NOVEL WEB Chapter 33 - Skirmishing
Dungeon Day 43
The boss was, of course, going to be an octo-lily. It was going to have most of the same abilities as its smaller counterpart, except for a few that would give it the extra oomph that Dan needed. These new abilities were the Domination Affinity and a new domination-related skill to help the boss ward off the possible thousand-plus fish that were coming. The ability itself would be weak due to its magic needing a higher rank to work properly, but it would be enough to debilitate weaker-minded fish. That was fine for Dan as that's all he needed, as his other bosses would be the ones doing the actual fighting along with the frog folk.
Another difference between the boss and its smaller counterparts was its size. Dan had made the boss a large creature, unlike the smaller lilies, who were medium. This change allowed him to add extra vine tentacles to the lily, giving it an additional power boost. The final and one of the most important abilities that the boss had gained was the ability to allow its mind domination to extend further out. Rounding off the boss was the addition of Mana Storage to give it access to more mana. In total, Dan paid 166 mana and summoned it near the town where his two other underwater bosses were.
🔷 Crystal Notice 🔷
🔷 Monster Statblock 🔷
Rank: Common.
Name: Lory the Octo-Lily.
Type: Plant.
Size: Large.
Hierarchy: Boss.
Mind: Intelligent, Sapient.
Arcane Mana: 200/200.
Arcane Mana Regen: +3 (0 Outside of Dungeon)
Pure Arcane Mana: Locked.
Pure Arcane Mana Conversion: Locked.
Order Mana: Locked.
Abilities: 10.
Water Affinity. Plant Affinity. Domination Affinity. Water Control. Plant Control. Body Enhancement - Strength. Mana Storage. Vine wrap. Dominating Aura. Magic Beacon.
Innate Abilities: 8.
Blindsight. Vibroperception. Uncanny Stealth. Inattentional. Plant Counterfeit. Mental Resistance. Regeneration. Share Sense.
Respawn Timer: 5 Hours (10 Hours if Death is Outside Dungeon.)
Respawn Cost: 83 Mana (166 if Death is Outside Dungeon.)
Original Creation Cost: 166 Mana.
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Getting straight into it, there was the Dominating Aura. That was going to allow his new boss to disable the weaker-minded fish in order to reduce the enemy that would come his way. The other standout was the Magic Beacon ability, which would allow the Dominating Aura to extend further, allowing it to affect even more creatures. The aura would have only extended a couple hundred feet out from Lory before, but with the beacon included, it could now easily extend to the entire town, making Lory the counter to what Dan believed was coming.
In terms of looks, Lory looked like the other lily monsters. The one exception to this outside of her size and number of tentacles was the pink bulb at her center and above where her tentacles sprouted from. Whereas the other octo-lilies have a few bulbs here and there, they didn't do much and were rather small. However, for Lory, the bulb acted as her brain. This was why she was able to have the Intelligent and Sapient mind. For the most part, the bulb looked just like any other pink bulb that a lily pad might have, except Dan knew that it was the center of the monster and that if it were damaged or destroyed, she would become a semi-mindless creature like her brethren.
It took a few seconds for the giant lily pad to come to, but when she did, she quickly spoke to Dan with a rather refined, ladylike voice.
“Hello, master. How can this humble plant be of assistance?”
“Hey, Lory, nice to meet you. For the moment, hover over the town.” Dan paused to send her a mental image before continuing, “You won’t be very active in the coming conflict, and I would prefer you stay as unnoticeable as possible. Your main role will be to debilitate a horde of fish that will no doubt show up.”
Dan did give the lily pad additional information, but for the most her role was going to be simple but effective, and he didn’t want her to be targeted by the enemy. However, he permitted her to defend herself or intervene if things got too dangerous.
It was around mid-morning after he finished creating his new boss, which turned out to be right on time, as not even an hour later, some of his scouts were eliminated. It hadn't been at once, but slowly but surely, some of his sharks were taken out of the fight. After the first monster fell, Dan had put everybody on alert, expecting some attack to hit the town directly. Thankfully, that attack never came, but annoyingly, more of his scouts were taken out. The attacks were made over a couple of hours, and during that time, some of his surviving scouts returned to his side of the lake.
The losses had been rather large, with all his sharks being killed but only around half of his gators being taken out. Unsurprisingly, none of the octo-lilies were taken out, and they made it all back in one piece. With the return of his scouts, Dan finally started getting more information about what exactly happened. And it was just as he suspected massive amounts of fish had targeted the scouts. And even though they fought back, it was just too many to actually do anything about and they were buffeted to death. Another thing the scouts confirmed was that it would be more than just small fish Dan had to worry about.
Some looked like catfish, and others were longer but skinny with large razor-sharp teeth on snout-like mouths. The only good thing about the whole thing was that the bigger fish were in the minority, and the hordes were mostly comprised of smaller fish. Even so, this it still meant that there were at least 100 to 200 of the bigger ones.
Then there was the fact that the fish Dan called small could still range from palm size to arms length. The one silver lining that Dan saw in the whole fight was that his new boss was definitely going to be able to take care of many of the smaller fish.
Another issue that Dan was worried about was the fact that not a single enemy frog warrior attacked the scouts. This meant that the frog warriors, along with whatever else might have been roaming the lake, were being held back. Nonetheless, this was still fine with Dan as it was still very much in the range of possibility that the enemy shard would just make one massive attack. This was especially true after Dan made a decision that he would just respawn his monsters and hang about in the town. The truth was that Dan was on the winning side of this fight. The longer the enemy shard took to make its move, the more monsters he could spawn, and the more his strength would grow.
So, with the decision to hold up in the town made, Dan spent the following day respawning his lost monsters. The ones he needed the most were the sharks, and due to losing all of them except for the few that he had already guarding the towns, they would also be the ones most expensive to bring back. Still, by the time midnight arrived, Dan had spent a total of 1260 mana to respawn all of his 30 scout sharks.
Dungeon Day 44
By midmorning the next day, Dan had respawned the seven gators he had lost. Naturally, it wasn't until he was reminded by the chieftain that Dan remembered he had also lost the frog warriors he had sent out with his monsters. Dan didn’t really want to spend the mana to respawn the warriors but had told the chieftain he would do so later when he had more mana, which was totally a lie. Honestly, Dan could have just wiped the guy's brain and rewired him from the moment he accepted the contract, but for the time being, he liked having the frog around as it was. The chieftain was a reminder that he wasn’t the only creator around.
Either way, with his monsters back in action, Dan sent all 30 sharks to the town and ordered the freshly spawned octo-lilies to make a wall across the lake and keep themselves at some distance from each other. With this detection wall set up, he added the 15 gators to it and told them to patrol the areas between the lilies. Dan wanted to make sure that no fish army made it past the border and somehow managed to target the village under his control.
The wall lasted a whole two hours. Not because it was destroyed by numerous fish but because said fish began showing up around the town. It was a trickle at first, one or two fish that swam around the town's boundary. Dan didn't even notice because he thought that one or two fish were coming back from wherever they had been. However, Dan began to get suspicious when those two fishes turned to 10, then 10 turned to 50 and 50 to 100. They didn’t even stay around for long. They would come by, swim around for a few minutes, and then swim off into the lake once again. Those actions gave them away, as fish didn't just randomly swim around the town before swimming off into the darkness of the lake, at least not so consistently.
These small swarms of fish eventually changed from scouting to skirmishing. The tactic did not make sense to Dan as the fish took more losses than they inflicted. Regardless of that, the use of the tactic itself told Dan two things about the shard. The first was that the share was intelligent enough to know tactics but not smart enough to know how to use them, at least not all of them. Dan made this distinction in how the shard had ambushed its scouts rather well, but now, it was struggling to apply another basic tactic
Skirmishing only really worked if the skirmishing force did more damage than they took. In fact, skirmishing wasn't even done against fortified settlements like the town. A skirmish was best done out in the wilderness, where the attacking party could quickly retreat after inflicting damage. However, it seemed like the shard knew skirmishing was a good tactic to use; it just didn't know where and when to apply it.
So, for about another hour or so, the stupid skirmishes continued. Some fish would come in and try to attack his sharks, and the sharks would rip many apart before the fish retreated. After enough of these attacks, it seemed like the shard understood that it wasn't getting anywhere with its skirmishes, and they stopped coming. This meant that if Dan was right, the next practical move for his enemy was to make one giant attack against the town.
Sure enough, an hour or so later, as the afternoon was turning into night, Dan was informed by Jaws and then proceeded to look through her senses as the area in front of the town became slightly darker as a massive swarm of fish approached.