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

Dungeon Day 56

Two days later, Dan created three more D-rank teams. This time, however, he had spawned them near the druid's house. Additionally, he had also sent Kinetic and Eagle the Hawk over to the druid's place via teleporter. These two bosses were going to be the ones speaking with the bandits and possibly engaging in combat if necessary. He had wanted to send all of his bosses to deal with this bandit issue, but he wanted them around in case another event happened. And out of all of his bosses, he felt like Kinetic and Eagle would be the ones less missed during a fight. It helped that they were the ones that could cover the most ground the fastest outside of his two underground bosses, but he would rather keep them around in case the next event just happened to introduce underground monsters.

Once at the druid's place, it was only a matter of time before getting to the bandit's area. He could have set up a teleporter to the edge and north of where his lands met the bandit's lands, but he would rather have his three teams get him some mana on the way.

The group of D-rankers engaged against enemy monsters, but as united as they were, the enemy posed little problem. So far, though the invaders sometimes assembled teams, it wasn't something his monsters couldn't handle. When the enemy did assemble there were two types of teams. One was usually formed with all the nature-related beast and their less nature-related yet magical counterparts. Naturally, these consisted of things like bark-skin boars, bark-blade wolves, torch foxes, nutter squirrels, and the such. This type of team was the easiest to deal with out of the two.

Though strong, the magical beasts were rather straightforward and not as bloodthirsty. The real problem was when monstrosity teams emerged. Much like the beast teams, these were also made up of D-rankers but instead hosted various monstrosities.

Annoyingly, the monstrosity groups were not only more bloodthirsty but rather well put together. They were usually a match for one of his teams, as they had tanky front liners in terms of the wolf bat skirmishers, scorpion bears, and centibulkers. Then their damage dealers were just as bad, consisting of the centiblades, centimentalists, and scorpion raptors. Finally, tying it together, they had much better aerial force than before with the new and improved wolf bat flyers and the old yet useful scorpmaw owls.

Even then, since he currently had three D-rank teams running into one of these groups, which consisted of two centibulkers, one centiblades, two centimentalists, and a couple of scorpmaw owls, his teams were able to deal with them without much issue. Usually, such a group going against one of his D-rank teams would pose a challenge. In fact, if this particular enemy group had run into just one of his D-rank teams, they could have likely killed a couple of his monsters. The centimentalists alone were not a joke. They could shoot bursts of flames, pressurized water, and wind gales, even being able to cause spikes to rupture from the ground. These monsters were the first time Dan had given his minions a kill-first order against a specific monster. The magical centipedes essentially acted as mages for the enemy, and as many knew in a game, healers and casters needed to be put down first.

The other two centipedes weren’t as bad as the centimentalists but were still rather dangerous, but since they specialized in either poison or cutting, they could be dealt with more easily. Of the two, though, the worst was the centiblades since their agility enabled them to inflict good damage on his monsters. This was added onto by the fact that they could essentially detach and extend their bodies. Dan had seen his monsters fight the damn things, and one second, they were facing one head-on, and next, it would detach into multiple sections, and it would now be behind his creature. Then, with all their blades, they would tear into his monsters, dealing incredible damage.

Thankfully, against three of his teams, there wasn't much they could do, and lightning bolts, metal, and wind slashes quickly blasted them apart. Additionally, they were torn into by the moles as they pierced holes into their bodies. Any damage that the enemy did manage to deal with blades, elemental attacks, or even their centibulker's poison was quickly healed up by his doe’s. And luckily, after that peculiar incursion, in which he gained a good chunk of mana, his party of monsters did not encounter any more issues.

Eventually, and after high noon his party crossed the threshold and was officially into bandit lands. Watching from high up with Eagle’s point of view, Dan saw that his team of monsters travel time would quickly pick up. The more north they traveled from the druid's land, the flatter and less forestry the environment was. It seemed that most of the bandit's area was grassy plains. There were patches of trees here and there, but for the most part, his party eventually got to see rather far into the horizon. And since they were no longer dealing with the brushes, roots, and other things found in the forest, they would make it to the bandit's ruins within an hour or two of crossing into their land.

The closer they got to the ruins, the more details Dan was able to see through Eagle’s eyes. He hadn't really paid attention to the images before, and outside of seeing that it was some ruins, he didn't care. Taking a closer look, Dan could see that it used to be a town that was now in ruins. The whole thing was fairly large and seemed to be made mostly out of stone, the grayish colors of the buildings still somewhat visible through the covering of vines and general shrubbery. Dan could also see where paths had once been; however, now, most of them were covered by grass, fading away into obscurity. Honestly, outside of the many humanoids walking around the ruins doing whatever they did, there wasn't much to the whole town.

Dan had given Eagle and Kinetic a plan. It was a simple plan as he did not feel like bargaining with Bandits at all. The fact was that he was now the top dog in the area. Sure, he was going to struggle a little bit with the shards, green skins, and the larger humanoids, but not too much. Dan had plans and would not bargain with this weaker force.

The plan was for Dena to introduce the bandits to his monsters. From there, he would have his monsters discuss the situation, mainly involving having the bandits surrender. Obviously, Dan knew that the bandits would resist, a fight would break out, he would have his monsters completely demolish them, and then the lands would be his. Honestly, Dan didn't care much about the bandits, and he could just kill them all, but his humanity wanted to try a peaceful revolution first. Ultimately, business was business, and his business was conquering the land to create a dungeon, so if the bandits didn’t bend the knee, they would die.

Dena went ahead of his group, and all of the bandits had gathered by the time his monsters made it to the edge of the ruins. Leading them was a large humanoid bear-looking dude that, based on old world standards, would have passed as a bugbear. Much like his retinue of bandits, he also wore scrapped leather armor, though his set was very much more put together and better kept. Looking around the group, Dan counted 130-something bandits, a bit lower than previous estimates, but maybe they had been killed by the invading beasts. Dan knew that the monsters didn’t necessarily target these folks, but things happened.

The bandits were a mix of bear folk, along with some dwarfs, humans, and a couple of gnomes. Watching them, Dan could see that they all looked rather apprehensive, watching armored bears, gorillas, and baboons along with the other rather interesting members of the party.

Dena already stood beside the leader, who became surprised as Kinetic spoke in his approach.

“Yo bro, how is it going?”

The leader, confused, looked over at Dena, then back to Kinetic, and once again back to Dena. For her part, the druid just shrugged and motioned for the bear guy to speak.

“Uhhh, it's going alright, I suppose. Dena here says you have some business with us.” The bear guy's voice was gruff, matching his rough-looking visage. His dark brown fur caused some of his armor to blend in slightly, but he otherwise looked like a bandit, even with a small scar on his cheek.

“Yeah, bro. Our boss is conquering these lands and wants to give you a chance to surrender without bloodshed, " the cheetah said in his surfer dude chill voice.

“Are they joking?” the leader asked, looking back over to Dena, who responded with her usual soft and sweet voice, clearly not worried about what was going on.

“No, they aren’t. Their master is very powerful. In fact, our family serves them now, and I would suggest you do the same.”

“Really? What does your master have to offer?” The bandit asked.

“Well, eternal life, maybe power, and honestly, I am not sure what else,” Kinetic responded once again, still relaxed about the whole situation.

However, after listening to the cheetah's response, the bear man began to laugh hysterically, only to calm down a minute later.

“Ha! Phew! Now that was funny.” He told the cheetah before turning to the bandits behind him, “You hear this, guys!? This cat here is offering eternal life if we submit to their master! What a bunch of shit!”

The leader's words caused a bit of laughter to pass through the crowd of bandits, and hearing them laugh, the bear dude turned back around.

“Listen here, uh, sorry, I didn’t catch your name.”

“My name is Kinetic.”

“Okay, well, listen here, Kinetic.” The leader paused as he watched Dena slowly back away from him. Still, that didn’t stop him, and he continued, “How about you grab your little beast friends here and go back to where you came from and go tell your boss they can shove a donkey up their a-”

Right before finishing his sentence, the ground under the bear leader erupted as a large worm swallowed him up. Then, the worm disappeared underground a moment later, leaving nothing behind. Surprised, the bandits just stared at the spot their leader had been in. They took a few seconds to process what had just happened before a grumble went through their ranks, and weapons were drawn.

Sadly for them, they didn’t even get to charge before moles, worms, earthen spikes, and wind slashes tore into their ranks. The whole thing sent the bandits into chaos as they tried to figure out what the hell was going on.

It didn’t take long for the bandits to start fighting back, but it didn’t go well.

The bears, gorillas, baboons, and big cats had charged in after the attack from the moles, worms, and eagles. So, it wasn’t long before the bandits were being squished by bears, smashed by gorillas, torn apart by the cats, or speared by the baboons.

Eventually, after Dan guessed that around half of the bandits had been killed, the rest surrendered. And right as they did that, Dan got the notification.

🔷 Crystal Notice 🔷

Congratulations! You have gained control of a faction and thus have claimed their lands.

🔷

And like always, Dan opened up his claiming goals.

Claiming Goals.

— Factions Under Control 4/9.

— Shards Collected 2/6.

— All Creatures in Area Under Control 0/1.