NOVEL WEB Chapter 13 - Absorption
Dungeon Day 27 - Continues
After Eagle demolished the enemy raven, the aerial battle took a turn for the better as the hawk began taking out the crows. Meanwhile, the battle on the ground that had come to a stalemate with the entrance of the rest of the teams was finally starting to shift back into the enemy's favor. Even then, with the stags and does, the three teams could hold their positions while waiting for the other two entombing teams to flank.
However, Dan decided it was time to go for the finishing strike. He had been watching the whole time and knew the snake had yet to join in combat. The damn thing was wrapped around the tree where Dan figured the shard was located. The only good thing about the whole fight so far was that none of the beasts had tried to escape just yet, but that was probably something that would happen soon.
Dan gave the order, and his boss entourage began to move forward. Ingot was going ahead, and he was going to clear a path for Dan. The large bear trotted in front until he was near the enemy camp. Then, the bear went into a full sprint, making the party increase their speed as well. Coming up behind one of the slamming parties, Ingot roared, causing the battlefield to go silent for a few seconds as the beasts saw the giant bear sprinting toward them.
Dan’s beasts, recognizing Ingot, were smart enough to move out of the way as the bear ran through them, slamming right through other bears, moose, and elks as he headed straight for the tree. It was then that the battle finally shifted to their side completely as Dan’s beasts were the first to recover and begin their attack, taking the other animals by surprise. The battle shifted even more in his favor as the entombing teams defeated their opponents and began assisting the other three teams.
To the shard's credit, none of the animals began fleeing just yet, but Dan knew that would soon change as he saw Ingot reach the base of the dead tree. As the bear got on his hind legs, Dan told Xinos to take out the snake. Then, he felt Xinos go invisible while Ingot activated his earth slam ability, and the bear's paws became as solid as stone.
The bear then cleaved the tree trunk, removing a huge chunk of it with a loud, crunching noise that caused the battlefield to go quiet once again. Then, with everyone watching him, Ingot placed his two front paws on the tree and heaved. It took a second, but eventually, with another loud cracking noise, the thing began tilting as it descended toward the large rock.
It was a sight to behold. All the beasts stared in silence as the giant tree slowly fell to the ground, landing with a crash and cracking in half as its center struck the large rock. With the tree's fall, the battlefield stayed silent for a little bit longer before everything went into chaos.
His monsters roared and hollered in victory as the enemy beasts began panicking, running towards the fallen tree while others seemed to gain their mental freedom and began to attempt their escape. Sadly for them, Dan couldn’t let any of them leave alive, and he commanded all the beasts that could hear him to begin the slaughter.
Meanwhile, as the beasts ran towards the tree and the shard, Dan switched sights over to Xinos. Dan wasn’t too worried about being attacked since he had Fur and George on watch.
The jaguar did not need to teleport as the snake was already preoccupied and trying to free its master from the tree. So, Xinos just approached carefully and extra quietly with his invisibility as he activated Stalker and marked the snake. Then, with that done and within 50 feet of the snake, the jaguar infused his claws with metal, making them turn as hard as iron. After that, he also activated Necrosis Infusion, quickly covering his claws in dark energy. With everything ready, Dan felt Xinos’s body tense up, preparing for the jump.
Xinos waited till the snake looked towards the camp at the approaching beasts before finally leaping! The cat flew in the air and activated his metal slash ability as he sent out large crescent slashes infused with dark energy. The slashes flew and struck the unsuspecting snake and tree, cutting them both into pieces. After landing on the sliced-up snake, which was beginning to rot, the big cat switched over to the incoming enemy beasts before roaring and charging at them. Seeing the scary cat, some of the beasts wrestled free from the shard's control before attempting to flee. Sadly, for them, they were struck by more slashes and were cut into pieces, with the rest of the beasts being flanked by Dan’s animals.
Switching the view from Xinos back to Hawk, he nudged the hawk to focus on the tree where the shard still lay. While watching the tree, Dan told Fur and Fir to stay back, and he prompted George forward as the small shard emerged from the slashed trunk. Dan himself couldn’t actually see the area as it wasn’t claimed yet and was stuck with viewing from his beast's eyes. That was a slight issue as the shard still had Dan’s old spatial sense ability and could quickly feel its environment. Thankfully, Dan could now feel the shard since it was close enough and no longer hiding.
The shard, now floating in the air, began to float towards Dan and was quick to unleash a blast of kinetic force that struck against Fur’s wall of earth. The attack didn’t faze Dan as he knew the shard shouldn’t have much more mana than himself. Luckily, the shard seemed confident and dumb and continued to approach Dan, unleashing more kinetic attacks from its fist-size body until it finally ran out. On the other hand, George dodged the blasts of power and approached the shard when the thing's innate survival instincts kicked in, and it began floating the other way.
Dan, smiling inwardly, prompted Fur and Fir to move forward with him as he saw George begin to trot after the shard. The gorilla then jumped over the floating shard and spent all his mana on his Smash attack, striking the shard like a baseball and forcibly sending it back toward Dan. The shard, now within ten feet of Dan, was entrapped by Fur with the elk's walls.
It tried to float up and above the walls, but Dan was there.
Finally, when he was basically touching the shard, he flexed his will as he called forth the contract along with his own power and saw as the shard began turning into blue energy. Dan began to absorb the energy, and a notification popped up once he had consumed it.
🔷 Crystal Notice 🔷
Congratulations! You have absorbed an Eldritch God Shard!
By absorbing the shard, you conquered its faction and, therefore, have claimed its lands.
🔷
Dan really wanted to check his status, but before doing so, he got hit with a wave of information as a shit load of land was instantly claimed, and his mind expanded. It didn’t hurt, but it was definitely a weird thing for a human to experience, at least all of a sudden.
Ignoring this crucial fact of the new land, Dan moved to check and see what exactly had happened to the rest of the enemy beasts. Thankfully for them, with the death and absorption of the shard, the beast's minds were freed, so he ordered his beasts to stop killing them and round them up instead.
The round-up was easy as his own beasts were much scarier than the normal ones, and the ex-enemy beasts had the massacre that had just happened fresh in their minds. Once the animals were rounded up and put under guard, Dan went through to see how many casualties there had been on his side, and it wasn't that bad. Three eagles, one bear, one gorilla, and four baboons had died. Dan wasn’t that worried about the loss as they weren’t that expensive to respawn, even if they did die outside of the dungeon. If anything, Dan was more worried yet interested in the beast's mental state after respawning. He knew they were made for this exact reason but didn’t believe for a second that everyone would be nice and relaxed like Hawk the Eagle had been.
Outside of deaths, there were plenty of injuries, but with the doe’s at hand, all his beasts were quickly treated. Finally, after checking that everything was somewhat okay, he checked his status screen.
🔷 Crystal Notice 🔷
🔷Dungeon Menu 🔷
Name: Dan.
Rank: Common.
Shards Collected: 1/100.
Points till Next Rank: 50/100.
Mana: 300/600.
Mana Regen: 12 Mana a Day.
Chaos Mana Regen: 6 Chaos Mana a Day.
Constant Mana Expenditure: N/A.
Number of People in Dungeon: 0.
Number of Boss Monsters: 8.
Number of Monsters: 59.
Monster Telepathy Range: 200ft.
Total Area Claimed: 135 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.
🔷
The progress was nice, though looking at the number of shards, he still had a long way to go. However, Dan’s happiness overshadowed his long road as he was almost at D Rank and would finally enter the big boy leagues of power, even if it was the lower ranks. Continuing to look at this status, he saw that the shard had indeed been Common Rank and that since it had only increased his mana tank by another 300. Additionally, due to its size, it only gave an additional 2 Chaos Mana a day, which wasn’t much.
The one thing that was nice to see had increased by a decent amount was his telepathy range. It was only an extra one hundred feet, but it would have been helpful back in the fight. He had thought that his telepathy only worked up to a certain range extending outward from his claimed lands, meaning he shouldn’t have been able to use it during the fight. However, it seemed that since he was the hub for the whole thing, he had his own telepathy range. What he had just discovered about how the ability worked wouldn’t be a game-changer, at least not anymore, but it was still nice to have.
Finally, the most impressive change brought by the absorption was the sheer amount of land he had control over. 135 Square Miles was no joke, and it was crazier to think that it was only a small part of the total area they were in. That wasn’t even thinking about the fact that there would be more shattered areas later on, some of which were probably larger than this current one.
Moving on from the sheer amount of land he now controlled, Dan looked at his Claiming Goals to verify that the shard had indeed been a faction. And sure enough, George had been correct, at least this time.
Claiming Goals.
— Factions Under Control 1/9.
— Shards Collected 1/8.
— All Creatures in Area Under Control 0/1.
Finally, and before moving on to properly managing his new kingdom, Dan looked at the other changes he had gone through. The first was that his size had increased, even if just a bit. Before, he had been the size of a soccer ball, and after absorbing the tennis-size enemy shard, his size had increased by maybe an inch.
The last change was what the absorption meant for his mind. This shard hadn’t been that smart and had primarily been dominated by feelings of greed and wishing to expand. Additionally, the shard didn’t have a proper consciousness and could grasp some emotions and concepts but didn’t have much long-term planning ability. That alone explained why it had been so slow to expand and react to Dan’s advances.
Honestly, Dan was glad the things mind did not influence him too much. However, he would need to devise some measures to defend against his own influence, if that was even possible. After all, Dan knew that he would meet shards with more memories and personalities that could twist his own.
The fact was that they were all once part of the same entity, and even though Dan was currently in the realm of mortal and human thinking. There was no way that wasn’t going to change later on.