Dungeon Day 59
It was late into the afternoon when Dan felt like he had enough hawks. He had spent most of the previous day along with most of this one, using all the mana he gained to create his scouts. Dan wanted to ensure he always had eyes on the green camp and throughout the hills.
To accomplish this, Dan had spawned 40 hawks at the cost of 2,520 Mana. Their sole purpose would be to fly over the camp and throughout the hills, making sure to update him whenever anything unusual happened.
Keeping him informed would have been a problem before, but now that he had much more land bordering the green camp and the hills, it wouldn't be as big of a deal. Dan just wanted to make sure that he was up to date so he could focus on summoning things and preparing for his future dungeon.
Dungeon Day 61
Things were starting to get a bit silly. There was less and less reason for his normal monsters to get involved in any of the fighting. Dan wouldn't just remove all of his common rank monsters since he had a plan for them, but they provided little fighting power. Sure, they could take on the regular spawning invaders, but with the threat of even more spawning enemy D-rankers, common monsters were starting to take even more casualties. It was getting to the point that Dan was thinking of just recalling them and having them only hunt around his core. After all, his D-rank monsters could do what his common monsters could and more.
Actually, that was exactly what Dan was going to do, as with the latest edition of five additional D-Rank teams, he had more than enough monsters to cover his lands if he recalled the common ranked ones.
Something else Dan had also been thinking about as he spent the last two days creating the five teams was the creation of a new team of monsters. For this new team, he was thinking of combining centipedes, bats, spiders, squirrels and porcupines. It was a good idea since he had yet to make any D-Rank spiders or bats.
He had thought about just keeping the spiders and bats as defenders, but honestly, he wasn't worried about it anymore. Not only did he have his shield and other magical defenses, but any enemies that would come were more than likely to come from the mists. Even if they didn't come from the mist, they would still have to make their way through a lot of land, passing a lot of his D-rankers on the way. So, it was better if he sent out his soon-to-be-created ranked bats and spiders to fight than to keep them cooped up.
The idea was to Dan’s liking, and he decided to go through with it, especially since he wanted to have a decent number of his porcupines and squirrels for the upcoming fights. As he thought about it further, he decided actually to have some fun with it.
It was something that he didn't really need to do, but just seemed interesting. There was an upcoming fight with the green camp if the moves they had been making were anything to go by. And Dan figured it would be interesting if he fought the camp with his new teams instead of combining the old ones with the new ones.
Dan believed he still had plenty of time to build up his new teams before a fight broke out, especially since the green camp was taking some time to put themselves together. Whatever issues had been going on within the camp had been resolved, possibly due to the interference of a shard or shards. And during the last couple of days, he had gained news from his hawks that the camp was starting to restructure as the cleanup process began. Dan expected that enemy parties would soon be approaching his territory. Parties that he would have to kill, which would then escalate the conflict until a full-on battle came about.
Dungeon Day 65
Just as expected, the goblins began making their move. It had started a day ago when Dan had gotten the report that goblin parties were being sent out in all directions. Since that meant that most of those goblin parties would head into his territory, Dan had to react. He had sent teams, both old and new, to intercept the parties and take care of them. It would be some time before the goblins actually sent anybody to investigate the missing parties, but it would eventually happen. Until then, Dan was happy to keep observing them and building up his forces.
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His build-up of forces was going great, and during the last four days, he had created 16 new parties at a cost of 12,130 mana. These new parties were sent to patrol the village and kobold area since Dan wanted them closer to the green camp in order to make it easier to mobilize them for a fight. The original parties in those areas were sent toward the druids or the bandits since the teams there were getting pressured by the ever-spawning invaders.
With the buildable forces going rather well and the goblin situation somewhat in hand, Dan was more worried about the hills. As far as he could tell, the fight between the trolls and the ogres was still ongoing, and his hawks had spotted many D-rank members on both sides. What was more interesting about the whole situation now that he had a closer look was that the trolls seemed to be fighting among themselves. Dan wasn't sure whether that was a new development or something that had just been happening.
He had asked Dena, but she said she never truly went too deep into the hills or stayed for that long, so she couldn't know for sure.
So far, Dan had good reason to believe that at least one or two shards had to be in the hill area. This then added to the claim that either the ogres or the trolls were being controlled, though it was a bit hard to tell. When Dan thought about it, maybe both of them were being controlled.
In moments like this, Dan wished he could sense the shards with any accuracy, but from previous experience, the shards were good at hiding themselves. This added another layer of worry that there could be a shard hiding with the gnolls and Dan wasn’t aware.
In the end, as long as he wasn't ganged up on, Dan felt confident that he could take on any of the shards. All he needed to do was keep on creating more monsters.
Dungeon Day 70
Five days later, Dan was still building up his forces. He had even made some more cardinals. This time around, he had set a new record for the most mana he had spent. He had made 14 new parties at the cost of 10,822 mana with an additional mana expenditure of 5000 to create 100 Flaming Cardinals for a total of 101 cardinals. Dan would call them the 101 Cardinals, the first official dungeon flying squadron.
Things looked good for Dan, and if things kept going as they were, he would wipe the floor with the green camp. They had sent out a few parties to investigate the disappearances, and Dan had also eliminated those parties. He knew they would eventually escalate, but he would keep building up until then.
So far, he had added another 360 D-ranked monsters, all from the newly created parties, though if he added the cardinals, it was 461 D-ranked monsters. The amount made Dan feel like the green camp was going to be a walk in the park even if they had 6000 members. The thought of wiping the floor with the goblins made Dan so excited. So, it wasn't very pleasant when his excitement came to an end in the most expected way possible.
🔷 Crystal Notice 🔷
Attention! A new event has been activated.
Event Name: Green Aberration.
Event details: The Green Camp and the minds of its many denizens have managed to overcome the mind of the D Rank Shard controlling them. The shard, in its last moments, has fused itself and the three High D Rank members of the camp into a large green humanoid aberration. The new creation empowers all previously Low D Rank members of the Green Camp, bringing them to Mid-D-Rank.
Warning! The new aberration has sensed your influence in the nearby lands, and its army marches in your direction. Eliminate the Green Aberration and conquer the green lands.
Sorry, Dan. Mother says things were taking a bit too long. Good Luck.
🔷
“Stupid, motherfucking shit!” Dan roared, the sound being heard throughout his lands, scaring the crap out of all its living inhabitants.
As anger bubbled in Dan’s mind, he wished he had a body with which to smash things. He had to make a note of that and make some sort of golem he could control and fight with. Sadly, he couldn’t get lost in his rage, and Dan quickly began mobilizing his monsters to move towards the new incoming threat.
However, when he went to call on all of his monsters regardless, he found that his previous idea to only use the new parties wasn’t something that came from him. Something was influencing him to use only the new parties and the cardinals. And the only entity that could do that was The Chaos Mother.
“Shit. Can I least use Drax?” Dan thought and said out loud. Then he thought about mobilizing Drax, and nothing stopped him, so he took that as a yes.