What would be the corruption infecting the Tainted Lands? Well, Dan just wanted some classic magical corruption, something that twisted the environment, making it look all gloomy, bleak, and like a twisted version of what it once was. In this case, he was going to create something with the help of the system that would turn everything dark-black and green. Dan felt like that was the best way to represent a corrupted druid. A power that turned everything into a gothic green environment.
As to what the actual effects of this corruption would be, well, it would legitimately be able to invade the soul of creatures. However, the process would take a long time, so it wouldn’t be a real threat to adventurers, but they wouldn’t know that. It would also invade their bodies, making them use more mana to dispel it unless they had someone to cleanse the effect. Either way, the magical corruption would make the adventurers more tired and sluggish as it drained their physical energies. All in all, it wouldn’t be the biggest threat, but it was something they would have to watch out for and a great training moment for them.
Another important question was, what would spread the corruption? Which Dan answered by making the thing that would spread it. And no, it wasn’t going to be Diana, even if she was capable of doing so as well.
For story reasons, it was going to be a crystal that Diana had somehow gotten a hold of from the entity that corrupted her. Then, using said crystal, she was trying to corrupt the lands and the wood beasts in the forest. Obviously, Diana wasn’t actually corrupting beasts since Dan was going to spawn them, but he needed to have a story reason for these things; otherwise, it would eat him alive.
Continuing with the actual dungeon building, Dan first had to create the crystal.
?? Crystal Notice ??
?? Item Creation ??
Name: Crystal of Corruption.
Item Rarity: Legendary.
Enchantment: Legendary Resilience. Pillar of Corruption.
Ability: Spreader of Corruption.
Description: The Crystal of Corruption is a large dark green and black crystal that oozes darkness into the land. While active, the crystal releases energy capable of corrupting the mana, land, or souls of creatures in its area of effect.
Instructions: Only Usable by Diana Liasis.
??
It cost Dan 419 Mana to create the incredibly enormous crystal, which was an amazing deal and only doable because the damn thing would never leave his dungeon. Literally, the moment it left the confines of his dungeon, it would cease to work. The cost was also low because the only entity able to use it was Diana, a rule enforced directly by the system and the World Crystal. A rule that stopped any adventurer from trying any funny business.
The crystal was incredibly hard to break due to its Legendary Resilience, and without it, there wouldn’t be any corruption. Its ability to corrupt came via both the Pillar of Corruption enchantment and Spreader of Corruption ability. So, it was because of that-that the crystal and Diana would be the two main objectives in future events.
Looking at the item description, it stated it would only corrupt a certain area, which was mostly just the Tainted Lands area. After all, Dan didn’t want the taint getting out of control, making him the one to end up cleaning it up. So, once the corruption reached a certain range, it would slow to a crawl, and Diana would have her adventurers and beasts spread it further.
As to how she was going to accomplish this, well, Dan had made another item he would spawn in.
?? Crystal Notice ??
?? Item Creation ??
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Name: Corrupted Shard.
Item Rarity: Ancient.
Enchantment: Ancient Resilience. Corruptive Shard.
Ability: Spreader of Corruption.
Description: A shard taken from the Crystal of Corruption. The shard, much like its parent, is able to spread darkness into the land. However, due to its size, its corruption takes longer to take hold, and it is much weaker.
Instructions: Only Usable by Diana Liasis.
??
This shard, as its description implied, was one Diana “took” from the main crystal. Except she didn’t take anything, and Dan would basically give her a bag of holding with thousands of the damn crystals for her to use. And yes, she had to use them. Diana, like Dena, would need to enchant something onto each shard, transforming them into the next variation.
?? Crystal Notice ??
?? Item Creation ??
Name: Corrupted Shard.
Item Rarity: Ancient.
Enchantment: Ancient Resilience. Corruptive Shard. Linked Power.
Ability: Spreader of Corruption.
Description: A shard taken from the Crystal of Corruption. The shard, much like its parent, is able to spread darkness into the land. However, due to its size, its corruption takes longer to take hold, and it is much weaker.
To resolve this, the Corrupt Druid, Diana, has made it so the various shards can be linked within a certain distance of each other. Once linked, the shards help to reinforce each other, increasing their power and reach.
Instructions: Only Usable by those aligned with Diana Liasis and her faction.
??
This variation had the last two lines added to it along with its new enchantment. The enchantments of the shard were similar to their parent. Ancient Resilience meant it was very tough, while Corruptive Shard was a weaker variant of Pillar of Corruption. Out of all of them, the most important enchantment was Linked Power, which, as the new description said, would allow the shards to synergize.
Even more important than Linked Power was the item's instructions, which finally allowed those adventurers who joined Diana’s faction to use the item for its intended purpose. The purpose being to spread corruption.
The shard, as anyone could tell, would be the key item for one of the two quests that those in Diana’s faction would be able to take.
A party could be sent out with a shard, and then they would go to the edge of the corruption and plant it there. The whole thing would be a large back and forth between cleansing and corrupting areas until enough time passed and the final event was triggered.
Even then, it would be important that parties guarded their shards because they could be destroyed. And if they lost too many shards at once it would hinder Diana's faction in the long run.
See, Dan was going to make the shards the spawn points for the corrupt beasts. Sure, monsters would still be spawning in the destroyed town, similar to how Dan did for Dena by making a large spawning area near her headquarters. However, there wouldn’t be as many spawns. Instead, Dan wanted to push the two factions to use some strategy. He knew it was all based on the adventurers, but knowing how competitive people could be, Dan hoped it would spark a fun turf war.
Diana’s faction was all about synergizing their shards, making sure they were constantly pushing their front line forward while having their monsters spawn closer to the front lines. Both of these could be done via strategic shard placement.
Meanwhile, Dena’s faction would need to coordinate attacks, making sure to have a constant stream of beasts cleansing the land, defeating enemy teams, and just getting rid of the shards, which had a 24-hour cooldown period before they respawned in Diana’s bag of holding.
Further adding to the chaos, Dan would make sure that the paths each of the respective beasts followed collided with each other evenly. That way, if there was no adventurer interference, neither side could advance. Of course, it was when adventurers interfered that things would get interesting because if they coordinated with the two faction leaders, they would be able to change the paths beasts took to the front lines. This ability wasn’t something the two leaders could do actively and was all system interference as it detected certain parameters Dan had set.
Dan felt like this dungeon creation session was starting to come to an end. He had moved some buildings around and plopped down the large corruption crystal at the center of town. He had even activated the thing just to get it going and was looking forward to seeing some monsters spawn. Of course, it was then that he realized he had yet to make any corrupt versions of beasts. In fact, all this talk about factions and faction leaders, and he had yet to even make Diana.
How would adventurers join her faction without meeting the faction leader? She was the one who was going to give out quests, bless adventurers who joined her faction, and give out the shards, which was the whole reason why the Tainted Lands could even expand.
