Peter stared over the pool of water, watching the cork that sat upon the ripple less water. The glass smooth sheen of the water was the only thing that was wrong with the picture, but inside a dungeon there was no moon or wind to do anything to upset the still surface. That and the mini C tier dryad earth striders who watched from the edge of the woods. A bit creepy, but they were harmless, just resting in between using their empower to grow the dark wood trees or other herbs.

  Peter was just glad to be back to fishing. He had practically grown up with a fishing pole in hand, and had literally died with one in hand. There had been little point in trying it before now. There was not enough variance in the dungeon summoned F tier fish. It would have basically felt like catching the same fish over and over, but now N’terrin had successfully bred a couple different varieties of Tier F dungeon fish: mud skimmer and brown trout. Not only could he catch fish that were younger than the adult version, he had also caught specimens up to 30% larger than the original summon the fish had been bred off. Peter had ongoing personnel records for length and weight for both types.

  In the future, he would like to have a good dozen different types, several more fish types were still actively attempted to be bred. It had taken N’terrin nearly half a year to get these two, and it had only been 4 weeks since his little fishing pool had been stocked. Once bred for the first time the bred spawn bred further a lot faster than dungeon summoned units. Then through the extra ambient essence they grew quite rapidly and bred anew. Peter had pulled out quite a few fish already, and the stock did not seem much diminished.

  Peter had not eaten them himself, they were quite nasty when he had tried, but they could be fed to many of the other dungeon unit species whose taste was far less discerning. Hopefully, in a few more months he could have 3 times the amount of fish. It would require him to increase the size of his little fishing pond, but he could double the size just by taking down about 5 of the dark wood trees. Years from now the pool could very well be 10 times the size as it was now without making much of a dent in the forrest, and he would make other pools on other floors But he was content for now.

  “I was told that I could find you here.”

  Peter immediately turned, recognizing the voice instantly. It was Delilah, back finally after her first mission out into the world. She had been out over 8 weeks, along with a handful of D tier one offs. Peter had expected her to be gone a while, but had not imagined she would be gone that long. Still at least he had known she and her team was alive based on the essence they were burning through each day. Still he had never been completely at ease. It was also possible for units outside the dungeon to be captured and interrogated. The thought of her being tortured…

  Peter dropped his simple wooden pole and gave her a hug, which she returned after a few seconds. “You’ve missed quite a bit.”

  “I know, I have been back for a couple of hours. Checked in with everyone before being told that you might be out here. What exactly are you doing?”

  Peter took several minutes talking to her about the joys of fishing. Her eyes glazed over midway. “I don’t know, it seems inefficient,” She said finally.

  “You don’t just do it to catch meat. There is the thrill when something is on the line, and you can constantly try to break personal records for the biggest fish. Not even mentioning how much good thinking you can get done,” Peter started excitedly.

  “Clearly, I can’t imagine where my mind could wander from doing something so boring,” she said, rolling her eyes.

  “How was the trip?”

  “Good, I found out a lot of things that should make future forays much easier, including obtaining a map of Dawn and a few other trinkets. I took a map from the palace,” Delilah said, adding that last part with a devilish smile. She took out a rolled up scroll from her satchel.

  Much to Delilah’s dismay, Peter lit a lantern so that he could actually see the map. The map was table size and appeared to include all the major cities and settlements in the country as well as the larger geographical features such as mountain ranges and larger bodies of water. As far as how dawn compared to other countries, Peter could not tell much. The recognized boundaries for the two other countries were near the sides of the map. A few foreign cities near the border were marked, but otherwise there was just the name of the countries.

  Dawn was north of Warsaw, but west of another country called Targas. Although a mountain range came in between Dawn and Targas. The west sea elves who were apart of Dawn were nestled against the only major body of water labeled the Northern sea. Dawn was surrounded by the Bear claw mountains to the north and east, a sea to the west, and Warsaw to the south. Warsaw apparently was quite a bit bigger, extending under the sea and a bit further to the east where they also shared a border with Targas.

  “The weevil dungeon should be around here,” Delilah poked a spot near the Warsaw-Targas border. “Her army likely made their way around along the mountains to hit us here.” Delilah’s finger stopped near the east side of the map. “Our dungeon is somewhere around her.”

  There was no map scale, but Peter guessed that there was a good 3 to 4 hundred miles in between themselves and the weevil core’s dungeon. Not too far considering that the A tier weevils could likely cover at least a good 10 to 15 miles an hour even over rough terrain. With nearly 30 hours between getting back from the congregation and the attack, there had been plenty of time for the army to cover the distance.

  Still they would have had to set out near immediately. Peter tapped the map as he thought about it. They had all those alternate dimension anklets ready to go. Either the Weevil core had been preparing this for a while, or had always had the capability of sending an army out short notice. Peter was leaning toward the former since sending armies outside the dungeon was not normal. Which meant… Perhaps Weevil had already been prepping for this for at least a year. Maybe Agatha had arranged it, when she found out Weevil was in marching distance from them. Or perhaps there were other reasons…

  Delilah broke his train of thought. “Above the bear claw mountains is a large valley, mostly a tundra environment as far as I could tell. There are a few nomadic types that live there in the north. Inside the ‘Claw’ mountains there are some dwarven clans. Some of them already trickle down into the weevil dungeon, so we will likely see some as well once word gets to them. There is not much trade between them and the countries so it is not surprising they have not heard of us yet.”

  Peter followed along. The mountain range being called Bear claw made sense. They ran up and over the northern part of the sea and then straight across forming the northern boundary of Dawn, before they curled down at the end between Warsaw and Targas. A long foot with a claw at the end, and Dawn was the little country right under the claw.

  “Primarily the Dawn people and government are concerned with Warsaw. Dawn broke off over 300 years ago based on the wealth gained from another dungeon that disappeared after about 100 years. The frictional relationship between Warsaw and Targas as well as countries to the west and south are the only reason Warsaw did not take them back over. Even the separation occurred while Warsaw was fighting a major war on their southern border.”

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  Peter nodded. It was good to know. They would need to ensure their home country, Dawn, was stable to ensure they were not affected.

  “But…that is not what you will find most interesting,” Delilah said with a smug grin. “There are a few other dungeons near us. Another demon dungeon is located in the southern part of Warsaw. The humans don’t know which core it belongs to of course, but I know that it is in the centurion division since it has been around for centuries. Then there is even a dungeon in Targas. Guess who that one belongs to…” Her grin widened.

  Peter’s mind raced between opponents, friendly cores, and trading partners. It could literally be any other dungeon. He gave her the look to proceed.

  “Lets just say, we finally have a way to approach and acquire cards from the final black lister,” Delilah said conspiratorially.

  Peter tapped the map, his mind whirling. He had given up on being able to obtain the only plant type dungeon in the centurion division. The third and final blacklisted dungeon he had no way to approach since the other core sat off by itself. There was nothing preventing them from trading during the rest of the year, while in Terra. Still it might be a bit tricky, establishing contact and negotiating. Then there was also the fact that any tree units would be so obviously from the Elm core. If he did acquire cards, he would not even begin to be able to show units summoned by them.

  There were only four other living dungeons in the intermediate division, neither was a tree. There was Vine (25) who he had traded with once before early on. Then there were two others, but they had nestled themselves in with major factions. Peter had meant to approach Vine again for higher tier cards, but just had not gotten around to it. The other three plant types were impossible to approach.

  Other than that, Peter had consigned himself to hope there would be a core of the plant type in future year groups. Few ever picked one. Not a single core had chosen the type in the current rookie year group. Which made sense, since when you thought about monsters you rarely thought about force based on plants. It was unfortunate for Peter, since it would be difficult to progress his dungeon in that area, but there was not much he could do.

  Delilah soon rolled the map back up. Peter would have it put inside the fishbowl later. “Did you like my new summons?”

  “Other than myself perhaps,” She said, highlighting her face with both hands. “Merlin might just be the most useful person you have summoned so far. Looks like he had totally overturned things.

  “Yeah, a pleasant surprise. I thought it would be some bad ass wizard when I summoned him. After I realized he was not, I summoned two more mages. Unlike Glenda we can spam the crap out of them,” Peter said, picking back up his pole.

  Peter had summoned two more A tiers after Merlin, followed by 5 maelstroms for each. The remaining 14.5 million essence he had kept in his back pocket, just in case Weevil decided to send another army or at least until Delilah returned with more information. He perked up at the thought that he would get to summon more units today.

  Cologne Mage (Design, Magic, Earth) A: ATT: A (-), DEF: A , SPE: A (+)

  Galactic Warlock (Design, Cosmic, Diamond) A (+): ATT: A (+), DEF: A (-) , SPE: A (+)

  The cologne race was basically a humanoid cat, reminiscent of something that might be found on Egyptian hieroglyphs. The unit was a standard earth mage. It could manipulate earth or even form earthen spears out of nothing. The spears would soon break down back into the ether, but they would be good for an attack. Obviously manipulating actual earth was usually far more manna efficient than pulling stone out from a typical cavern based floor, so Peter would need to take that fact into account when using them.

  As far as the Galactic Warlock, the galactic part Peter assumed referred to the white plasma energy that the unit could wield. The warlock actually belonged to the race called the Brilliant. A broad race that encompassed any bejeweled being. The female warlock elite however had gray skin and purple hair. The only jewel Peter saw was the single diamond embedded in her forehead. Other than her hair color, her skin being gray instead of a light tan, she was pretty similar to the diamond type core.

  The warlock was the more powerful of the two. Apparently, she had manna reserves on par with Glenda, as long as Glenda’s familiar was not taken into account. The diamond acted like a greater reservoir, so despite only having a A (+) rank in her special attribute versus Glenda’s S (-) she had the same amount of manna. However the warlock was another innate type like Delilah so would be far less helpful throughout the rest of the year. Whereas the new cat man could make some minor contributions in the magic college.

  Minor being the keyword. Like Delilah had said, Merlin had turned things over. He was currently serving somewhere in between the engineering and magic colleges, but he also could make contributions in other areas including working with Khan. The guy being able to see the cause and effect of various processes made him a ridiculously good researcher. It was to the point where even if he was a bad ass fighter, Peter would not send him out. If he did he would have to save a resurrect for him.

  Glenda had never really made progress in several years, establishing levels for enchantments and getting some up to level 3. She had gotten an enchantment up to level 5, but that was thanks to using a better tier 2 material, cobalt. Given enough time perhaps she would have progressed further, but Merlin had done so in less than a week.

  First of all the guy had scrapped her current enchantment leveling system. Reestablishing levels that according to him made more sense. The levels were stronger with the ranges in between being equal, with 5 levels maxing out an enchantment for a tier, which was approximately a full tier. The enchantments seemingly affected the base material they were on like some sort of coefficient. During the same week, the wizard already had new level 5 enchantments for several tier 1 materials including arrow heads, shields, and swords.

  Over the last few weeks, he had been working with tier 2 materials, the dark wood and cobalt and already had a few dark wood enchantments up to 10. The cobalt enchantments were far lower at level 7, which according to Merlin was his limit until the smiths found better allows and smithing techniques.

  Regardless, their tier 2 dark wood arrows now had a strong level 5 piercing enchantment based on the masterwork shield piercing spear he had received from his last rare equipment card. The level of the piercing enchantment was stuck to 5 until they used better metal alloys for the arrowheads. Still it was an improvement from what they had.

  Merlin had also improved upon Glenda’s design for the beast augmentation spike, although the fairly fragile dark crystal would not hold up too much more and remain stable. It was a sizable improvement, although it did not fix the exploding vulnerability if the crystal was actually hit. Still a beast at the peak of the A tier could at the very least physically compete with something at the lower end of the S tier and so on.

  As far as the alternate dimension anklets they had acquired from the weevil’s attack, Merlin had put them aside saying they did not have the right materials to duplicate them with any reliability.

  Once again the guy was not restricted to enchanted equipment. Khan was pulling the guy aside daily to help him verify new combinations and what would result. According to Khan he cut off days of work every day when he came to observe for a few hours.

  The appearance of the guy was the start of what Peter referred to as his dungeon’s industrial revolution. In less than two months he had mainly taken on and improved other’s projects. Now the guy was moving forward with his own.

  The only downside was that Merlin’s one offs were not nearly as capable. They were still intelligent, so would be useful. However, their special ability was not near the level of the original. Still they were more valuable researchers on average than the other mage types. Pretty soon the gray skinned wizards would have their hands in all facets of his dungeon.

  Peter’s musings were interrupted by Delilah’s yawn. “I got on a different time schedule while I was out there, so I was thinking about going to sleep. You can keep fishing or… you’re welcome to join me.” Delilah started sauntering away.

  Peter did not even bother to take the cork out of the water. He dropped the pole to follow. He could fish or summon new units later. Ten minutes later, they were in his bed with her cuddled up on him. ‘Oh, she meant actually sleeping,’ Peter thought frustratedly.

  There was no doubt in his mind that she had done it on purpose. Just another of her games. He sighed, well this was still nice. Perhaps she had given in a little bit having not seen him for 2 months. Perhaps there was something to the ‘absence that makes the heart grow fonder’ adage.