Dungeon Day 37
The night went by without much issue, and soon, his monsters were back out hunting. It would be a bit longer before he could send them to hunt again at night, but the wolfbats were just too much of a problem. Dan just needed more numbers, and as the days passed, he would get more. However, he was getting impatient with the whole druid situation. So he decided to finally send out a proper envoy other than the hawk to go and meet with them. The envoy would mainly be a show of force to show the druids that he had reasonable power, and it would consist of Xinos and seven of Dan’s teams.
It would probably be another day before Dan sent them, as he wanted to get some more monsters under his belt before doing so. Dan also wanted to make more hawks for easier scouting, as those he had made so far weren’t enough.
As such, the day progressed, and Dan gained mana from his monsters hunting. There were even a few casualties as some of his birds and much weaker big cats got in trouble, taking a bit too much damage. However, Dan couldn't complain either, as he ended up getting some new monsters that gave up, just as the wolves had. In total, he had gotten two-blade wolves, one vine snake, a lightning rabbit, and even a poison possum, along with a bark-skin boar. These new monsters didn't have much to them outside their abilities.
The wolves could send blades of hardened wood at their enemies. Honestly, the wolf was the most dangerous out of all of them since the vine snake didn't have any poison, and it was just more like a constrictor snake. The lightning rabbit could make small sparks of electricity, and the poison possum would poison things if it was attacked which was kind of bad. Then the bark skin boar was just a big boar, much like the one Kinetic had demolished some time back.
In fact, the blade wolves were the ones that were responsible for the most casualties out of the nature-related beasts since now that Dan and George knew how to deal with the howling wolves, they weren't much of an issue and were just ganged up on. Of course, there were also the scorpion bears and raptors, who were also responsible for some casualties along with the wolfbats. The owls weren't much of an issue. Sure, they could deal some damage to his birds, but never anything lethal with Dan’s healing doe’s around.
Even with the losses, Dan still got a decent amount of mana and was able to make two more full teams of his monsters, along with ten new hawks. An issue that Dan was noticing with the creation of all of these new monsters was that there were too many of them, and his little fort was starting to get a bit too cramped. There was still some space to let them rest, though it was only possible since the worms and the moles mostly spent their time underground.
It wasn’t long before hunting time came to an end once more and Dan found himself recalling his monsters to a rather cramped camp.
Dungeon Day 38
The night had passed without much issue, even if some owls and wolfbats attacked the base. They didn’t do any damage and mana was gained, so Dan hadn’t really cared especially since he had been able to create another team of beasts, bringing his new total to 20.
The one thing that did begin to annoy Dan, was his mana capacity. It was just too low. And he couldn’t do anything about it until he absorbed another shard, and he wasn't sure how long it would be before he did so. Hopefully not too long.
Starting the day with 20 teams, Dan decided to send eight full teams along with his jaguar instead of the seven he was initially going to send. He could teleport two teams at a time as long as they were appropriately stacked on top of each other. The whole thing was a bit of a loophole, but mana saved was mana saved, as each teleport cost 158.
It would cost Dan 474 mana to send all eight teams, something Dan quickly did. He even exploited the loophole even further by stacking Xinos on top of the first two teams sent through.
He had told Xinos that safety was a priority, as dying so far from the dungeon would cost more and make them take longer to respawn. Additionally, even with the teleporter near the bottom right-hand corner of his lands, it still would take about 12 hours to walk the full distance to the druid's area or, more specifically, to their cabin, making death even more annoying.
Knowing it would take until the afternoon before his jaguar arrived, Dan decided to relax and enjoy the dungeon life. He would watch his monsters fight and even explore his lands a bit more. Dan would still keep pumping out his teams, as the more he had, the better.
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One important thing Dan did with his new hawks was to send them out to scout the other lands that his original scouts were still observing. Even if he figured he would get all the information he would need from the druids, the notification about a shard being consumed demanded he keep an eye out.
Time passed, and Dan was able to make two new teams before finally, the afternoon came about, and he began to recall his monsters for the night. More importantly, though, Xinos arrived at the druid's place. They had been in the druid's territory for the last four or five hours. However, they had been met by some of the druid's beasts for the last bit of their journey as they were escorted to their destination.
Dan watched through his jaguar's eyes as his entourage of beasts approached the shack where the druid stayed in. The shack wasn't much to look at and had clearly been built by those who didn't know much about construction, something that Dan would happily fix when the druids eventually came to work for him one way or the other.
In fact, part of Dan's plan for his future dungeon was to use some of the current residents in the zone to establish some sort of pre-layout, and he was definitely going to use the druids for that.
The lead druid was a blonde elf who wore simple leather clothing and had a nice-looking oak staff. She had green eyes and was of average height, which put her around 5 feet and a bit.
Looking through Xino’s eyes, Dan couldn't tell if the woman was more shocked by the sheer size of his jaguar or the incredible entourage that was with him. Either way, she tried to hide her shock and welcomed Xinos. Her voice was soft and caring, which matched her. Well, at least Dan thought so.
“Welcome, welcome. My name is Dena.”
“Hello Dena, I am Xinos. Nice to meet you on behalf of our master.” The jaguar spoke, opening his mouth and letting his gruff voice seemingly come into existence. Of course, the beast speaking in such a proper manner caught her by surprise once again.
“Oh my! You can speak so fluently. It is truly a surprise as even with our magics, our beasts can't communicate so wonderfully.”
After that brief introduction, Dena was quick to get down to business. The druid tried to pry into exactly what the jaguar's master was and the overall force they had access to. She even brought up the crystal, which was actually Dan. However, and for obvious reasons, Xinos was not inclined to comment on it. He simply stated that they were powerful and that they were on the druid's side against whatever was going on in the area. In fact, it was more important for them to get information about how exactly the druid got into the zone and how this area came to exist.
As far as Dan knew, the shattered lands could range from a mishmash of random places in the universe to a version of the area that used to exist on a planet before the space was shattered.
Thankfully, the druid quickly gave up on pursuing information about Dan and began sharing their own story. They were from some planet that had yet to be named as it was very young in its development. From what Dan could gather, the druid and her fellows were sucked into a random riff that opened in their small grove, and when they came to, they were in the shattered zone.
At the time, there had been confusion as to what to do. However, since they had seen regular beasts about, they did what they did best and began acquiring their help. Soon enough, they had a huge number of beasts as part of their group and were able to start exploring the entire zone. They found the other factions that were also existing within the space. Some of the factions were nice, and they quickly made friends with them, while some were not so nice and had attacked them on sight.
In general, the druids had been in the area for about five or so days before Dan arrived, which wasn't much.
Hearing that from Dan, George had questioned if the rest of the inhabitants were there for longer, but from the druid's information, it didn’t seem like it. This meant most of the factions had to have been in the shattered zone for around the same amount of time the druids had been.
Learning the back story of the druids made Dan feel a bit better about them, but he didn't care in the end. He just really wanted to get this whole thing over with so he could make a proper dungeon. And, of course, continue expanding to the other shattered zones. Still, the Druids definitely had more information, and Dan needed that information.
Xinos also asked about the invaders' beasts that they had been encountering and what they had seen, which was when Dan got a surprise. Though the druid had seen the monstrosities, they hadn't had to fight many of them, as most of them were just heading into Dan’s territory. This probably meant that many more of the monstrosities were coming over from the different zones, which wasn't good, or maybe it was since it gave him a lot of mana. Additionally, Dan was also able to confirm that outside of the druid zone, the invaders weren't actually attacking the regular beasts. The only reason why they were attacking in the druid zone was because the druids used the beast as part of their faction.
He also confirmed that the invaders were also attacking the other factions, but definitely not to the same extent that they were attacking Dan. For example, the bandits barely got harassed, nothing really attacked the ogres and trolls, and the gnolls and kobolds were mostly left alone to do their own thing. Surprising him even more, the humanoids from the village and the green camp were also mostly left alone, which was a bit odd. One spot that was left entirely alone without issues at all was the lake. It made sense since none of the invaders could go underwater.
After hearing all of this information, Dan was glad he had finally sent his jaguar over. However, he still needed to know more about the exact goings on with each faction. So he quickly nudged his jaguar to ask about that, and the druid was more than happy to explain it.