NOVEL WEB Chapter 51 - Drax and Dena
Dungeon Day 56 - Continues
Looking at the stat blocks for humanoids, Dan was glad he didn’t need to pay for the innate abilities of creatures, which he had gained the blueprint for; otherwise, things would have been more expensive when re-making the two humanoids.
Humanoid's stat blocks were similar to monsters except that instead of abilities for powers, they had spells and techniques on top of innate abilities.
What was even better was that as long as humanoids were D rank and above, Dan could give them as many spells and techniques as he wanted without extra charge. Of course, there were a few other things to make things fair and balance things out, but it wasn’t something Dan had to worry about when he had remade his two humanoids.
This was because they were orginally created the normal way, and he had their blueprints. So, Dan had bypassed some of the things that would have otherwise made them much more expensive. However, if he made his own elf or dragonkin now, he would have to go through the proper channels and pay more. Thankfully, that didn’t matter right now, and Dan returned to looking at his two humanoid stat blocks, starting with Dena.
🔷 Crystal Notice 🔷
🔷 Humanoid Statblock 🔷
Rank: Low D Rank.
Name: Dena Liasis.
Type: Humanoid - Beast Elf.
Choice: Forest Druid.
Size: Medium.
Hierarchy: Boss.
Arcane Mana: 600/600.
Arcane Mana Regen: +6 Per Minute.
Pure Arcane Mana: 300/300.
Pure Arcane Mana Conversion: +3 Per Minute.
Innate Abilities: 6.
Dark Vision. Beast Shapeshifter. Nature Attuned. Language of Beasts. Forest Attendant. Presences. Long Lived.
Spells: 9.
Basic Beam of Extinction. Basic Heal. Shield. Barrier. Basic Control Elements. Basic Clean. Summon Light Fruit. Basic Root Control. Body Enhancement - General.
Techniques: 0.
Respawn Timer: 6 Hours.
Respawn Cost: 61 Mana.
Creation Cost: 122 Mana.
🔷
First of all were the innate abilities, unlike his monsters, whose innate abilities he couldn’t really touch. A humanoid was much more adaptable. Looking into it, Dan saw it had something to do with the many varieties found within humanoid ancestry. Monsters were usually more one-tracked, whereas humanoids could be a mix of a multitude of different things. A good example was seen in their types. If Dan took a beast's changes too far, they would become monstrosities, half-elementals, or whatever. However, if he went and changed Dena’s innate abilities she would simply become a different type of elf. She would still be a humanoid, just a different subclass of her main species. Either way, monsters and humanoids were still the same in that their innate abilities showed what their lineage entailed.
Looking at Dena, her beast bloodline is seen in her shapeshifting and language ability, which then classified her as a Beast Elf. This could be different and display something like Forest Elf or Nature Elf, etc. However, the bloodline overrode that. The other interesting thing was the choice. Now, as far as Dan could discern from the information he was gaining, the whole choice assignment was more of something the system did to help Dan. The choice was a quick way to summarize what Dena specialized in.
In this case, Forest Druid meant she was a druid or someone who cared for nature and specifically focused on forests. Apparently, magic was more complicated than games back on Earth, and just because you were a druid didn’t mean you could shape-shift. This time around it was purely coincidental that Dena was able to shapeshift and also followed the path of a druid. In fact, when Dan took a closer look at her ancestry, it was just that this beast's bloodline truly overpowered the rest. It turns out that Dena came from a line of Forest Elves, which is why she has the Nature Attuned and Forest Attendant abilities. Those abilities basically just made the druid better at taking care of the forest and at using any nature magic.
Following all of that were the spells. Dan immediately saw the beam she used to kill Eagle a while back and the name was actually kind of badass. Other than that, everything else seemed to be rather basic. Though he did wonder what the heck the difference between the shield and barrier spells was. And he was happy to learn, courtesy of the system, that the shield was something she constantly had to maintain but acted as a bubble around her, allowing her to block many things as long as she had mana. Meanwhile, the barrier was fed a certain amount of mana, which it then used to block whatever was coming since it stayed stationary. Dan honestly thought the shield was better but could see how the barrier would be useful.
Either way, seeing as Dena didn’t have any of these so-called techniques, Dan pulled up Drax’s stat block, hoping he would have some.
🔷 Crystal Notice 🔷
🔷 Humanoid Statblock 🔷
Rank: High D Rank.
Name: Sir Draxis Kron.
Type: Humanoid - Flame Dragonkin.
Choice: Draconic Fighter.
Size: Medium.
Hierarchy: Boss.
Arcane Mana: 1600/1600.
Arcane Mana Regen: +10 Per Minute.
Pure Arcane Mana: 800/800.
Pure Arcane Mana Conversion: +5 Per Minute.
Innate Abilities: 6.
Dark Vision. Flame Breath. Flame Resistant. Flame Attuned. Dragonblooded - Fire. Presences.
Spells: 8.
Body Enhancement - General, Strength, Speed, Resilience. Sub Body Enhancement - Boost, Minor Levitate, Wall Climb. Shield.
Techniques: 5.
Burning Flames. Light like Ash. Lacerating Slash. Piercing Thrust. Scales of a Dragon.
Respawn Timer: 6 Hours.
Respawn Cost: 89 Mana.
Creation Cost: 178 Mana.
🔷
Dan had to admit that Drax did not disappoint. Not only did the so-called knight have techniques, but more importantly he had stayed at High D Rank. Dan had honestly been expecting the dragonkin to be demoted, but the fact that he didn’t was a pleasant surprise. Sadly, it didn’t mean Dan could now create High D Rankers, and it was more of an exception to the rule since he hadn’t actually changed anything. Then, adding to the fact the dude had still been alive, something the wolf bat boss no longer was, thus making it unable to be respawned as a High D Ranker.
Honestly, just the fact that he now had access to a High D Ranker changed the whole game, and Dan felt even more confident about taking down the shards even faster. Comparing the high ranker's stats to his lower rank creations, the difference was night and day. Just looking at the Arcane Mana alone, if he gave the knight the Mana Storage ability, it would take him up to 3200 mana. To Dan, that alone seemed overpowered, and now that he had brought attention to it, he truly expected it to get nerfed. It didn’t even take that long when he received the news from the World Crystal now; if he wanted to give Mana Storage to bosses or mini-bosses who were High D Rank or higher, he would have to pay extra.
Taking a minute to calm down at the unfairness of reality, Dan proceeded with his inspection.
Drax’s innate abilities did not really surprise Dan. Since the dragonkin was part dragon, it made sense that his innate abilities reflected that. The only thing that wasn’t necessarily obvious was the Dragonblooded ability. This did a bunch of different things and was the real center of the dragonkin and where all his other abilities came from. Including a few that didn’t show up on the stat block since they were integrated into the Dragonblooded ability. Such as the fact that Drax could speak Draconic, aka the language of dragons. Additionally, since he had dragon blood within, he would unlock other abilities as he grew in power. All abilities also counted as Innate Magic. Meaning they were unique in their workings and fell into a special magical category too expansive for Dan to bother getting into.
Moving on to the techniques, Dan found they were basically a separate category of magic that could accomplish the same thing as chanting and relied more on will than knowledge. However, that didn’t mean casters didn’t use them. Techniques fell into a wide variety of things, though they were mostly described as spells that could be used with fewer words and lots of willpower. In truth, the whole thing was also another pain in the ass, and Dan couldn’t be bothered. As far as Dan was concerned, it was simple; you said the name of the technique with lots of your willpower and mana behind it, and cool shit happened. Usually, the name of the technique implying what it did.
And from looking at Drax’s, it was rather straightforward. Light like Ash was clearly some sort of movement technique. Meanwhile, Lacerating Slash and Piercing Thrust were weapon techniques. Then Scales of a Dragon was definitely a defensive technique. Looking into Burning Flames, Dan found it was basically a thing that lit the dragonkin and his weapons on fire as he chose to let him burn things much more easily.
After spending some time inspecting his two official humanoids, Dan looked back at their location to find everything had been resolved. They were inside the town hall eating and drinking while his monsters relaxed outside. Seeing this, Dan instantly got them moving. Well, he got his monsters moving. The village and all its citizens were now part of his dungeon, which meant things would start targeting them. So, he sent his two teams of monsters, Kinetic and Eagle the Hawk, to begin patrolling.
Additionally, Dan created a teleporter behind the town hall so he would have another spot to teleport to. Actually, as he did that, he made another one at the bandit ruins. In total, it was another 630 mana, and Dan barely batted an eye.
With the teleporters out of the way, Dan just needed to create more monsters to increase the villager's defenses. In regards to Drax and Dena, he would allow them to continue doing their thing for another day or two. Then, it would be time to bring in the kobolds.
Dan had originally decided to leave them for last, along with the gnolls, but it was best to leave the gnolls for last. Unlike the gnolls, Dan knew he could bring in the kobolds with little to no combat. Honestly, Dan expected he would have to wipe out half of the gnolls, if not all of them, for them to see reason.
He would have loved it if all areas could be conquered as easily as the ones he had done so far, but it seemed something had changed. Or maybe it had always been this way, and Dan had just never realized it. The thing was that even if he killed an area leader or leaders, it didn’t mean he would just claim it right away if the rest of that area's inhabitants were still hostile towards his forces. Their leader either had to submit, or the majority of forces needed to surrender.
He hadn’t experienced it until the bandits, since he had consumed his first shard, and Dena and the frog chief had submitted. Dan did wonder if it had something to do with the majority of power found in the faction. For example, if he had killed Drax, who held all of the power in the village, would the area have been claimed just fine? Whereas the kobolds or gnolls leaders didn’t hold most of the power, would killing them not hold as much weight?
Anyway, in the end, it truly didn’t matter; Dan’s rule over these lands was inevitable.