NOVEL WEB Chapter 25 - Wolfbats
Dungeon Day 35 - Continues
Dan felt the losses first, but he also got the notifications as usual.
🔷 Crystal Notice 🔷
🔷 Boss Death 🔷
Notice! Boss: Eagle the Hawk has died to Scorpion Bear.
As death was within the dungeon area, no penalties are applied.
Respawn is time 2 Hours, and Respawn cost is 36 Mana.
🔷
🔷 Crystal Notice 🔷
🔷 Boss Death 🔷
Notice! Boss: Fur the Elk has sacrificed itself.
As death was within the dungeon area, no penalties are applied.
Respawn time is 2 Hours, and Respawn cost is 63 Mana.
🔷
Looking at that second notification, Dan questioned how exactly his boss had killed itself. However, he quickly got his answer when a new notification popped up.
🔷 Crystal Notice 🔷
Notice! Fur the Elk has earned the innate ability Sacrifice. Sacrifice allows the elk to sacrifice his own health and use it to activate magical effects.
Sacrifice can only be used when Fir is in mortal danger.
🔷
“Well, I’ll be damn.” Was Dan’s only words as he read the notification.
With the appearance of the Sacrifice ability, Dan learned that his monsters could develop their own abilities. He wasn't sure if the feature was something new or something that had always been there, but he wasn't going to complain. It was clearly something that couldn't be done easily, as his elk had killed itself to accomplish it. However, Dan needed to ensure that his monsters wouldn't just randomly start killing themselves in the hopes of getting some random ability.
Dan did want to be a bit mad at Fur for making him spend mana on respawning him, but it wasn't a big deal as Dan would get the mana back in no time. In fact, Dan had already made a bunch of monsters from the fight, and he was only going to make more as his monsters started hunting down the rest of the aberrations.
In total, he had gained 2500 mana. With all that mana, he had pumped out some monsters and created five new teams. So, with just that one fight, he had gained a total of 75 new monsters, which would increase his total mana income as they began to hunt.
With the fight done, Dan recalled his bosses. He had been thinking of sending some support just in case they were attacked by something on the way back, but he doubted his monsters needed any help, especially with Fir healing them.
Eventually, his bosses got to the base and sat down to rest, and Dan was happy to let them do so. His other monsters continued engaging the monstrosities as they rested, and he had a few more casualties. However, they were just regular minions, which wasn't a big deal. Considering the amount of mana he was raking in, he was not worried about a couple of birds getting killed. He also eventually respawned the minions that had been killed along with Fur and Eagle and was glad they were not traumatized. That weakness seemed to have been wrung out of them, probably by the World Crystal, and Dan appreciated it as he didn’t want a bunch of monsters with ptsd.
All in all, as the day came to an end, Dan was able to make two additional teams with all the mana that he gained and ended up recalling all his beasts, just in case the night brought with it some other type of challenge.
Surprisingly, Dan was indeed right, and a new challenge came during the night. Well, a new challenge and an old challenge. The old challenge was just the owls now coming in more regularly, flying around by themselves, and harassing his beasts here and there. Of course, there were also the same monstrosity teams, the wood beasts and smaller magical beasts that had become a common sight. The new challenge, of course, was a new monster that could only be described as a wolfbat.
The wolfbats were the size of an average wolf, except they had a more humanoid look to them. Their bat genes came in their two leathery wings, though theirs extended from their backs. Additionally, the wolves also walked with a hunched posture, like a werewolf would. They also had pointy ears and a bit of a snout that was much like a combination of a wolf and a bat, and finally, they had nice fluffy tails. The wolves couldn't fly, but they jumped and glided as they ran through the branches of the many trees in the forest. They weren't necessarily the biggest problems, and Dan hadn’t deemed it worth attacking them just yet. If they did come, the fort had plenty of defenders. The problem was that now it would be a bit more problematic to send his monsters out to hunt at night.
It wasn't that his monsters couldn't take care of themselves. It was just that they would be outnumbered by the number of monsters out in the wild. From looking at the map Dan could see there was a sea of red dots in his lands. Well, at least comparing the enemy numbers to his own. He could still send out his monsters to hunt in the nearby area with the support of the bats and even the spiders, but he did not want to stretch out his defenses too much. In truth, Dan hoped that the wolfbats would sleep during the day or at least be less active, allowing his teams to hunt more easily.
Dan also believed that eventually, when he did have enough monsters. He could just constantly be on an extermination run against the enemy beasts, killing them as soon as they came into his territory. However, for the time being, his lands were just too big, and he did not have enough monsters. So, as far as Dan was concerned, it was best to chill during the night and hunt during the day. This was especially so considering that he was planning on sending beasts over to help the druids, as they would certainly be struggling with these new monsters.
Dungeon Day 36
Thankfully, Dan had been right, and as the day came about, the wolfbats started being less active, and more of them began to settle for the day, a weakness he would use to hunt them down.
Finally, looking at the druid situation, the main issue was that the druids were very far from him. Not only would he need to travel through his own territory, but he would also have to cross through the frog's territory until he reached the druids. As such, he had been looking for something to close the gap and had found it. The answer was teleportation.
Sadly, as much as Dan wanted to set up a teleportation network from his base to the druids, that was not going to be possible. The simple fact was that he could only really set up something in his own claimed area. However, he could still set up a teleportation circle from the fort to the edge of his territory. This would then shorten the travel time between his lands and the druids even more. Additionally, suppose he went for the frog people first and captured their territory, allowing him to establish another teleporter, thus shortening the gap even further.
To establish his own teleportation, he needed a new, smaller base at the edge of his territory to keep the circle safe. This new base would be even faster to set up than his current one, as he now had plenty of mana to spend. So, he quickly constructed yet another basic stone structure much like his current one, just smaller. He copied the same square layout as he couldn’t be bothered to be super creative for a temporary structure. The only thing that he would bother with was placing some guards there when construction was done. However, that wasn't going to be much of an issue either.
It cost him about 100 mana to set up the new base, as stone and trees only cost a little. While he had been setting up, it had occurred to him that he should set up a proper hiding enchantment, but he wasn't as worried about that yet. This was mainly because he wasn’t D Rank, and he wanted to set up those types of enchantments whenever he had proper power. If the new monsters had been a proper challenge, he would have set up new enchantments, but he wasn't too worried about anything for now.
Looking at the teleporters themselves, he wanted to make them rather big. Mainly so they could transfer more monsters in one go. He also needed some sort of base to enchant onto as he didn't want to do it on the dirt since that could be easily disrupted. So, for a base, Dan made a large stone of a higher quality. The enchantment was considered tricky because it would take some work for his beast to activate it, but not much. The main issue with it was that it was space magic, and so it would cost a bit more because of it. In total, each teleporter came up to 315 mana for a total of 630. Then, any time a beast wanted to use it or any time it was activated, it would cost 158 mana.
Overall, it was a good deal as Dan would get plenty of use out of it, and it would be less distance for his monsters to travel when they dealt with the frogs or the druids.
Dan continued the creation spree by creating some bats, spiders, moles, and worms to defend the smaller base. He created four worms, six moles, six spiders, and six bats. It wasn’t a lot, but it should do to help defend the base. He could also teleport more beasts over there or spawn them in if the base needed extra defenders.
However, after all that was completed, Dan was running low on mana again, and as night approached. He began recalling his monsters back to the base. Last night, he wondered if another new creature might appear overnight and how he would handle that if it happened. He also thought about the druids and how they were faring with this whole thing. He had yet to hear back from them after the hawk returned to give him the report on their lands. He hoped they were doing well and they would make it for a few more days until he finally sent over some creatures to help them.