Once an adventurer entered the Beast Lands, they would only be met with hostility. This hostility would greatly differ from the previous areas that Dan had created. In the Druid's Domain and Tainted Lands, adventurers were met with notifications and buffs, allowing them to meet with and understand the factions. Meanwhile, the monsters in the lake area were either passive or aggressive from the start. Something like a shark attacking without question, while a beaver monster would only attack if provoked.

  However, in the Beast Lands, a place where monstrosities and beasts were already fighting, any newcomer would be met with force from both sides. Naturally, adventurers would retaliate, which was what Dan wanted since it allowed adventurers to prove themselves in combat. The importance of proving themselves in combat was key because it would trigger the next step in that adventurer’s journey within the Beast Lands.

  See, via the World Crystal and through the System, Dan would keep track of adventurers, giving each of them their own “file,” so to speak. It was basically like players having their own character save files in games. Using these system files, Dan could keep up with what adventurers did in his dungeon. Essentially, when an adventurer talked to a villager and got a quest, their file would be updated. This would then keep track of the quest and any other relevant information. So, it was through this same system that Dan would keep track of the battles adventurers had, and in the Beast Lands, when adventurers reach a certain kill threshold, it would trigger the system to activate the next step in the chain.

  In this case, the threshold was given to adventurers when they entered the Beast Lands and was based on killing a certain number of beasts or monstrosities. Then, once they reached those thresholds, the system sent a party from either faction to recruit the adventurer. Now, adventurers weren’t limited to just one faction, and they could trigger both factions, allowing them equal opportunity to speak with the faction's leader.

  From there, the adventurers could join a faction or stay neutral and keep doing whatever they wanted. In fact, unlike the lake, and just like the druid's area, adventurers could wait until the very last minute to join a faction and still participate in the final event. Of course, for fairness's sake, if they didn’t participate in the quests of either faction, their final reward wouldn’t be as good.

  Anyways, adventurers would be offered two types of quests after joining a faction. One was to simply keep killing the minions and bosses of the enemy faction, while the other was to find the Beast Lords. Naturally, Ingot’s faction wanted the Beast Lords brought back alive, while the Monster Mash wanted the Beast Lords dead. And in the end, no matter what faction adventurers joined, they would need to go and find Beast Lords.

  The Beast Lords themselves were going to be spread across the map. Some would have nests or caves they stuck to, while many were wandering bosses like in the lake. Of course, since the area they would be found in was the entire map, Dan was worried that adventurers would have trouble finding them, and he had almost made some dumb magical item to help track these bosses. However, he then remembered that, one, they were meant to be hard to find, and two, in the end, it wouldn’t matter much because adventurers were bound to map and catalog his dungeon. It was like back on Earth when players made wikis for games explaining every place on a map and every single ability bosses had.

  Dan would try and add as much variety as possible by switching up which bosses spawned where and when via having multiple layouts, but in the end, the power of cataloging couldn’t be overcome unless he straight up just turned up the random factor to eleven. This was an action he wanted to avoid taking since he felt it would ruin the experience and because Dan felt his dungeon was already going to have an incredible amount of variety.

  Getting back on track, as adventurers found the Beast Lords, there was a good chance that they would end up in conflict with each other. For this reason, and like in the druid and tainted area, mind fuckery would be turned up to the next level.

  Again, the only reason why Dan and the World Crystal could use the level of mind fuckery they planned to use was that the Chaos Mother had permitted them to do so. Something that Dan appreciated since, otherwise, combat would be much less prominent in his quests and events.

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  That being said, it's not like adventurers couldn’t fight in the dungeon since Dan wouldn’t stop it. After all, combat happened in real life regardless of anything else. The issue with Dan’s dungeon was Dan was actively pitting adventurers against each other. Apparently, it was fine if adventurers decided to kill each other on their own, but it wasn’t fine if Dan encouraged killing by having them join “fake” factions whose end goals didn’t actually matter in the grand scheme of things. And to be fair, Dan found it hard to disagree. So, to that end, mind fuckery was going to be prevalent in order to stop adventurers from straight up killing each other when they were actively participating in quests or the final event of the Beast Lands area.

  Before getting to the final event of the Beast Lands, Dan wanted to touch upon the purpose of bosses, specifically the Beast Lords, after they were recruited. Just like in the rest of his dungeon, the Beast Lands would be on a timer. At the end of this timer, Beast Lord recruitment would end. Now, before the timer ended, Beast Lords would be running around the Beast Lands like many monstrosity bosses could since they were not, in fact, just stuck in their caves at the mountain fort.

  As the bosses roamed, they would fight each other, but more importantly, they would fight adventurers. These fights wouldn’t matter as far as the final event went because the bosses would respawn. At first, Dan felt this fact detracted from the entire area, but once he got to thinking about it, it didn’t seem as bad. Ultimately, his dungeon was a place for adventurers to fight and grow, and the Beast Lands was just another part of that. It was a place where they could fight new monsters and be placed under new circumstances that would ultimately help them grow.

  With that in mind, Dan moved on to the final event of the Beast Lands.

  Once this final event was triggered, no more Beast Lords could be recruited, and they would simply become another boss on the floor. This change would mainly manifest in that they wouldn’t have any “dialogue options” for adventurers regarding the Beast Kingdom. Instead, these bosses would act as if they were just another powerful creature in the forest. Undoubtedly, some adventurers would end up not believing them and would still fight them, only to find that upon defeat, they would receive nothing. On that note, these bosses would give the option for adventurers to retreat if they were reasonable enough after learning that the boss could no longer be recruited.

  The final event of the Beast Lands was going to be yet another raid. However, this raid would be much larger than the one Dan planned for the druid and tainted lands. This was because it would involve more bosses and monsters than any other area in the dungeon so far.

  Once the event triggered after the timer ended, the system would check the number of Beast Lords recruited. If the number was above a certain amount, the ones leading the raid would be the Beast Kingdom. Meanwhile, if the number was below a certain amount, the ones leading the raid would be the monstrosities.

  Naturally, the raid would be targeting the opposite faction's base of operations.

  If the Beast Kingdom led the raid, then they would march a huge army of beasts and adventurers toward the base of the monstrosities. Of course, the Monster Mash faction wouldn’t be defenseless, and a battle would break out as the beasts and adventurers found themselves fighting through the chasm to reach the final boss.

  This final boss would be something to behold and would contain multiple phases, requiring adventurers and all living beast bosses to take it down. Because, yes, during this final raid, all deaths on either side were permanent, and the invading force could definitely be defeated, and the defending faction could end up winning the event, thus affecting the next reset.

  With that in mind, if the Monster Mash was leading the raid, they would end up raiding the Beast Kingdom's mountain fortress with all their monsters and adventurers. And just like in the previous example, the Monster Mash would have to fight through many defenses, until they reached the final clash. This final clash would also be a large battle where both sides would go all out as they attempted to end up as the ultimate winners.

  Obviously, the danger of the event wasn’t lost on Dan, and during these raids, the mind-altering effects stopping adventurers from killing each other would be turned up even more. In addition, his beasts would be under different orders, both here in the Beast Lands and in any final clash. Ultimately, Dan wanted to avoid too many adventurer casualties since dead adventurers didn’t provide mana. More importantly, Dan wanted his dungeon to be a good learning place for adventurers, and if his monsters ended up targeting them during final battles, it wouldn’t be very pretty.

  Speaking of monsters, it was time for Dan to finally make more of them.