NOVEL WEB Chapter 47 - Waiting
Dungeon Day 54
Dan spent days just relaxing and watching his monsters fight. He was waiting to get mana in order to spawn in new ranked monsters. Thankfully, he wasn't bored during the process, as watching his monsters fight was rather entertaining. He had made changes to some of his monsters as they upgraded to D-Rank, and throughout the last few days, he had been able to see them in action.
The first of the changes that he had seen were against some of the new wolfbats. His hawks, now called the Wind Hawks, engaged in aerial fights against the flying wolfbats Dan came to know as simply wolfbat flyers. The hawks had gained two new abilities, Wind Charge, which let them charge up much like the Kinetic could, making their dives even more deadly.
Then, to add to the already deadly dives, Dan gave them an ability called Bullets of the Wind. He had made this ability specifically as he had-had something in mind. This something being to allow the hawks to dive as groups, reinforcing each other's dives, allowing them to do even more damage at even greater speeds. The combination of the two abilities let the hawks essentially one-shot the enemy flying wolfbats. Dan said one-shot, but it was more like two to three shots as they had to dive together and hit the wolfbat at once in order to do it. Still, the now much greener-looking hawks were streaks of light green light as they dove down from high above, really making them look like bullets or missiles homing in on their targets.
Since Dan still had the idea in mind that the hawks were the scouts of his aerial forces, he had given them speed and the ability to do more damage with said speed. On the other hand, the eagles were more of his aerial infantry and were going to be led by Hawk the Eagle. To this extent, he had given the boss an ability called Buffeting Storm. The ability let the eagle spend mana to alter the weather around herself, and on its own it wasn't anything major, simply allowing the bird to increase the winds in an area around her. However, when combined with the rest of the eagles and their new ability, Storm’s Kin, it became something grander.
Storm’s Kin let the eagle minions connect to their boss's Buffeting Storm ability and feed it mana. This would then allow the Buffering Storm to grow in power alarmingly as the weather became more turbulent. Naturally, this weather would not affect them, allowing them to maneuver freely while any other aerial forces tumbled about. Dan had to admit it had been fun seeing wolfbats, owls, and other birds buffeted in the storm as the eagles swooped in and ripped them apart. It wasn't as satisfying as seeing the hawks put holes into wolfbats bodies or make enemy birds explode, but it was almost there.
Sadly, even with all these abilities, Dan still suffered some losses with his new D-rank monsters, having been outnumbered by the spawning invaders. The losses were not crippling but something that just happened when monsters fought. Even then, it was nothing compared to the number of losses he had taken from his big cats.
The big cats had received some changes, mainly involving Dan specializing them in what he wanted them to do. The panthers became Stalker Panthers as Dan had moved more into the stealth area of their nature. He gave them Stalker and Camouflage, making them even better at being stalking cats.
His jaguars became Slashing Jaguars upon gaining the Metal Whirlwind ability, and as the name implied, they could now summon a whirlwind of small metal shards around themselves. These shards spun at decently high speeds and could tear into enemies along with the jaguar's claws. Dan had decided to specialize the jaguars more into skirmishing infantry and, as such, had also given them the Resilient Body Enhancement. Of course, this meant that they were fighting things like the Centiblades, which were the centipedes with bladed limbs, causing the big cats to take almost as much damage as they dished out.
The last of the big cats were the cheetahs, who now became Lightning Cheetahs. These cheetahs followed after Kinetic and gained the ability to shoot out Lightning Bolts after charging up.
In terms of looks the jaguars gained a more greyish metal-like look while the cheetahs own colors gained more vibrancy.
After the cheetahs, the last major change was to the primates and the bears. For their looks, Dan had reverted them back to normal, meaning black and silver fur for the gorillas, brown fur for the bears, and the mixture of colorations that baboons could have. Regarding their abilities, Dan had modeled the new D-rank gorillas and bears after their bosses, but with some minor differences. The bears, now called Earthen Bears, had gained the Earthen Armor ability, making them look just like Ingot’s bulking form. Like Ingot, Dan had given them some cool roars that were called the Enhancing Roar and Fearing Roar. The Enhancing Roar boosted the speed, strength, and resiliency of allies, while the Fearing Roar decreased the speed of enemies. This boost or debuff wasn’t huge, but it was something.
The gorillas, now called Earthen Fist Gorillas, had also gained the Earthen Armor ability. However, unlike the bear's clunks of rocks, the primates had proper chest plates and helms. Additionally, Dan had given them the Earthen Fist ability to help them punch things harder with their already powerful Smash ability. Dan had to admit that seeing the gorillas uppercut all sorts of monsters had been incredibly entertaining.
Now Dan's favorite change had been to the baboons. It wasn't because the change was extremely powerful but because it was incredibly adaptable. The baboons, now called Baboon Skirmishers, had been given two new abilities. The first was the Wooden Armor ability, and the second was a match for the first and was called Wooden Weaponry. These two abilities let the baboons summon wooden armor and weapons. Of course, Dan wasn't dumb and had ensured that the armor and weapon summoned would be made of ironwood. The wood was magical and just as tough as iron.
The armor summoned was like the gorillas and gave the baboon's chest plates and helms. Since the wood had a dark metal coloring to it, the baboons looked like mini dark legionaries while they wore it. Something that Dan thought was one of the dopest things he had seen.
If the armor was awesome, their Wooden Weaponry was just as good. Their new ability let the monkeys summon a pair of weapons for 24 hours, and considering they had three different pairs they could choose from, it was pretty nice. The baboons could summon a sword and shield, a spear and shield, or a short bow with around 15 to 20 ironwood-tipped arrows. These changes made the baboons Dan's new favorites because who didn't love a dark monkey legion?
Anyways, moving on from the primates, who could now contend with the skirmishing wolfbats and the much heavier centipedes. Dan looked at the last and minor change he had made to his monsters. Even if they were minor and were just being brought over from his previous monsters, it was still one of the most important changes. This change was having the doe’s continue to have their beams instead of touch-base abilities. The doe’s were still one of Dan's most important creatures as they had single handling reduced the amount of casualties he had-had. They weren't able to stop all of them, as he had been low on monsters from the beginning, causing him to split his D-rank teams, which, of course, also increased the number of casualties. However, as he slowly became able to spawn in more D-rankers, the number of casualties decreased because they were now fighting in teams and had access to quick healing.
Slowly but surely, things began to pick up since the faster Dan's monsters could hunt, the more mana could gain. In fact, most of the teams he had created recently had been in the last four days when the hunting had been at the highest. And now, with his current amount of hunting, Dan could bring in around 2,000 to 3,000 mana a day, depending on how many invaders his monsters could get to it. Honestly, when Dan looked at the grand scheme of things the travel time was becoming a problem more than anything else, and he had to stop his monsters from coming back to the core to rest. Instead, Dan had them find safe resting spots, or he created random caves for them by removing dirt. It helped that all the monsters were slowly coming to him instead of him having to send monsters too far and wide.
Eventually, things had evened out for Dan, and in the last couple of days, he had spent a total of 11,228 mana to create 12 new D-rank teams and 30 new D-rank hawks to help the teams further. This number had been enough to stop the casualties he had been having from having to separate the rankers. So, without the worry of too many casualties, the next groups of rankers would be the ones used to conquer the bandits and the village.