Dungeon Day 20 - Continues

The first to return were Kinetic and George. They had made it relatively far but had decided to return as nighttime approached.

As he also waited for his birds to return, Dan ran into the fact that he wouldn't know what the hawks were up to until they came back or died. He could have given them the Share Sense ability but hadn’t due to his lack of mana, and he hoped that wouldn’t be a problem next time he entered a new zone. Still, this meant that Dan was stuck with Eagle for scouting since he wanted to keep Hawk in place just in case there were aerial threats he had yet to learn about.

Time passed, and the temptation to investigate the dead tree grew, but he held it down harder since he didn't want to instigate any fights until he learned more about the region.

As the day passed, Eagle nudged him. He had nudged the hawk a while back to head straight east from the dead tree, as that was the direction where only one of the hawks had gone.

Thankfully, that command paid off, and the hawk stumbled across a giant lake with immense lily pads floating on its surface. Eagle the hawk explored the lake but didn't get too close. It was only a few hours before nighttime set in when Eagle found the lake, and Dan decided to recall her.

Dan could feel that the rest of the hawks were making their way back and wanted everyone back so he could move forward with new information.

It was as night came, and the forest went incredibly dark due to the lack of moon or starlight. When he finally recalled the rest of his monsters from scouting, Dan wasn’t sure what might prowl at night and wanted to be prepared just in case.

The hawks arrived in camp one after another, and as they entered the dungeon proper, he began getting mental images of their travels. Wanting to make a proper map to share with his monsters, Dan brought the bosses into the cave.

First of all, the area they were in was squared, not a perfect square due to the fog, but close enough. As such, he made a square in the cave wall. The square could be divided into three sections. There was straight north, northeast, and straight east.

Dan’s camp was in the bottom left-hand corner of the square.

Straight north, following the squares left fog wall was a cave that Dan named Cave One. Further north from Cave One was a large camp of tents filled with orcs, goblins, and hobgoblins. Dan gave this camp the simple name Green Camp. These two spots thing were part of the first section and were straight north of Dan’s camp.

Resetting back to Dan’s base camp and heading diagonally straight towards the northeast was the giant dead tree, followed by another cave, which Dan named Cave Two. Continuing the same route, the hawks then found a village. The village was a plain, medieval-looking village populated by the typical fantasy races, such as elves, dwarfs, gnomes, and humans. It might have more fantasy folks, but those were the ones the hawk spotted at the time. The village was also rather large and had more than just a few dozen buildings; it might even be called a small town by some.

Moving further northeast from the village, the hawks found a hilly area with large lumbering figures that looked like ogres and trolls. These hills were one of the two farthest areas from Dan's camp, and he was happy with that, as the ogres and trolls were probably the most dangerous creatures in the shattered space. Well, aside from anything, the other shards might be cooking up.

Section three was odd as it didn’t entirely go straight. For this section, it was best to start from the giant dead tree and head straight east. Eventually, one would find the large lake that Eagle had seen, and further past that was an insanely large rock containing some animal camp. Finally, from the rock and straight north, they could reach some ruins that were definitely populated by bandits.

Effectively, the hills were straight across from Dan’s camp on the other side of the map. Then, the furthest thing north was the Green Camp, with the large rock being the furthest thing east.

Sandwiched between the goblin and orc camp and Dan’s camp was Cave One, with both locations making up section one. Section two was made up of the dead tree, Cave Two, the medieval village, and the hills. Then, finally, was section three, which had the lake, large rock, and bandit ruins, with all three locations making a lying down L.

Though not much, Dan had more information about the land, and he could start planning how to conquer it all. Though before he did anything, Dan wanted more information. So, he planned to send out the hawks again, but this time around to get a closer look at each area. All the while, Dan wanted to do some probing of the giant dead tree and see what was there. Honestly, the tree was the closest spot to Dan, and there was no way the layout was created by normal animals.

Dungeon Day 21

Dan sent the hawks back out early in the morning. He had ten hawks and sent out eight of them, as the dead tree was near enough, and he would use the two remaining ones to probe it.

After the eight hawks were sent out, Dan established the same scouts he had the day before. Then, once the defensive line had been established, Dan sent out the two hawks with Eagle watching them from further up in the sky. Dan had even been tempted to give Eagle invisibility but decided against it. He still had his 300 mana and wanted to keep it that way until an offensive started. He knew he could hunt some of the wild animals, but he was worried that it might set off alarm bells for whatever was happening in the tree.

Once the guard had been set up, Dan switched over to Eagle.

The two hawks took a slow approach. First, they just flew above the tree at a somewhat respectable distance. However, that didn't do much of anything. So, they slowly started flying closer and closer. At first, they landed on the trees outside the clearing. That also didn't get any attention, and Dan began to wonder if it was just that two random hawks only being around for less than an hour was not worth looking into. Still, Dan didn't want to leave the tree alone, especially after watching it for a bit.

The animals were not acting right. They all seemed too well organized for animals. And Dan only had two explanations for it. The first was that the animals were working for some druid, while the second involved one of the shards. Naturally, he was inclined to believe that a shard was involved, as there were supposed to be eight in this area, but he also didn't have enough proof to rule out the druid idea fully. Also, there was a third idea that could also make sense. However, since he was still using the mindset of an Earther, he hadn't thought of it.

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The fact was that monsters could also be intelligent, and Dan didn't believe for a second that his creatures were the only ones that could form complex thoughts. And if a higher-tiered monster was around, they could also be part of why these animals acted in such an organized manner.

So, with the hawks comfortably watching without raising suspicion, Dan began to observe the clearing. And as the day passed, he got the information he sought.

To begin with, whatever was controlling the animals had a decent amount under control. Dan counted two bears, a couple of wolves, a large snake, a raven bigger than his hawks, along with some ordinary crows. That list of animals represented the most dangerous ones, while the rest were bunnies, foxes, squirrels, and other smaller birds.

The animals all seemed to be gathering more creatures or at least trying to. However, unlike his much more intelligent creatures, they were having trouble understanding the concept of bringing stuff back alive. Well, some were. Still, whatever was going on, the fact was that an animal would be brought half alive, and it would then be placed near the tree where something then happened, and it went still. Then, it would just be left there.

Sometimes, the animal recovered, depending on the wound. If they recovered enough to move, they would be taken to the side to heal, or so Dan figured. If they did die, they became the meal for the other animals.

After observing for a while longer, Dan got the proof he needed when he saw some of the bigger animals using basic forms of telekinesis. That alone confirmed that one of the shards was involved, and it was definitely dominating the animals and using their mana to make basic telekinetic effects. And now that Dan knew this, he began planning a proper offensive, which would begin by testing the shard's strengths.

It didn't begin right away as Dan wanted to get a full measure of the shard's forces in case it had some of the animals on longer expeditions. After all, the last thing Dan wanted was to attack and get flanked by returning beasts.

Dan also wanted to see how many beasts the thing controlled, as the more creatures it controlled, the stronger the shard was. So far, Dan had counted around 20 or so beasts, but there could be more. Another factor was also just how much mana the shard had built up. Usually, the higher the rank, the more mana something could have, and since the other shards didn’t have the same restrictions, they could store more mana than he could. Another important thing to check was the size of a shard, but not for any really dangerous reason.

A bigger shard meant that their innate ability to produce Chaos Mana was larger, which might help it rank up faster or produce more ambient manna by converting its Chaos Mana. This was one of the two ways shards would have access to ambient mana inside the shattered lands. The other way was to absorb it from creatures.

It was an issue Dan had wondered about. After all, if the shattered zone was filled with Ambient Mana, then couldn’t the shards wield that?

However, the World Crystal had told him that after his self-destruction, the shattered lands, which were already teeming with Time and Space Attune Chaos Mana, became even more unstable, making it almost impossible for normal mana to exist within. Thus, when said Time and Space Chaos Attuned Mana started bringing spaces into the shattered lands from across time and space, all creatures in said lands were modified to absorb and transform said Attuned Chaos Mana into normal mana. This then let the creatures use magic while stopping the World’s Crystal’s original denizens from actually entering space since they would eventually run out of mana while within, not that they could even enter past the incredibly unstable outer shell of the lands.

Of course, the question Dan had asked was obvious. Wouldn’t the attuned Chaos Mana eventually run out? Turns out that was a no since normal Arcana Ambient Mana was still making its way into the shattered lands and was being consumed by Chaos Mana, making more of itself.

So, as Dan saw it, this all pointed to a few things. One, the shards in the shattered zone would definitely take over creatures to absorb their mana since aberrations need normal Chaos Mana to make their Arcane Mana. Two, he was the significant changing factor for adventurers since in order to stabilize the shattered zone, he had to claim it, and then via the contract, the World Crystal would fix it, allowing for normal mana to finally be properly available, which would enable adventurers to roam Dan’s lands. Adventurers would then fight his monsters, giving him mana in the process, which Dan would then use to create more monsters and expand into more zones. Then it was rinse and repeat until Dan had conquered everything.

Learning all of that put Dan at ease. Things made much more sense, and a path was clearly ahead of him. He entered a shattered zone, took it over, made a dungeon, got lots of mana from ensuing adventurers, and moved on to the next zone. There were bound to be complications, but he believed things would work out. So, Dan got back to looking at his current target.

In total, the shard had around 50 animals under control. Around 20 were on the weaker end, being rabbits and such, while the other 35 were bears, wolves, stags, moose, elks, and a couple more ravens. With the information gained, Dan felt confident in taking down the shard since it was definitely the same rank as him. However, before doing so, he wanted to learn a bit more about the rest of the land, which wouldn’t take long since his birds were returning just as night was coming in. That revelation surprised him, and he couldn’t believe how long he had spent animal-watching.

Dungeon Day 22

The first thing Dan learned was about the caves and lake.

Cave two was home to some creatures that Dan could only identify as kobolds. These kobolds were in some sort of fight with the denizens of Cave One, who were gnolls. He identified both of them thanks to his tabletop days.

There was no way to know why they were fighting, but it was good to know that there were two fewer areas to worry about for the time being. However, Dan was definitely convinced that the caves were part of the nine factions he needed to control.

After the caves came news from the lake, which was followed by news from the large rock.

The lake was inhabited by some frog-looking humanoid creatures who seemed to possibly be fighting each other or something else, at least if the bloodied water was to be believed. Now, the large rock was home to a druid with some sort of beast alliance going on. However, there was no way to know if this alliance was friendly towards Dan. For the most part, however, the beasts mostly seem to travel between the lake, the village, and the kobold cave. Dan was curious about why that was a thing, but he would probably find out sooner rather than later.

Next up were the ruins and bandits who were harassing the under-armed village. Meanwhile, the village itself was on high alert and filled with basic town folks like farmers, smiths, and other random folk with basic jobs. It had about ten guards, which wasn’t much against the many bandits. However, they did have one dragon-looking humanoid that was decently armored up and was apparently enough to hold the bandits back from having taken over the village. Well, at least, that was the only thing Dan could think of.

Finally, the orc, goblin, and hobgoblin encampment numbered in the thousands, unlike the hundreds of trolls and ogres in the hills. Thankfully, both didn’t seem to be doing much, and Dan hoped it stayed that way.

With all this new information, Dan was finally able to take proper, decisive action. First, he sent the hawks back to their respective areas. He wanted them to keep watching and learning. However, instead of having them constantly report back, he would have the two remaining hawks act as replacements. They would be flying back and forth, allowing two hawks at a time to come and update Dan on any changes. The only reason the stationed hawks were to leave their zones was if something major happened. Like if they found a shard.

So, with those commands given, it was time for Dan to begin working towards absorbing the first shard.