Dungeon Day 121 to 143 - Continues

  Up next on the creation list was a wood beast that had caused Dan some casualties early on in his dungeon career.

  ?? Crystal Notice ??

  ?? Monster Statblock ??

  Rank: Mid D Rank.

  Name: Wood Blade Wolf

  Type: Beast-Elemental (Wood).

  Size: Medium.

  Hierarchy: Minion.

  Mind: Intelligent.

  Arcane Mana: 250/250.

  Arcane Mana Regen: +8 Per Minute.

  Pure Arcane Mana: 125/125.

  Pure Arcane Mana Conversion: +4 Per Minute.

  Abilities: 4.

  Evocation Affinity. Body Enhancement - General. Fierce Bite. Empower Wood Blade.

  Innate Abilities: 6.

  Keen Hearing. Keen Smell. Night Vision. Stealth. Wood Blade. Mental Resistance.

  Respawn Timer: 2 Hours.

  Respawn Cost: 31 Mana.

  Creation Cost: 62 Mana.

  ??

  The wood-blade wolves had much sleeker forms, their skins made of sleek brownish bark. For powers, the wolves had the ability to unleash sharp blades of wood, which Dan had now given them a way to empower further.

  Dan hoped that the blade wolves would be as annoying to adventurers as they had been to him. And if the wolves weren’t enough, then Dan was sure that when other nature monsters started getting into the mix, things would get much more interesting. After all, so far, both wolves were on the damage-dealing end of the fighting scale. An issue Dan looked to fix by creating his first tank nature monster, which was also one of the first ones he had run into in his current dungeon life.

  ?? Crystal Notice ??

  ?? Monster Statblock ??

  Rank: Mid D Rank.

  Name: Bark Skin Boar.

  Type: Beast-Elemental (Wood).

  Size: Medium.

  Hierarchy: Minion.

  Mind: Intelligent.

  Arcane Mana: 250/250.

  Arcane Mana Regen: +8 Per Minute.

  Pure Arcane Mana: 125/125.

  Pure Arcane Mana Conversion: +4 Per Minute.

  Abilities: 5.

  Abjuration Affinity. Body Enhancement - Resilience. Charging Momentum. Enhanced Bark Skin. Piercing Tusks.

  Innate Abilities: 6.

  Night Vision. Strength. Endurance. Bark Skin. Tough Tusks. Mental Resistance.

  Respawn Timer: 2 Hours.

  Respawn Cost: 33 Mana.

  Creation Cost: 65 Mana.

  ??

  Dan still remembered fondly when Kinetic had slammed into a bark-skin boar all the way back when they first started appearing. The cheetah had blasted the boar out of existence, a problem Dan hoped to fix by making the new version much tankier.

  Even if it was tankier, thanks to the Resilient Body Enhancement and the Enhanced Bark Skin, the boar still looked like the old version, except its gnarl bark skin was much thicker. Additionally, the eyes now glowed green, matching all the other wood beasts Dan had made so far.

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  Regarding the other abilities the boar had access to, well, Piercing Tusks just made its tusks sharper, allowing it to easily piecer tougher things, hopefully, one of those being adventurer armor. Then, Charging Momentum worked similarly to Kinetics and Eagle’s charging abilities, except it used less mana, and in exchange, the boar only gained power as long as it was able to keep its momentum up. This means that if it was stopped by a restraining spell or because it rammed into a tree, the boar would have to start from scratch.

  Dan was happy with his creations so far, and though he planned to make many more, he knew it was time to make the core beast that, along with Dena, would be the backbone of the Druids Domain faction.

  See, Dena was just one individual, and she wouldn’t be able to cleanse the land by herself. Additionally, Dan had a pesky feeling that since she was the good faction in this area, more adventurers would end up joining her side. As such and as a way to balance that, Dan decided that in order to cleanse the corruption, Dena’s faction would have to rely on a specific beast capable of cleansing the corruption.

  Essentially, it would work like an escort and defense quest. An adventurer team would have to escort this beast to a corrupted area. Then, they would have to defend the beast until they finished cleansing the area. This then added layers of failure because if a team failed to protect their beast, it could be killed, thus resetting the cleansing process. To that end, it was important to point out that when adventurers joined a faction, they were heavily discouraged via mental means from injuring or killing fellow adventurers of the opposite or same faction. This was done to reduce casualties from having Dan actively place adventurers at odds and was only possible thanks to Mother Eternity letting them break the rules of reality, which gave free will.

  So, yes, adventurers all over the zone, not just in the druid area, would be able to fight each other and not just in certain area events. Dan was just now running into this issue so openly since the lake wouldn’t actually have adventurers at odds with each other, and the final result was more up the number of quests and such they completed.

  However, for the druid area, adventurers could slay the other beasts, including this cleansing beast. This, of course, meant the defending party wouldn’t just let it happen, which meant fighting would inevitably happen. Now, as to what this cleansing beast was, well, it was also a beast elemental, except it wasn’t wood-related, even if it was still in the same forestry category.

  ?? Crystal Notice ??

  ?? Monster Statblock ??

  Rank: Mid D Rank.

  Name: Nature Doe.

  Type: Beast-Elemental (Nature).

  Size: Medium.

  Hierarchy: Minion.

  Mind: Intelligent.

  Arcane Mana: 500/500.

  Arcane Mana Regen: +8 Per Minute.

  Pure Arcane Mana: 250/250.

  Pure Arcane Mana Conversion: +4 Per Minute.

  Abilities: 10.

  Restoration Affinity. Nature Affinity. Cleansing Affinity. Body Enhancement - General. Healing Beam. Healing Aura. Cleansing Beam. Cleanse Area. Spearing Roots. Mana Storage.

  Innate Abilities: 6.

  Control Roots. Night Vision. Sense Plants. Control Plants. Healing Touch. Mental Resistance.

  Respawn Timer: 2 Hours.

  Respawn Cost: 43 Mana.

  Creation Cost: 87 Mana.

  ??

  A nature doe had green orbs for eyes and a greenish tint to their pelts. And like Dan’s other mending doe’s, their pelt was spattered with golden dots. Unlike Dan’s other doe, these nature ones were a bit stronger since Dan had actually given them an offensive ability. He had been tempted not to give them one, but considering they would be actively targeted and not just because they were healers, Dan felt they needed something they could defend themselves with.

  Aside from their offensive capabilities, nature doe’s did have more utility to them which mainly came in their innate abilities, all of which were self-explanatory. The utility wasn’t great but it was something that might be useful.

  The doe’s were going to be the main key for Dena’s faction to push back the corruption, and one would be assigned to each team that joined her faction. Well, only if the team chose a quest to go clean up the corruption. Not that they had much choice since it was either cleanse the corruption or go kill corrupted beasts. And, of course, it was vital that they did both.

  Like in the lake, the druid/corruption area was going to be on a timer at the end of which a final event would trigger. And depending on whether there was more corruption than not, the corrupt faction would gain a boost in power, making the final event much harder for Dena’s faction. Of course, if there was less corruption, it meant fewer corrupt monsters Dena’s faction had to deal with, allowing them to possibly win the final event.

  This meant that killing corrupted creatures was important because some of them were able to corrupt the land. Though, that wasn’t the only way for Diana to have her corruption spread. However, that was something that Dan planned to get to a bit later.

  For now, Dan wanted to finish up the Druids Domain.

  One of the things Dan was looking at was giving the nature and wood beasts a resting spot as he had given to the town monsters. The problem was that the druid area was much larger, and Dan wasn’t sure if a big underground spot was the correct move since the travel time alone would cause issues for his beasts.

  Dan was tempted to do nodes as he had done for the lake but didn’t think that would offer the same reprieve. Additionally, he wanted there to be a delay between the troops arriving at the frontlines where the corruption would be spreading into the Druid's Domain. Once again, this was done for balance reasons since Dena would likely receive the most number of adventurers. Thus, Dan needed to give the corrupt faction a chance to actually do something and not just get steamrolled.

  There was also the problem that adventurers didn’t need to join a faction. They were prompted to go speak with Dena or Diana but weren’t actually forced. So, that presented the problem that these neutral adventurers could attack both sides without issue. A problem that wasn’t found if they joined a faction, since then they would be mentally pushed to not attack their own faction monsters.

  Essentially, Dan needed a safe spot for his beasts to rest after respawning, even for a little while, while at the same time the spot needed to be away from the front lines. Thankfully, when he put it like that, it was obvious what Dan had to do.

  Dan began making large trees south of the large rock in the Druid's Domain but closer to the large druid tree. Speaking of the large tree, these trees weren’t going to be the same size as it; Dan just called them large because they were larger than normal.

  Anyway, these large trees would be the spawning points of his monsters in the druid's area. It was far enough from the front lines to where it caused the reinforcements to be slightly delayed, giving the corrupt area a slight edge they would absolutely need. On top of that, since all the spawn points were basically next to each other, there would be a massive number of monsters in this one area. And Dan hoped that would be enough to deter adventurers from just rushing in, and if it wasn’t, because they were too dumb, they would be slaughtered by the thousands of beasts.

  With the spawn points set, Dan just had to set up the paths beasts would take as they split into groups. Because yes, in the druid area, it was a faction war so it wouldn’t make sense to have too many solo beasts, so they would all split into groups of varying sizes. Then, they would be given a path that they would follow all the way to the front line, where beasts of the two factions fought while trying to push the other back.

  Eventually, adventurers would join them, which would be the deciding factor between the two factions.

  Feeling he had done enough in the Druid's Domain, Dan finally set his eyes back up on the future Tainted Lands.