Hours after the sudden battle Peter still found himself overcome with the losses. He was now just outside of the tenth floor entrance, sitting against a darkwood tree. Delilah who had thankfully been still alive post battle was now healed. She rested with her head on his lap, as he unconsciously ran his fingers through her white hair. Khan had also survived. Peter could hear him bickering with Michael, Gnther, and Glenda a hundred yards off.
The losses were severe. Most of his original moon and dark elves were just gone. The light, the rune, and elemental mage that had worked in the magic college with Glenda from day one were dead. N’terrin and N’torra were fine since they had only waited on the tenth floor ready to do their best if needed. The dryad earth trotter was actually fine as well. It had actually been forgotten since it was off deep in the dark wood along with its C tier one offs. A shame since at least the A tier could have easily stood toe to toe with any one of the weevils. Other than that his support forces had taken a serious hit.
Peter had lost a good number of his regular elites as well. Spectral armor had gone down fairly early, but it had been far from the last. The B tier metal glider fly had died somewhere along the way. The B tier was the last relic from his year 1 congregation’s battle against the dart frog core, although 2 maelstroms of it would keep its spawns for use as scouts. That was more of a sentimental loss however.
Of far greater concern was the loss of the blink dragon, the water mancer salamander, and finally the half off hippo. Although all 3 had 2 maelstroms as well, they had proven invaluable. Their losses would be felt.
Still thankfully the nightmarish creation had survived. The new S tier had proven itself to be utterly dominant in the field of battle. At least when the enemy was only trying to take it down through purely physical means.. It probably had not killed as many as the armageddon dragon, but it had killed quite a few. It had also proven that it could hold the line against an overwhelming force. Peter was positive he would not have survived the battle, if he had not picked the slime monster. Then again who could say, his other choice, the reality bender, could have been even more amazing. He would likely never know.
Perhaps more concerning was the fact that a good number of adventurers had been killed during the raid. If it had not been night, there would have been 50 times the amount. Still no adventurers were currently entering. Peter flipped over to one of his dungeon's entrances. The dawn governmental division had cordoned off both entrances into his dungeon. There were still plenty of knights and elves clustered around the cave mouth. Each wore the cloaks of gold or green respectively. Earlier they had been examining the tracks left by the bugs who had blinked into the physical realm just in time to leave some prints.
Peter could only hope that they determined that this was an irregularity, and would allow adventurers to enter soon. As far as Peter could determine they should have to. After all, there were thousands of people that lived in the boom towns springing up surrounding his dungeon. Thousands that depended on the food gathered on the first floor. Thousands that were only here for the riches that lie within. Hopefully, they would make that call sooner rather than later.
Peter could hardly bemoan the loss of essence, since he had just come into a great windfall of essence. Peter glanced again at his home screen. His essence was sitting at 53,114, 673. It had barely climbed since the last weevil fell. It would take more than 3 years to collect that much from ambient accumulation or the adventurers. Not that it had come for free. He had spent 5 million essence, and over 13 million in original cards. Then there was the cost of the already summoned units he had lost. It had definitely not been free.
Peter found himself wondering why the weevil core had elected to make such a move. Even as an intermediate dungeon it had to have spent at least several year’s worth of resources on the attack. Attacking another core’s collection dungeon was basically only a legend, or so he had been led to believe.
How the dungeon knew the dungeon belonged to him, was not difficult to discern. He had perhaps stupidly used several clockworks on his earlier floors. A new dungeon with clockwork mobs…probably was not that difficult to put together. He had used them in several dungeon battles as well as the fact that clockwork had been his guide.
Still the question of why lingered. He had not even destroyed the long leg spider core. Agatha had at least a few spares left to fall back on. Fire ant was just fine as well, since he had beaten Predator. The only thing that Peter could think of was that the dungeon had either seen him as a future threat, or that it had felt there was a good opportunity. After all, not many rookies should be able to last against 500 A tiers, especially after losing most of its forces in a battle.
The weevil core had probably assumed that the 500 would be more than enough to kill a rookie core and any spares that generated every 24 hours afterwards, while dealing with the reinforcements he was bound to summon. Perhaps the weevil core had thought 500 was overkill… It had assumed wrong. Peter could only take a bit of comfort that the dungeon had bled essence to send its units out into the real world along with the resources the units represented in of themselves.
Peter on the other hand could replace his losses as painful as they were with the essence he had acquired. It was possible that he could come out of this quite a bit better off. At the very least he could summon maelstroms for nightmarish creation and 2 for the spirit catcher dragon. With no resurrects in hand that would at least guarantee he would maintain their existence. That would burn half his newly acquired essence, but would guarantee more B tiers each year. If he made three new B tier maelstroms that would double his annual B tiers at 720. He would only need to wait 24 hours for the spirit catcher to resurrect.
Peter smiled despite the shit morning he had experienced. He was getting there, 720 B tiers was equivalent to 7.2 million essence’s worth of units for free every year. If he used the rest for maelstroms as well, he might even get to the point where his maelstroms were producing a year’s worth of essence by themselves, at least for what was possible for a rookie dungeon. Peter decided he would use all of this 50 million plus essence for such a purpose. He would only sit on it for a bit to ensure the weevil did not try again. Peter did not think it would be likely. The other core would know that he had gotten a ton of essence for stopping the attack.
Peter had a pair of surviving freshly summoned mages, but both were abyss types. Their magic and names were a dead give away. Peter determined not to use them for the foreseeable future. He already had enough attention on himself. Without a unit to report back or a way to witness the attack, his use of blacklisted core types should be safe.
Peter knew he was far from being the only dungeon to use maelstroms, but from what he could gather few did as much ‘future prep’ as himself. Most mainly made maelstroms to maintain valuable units or capabilities. He tempered his excitement. Even after this, he would be far from his goal. The 500 weevils had just been an off hand attack from randomly summoned A tier type cards. They had been disorganized and uncoordinated. Really the only reason he had survived, but it showed that intermediate dungeons were capable of far more. At the very least they would bring in at least 50% more essence than he was now, since 40 more floors would mean 20,000 more ambient essence daily. He had no illusions that an actual battle with more coordination and resources would be far more difficult to endure despite him being more prepared. He had gained a step, but it would be foolish to think he was at the peak. Perhaps the top of the first foothill; he had far more to climb.
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Peter sighed when he noticed the bickering voices drawing closer. Delilah shot up. She was not going to allow herself to be caught with her head resting in his lap. Boris, Gearhead, Greg, and the other dark elf deans had come as well as those that had been bickering for the last half hour. It looked like he was about to have an impromptu full staff meeting.
“Our support forces are in shambles. I must insist that we acquire more dark elf cards next year. We can summon more one offs in the interim,” Khan ensured he was the first to talk.
“We have moon elf stock options,” Glenda suggested.
“Ha… like we need more fireflies buzzing about. It's a shame you all were not wiped out entirely,” Khan said, eyeing the white witch. The wolf pup familiar growled. Khan backed off a step.
“Enough..!” Peter said exasperated. “Did we recover or find out anything from the weevil forces?”
Gearhead stepped holding several metal bracelet-like devices. While both Glenda and Khan tried to reply. He cut them both off. “Many of the beetles had these bracelets around one of their legs.”
Peter took one of the offered devices. Delilah took another. They both studied them. The first thing that came to mind was a tambourine. They were simple metal rings each with a good dozen amber like rounded gems evenly spaced throughout its length. Peter’s analyze showed him the gem's properties.
[Varied deciduous tree resin; tier 3 resource (prepared) ]
Peter honestly did not exactly remember what deciduous meant. Second or third grade was a long time ago, but obviously the bug dungeon had tapped a bunch of various trees like they did for maple syrup. Being able to make gem-like materials was news to him.
“What do they do?” Peter asked although he had a feeling.
Glenda stepped forward. The losses of her comrades and peers, forgotten. “They allow non dimensional units to travel into the alternate realm for a period of time,” she said excitedly.
“Can we reproduce them?” Peter asked, but the moon elf shook her head.
“Obviously we cannot make the gems as far as the magic, I’m sure I can discover how it works.”
Gearhead picked the thought up. “The ring itself should be simple enough as well as the fixtures that hold the gems in place. We will need to find a gem replacement for resin ones…” He trailed off.
“The magic etchings should advance our studies quite a bit. It will likely still take a while for us to reproduce,” Glenda said shrugging.
Peter noticed that Delilah had a scowl to his side. Her gift, the A tier celestial tiger had just died in the dungeon’s defense. Right before he acquired something that would have allowed it to travel through the dimensional boundary with her, so much for his gift. He would have to give her something else by the time they were able to reproduce things that worked like these rings. His thoughts were forestalled.
“Best guess is that these rings would only allow their user to travel over for about half an hour, although size of the user and other considerations should affect things,” Glenda noted. “Likely the bugs only used them when they were traveling through unpopulated areas.”
“What about sap from the dark wood trees?”
“I could strip an entire tree and maybe get a small jar full of the stuff, and that would likely be extremely difficult. The dark wood trees just don’t produce enough,” Khan said. He put his hand on the black wood of another nearby tree.
Like most of the originals planted this tree was already as wide as Peter was tall and stretched several hundred feet in the air. It was nearly half way up to the 500 foot ceiling. It was probably an under exaggeration to say there would only be enough sap to fill a jar, but Peter got the point. It was not one of those sap producing trees.
Peter drummed his fingers. He could not reproduce the sap, and even if he could, half an hour would not be enough to ensure he could maintain units in the alternate dimension for more than a floor. He spoke his thoughts out loud.
“Makes sense. It would be strange if the weevil dungeon had been able to summon 500 units capable of making the trip through the other dimension. A good thing for us since they likely burned the charge to get across the settlement outside. We could not have dealt with them if even a fraction had come through the other dimension.”
“Perhaps we need to consider sending out our own scouts like Emma and Fellette mentioned,” Khan mused. “Seemingly we have neglected that recommendation. If the weevil dungeon had chosen to act more indirectly against us, we would have not had a clue. With this failure, it is definitely possible that the other core will do just that.
Peter sighed. He had also considered as much. Attacking other dungeons directly was supposedly the stuff of legends, but messing with other dungeons' essence, human governments, or institutions was not. Things might get uncertain for him if the country of Dawn were to fall, or if ‘some predator’ started picking off people near his dungeon. A period of upheaval could result in anywhere from months to years without adventurers. The losses from this last attack and the governmental branches' response were proof enough that things outside the dungeon could drastically affect him.
Peter was frustrated this would be an unnecessary expense for him, since most cores did not normally start looking out until they had survived the integration into the intermediate division. However it looked like he might need to start it now. He did not believe that the weevil core would risk another direct attack, but it did not mean it would not mess with them in other ways.
Peter had a faint idea of how this game went. He would need to protect important heads of state or locations, to keep the country of Dawn from descending into chaos if they were assassinated. He would need to protect his local population ensuring ‘some monster’ did not cause problems. Then he would just have to learn, understand, and monitor the political environment outside. Right now he would make purely defensive moves, but in the future he might make plays against other dungeons himself.
“I will do it,” Delilah said, volunteering.
Peter balked at the thought. In truth she was perfect for the task. She could go into the alternate dimension, severely reducing the manna expenditure to maintain her outside the dungeon. She was humanoid which also reduced the expenditure. That and she was not particularly useful in their day to day life in the dungeon, but the thought of sending her out was terrible. One day she might just not come back.
“Perhaps we won’t have to play the full game yet, but I think at the very least we need to patrol the local area,” Khan spoke up. He was clearly not too enthused about the new requirement. There was no question who would likely be doing the patrols. The D tier dark elves would be an extremely cheap unit to maintain outside of the dungeon. He could then have them shoot a flare or something to inform units on guard at the dungeons entrance. Then a strike squad could be sent out.
Typically cores would only send out A or S tiers for a specific purpose, while B and C tiers did the daily reconnaissance. The weevil had paid a premium to send out A tiers for even the transit. The cost must have been even higher since they had traveled for the most part through the physical realm.
“I will do it,” Delilah said again with a challenging expression. Peter glared at her. He hated the idea, but he also knew she would insist on getting her way. Since S and A tiers were outside of the norm, she would be at the top of the food chain if she went out. He felt his stomach sink at the thought that one day she might go out for a mission and not return, but he also did not want to hold her back. She was clearly excited about the prospect. Her inner fire had been stoked at the idea.
Peter hesitantly nodded, before he voiced his idea for the patrols, signal flares, and strike teams. Glenda said she could work on single use items that the dark elves could use, and Delilah said she would coordinate their reconnaissance teams and further reaching missions. She was clearly excited about exploring the outside world, and perhaps causing a little chaos. Lord help him.
