Dungeon Day 32 - Continues

After the slaughter, the rest of that day passed without issue, and the night came and went just as fast. As the night passed, Dan looked for more enemies and was glad to find the old ones reappearing. However, along with the old wood ones, there came new batches of the new smaller beasts that his monsters had slaughtered. Even so, the difference was obvious as they didn't come in the same numbers, and even more importantly, they weren't alone. Instead, the new smaller enemies traveled alongside the much larger nature groups from before. And Dan wasn’t concerned since the small beasts didn’t add any real firepower to the groups.

As he saw the new beasts, Dan was reminded that he now had access to all of their blueprints and quickly brought up his list of monsters while hiding the old list of wood beasts.

Create or Edit Creature.

— Edit Creature.

- - Current Creature List.

- - - Torch Fox.

- - - Lightning Rabbit.

- - - Stone Pecker.

- - - Seeder Squirrel.

- - - Poison Possum.

- - - Spore Butterfly.

- - - Smoking Robin.

There were more, but Dan had stopped looking at the list as he was happy with the variety he had to play with. Heck, it made Dan wonder what other stuff he would end up getting because of the challenge. Technically, he could have made them himself, but having the blueprint ready to go was nice.

That was an aspect of his monster creation he liked. Just by having access to beasts and magic, he already had an incredible number of creatures he could make. However, the thing was, even if he could technically make a bunch of creatures getting blue prints was still better.

For example, Dan could make a dragon out of a komodo dragon by enlarging it and giving it wings and a lot of magic, but it would never be an actual dragon. Additionally, it would be very expensive. On the other hand, when he got blueprints for monsters, all their abilities became innate abilities, allowing Dan to empower that monster even more with even less mana.

The best example of this was with the Howling Wood Wolves. Dan would have had to give the beast Sound Affinity to replicate their howling ability, which added to the cost. Then their Forest Friend ability would have needed Nature Affinity. However, instead, the beasts already had those abilities for free, giving them a stronger base. Thus, if Dan wanted to empower them, the total mana spent would be less than if he had made them from scratch.

Moving on from the list and creature system. It was time for Dan to send his monsters back out to start another day of hunting, and from what he saw on his lands, there were plenty of things to hunt. In fact, in the following days after the slaughter, the hunting became incredibly good, and Dan’s mana quickly filled and emptied as he began pumping out more of his new monsters.

Dungeon Day 35

It wasn’t until the night of the 34th day, as it moved to the 35th, that things began turning from the established normal of wood beasts and small beasts to something more. To Dan, it wasn’t surprising that things got harder. The surprise came in how things got harder. Well, not that Dan was scared, as he finished up all his monsters and was not worried about his new teams being unable to deal with any new threat. Each of his new teams had the new addition of two moles plus a worm, which brought the team's total number of monsters to 15. Overall, each of his teams could easily take on one of his bosses, though a team would definitely take a casualty or two.

Additionally, he made some extra monsters when he created his new batch. These leftover monsters were mainly five worms and ten moles, which would be part of the base defense force. Of course, there were also spiders and bats that were part of the base defense force. Which Dan wasn't always going to keep them in the base because that would be a waste, since things weren’t as dangerous as he first thought.

There was also the fact that Dan was definitely going to make more teams for his eventual excursion to the other zones. However, that would come later. Honestly, later was really approaching now, as Dan didn't really have many more excuses to hold back on finally getting a move on-on conquering the entire zone.

However, before he could move to go deal with the druid situation. Dan was going to address a new issue that had popped up during the night. So far, all the monsters that had been attacking Dan and his beasts weren't really that strong or disturbing. The beasts were beasts; sure, they had nature affinities, among other things, but overall, they were not very strong. In fact, with his new teams, the current invaders have become things that his monsters could easily slaughter. However, during the night, Dan spotted some new invaders that were worrying him. They still resembled beasts, but it was clear that they were stronger, far stronger than the ones that had been appearing so far.

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They weren't nature ones or smaller magical varieties like the torch foxes, lightning rabbits, and whatnot. Instead, Dan believed they were more destructive and powerful.

If Dan had to be more precise, they were more like monstrosities.

These new monstrosities had yet to attack them, mainly because he had yet to send out monsters to intercept them, but they were there. And Dan could see them approaching his base. There were three different types of monstrosities; however, they did share similarities. These similarities were mainly shown in their scorpion-like tails and the fact that they looked ravaged, deceased, and hungry.

The largest of the monstrosities were bears, though definitely not larger than Ingot, but definitely larger than his normal bears. Thankfully, these acted more like bosses than anything else, keeping their numbers reasonably low.

On the other hand, there were raptors that also had scorpion tails. The raptors had a mix of scales and feathers and also looked diseased and hunger-stricken. Comparing the raptors to his animals, he would put them around the same size as one of his big cats. And just one of the things could easily take out two of his minion beasts. Naturally, such power put them easily in the miniboss category, making them a threat. The last of the monstrosities that Dan had seen were owls.

Again, the owls looked diseased and had feathers falling off them, with some of their ribs clearly showing. These owls were the most numerous of the new invaders and the weakest, making Dan believe that his own birds could take them. Now, just because his birds could fight them didn’t mean they were going to come out unscathed. Not only did the owls have scorpion stingers, but their whole faces were missing. Instead, they had circular open maws on their faces, just like Dan’s worms had.

All in all, the new monsters were something that Dan wasn’t looking forward to, but he imagined that they would give a decent amount of mana. In total, he had spotted around three of the bears, each accompanied by two raptors, with a few owls flying around and doing their own thing. Of course, it wouldn't have been much of an issue if that had just been the case. The problem came when a bear the size of Ingot walked out of the smoke on the edge of his territory.

That particular bear's stinger was massive, and it had four raptors the size of Dan’s monster bears with it. Then, as if that wasn't enough, around ten owls flew around the large bear and its raptors. Looking at the new enemies, Dan knew they would put up one hell of a fight.

So, as the morning came, Dan began preparing his monsters to engage.

First up was the team that was going to fight the giant bear. Naturally, all his bosses except George, Itsy, and Balbatzar would engage the large monstrosity. From there, two teams would be sent out to attack each of the three bears. The four teams left would, in turn. Just hunt more of the regular wood beasts.

Dan watched his team of bosses slowly make their way toward the giant scorpion bear. He didn't believe for a second that his monsters would lose the fight, but he was definitely prepared to take some losses. And almost as if the new monsters weren’t enough, he received an extremely worrying message

🔷 Crystal Notice 🔷

Warning! A Crystal Shard has been consumed!

Claiming Goal updated.

🔷

“Fuck.” Was Dan's only response as he thought about the implications of what he just read. Clearly, one of the shards had absorbed another, which meant that now there was another crystal shard out there that was stronger or just as strong as him. Of course, he had to confirm it and quickly opened his claiming goals.

Claiming Goals.

— Factions Under Control 1/9.

— Shards Collected 1/7.

— All Creatures in Area Under Control 0/1.

And, of course, there it was. In truth, it didn't change the objective as he still needed to control the whole area, but it would just make conquering it even harder. The main problem out of everything was that he didn't know where the rest of the shards were. However, he hoped that it would be one of the places furthest from him. That way, he had even more time to build up his forces.

Thankfully, he was about to get a lot of mana and could create even more teams.

It took about an hour, but his team of bosses eventually got close enough to the enemy bear.

Unsurprisingly, the first to make contact was Kinetic and the birds. Well, Kinetic didn't really make contact; it was more like he just zoomed around the monsters, looking at them menacingly. Now, Hawk the Eagle and Eagle the Hawk did actually make contact.

They were the first to engage in the fight as they began to demolish the owls flying above the scorpion bear and its raptors. Of course, the first two were the easiest to fall because they were taken by surprise, and we were not expecting the Wind Slash. However, after those two fell, the other eight finally started their attack.

Hawk was the first one to get struck, as she was the largest. It turns out that the owls could shoot some spines out of their maws. However, even then, all of them didn’t seem too smart, as two of them flew straight at the eagle and were quickly torn apart by Hawk.

Meanwhile, Eagle the Hawk was having the time of her life. The hawk outmaneuvered the owls like it was child's play and swooped through branches, trees, and everything else. It wasn’t long before Hawk took out another three of the owls as they couldn't match the speed of the small bird.

The aerial fight finally came to an end as the last few owls managed to get on top of Hawk the Eagle. Then, they drove their stingers deep into the bird's flesh and began pumping poison into her. That left the birds as stationary targets, and Eagle the Hawk quickly took them out.

From there, both birds flew back to Fir and began to get healed. However, now that the two birds had engaged the enemy. The enemy knew there was something out there capable of hunting them. The information would help them, but it still wouldn’t prepare them for the massive worm beneath them.