NOVEL WEB Chapter 27 - Factions
Dungeon Day 38 - Continues
The druid began by explaining the frog lake. The frog lake was the area between Dan’s land and the druid’s land. It was a giant lake with many islands and giant lily pads. From what Dan had seen before through the eyes of the hawks, there was some battle going on in the lake, but Dan was unsure as to what exactly the battle was about. Thankfully, the druid was able to clarify this very nicely.
Essentially, the entire lake had once been in a different world filled with frog people. From what the druid had been able to gain from the frog people. The world that they had been in was also fairly new, and their lake was ripped from that world and taken here. Of course, they hadn't noticed that at first, as they were all in the lake, but once they realized that the currents' flow had changed, they explored and found that they were no longer in their old swamp-like world.
This confusion of being in a new place was further augmented as some entity began taking over the minds of some of the frog people. Hearing that, Dan instantly knew that it had to be one of the other shards but would wait to confirm it before doing anything. The druid continued the explanation by explaining how the frogs were eventually sent into a civil war as a fight broke out between the free frogs and the mind-controlled frogs. In fact, the fight was still raging on as they spoke, and as Dan heard that, he was even more eager to go and challenge the possible enemy shard.
Additionally, the druid added that the free frogs were slowly losing the fight, as with every day that passed, the mind-controlled frogs were able to slowly expand by taking over new hosts. It was at that point that Xinos interjected and told Dena that they would be able to help the frogs if she provided an introduction. Of course, the druid was happy to do so as they were also trying to help the frogs, but they had only been able to do so much because they didn't have that many animals that could function underwater.
From the frog lake, the druid moved on to speak about the kobold and gnoll caves. Apparently, both places had appeared around the same time, at least from what the druid had learned. The gnolls had been aggressive from the start and almost killed one of their druids. So, it wasn't a surprise when they eventually started fighting the kobolds. The kobolds, on the other hand, were relatively nice. They had been happy to help the druids and had made some alliance with them. However, that alliance only came after the gnolls attacked the kobolds. According to the kobolds, the gnolls had simply attacked as they wanted to expand their territory, and the kobolds were the nearest and weakest creatures they could attack.
It didn't make any sense to Dan as the village was right there by the kobolds, but maybe the foul beasts had yet to explore and had gone for the first thing that they had interacted with. Either way, both were at war with each other, and from what Dan could gather, he would probably help the kobolds win, or he would just make them both play nice with each other. Of course, Dan also asked for an introduction to the kobolds, as Dena said the gnolls would just attack on sight.
Next up were the bandit ruins and the village. The bandits were a bunch of humanoids that had indeed spoken with the druids at first, but both factions had quickly fallen out. Much like the rest of the zone, the bandits were also from a different world. They had come from a world named Gar, and though it wasn't too advanced, they had been advanced enough to where most of the enlightened folks had already met each other. Much like the druids, the bandits had also been seemingly minding their own business when a rift opened and swallowed all of them. However, from the number of bandits, the rift had to have been much bigger than the one that swallowed the druids. Since according to the druid's count, there were around 150 or so bandits. They were all fairly skilled with their weapons and were led by what Dan identified as beast folk of the bear variety.
The village was much like what Dan had seen. They didn't have many combat-capable peoples, but a High D rank dragon knight held together the whole place. To be specific, it was a dragonkin that was indeed a knight. And, of course, the bandits were harassing the village since it was the only spot they could harass without too much worry.
For example, the druids had one or two D rankers, but they were on the lower end of the scale, and though the bandits did hold more D rankers than the druids, the druids had hundreds of beasts they could call on for help. On the other hand, the dragon knight had enough experience and magic capability that the bandits didn’t dare engage fully. In fact, there had never been a fight between the two sides. It was more harassment of the outer areas of the village and the theft of goods during the night. Dena pointed out that the bandits were slowly becoming more aggressive and confident that they could take on the dragon knight and the measly guards who guarded the village.
After she finished explaining this, Dan was glad his jaguar asked if the kobolds and the gnolls had any D rankers in their midst. Dena explained that neither faction had any D rankers. However, they made up for this with sheer numbers and the fact that they both lived underground. If it hadn't been for that, the druids would have probably been able to help out the kobolds long ago.
The main issue was that the gnoll cave had only one way in making their entrance into a butchering field. And since the druids wanted to avoid getting too many of their beasts killed they were stopped from doing all-out charge with the kobolds. This was even more difficult now with the new invaders showing up, making it harder for them to support the village or the kobolds.
After explaining that particular situation, Dena began explaining the problem of the remaining two factions.
Up first was the green camp, and as Dan had seen, it was a camp of goblins, orcs, and hobgoblins who were having some conflict. Dena said that the fights weren't full-on fights but more of sneaky maneuvering. Dan had asked if the druids had figured out exactly what was happening, but the green skins had been aggressive from the start and wouldn't even talk to them. Sadly, that was information Dan already knew from his own surveillance.
The one thing the druids knew since they had been watching longer than Dan was the strength of the green camp. The camp had more D rankers than the bandits. Each of the leaders was High D ranker and could possibly match the dragon knight in power. The rest of the D rankers were of lower power, but there were many of them, with each captain being a Low D ranker. Additionally, Each captain also controlled 200 of their kin, giving the entire green camp a total of 30 Low D rank individuals controlling a total of 6000 soldiers.
Dena agreed with Dan and was thankful the camp had minded its own business so far. Still, the druids were worried that once their problems were fixed, the green skins might turn their eyes to the rest of the zone. And unless the remaining factions combined to try and stop them, the green camp would easily overcome them.
Hearing about the strength of the green camp, Dan was beginning to suspect the World Crystal had put him as far away from the higher rankers as possible. Or maybe the spot Dan had emerged from just happened to coexist in that general space. Either way, one obvious thing was that the further away from his starting area he went, the stronger the enemies would get, which really made him glad that he started where he had.
Moving on from the green camp, Dena also spoke about the ogres and trolls, and as Dan figured, they weren't aware of what was going on there either. Apparently, they had learned that the trolls and the ogres were fighting but were unsure why. Dan hadn’t noticed this fighting since his hawks could only be in one place at a time compared to the druid's many beasts. With the revelation, Dan did prompt Xinos to ask Dena if they had noted any signs of mind control, but she didn’t think so unless they were very good at hiding it.
The answer made Dan worry that the large humanoids were being controlled by a much more powerful shard with higher mental capabilities and could easily fool anybody watching. After all, he knew he had eight, well now, seven shards to collect, but he didn’t know their ranks. So, considering that a shard had now been absorbed and that none of the other factions outside of the frogs showed signs of mind control, Dan was beginning to think that something was definitely going on with the hills. And he feared a truly powerful shard was gaining momentum there. Sadly, and annoyingly he couldn’t do much since if he sent his monsters that way, they would be demolished.
At the very least, Dan was glad he could start properly planning things with all this new information from the druids. Obviously, the first thing he would do was approach the frog people and make sure that he won that fight for them and absorbed that shard. Then, once it was absorbed, Dan would reach D rank, and the real battle against the rest of the zone would start.
He would move from the frog lake and quickly take over the gnoll and kobold camps. From there on, he would hit the bandits and the village and leave the green camp and the hills for last.