The unexpected submission of the druids threw a wrench in Dan's plans. A good wrench, mind you, but a wrench, nonetheless. Thankfully, this wrench brought something into Dan's perspective early on. Throughout his current invasion, Dan has been slowly formulating a plan for how he would have his first dungeon area look and work. And, of course, something that he had been slowly realizing was that to make his plan come to life, he would need a lot of mana. Not just to create enough monsters for adventurers to fight but also to create the other different aspects he wanted in his dungeon. So, the sudden increase in land showed Dan how many months he would need to create a proper dungeon.
The issue was that when he conquered the entire zone, he probably wouldn’t have any more invaders coming in to try and terrorize him. That would mean that his nice income of mana would run out. Dan knew he could always let the adventurers in and gain mana that way, but he wanted to present a finished product to the adventurers. As such, he decided instead of following his original plan of conquering the lake and following that up with the kobolds and the gnolls. He would actually conquer the lake to reach D rank, and then from there, he would leave the kobold and the gnolls alone until the very last minute.
The plan was to go ahead and conquer the rest of the zone and then allow the kobolds and the gnolls to do their thing, allowing the invaders to still appear in the zone and letting Dan farm them for mana. Of course, this would only be a one-time thing since when this first area of his dungeon was done. He would have a constant flow of manna from adventurers, allowing him to quickly conquer other areas without having to stall like he was going to do with this first area.
With that decided, Dan moved on to inspect the rest of his newly acquired land, which had doubled in size. The main point was that he did not gain all of the lake. Instead, the lake was divided in half, as he imagined that the shard counted as a different faction leader who was vying for control of the lake.
Wanting to learn more about the lake in general, Dan spoke with the chief.
Dan learned there were three civilized places within the lake. There was one big town in the middle and deepest area of the lake, with two smaller villages at each end of the lake but still within the deep zone. Having gone to the small village that was now under his control since he had owned the southern part of the lake, Dan had found it rather simplistic. The buildings were made of stone and were simple square structures with lots of algae growing on them. In regard to the town itself, well, that was a bit blurry as it wasn't fully under his control. The town was right at the center of the division between his controlled land and the shard-controlled land. Since it was right at the center, the whole place was contested, letting Dan make out some of it but not all.
Another interesting point was that none of the civilized locations had actual names. Instead, the frogs just called them by village in the north, or village in the South, or whatever other name they had. The town was just called “The Town,” and Dan didn’t like that, so he quickly gave them names, at least in his own mind. He would eventually let their names be known, but for now, he would keep it to himself.
The village up north, which was still in enemy territory, he named Ribbit. Then he named the town Fraggles, and the village to the south was called Rana. Looking over at the village that he had full control over, Dan found out there were a lot of frog people there. In fact, most of the population that was still free was in this village. The town itself had actually been empty and devoid of much life.
That made sense to Dan since it was designated as the current battleground for any decisive fighting. Speaking of fighting, the reason why the frogs were losing the fight was that their mental resistances were worn down.
Dan knew that all creatures had some resistance against mental attacks. However, after fighting the mental attacks of the enemy for so long and then actually having to perform in combat. The frog's mental resistances were slowly eroded, and now, if they entered combat without being fully prepared, they could easily be taken over by the enemy. Of course, this all changed as soon as the chieftain accepted Dan’s rule over their lands and peoples, as they all automatically got the Mental Resistance ability. Still, even if he did rule over them, Dan wasn’t going to waste mana on upgrading them just yet. He would instead rather create monsters to take out the enemy quickly.
Thinking about fighting brought up one of Dan’s main worries. He did not simply want to kill the frog people under the enemy's control and would rather knock them out. Dan wasn’t sure what his strategy would be in that regard, but he would try to create monsters to help with it.
Leaving the underwater troubles behind for a bit, Dan looked back at the druid side of things, and things were looking up for them. The beasts under the druid's commands were technically just regular beasts that invaders wouldn't attack since Dan had chosen to refrain from gaining control over them. That decision had been mostly made because they were just regular beasts and would quickly perish against the invading monsters unless he upgraded them, which he didn’t want to do because that would cost him a lot of mana, and Dan would rather make new monsters instead.
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The invaders were still trying to attack the druids, now more than ever since they were considered his, but Dan had eight teams plus his jaguar over there and wasn't too worried about their safety. It also helped that they had two Low D Rankers.
Additionally, Dan was considering making more teleportation circles so the frogs and the druids could move around faster. After thinking about it for a bit, Dan really liked the idea and told the monsters guarding his small teleportation fort to teleport back to the main fort. He then quickly dispersed that fort and removed the teleportation circle, which sadly didn't give him any mana back.
With that done, he went to take a look at the best spots to place down the new teleportation circles. Looking at the claimed land, he decided to place the teleportation circle for the frogs on the largest island available to him currently, which was also close to the village of Rana. Dan quickly spent the 315 mana to create a teleportation circle and told the chief about what he had made to ensure it was staffed with guards.
Now, for the druids, it was a much simpler thing. He would place the teleportation circle outside of their cabin. They could guard it very easily right there, and with his teams in the area, he wasn't too worried about anything destroying it.
With that done, Dan finally looked at the notification he had been ignoring.
🔷 Crystal Notice 🔷
Congratulations! You have gained control of two additional factions and thus have claimed their lands.
Warning! You have only claimed partial control of one of your current faction's land. The faction of the Frog Lake is still partially controlled by an enemy. Defeat this enemy to gain full control of the Frog Lake.
🔷
Well, that was obvious, and Dan dismissed it and moved on to check his status screen to see how much land he had gained access to.
🔷 Crystal Notice 🔷
🔷Dungeon Menu 🔷
Name: Dan.
Rank: Common.
Shards Collected: 1/99.
Points till Next Rank: 50/100.
Mana: 100/600.
Mana Regen: 12 Mana a Day.
Chaos Mana Regen: 6 Chaos Mana a Day.
Constant Mana Expenditure: 16 Mana a Day.
Number of People in Dungeon: 0.
Number of Boss Monsters: 8 to 13.
Number of Monsters: 59 to 444.
Number of Humanoids: 618.
Non-Original Residents: 32.
Monster Telepathy Range: 200ft.
Total Area Claimed: 135 to 455 Square Miles.
Pure Arcane Mana: N/A.
Order Mana: N/A.
Abilities. 15.
Claim or Edit Area.
Create or Edit Creature.
Create or Edit Item.
Claiming Goals.
🔷
Looking at his status screen, which he hadn't seen since he absorbed the first Shard. Dan was worried about seeing that his number of shards had gone down to 99. Alas, it was a reminder that he was indeed on a timer and kind of made him stress out about encountering the future shards.
Dan chose to distract himself by looking at the rest of his status. He couldn't help but be amazed at the amount of growth he had accomplished. His number of monsters had gone up an incredible amount. Then he noticed that he had a new little line of how many humanoids he had under his control. He assumed that most of those were just the frog people in the village and imagined the number would go up when he finished conquering the lake.
Heck, by the time he was done conquering the entire zone, the number of humanoids under his control would be in the thousands. If the druids were right and each green camp species had 2000, for a total of 6000, then he would probably be at 10,000 by the time he was done with the kobolds and gnolls.
That was an absolutely crazy number to have under your command, something he definitely never had access to before Earth outside of the games he played.
Another thing that made his non-existent mouth open wide was the amount of land he had gained. He had tripled the size of his growing empire and was excited to be able to eventually put the land to work as a proper dungeon.
All in all, his recent accomplishment was impressive, and he couldn't believe that he had gained so much with so little. He had literally only spent some mana making a boss and had respawned Eagle the Hawk.
After celebrating inwardly for a while, Dan calmed himself as he thought about the challenges still to come. He had a lake to finish conquering, a shard to absorb, and still more than half of the remaining zone to place under his control, which alone would be more challenging than anything else he had done so far.
Once he had calmed down enough, Dan began thinking about what he would make for his underwater mini-boss. It didn’t take long to make a decision.
Gators were cool, and he started calculating how much mana a dope assassin alligator would cost.