Creating the monsters was going to be the easiest part of the whole endeavor. Spawning them, on the other hand, was going to take forever. The lake and the other areas of the zone were just so large that in order to properly populate them, Dan needed to spawn monsters in the thousands.

  Actually, as he was thinking about the spawning situation, Dan realized something very important. He was going to have a lot of monsters, and there were definitely going to be overlaps. This could be problematic since it meant adventurers might accidentally stumble into a larger pack of monsters than intended. In fact, the more Dan thought about it, the more he realized that he needed to make sure there was a system in operation that would offer proper encounters to adventurers.

  Currently, all his monsters traveled around in their designated teams while fighting the invaders. However, when the dungeon opened up, Dan needed to make sure that there were not only teams of monsters but also solo or smaller groups of them. To effectively do this, Dan would make sure that there was a system in place so that when monsters spawned in or left their main spawn points, they would be told to split up, remain as a large group, or simply downsize. This way, there would always be random teams or solo monsters wandering about.

  Another way to stop his monsters from accidentally grouping up in an area was the creation of paths made from magical energies that his monsters would follow. It was basically like the pre-programmed paths monsters in a game took. Though, of course, his monsters were free to deviate from the path by a decent chunk of distance. That way, it didn’t all seem so orderly. As for how they would know which path to take, well, Dan planned to use the same system that told them to split or stay together to assign paths to the monsters.

  After making the paths in the town area, Dan implemented the same thing in the lake. Dan had created many paths that traveled above and below ground, in the sky and underwater. Out of all of them, the above-ground paths were the easiest since he only had to work on one axis while in the air, and water, as well as underground, the 3D space made things a bit more annoying. It made the work longer, but Dan eventually set various routes to cover a decent amount of distance.

  With the paths done, Dan moved on to the next important thing he had to do in the lake: spawn points.

  He placed a bunch of spawning locations for monsters all over the lake. Each node was either a solo, group, or boss spawn. So, when a monster died, they would either respawn in a group or alone. From there, they would be told to follow one of the paths that Dan had laid out, with the same understanding that they could swim some distance from the original path location.

  Something that Dan had thought of while making all the spawn nodes was the need for his underwater beasts to get some rest, at least the ones without nests. Back in the town area, the beasts had a big underground cave, but here in the lake, there wasn’t an easy way to give them a spot to rest.

  The more he thought about the problem, the less worried Dan became as he found various factors that would make the situation much less daunting. One of these factors was space.

  Like the birds that would spawn in the air or sometimes on trees, the fish would be spawning in 3D space. This fact would make it much harder to pin them down since they could move in any direction. In addition to that, the lake would be a much harder biome to traverse and see in, giving the various monsters plenty of time from the time they spawned to when they would next encounter adventurers. This also did not add the fact that Dan doubted there would be many adventurers who preferred underwater combat, making the lake incredibly less busy than the surface. So, when Dan added all of these factors up, his worry for the minion's rest decreased, and he moved on to dealing with the boss situation.

  Bosses would have some more freedom. They were going to be the only monsters that could change paths, adding more randomness to the situation. However, to make up for that, they would wander around relatively slowly so adventurers could catch up with them. Of course, a few bosses would have set locations where they would always respawn in. The lake was a bad example of this since most bosses were wandering bosses, but there were still a few with set homes, like the beaver boss.

  ?? Crystal Notice ??

  ?? Monster Statblock ??

  Rank: Mid D Rank.

  Name: Chuck the WoodCutter.

  Type: Beast.

  Size: Large.

  Hierarchy: Boss.

  Mind: Intelligent, Sapient.

  Arcane Mana: 2000/2000

  Arcane Mana Regen: +8 Per Minute.

  Pure Arcane Mana: 1000/1000.

  Pure Arcane Mana Conversion: +4 Per Minute.

  Abilities: 12.

  Quad-Elemental Affinity - Earth, Wood, Water, and Metal. Control Elements - Earth, Wood, and Water. Body Enhancement - Speed. Iron Chomp. Iron Tail. Tidal Wave. Mana Storage.

  Innate Abilities: 5.

  Keen Hearing. Keen Smell. Rodent’s Durable Teeth. Mental Resistance. Regeneration.

  Respawn Timer: 6 Hours.

  Respawn Cost: 122 Mana.

  Creation Cost: 245 Mana.

  The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement.

  ??

  Chuck was going to be one of the beast lords of the lake. Dan would place him in the southwest corner of the lake, where he would let the beaver build a dam for himself and his minions. Said minions were going to be exact copies of Chuck except much smaller. Also, like Chuck, they would all have brown fur sporting cool metal blue streaks, with dark, slightly shiny, flat tails and very boopable noses.

  The dam was going to be one of the main spawn points for the beavers and the main spawn point for Chuck. From there, the smaller beavers could roam about the lake, but Dan wouldn’t allow them to go more than a few miles from their nest. He wanted to keep some monsters localized to certain areas, and that was the best way he could think of doing it.

  Inspecting Chuck, the beaver's abilities were fairly straightforward. The only one that was maybe a bit odd was the Rodent’s Durable Teeth, which made the beaver's teeth keep growing if they didn’t munch on things to wear them down.

  Moving on from Chuck, Dan made a boss with no set spawn point. The boss was another beast lord and would spawn in one of the random boss nodes in the lake along with his posse.

  ?? Crystal Notice ??

  ?? Monster Statblock ??

  Rank: Mid D Rank.

  Name: Otterson the Destroyer.

  Type: Beast.

  Size: Small.

  Hierarchy: Boss.

  Mind: Intelligent, Sapient.

  Arcane Mana: 2000/2000

  Arcane Mana Regen: +8 Per Minute.

  Pure Arcane Mana: 1000/1000.

  Pure Arcane Mana Conversion: +4 Per Minute.

  Abilities: 8.

  Evocation Affinity. Water Affinity. Water Control. Body Enhancement - Speed and Agility. Explosive Slam. Explosive Wave. Mana Storage.

  Innate Abilities: 4.

  Keen Senses. Dexterous. Mental Resistance. Regeneration.

  Respawn Timer: 6 Hours.

  Respawn Cost: 71 Mana.

  Creation Cost: 143 Mana.

  ??

  Otterson the Destroyer was a tough name for such a cute creature, but that’s exactly what Dan was going for. He wanted adventurers to underestimate Otterson and pay the price for doing so.

  Looking at Otterson’s stats, Dan felt it was all self-explanatory: he was an explosive otter who would make a huge commotion under or above water. Like him, his minions would also be normal-looking otters, though with shining red eyes.

  As Dan previously mentioned, Otterson would spawn randomly around the lake along with a large number of otters, some of whom would follow the boss around. However, unlike the beavers, the rest of the otters would be able to roam all around the lake, and like with the rest of his monsters, they would be told to split up or stay in small groups as they traveled through the various paths Dan had set up.

  The next boss was definitely going to be one of Dan’s favorites. The boss was a small creature, and Dan was purposely going to make its fur teal and its beak and tail orange. This creature was also going to be a semiaquatic, egg-laying mammal of action who would absolutely demolish his enemies.

  ?? Crystal Notice ??

  ?? Monster Statblock ??

  Rank: Mid D Rank.

  Name: Perry the Platypus.

  Type: Beast.

  Size: Small.

  Hierarchy: Boss.

  Mind: Intelligent, Sapient.

  Arcane Mana: 1000/1000.

  Arcane Mana Regen: +8 Per Minute.

  Pure Arcane Mana: 500/500.

  Pure Arcane Mana Conversion: +4 Per Minute.

  Abilities: 10.

  Evocation Affinity. Water Affinity. Water Control. Body Enhancement - Speed and Agility. Water Jet. Venom Touch. Venom Slash. Venom Beam. Paralyzing Touch.

  Innate Abilities: 4.

  Electroreception. Venomous. Mental Resistance. Regeneration.

  Respawn Timer: 6 Hours.

  Respawn Cost: 81 Mana.

  Creation Cost: 163 Mana.

  ??

  Honestly, Dan felt like there wasn’t much else to say in regards to Perry.

  Okay, that’s not true.

  Perry was going to have various different spawn points around the lake. These spawn points would be caves where more of his kind would also spawn in. Once again, his minions would have the same stats, except they would be split into Low and Mid D Ranks like all the other minions Dan had made. This would further add to the power variety in the areas, giving adventurers different challenges when faced with a group of Mid D Rank minions compared to a few Low D Rank creatures. Naturally, there would also be a much wider variety of encounters based on the total number of monsters Dan would have.

  Even if the platypuses mainly spawned in these specific caves, they could still roam around the lake, just like the otters. This would then allow random groups of monsters to link up together making it so each group had a random number of monsters. To accomplish this, Dan had simply just added an extra command to these magical respawn nodes that would, along with the path a monster would take, also tell them if they should group up or not. Additionally, it would assign a group leader who held data on the number of monsters that a particular group would have. Again, it was a bunch of system stuff that Dan was thankful for and would work automatically once he had it all set up.

  As for Perry, well, the platypus was going to be a roaming boss as well and would have his own group of minions following him around. However, unlike Otterson, Perry would occasionally visit each of his family caves at set times during the day or week, thus allowing adventurers to eventually track his movements.

  One thing Dan had forgotten to mention was that the minion platypuses would mostly look like regular platypuses with brown fur and dark beaks or tails. The one variation would be slight tinges of green, indicating they were different than normal platypuses in the lake.

  Because, yes, there were still normal bests in the lake and in the zone at large. Dan had yet to make them all submit in order to avoid having them killed by the invaders. He would eventually fix that issue, but not until he took over the gnolls.

  Anyways, back to monster spawning, Dan spent quite a while making more monsters to populate the lake with. Naturally, he set their spawn points and swimming or flying paths accordingly. And eventually, after a month of work where he also finished setting up the quests for lake events and the beast lord interactions, Dan felt like he had completed the lake to the best of his ability. Like with the town, Dan was sure he had missed a few things, but after working on the lake for so long, he was burnt out and ready to move on to the next area.

  The question was which area he would do next. It was a toss-up between the druids or the beast mini-kingdom.