Dan the Man - turned - Eldritch God - turned - Dungeon Core

Dungeon Day 44 - Continues

Seeing the swarm approaching, Dan immediately prepared his monsters for the fight. All his sharks emerged from hiding and started swimming above the town's roofs. Dan also recalled all the lilies that were out on patrol, along with the gators.

It was going to be a rather straightforward fight. He would have his gators stand at the periphery and act as snipers, taking out individual targets whenever possible. As for the lilies in town, well, there was no point in hiding them right now, so he tasked them to engage in the fight, though only in the periphery as well.

His sharks and bosses were going to be the main attack force, and since Lory was going to take out many of the fish from the fight—not by killing them, but by simply making it so they couldn't do anything—Lory alone would make the fight a lot easier since only the much larger fish with more mental capabilities would be left.

In total, Dan had 40 sharks, 10 gators, and 10 lilies, with the rest either having been sent on patrol or stationed in the small village to the south. Even then, Dan felt more than confident that his current force could take on the incoming horde of fish as long as Lory took out the smaller ones. The large lily still sat in the middle of town and a bit above it, floating harmlessly. Meanwhile, the horde of fish was slowly approaching the town, and his gators started fanning out as they backed away from the town and began to try to encircle the incoming horde. The gators were the fastest to move undetected due to their already stealth assassination tactics, while the lilies took a much slower approach so as not to attract as much attention.

Eventually, though, the fish horde stopped some distance from the town's edge as both of the forces stared at each other. Dan used this time to tell Lory to move forward a bit so her power could affect more of the horde. Honestly, Dan wasn't sure what the shard was waiting for, as it spent about a minute or two just letting both forces stare at each other. From his best guess, that shard was maybe trying to figure out what exactly Dan’s plan was as, from its perspective, it clearly had the number advantage.

If Dan hadn't been confident about his monsters and their ability to tear through the incoming fish, the start of the battle would have frightened him. It certainly frightened the chieftain. The fish hoarder went from standing still, hovering in a spot, to moving forward in one large mass as if a race whistle had been blown. Seeing a wall of fish move forward in unison was a sight to behold, especially once they started picking up speed and covering the last distance to the town before entering it properly.

Even so, they still had a bit of distance to go before they struck his shark wall, which was exactly what Dan needed. He wanted as many fish to enter Lory's range as possible. His plan was simple. Once the fish entered Lory’s range, she would take them out. Then, once the smaller fish were out of the fight, all that would be moving were the stronger, bigger fish that could fight off his boss's influence. Once these stronger fish were exposed, he had told his sharks to shoot forward and target the bigger fish to try and take out as many as they could.

And just like Dan had planned, everything went rather nicely. The fish hoard approached, and Lory activated her Dominating Aura a couple of dozen feet before they were about to crash into his sharks. It took a few seconds for the aura to travel through the town and crash into the incoming fish horde, but once it did, the effect was noticeable as the wall of fish just stopped. Not all of them, but the large majority stopped, which meant that the larger fish that were able to resist the effect kept going, giving themselves up as perfect targets for his sharks.

His sharks didn't even hesitate. As soon as they saw the bigger fish, they all activated their Water Jet abilities and rushed forward as their teeth were infused with metal. Forty sharks struck, and just like that, forty of the larger fish were taken out as large chunks of flesh were ripped out, coloring the water red in seconds. The best part was that his sharks hadn't even used most of their mana, so they had had at least another good burst of movement in their tanks. Nonetheless, even if forty were taken out, there were at least another 100 plus of the large fish who, after the momentary shock, turned and began targeting his sharks.

Looking at the attacking fish, Dan could see that there were indeed catfish-like fish with large whiskers, except they had very toothy maws. The other skinnier fish also had sharp, tooth-filled snouts that made them look like tigerfish. Either way, they struck his sharks, ripping small chunks of flesh from them or just slamming into them. The bigger threats were the catfish as they were able to inflict bigger wounds on his sharks.

The fight had just begun, and even if the enemy had finally engaged and were doing some good damage, Dan still had plenty in reserve. His sharks still had some mana left, and many of them began enhancing their skins with metal, making it harder for the enemy to tear into them. Adding to the growing chaos, the enemy frog warriors also engaged in the fight. They had been approaching underneath the mass of fish with large lobster-like creatures sporting rather big pincers. These lobster creatures were not as big as his sharks but were still around the size of the frog folk.

Of course, not having any other option, his own frog folk began to engage the incoming frogs. And honestly, with the inclusion of this new force, Dan was beginning to worry about the fight.

His worry lasted for a whole few seconds as his two bosses finally started engaging. They had decided to chill on the back and wait for the battle to start properly before moving. The best part was that they didn't even need to enhance their bites to kill the enemy. All they needed to do was zoom around with their speed abilities, and their normal bites were more than enough to do the job.

This mixture of the bosses finally entering the fight, with the gators also joining in began to give his monsters a slight edge. Annoyingly, some of the sharks had already perished, but there was nothing Dan could do about that. However, now that the gators had gotten into the action, they would target enemies that were endangering the sharks. The gators effectively acted as a sniper force, taking out an enemy before they could take out one of Dan’s sharks.

Seeing as his fish were holding, Dan looked back at the fight with the frog folk, and they, too, were holding their own. The main issue Dan saw was that his own frog folks were trying to knock out the enemy while the enemy frog folk were just trying to kill his own.

Additionally, it didn't help that the enemy had the lobster things that further endangered his frog folk. The only good thing was that the lobsters couldn't swim, so his frog folks could stay above the enemy lobsters as they battled with the enemy frogs. In the end, looking at the entire battle, Dan knew it was turning in his favor, so he made sure to send out a command to the very slow-moving octo-lilies.

The lilies were still trying to flank the enemy, but their movement was very slow as they wanted to maintain stealth. They had barely left the town's side when the fight started. So, Dan ordered them to forget stealth and use their Water Control to move toward enemy warriors in an attempt to take them out of the fight alive. This also brought Dan’s attention to the enemy warriors, as there were only 35 of them, which meant that the shard still had control over at least another thirty other warriors and was probably using them to defend its hiding spot.

Dan watched as the fight continued. The whole thing was a bit of a mess to watch as half of the fight was happening within his territory, but half wasn't. So, he had to switch from his normal dungeon view to one of his bosses to see how everything was going.

As he waited for the octo-lilies to engage the enemy warriors, Dan’s attention returned to the fish fight. He had lost a few more of his sharks as there were only so many gators, but overall, his bosses were tearing the enemy apart. From what Dan could see, he had around 20 or so sharks left, while the enemy still had around 40 of the larger fish.

It was nothing that his monsters couldn’t handle, but there was still the worry that Lory would run out of mana and her Dominating Aura would fade. Upon checking her mana, Dan was correct to worry; sure enough, she only had about 100 left. The fight so far had taken about a minute, meaning he had about another minute left before the rest of the fish came back into action.

Dan was counting on that with the elimination of all the bigger fish, the shard would decide that it had taken enough losses and would retreat the horde of fish. Adding to that hope was the fact that his lilies finally engaged the enemy warriors and began wrapping them in their vine tentacles. The warriors, already somewhat exhausted from the fight, didn't put up much of a struggle before they were knocked out.

With the enemy warriors being slowly taken out of the fight, his own warriors began engaging the lobsters and began inflicting casualties. Speaking of casualties, he had lost about five of his own warriors, but it was nothing he was really worried about.

As the fight raged on, the enemy's number started to be slowly whittled down. Eventually, there were only 10 to 15 of the larger fish left, which was when they began to retreat. The retreat of the large fish caused the lobsters to also begin retreating, along with the few frog warriors that were still left on the enemy side.

Right as the enemy retreat began, the rest of Dan’s gators, which had been patrolling, arrived on the scene. Instead of having them engage, he had them hide in the perimeter. Dan would use them to stalk the retreating enemy to the shard's lair.

The water was filled with blood and chunks of flesh that had been bitten off both sides. It was a gory scene to look at, but it meant that Dan had won the fight. Especially after Lory removed her dominating aura and all the fish scattered in all directions, letting Dan know that the shard had given up control over the horde.

Without the threat of the looming hoard of fish, Dan took stock of all his losses. He had lost around 17 Sharks, eight of the frog warriors, and three of the gators. And as far as Dan was concerned, the losses were worth the victory that he had just achieved.