that more of his people would connect with them soon.
Comments
андрей ткач
Thanks for the chapter!
