NOVEL WEB Chapter 39 - Ranking Up Part 2
Dungeon Day 45
Dan received the new day by catching up on some universal lore about the ranks. He had gained the basic knowledge back on Earth and knew that his Eldritch God self knew more, but he didn't have many Eldritch memories. Luckily, the system was able to give the information once again.
Officially, there were six ranks. Five of them were just referred to by letters, while the last one was a bit special. The first five were D, C, B, A, and S, with D being the lowest and S the highest. Finally, the last rank, known as the Demi-God rank, was the strongest of the six. Each Rank was a qualitative increase in power, and even within the same ranks, creatures could be divided into Low, Mid, and High Rankers. This getting even more complicated depending on magic use, training, and genetics. The last one is especially important for monsters. Not that any of those three things mattered to Dan, as all his creations came in ready-to-go bundles for the most part.
For creatures outside of his dungeon, progressing through the ranks would take time and combat; at least for many, it did. This was because they needed to use pure mana, which they refined from normal ambient mana to refine their bodies. This would allow them to handle purer mana, which in turn allowed for higher magical capabilities. For many, that wouldn't seem bad until they realized that refining their bodies past Low D Rank would actually become painful. The higher the refinement, the more painful it was. To counteract this pain, much of the refinement was done in battle, where adrenaline would mask some of it. So, overall, how fast a creature ranked up was really up to how much dangerous combat they were willing to put themselves through. Even so, Dan felt like there were definitely other ways to rank up, but he wasn't sure how.
Either way, ranking up meant a creature became more resilient and powerful as it gained access to purer mana. This trend increased with every rank until they finally achieved mana so pure that it became Order Mana, and through it came an incredible boost in power. Still, Dan was far from that point, so he didn't have to worry about it. What he did need to worry about was the differences in power between his Low D ranked creatures and the much higher ones out in the zone.
Dan was convinced that in terms of power, his Low D ranked monsters could match any other creature of the same rank as long as he provided them with the right skills and matchups. A thought that made him think about the Low D Rank scorpion bear his bosses had fought. That thing should have completely wiped the floor with them. However, they beat it fairly easily, which meant the thing was definitely a garbage tier D rank, and Dan didn't think that was going to stay the status quo now that he was actually D rank. He knew the Chaos Mother created the challenge, and so far, it had been all but that, even if there had been a few casualties.
So, Dan expected the invading monsters to start appearing as stronger variants. However, even then, out of everything in the zone, the goblins, ogres, and trolls were the things that gave him the most pause as he didn't have anywhere near the strength to match them in a fight, at least not yet. Thankfully, the plan for Dan was rather straightforward. He just needed to make more monsters.
Soon enough, Dan found himself back in his fort as he began looking to upgrade his bosses to D rank. Looking at the menu, the system had gotten a good update, as some redundant stuff had been removed. It was interesting to see that the system he had signed into was still improving. He imagined that it would change some more by the time all of this was done.
Outside his main menu, the main changes were to his monster's stats screens. Mainly, it was information that was removed as it was rather apparent at this point what it meant, and he could always nudge the screen to show the information again. Happy with the new update, Dan began looking at how much mana he would need to bring all his bosses into D rank. Thankfully, the way it worked was that he just had to pay the difference between the old and new rank. Which meant he wouldn't have to pay an even higher amount of mana to remake them again. In total, he would have to pay 1197 mana to bring all of his bosses to the new rank.
It seemed like a lot of mana, but in the grand scheme of things, it wasn't, and by mid-morning, he had already upgraded all his bosses to the new rank. Along the way, he made some changes to some of his bosses in order to increase their capabilities. Changes that he was very happy to show off.
First on the list was Fir the Elk, whom Dan would use as a main example of the changes to the creature's stat block.
🔷 Crystal Notice 🔷
🔷 Monster Statblock 🔷
Rank: Low D Rank.
Name: Fir the Elk.
Type: Beast.
Size: Medium.
Hierarchy: Boss.
Mind: Intelligent, Sapient.
Arcane Mana: 1200/1200.
Arcane Mana Regen: +6 Per Minute.
Pure Arcane Mana: 0.
Pure Arcane Mana Conversion: +3 Per Minute.
Abilities: 8.
Restoration Affinity. Cleansing Affinity. Healing Beam. Cleansing Beam. Aura of Healing. Aura of Cleansing. Night Vision. Mana Storage.
Innate Abilities: 3.
Mental Resistance. Regeneration. Share Sense.
Respawn Timer: 6 Hours.
Respawn Cost: 92 Mana.
Creation Cost: 184 Mana.
🔷
The changes made to the boss were rather simple. Instead of the Healing and Cleansing Touch, Dan had switched them to beams in order to help the support boss heal and cleanse things from afar without having to get into the thick of it. In retrospect, he should have done that earlier, but he hadn't thought about it.
Looking at the actual stat block, the most prominent changes were the missing words that stated the information about a monster being outside his dungeon area. At this point, he knew that his monsters would only regen mana in his dungeon area. Along with the fact that them dying outside of his dungeon area would cost him more mana to respawn them, and it would take longer before he could do so. Adding to this regard was the original cost of mana. Now, the mana stated how much his current ranked monster cost instead of the old cost compared to the new one. The other thing that had been removed was the Order Mana line. Dan knew that this had been removed due to the fact that it didn't need to be seen. He or his monsters would only have access to that once he reached B rank at the very least, and it was just cluttering up the space.
Next up on the change list that Dan was taking a look at was the obvious fact that the Pure Arcane mana section was now unlocked. The conversion option was how much mana his monsters converted from Ambient Mana into the pure version. Of course, as Dan had stated before, they didn't actually have any direct access to pure mana as all would be stored within himself, and he would then give it all back to them. It was a way for Dan to control how much mana some monsters had compared to others. This was mainly done to influence the future difficulty of fights, as it wouldn't make sense for some minion creatures to have more pure mana than a boss type. The whole pure mana thing also worked completely separate from how it worked for most creatures in the world, as they could only store so much pure mana compared to how his monster could store as much as he wanted to give them. This didn't mean that they could just use it, as using too much pure mana at one time would probably make them explode from the inside.
Of course, looking at the mana, Dan also saw that the mana regen was a + 6 per minute, and the pure mana conversion was half of that. Now, unlike how mana regen was capped on a hierarchy basis with common ranked monsters, all of the D-rank creatures would have the same mana regen. In regards to the normal mana storage, his bosses now had a total of 600. The minibosses had a total of 300, with the minions having 150. Fir had 1200 due to her Mana Storage ability, which still doubled her storage amount.
Having taken a look at all the new changes, Dan moved on to look at another change he had made to another of his bosses.
🔷 Crystal Notice 🔷
🔷 Monster Statblock 🔷
Rank: Low D Rank.
Name: Hawk the Eagle.
Type: Beast.
Size: Large.
Hierarchy: Boss.
Arcane Mana: 1200/1200.
Arcane Mana Regen: +6 Per Minute.
Pure Arcane Mana: 0.
Pure Arcane Mana Conversion: +3 Per Minute.
Abilities: 8.
Body Enhancement - Speed and Strength. Night Vision. Wind Affinity. Wind Slash. Mana Storage. Buffeting Storm. Eye of the Tornado.
Innate Abilities: 5.
Keen Sight. Flight. Mental Resistance. Regeneration. Share Sense.
Respawn Timer: 6 Hours
Respawn Cost: 105 Mana.
Creation Cost: 210 Mana.
🔷
Hawk the Eagle had gained two new abilities, and Dan had removed an old one. Dan had given the eagle Mana Storage to complement Buffeting Storm and Eye of the Tornado. These two new wind-based abilities would help Hawk in her offensive and defensive capabilities. To accommodate this, Dan removed her old stealth ability as he wanted the bird to focus more on fighting.
There were many more changes that he had made to his other bosses, but Dan would explore those later. He was getting a bit distracted and needed to make some actual defenses, just in case.