NOVEL WEB Chapter 31 - Water Preparations
Dungeon Day 39 - Continues
It was time for Dan to start pumping out even more monsters. Not only did he have to make the new gators and shark minions, but he also had to make the gator mini-boss. He also needed to create even more of his regular teams in order to be able to patrol his newly expanded lands adequately.
So, after getting the new lands, he told the druid to return to their lands and do their own thing for now. As for the frog chieftain, he told them to hold tight, as Dan didn't want any more frog people to fall under the command of the enemy shard.
Dan wanted to make this fight with the enemy shard a one-sided massacre. However, he had been asked by the chieftain to try and save as many of his people as he could. Something that Dan would strive to accomplish. This would mainly be done by attempting to knock out the frog people instead of killing them right away, which made him question if he should strictly make some underwater monsters for that purpose. Dan was very tempted to do so, but he felt like if he just did a proper good strike against the shard and took it over, the frog people that were under its control would be released. Such an attack would have some of the frog people die in the assault, but it was better than a prolonged period of fighting.
The most difficult part of the plan was finding where the shard was hiding. Once that was accomplished, he could send in his army of sharks and gators and quickly capture the shard. Of course, he first needed to make an army of gators and sharks, which he would create in the following days as he gained more mana. However, with his current amount of mana, he could still create the new gator mini-boss.
Unlike the shark, Dan wanted the gator to be a stealthy assassin. Sort of like Xinos, as such, many of his jaguar's capabilities were given to his gator. The gator got the Illusion and Metal affinity. However, it didn't get Space Affinity, but it gained the much-needed Water Affinity. It also got the metal enhancement and a few other body enhancements. Then, in terms of other abilities, it got Invisibility and Mana storage. Additionally, his gator was going to have Water Jet, which would help him move faster through water, much like his boss shark had. Finally, Dan gave it another ability to help him chomp down on things and keep whatever was bitten in its maw.
🔷 Crystal Notice 🔷
🔷 Monster Statblock 🔷
Rank: Common.
Name: Billy the Gator.
Type: Beast.
Size: Large.
Hierarchy: Mini-Boss.
Mind: Intelligent, Sapient.
Arcane Mana: 100/100.
Arcane Mana Regen: +2 (0 Outside of Dungeon)
Pure Arcane Mana: Locked.
Pure Arcane Mana Conversion: Locked.
Order Mana: Locked.
Abilities: 12.
Water Affinity. Illusion Affinity. Metal Affinity. Water Control. Metal Enhancement. Body Enhancement - Speed and Strength. Iron Clamp. Invisibility. Mana Storage. Stalker. Water Jet.
Innate Abilities: 7.
Keen Smell. Night Vision. Stealth. Strength. Mental Resistance. Regeneration. Share Sense.
Respawn Timer: 2 Hours (4 Hours if Death is Outside Dungeon.)
Respawn Cost: 54 Mana (107 if Death is Outside Dungeon.)
Original Creation Cost: 107 Mana.
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Dan honestly expected some odd-colored reptile thing to appear, instead, near the water of the island upon which he had built the teleporter for the frog folk. A rather normal-looking alligator appeared and splashed down. The alligator was as large as his shark boss, just flatter. Still, Billy the Gator was definitely something not to be messed with, so much so that he was quick to make Dan eat his words. The gator was definitely not just normal, as its scaly skin flickered and changed.
The gator's scales first went through various hues of blue. Then, they shimmered to a foggy crystal-like substance until they finally shifted to a silver-like metal. Once they went through all these stages, they finally shifted again and became a nice deep green with a bit of a gleam to them. Like always, the boss was confused for a bit until he finally caught up to reality and looked around.
“Hey Billy, how are you feeling?”
“Feeling pretty good, boss, itching to bite something.” The gator spoke with a bit of a rural accent.
“All right, just hang about there for a bit, and don’t bite any of the frogs. George should be contacting you in a bit to catch you up on events.”
“You got it!” Was the gator's only reply.
With his mini-boss out of the way, it was time to start making the minions that would become the main force of combat in the lake. Sadly, he didn't have enough mana, and it would probably take a couple of days to build up his small new underwater army properly.
Dungeon Day 41
Dan knew it would only be a matter of time before he stopped bothering to look at his mana. In the beginning, it was something that he constantly paid attention to just to see how much he had left. However, now, as he constantly gained new chunks of mana due to his monsters fighting the invading beasts, it had become a lesser priority to care how much mana he had access to. This attention would plummet even further when he would eventually open his dungeon to adventurers and would have a constant flow of mana coming in. So the only reason why he even looked at his mana now was to make sure that he had enough for what he wanted to accomplish at the time. That would also come to an end soon enough whenever he had more mana storage. This storage would increase the more shards he consumed until he eventually stopped worrying, or at least Dan hoped he would.
Overall, Dan would usually get between 1000 and 1500 mana per day, and even then, this was mainly limited by the number of monsters he had access to and the number of monsters that were invading his space. Naturally, as he expanded and gained more terrain, even more monsters would spawn, which then would require more of his monsters to hunt them down. The current issue that Dan found himself with was the immense amount of land that he had gained. He didn't have enough teams to hunt the invading monsters.
Even so, the whole thing was fine, as the monsters couldn't go underwater and attack the frog people. As for the druids, he had eight teams and Xinos guarding them. And that wasn’t even mentioning the fact the druids had two D rankers. So, any of the beasts that did bother to go towards them were dealt with. Adding to the druid’s safety was that all the invading monsters were slowly filtering to Dan's first territory, where his core was located. This had-had Dan questioned if he should have integrated all the beasts that the druid had made an alliance with, but Dan had decided against it as they would probably get killed too easily by the invading beasts. Adding to this decision was the fact that even if the invaders all filtered to Dan’s core area, he was confident that his monsters would hold them off. Finally, the big deciding factor was that Dan wanted as many of the normal beasts populating his dungeon as possible, and he didn’t want to waste mana creating them when the time came. Sure, he would have plenty of D-rank beasts for adventurers to fight, but Dan still wanted a proper and living atmosphere.
Moving back to the topic of monster creation, Dan finally managed to build up his proper underwater army during the last few days. He had made 15 gator minions, which cost him a total of 705 mana. He would have made even more, but he didn't need that many gators, as they would be the assassins of his army. However, he would need a lot of sharks, which is why he made 30, which cost him 1560 mana. He felt that that was more than enough to deal with the shard. Dan would have made more, but it was clear that the shard was not D rank, as if it had been, the frogs would have lost the fight long ago.
Additionally, Dan had also made some more of his base teams, as he was still in dire need of them, though sadly, he hadn't been able to make many. Each team now cost 527 mana, which included the creation of the spears for each of the baboons. So, he only really made two additional teams.
Looking back at the sharks and gators he had made, they were basically identical to his boss and mini-boss. Naturally, they had the usual exceptions of being slightly smaller and weaker with access to less mana, but otherwise, both new creations were mostly the same in terms of abilities.
🔷 Crystal Notice 🔷
🔷 Monster Statblock 🔷
Rank: Common.
Name: Jet Shark.
Type: Beast.
Size: Large.
Hierarchy: Minion.
Mind: Intelligent.
Arcane Mana: 25/25.
Arcane Mana Regen: +1 (0 Outside of Dungeon)
Pure Arcane Mana: Locked.
Pure Arcane Mana Conversion: Locked.
Order Mana: Locked.
Abilities: 8.
Metal Affinity. Water Affinity. Metal Enhancement. Water Control. Body Enhancement - Speed and Resilience. Water Maw. Water Jet.
Innate Abilities: 6.
Keen Senses. Night Vision. Electroreception. Strength. Water Breather. Mental Resistance.
Respawn Timer: 1 Hour (2 Hours if Death is Outside Dungeon.)
Respawn Cost: 21 Mana (42 if Death is Outside Dungeon.)
Original Creation Cost: 42 Mana.
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🔷 Crystal Notice 🔷
🔷 Monster Statblock 🔷
Rank: Common.
Name: Stealth Gator.
Type: Beast.
Size: Large.
Hierarchy: Minion.
Mind: Intelligent.
Arcane Mana: 50/50.
Arcane Mana Regen: +1 (0 Outside of Dungeon)
Pure Arcane Mana: Locked.
Pure Arcane Mana Conversion: Locked.
Order Mana: Locked.
Abilities: 12.
Water Affinity. Illusion Affinity. Metal Affinity. Water Control. Metal Enhancement. Body Enhancement - Speed and Strength. Iron Clamp. Invisibility. Mana Storage. Stalker. Water Jet.
Innate Abilities: 5.
Keen Smell. Night Vision. Stealth. Strength. Mental Resistance.
Respawn Timer: 1 Hour (2 Hours if Death is Outside Dungeon.)
Respawn Cost: 24 Mana (47 if Death is Outside Dungeon.)
Original Creation Cost: 47 Mana.
🔷
The sharks and the gators looked much like their bosses, and there wasn't much else to them except that they were ready for combat.
Dan wasn't sure if it was a boss minion thing, but Billy the Gator's restlessness was definitely rubbing off on his other minions, and Jaws had also been getting a bit restless, which didn’t help the situation. The fact that they hadn't been able to bite anything yet seemed to get on their nerves.
Dan told them to hold on for a little bit longer as they would wait for the next day to begin an investigation in search of the shard. This investigation would take some time, but it was the only way. It would help that the chieftain had provided a map of the unconquered land, but searching still took time.
On another note, Dan had also wondered whether he should teleport over there to be ready to absorb the shard but had decided against it, at least for the time being. The main reason for this was that he didn’t want to shift the invaders to move towards the lake. It was also better to wait for the shard to be secure, then go absorb it rather than be there doing nothing for no reason. It wasn’t as if it would take long for Dan to get there with the teleportation circle setup. Ultimately, he decided to go once the strike team moved in on the shard for the final fight.