The shard, which was basically out of mana, didn't put up much of a fight as it was taken towards Dan. In turn, knowing Lory only had so much mana to suppress the shard and bar it from making new minions, Dan began floating toward the town in the middle of the lake. He was tempted to create some escorts but didn't as he doubted there was anything else in the lake that could threaten him.

Dan took around ten minutes to get to the town as he could move much faster within his dungeon. Annoyingly, it meant he was stuck waiting for Lory to make it to the town. After about another hour, the large lily pad reached the town. The shard had run out of mana long ago and had given up, which Dan appreciated. Unsurprisingly, though, when it felt Dan, it attempted to free itself again, but without much mana, it made no progress. For his part, Dan slowly approached the shard before touching it and beginning the absorption process.

The first thing that struck him were the memories and feelings. Much like Dan thought, the shard had enough sense and intelligence to create tactics, but some cunning was missing, which made sense. Its original ambushes had been smart, but the way it approached the town battle could have been more tactical, especially how it had given its intention with the initial scouting. Overall, the shard was an intelligent entity, except it just had that bit that needed to be added, stopping it from being able to plan way too far in the long term. The shard was controlled by one too many emotions that muddled its thinking and thus did not allow it to use its full mental capability. The more he absorbed the shard and its memories, the more information Dan got.

He saw how the shard pierced through the spatial membrane that separated this zone from the rest. As he fed on the memories, he saw the shard falling, the lake underneath appearing, and it entering its waters. From there, it took the minds of the fish around it before stumbling upon the northern village, where it properly began its conquering of the frog folk. Dan sped forward through the following memories as he saw the fights with the frog folks as the shard conquered more and more territory. However, it once again was obvious that the shard had held back. The warriors under its control had sparingly used telekinetic magic, which delayed the shards' conquering of the lake.

From there, Dan watched the fight between the shard and his monsters, from how it ambushed his scout teams to the fight at the town to the last battle that he had just fought. He even noticed how the shard had lost control of the frog folk it still had under its grasp as it lost itself in the rage against his bosses. Once he had gained all those memories, the final core of the shard came into Dan's mind.

The memory was from Earth. It was of him looking at his transformed body after being transformed into an aberration. He felt the oddity of the situation as he remembered feeling disgusted at his new form. Yet, he had been somewhat thankful for being able to survive Earth's destruction. The memories continued as Earth was still being destroyed, and he looked down to see giant cracks appear on the planet's surface. It had been at that point that he made a split decision. Dan knew of the rifts appearing on the planet's surface. Much of the information he had about the Earth and the Eldritch God had come from the Realms and its entities who had given the information to his kind in exchange for souls or contracts of submission. Part of the information they had learned was that the rifts that opened while the Eldritch God fed could take entities to different places in space, time, or both.

Now, even if Dan had to live with his new form, there was no way he would accept working for the thing that destroyed his planet. And since he was not attached to it by the connection he now knew about, Dan had decided to take his chances. He floated down to the planet and entered one of the rifts before everything went dark, and he once again snapped out of the absorption process. The shard was gone, and he had new memories, but more importantly, he got the notification he had been waiting for.

🔷 Crystal Notice 🔷

Congratulations! You have absorbed an Eldritch God Shard!

By doing so you have finished placing Frog Lake under your control and thus have fully claimed their area.

🔷

Soon after that, he got another notification he already knew was coming.

🔷 Crystal Notice 🔷

Congratulations! You have absorbed enough Eldritch Shards to reach D Rank. Upon entering D Rank, you have unlocked new features. Check your Dungeon Menu for more information.

Continue to absorb shards to progress through your current Rank and enter C Rank.

Good Luck!

🔷

Naturally, Dan quickly opened his Dungeon Menu.

🔷 Crystal Notice 🔷

🔷Dungeon Menu 🔷

Name: Dan.

You might be reading a stolen copy. Visit Royal Road for the authentic version.

Rank: Low D Rank.

Shards Collected: 2/99.

Points till Next Rank: 0/700.

Mana: 400/600 to 400/900.

Mana Regen: 12 to 32 Mana a Day.

Chaos Mana Regen: 6 to 16 Chaos Mana a Day.

Constant Mana Expenditure: 16 Mana a Day.

Number of People in Dungeon: 0.

Number of Boss Monsters: 13 to 15.

Number of Monsters: 444 to 611.

Number of Humanoids: 618 to 1087.

Non-Original Residents: 32.

Monster Telepathy Range: 200 to 300ft.

Total Area Claimed: 455 to 578 Square Miles.

Pure Arcane Mana: 0.

Pure Mana Regen: 0.

Order Mana: N/A.

Abilities. 15.

Claim or Edit Area.

Create or Edit Creature.

Create or Edit Item.

Claiming Goals.

🔷

Looking at his status, Dan had really grown a lot since the last time he checked it. Now firmly in D rank, Dan was much more confident about his power, even if he was in the lower grades of it. The rank didn't mean as much for him as it meant more for his monsters. Now, they would get a qualitative increase in power even if they cost more to create. Heck, even upgrading them from their current rank up to D rank would cost a bit of mana. Not that Dan could complain too much, as the increase in power would more than make up for it.

Moving to other things regarding his new status. He had more mana capacity and regeneration. Naturally, he also gained more humanoids as the frogs that the shard had controlled automatically fell under his control. Of course, his monster numbers had expanded, and they even showed the total amount, ignoring the ones that were currently dead. Finally, it showed his increased telepathic range and the new amount of land he had gained. The telepathic range wasn't much, as that would only mean over 300 feet from his dungeon border, but eventually, he knew it would be in the miles, and it would be much more helpful.

The rank-up also acted as a bit of an update to his system, and he gained some new details. Now he had a proper account of how many creatures he had, their rank, their species, and how many of them were dead. It wasn't super important, but it was just nice to see that he currently had 96 dead monsters. The thing even showed that he had two D-rank creatures under his control, which were the druids.

Out of everything, the more notable thing was the new pure mana he would have access to. Though it currently said he had none, it was because none of his monsters were directly D rank. When they eventually became D-rank, they would start producing pure mana, which he would act as a tank for and then redistribute as he saw fit—thinking about it, however. Dan wasn't sure why he didn't have any, as he technically did have two D-rank creatures. Looking into the problem, he realized that the two humanoids did not count as part of his pure mana regeneration. The issue seemed to be that they weren’t technically his creations; thus, their connection to him worked slightly differently. However, once he had altered them enough and thus altered their soul, the problem would be fixed.

It wasn't something that Dan was worried about. He would have plenty of monsters producing mana that it wouldn't matter.

Either way, Dan moved on to another important thing: checking his goals.

Claiming Goals.

— Factions Under Control 3/9.

— Shards Collected 2/7 to 2/6.

— All Creatures in Area Under Control 0/1.

Dan was unsure if it was a coincidence, but as he was looking at his goals, the total number of shards collected went down again, and soon after, he got a notification.

🔷 Crystal Notice 🔷

Warning! A Crystal Shard has been consumed!

Claiming Goal updated.

🔷

“Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuuuucck!” Dan inwardly screamed.

Eventually, Dan calmed down and hoped that things hadn’t gotten way harder. Dan believed that there were no D Rank shards in the zone. This belief came from his theory that this zone was acting like a training ground for him. He couldn’t prove it, but things were going a little too well in the grand scheme of things. Not only had he come out in the weaker area of the zone, but from the battle that had just occurred, something was happening in the background to help him. He had asked the World Crystal, but it had just denied anything about helping Dan in any such manner. Of course, Dan didn’t believe it.

All of this meant that if there were no D Rank shards, there was a good chance one had just been created. From what Dan got by learning the workings of things when shards merged, they grew in power much like he did and much like him, and also, thanks to Mother Infinity, the scaling of the shards had been altered. It was one of the things made for balance’s sake. So now, instead of shards having access to random levels of power, each of them had been altered to possess enough energy that when a certain amount combined, they would increase in rank. In this case, if one normal rank shard absorbed two other normal ranked shards, they would reach D rank.

To that extent, it was three shards to a rank, meaning three commons made a D rank, three D ranks made a C rank, and so on. Thus, if the same shard had just absorbed two other common ones and his theory about no original D-rank shards was true, it meant a new D-rank shard had just been created.

With this new piece of information, Dan really needed to step up his game, and he didn't think he was going to respawn his underwater monsters. There was simply no need for them now that the lake shard had been taken over, and they would just be swimming around doing nothing. He would eventually have to respawn them when he opened up the dungeon, but for now, he would leave Lory to do its thing around the lake.

With that decision made, Dan started making his way back to the teleporter in order to go back to his fort. He needed to make some improvements to his defenses, not only because there was probably another D rank shard around but because he was about to start engaging other D rankers.

One of these improvements was obviously going to be powering up his monsters, starting with his bosses. He knew that his monsters were already rather powerful compared to normal beasts, but the difference in rank was going to be a game-changer.

One of the big differences was going to be seen in sheer power, whereas before, Ingot had to use one of his abilities to tear down a tree. When the bear eventually got to D rank, he would be able to do that with just a swing of his paw.