Peter had 18 million essence to spend. It sounded like a lot, but assuming that both the other two dungeons had nearly a full 2 years worth, it was basically only 25% of that of his enemies would have earned. However, the maelstrom units would make up some of the difference as would random spawns he had taken from his collection dungeon. The spawns did not amount to much, and the adventurers might wonder why the next day was light on monsters, but Peter would make the move from now on. Another few hundred C and D tiers that he could use as fodder for no extra cost. It was a wonder he had not decided on this in the past.
Peter decided to use 8 million to summon 80 A tiers using design type cards. He needed to supplement his elites. He also needed a big army, so he could not summon too many. These would be all he got, since he did not have any original cards to fall back on in this battle. Peter used 3 million to summon 300 more B tiers bringing him over 1,000 in total. He used another 4 million to summon 8,000 C tiers, giving him over 18,000 in total. He had already supplemented the few D tier unit types over the year, and an extra 1 million to summon 10,000 D tiers. It left him with 2 million in reserve to use during the course of the battle. He was pretty sure he would need it to win this battle.
Allister and Bones might feel like they had him pegged, but even from last year his capabilities were completely different. The attack from weevil had allowed him to come a long way in only a year’s time. Peter also had personally seen Allister’s strategy and dungeon, and Predator had fought bones so hopefully he should have a good idea on what he could expect.
Since neither undead had a particularly good showing in battle wins, Peter was not expecting too many S tiers. Allister had 1 that had been killed, but potentially was resurrected. There had not been any indication that Bones had any. Still with 5, Peter was pretty confident he would have the advantage there. The only area where he would likely have numerical superiority, so he planned to milk them for all they were worth. He just had to hope none of them died since he did not have a single resurrect left.
As the counter bottomed out, Khan could not help but to put in one last snappy remark. He muttered to himself, but loud enough to ensure Peter was just able to hear. “Foolish… we’re going to be outnumbered 3 to 1.”
Peter rolled his eyes as the battle started. In 5 years they would likely be facing a dungeon with 10 or 20 years of preparation compared to just their 2, year 10 and year 11. Not to mention that most if not all of the essence from one of those years would be headed to building 40 floors for each of his two dungeons. If he could not deal with this amount of disparity against rookie dungeons how would he be able to face the imbalance with more experienced dungeons. That plus the potential rewards he could get for beating 2 dungeons…
Peter glanced at the new counter counting down from 13 hours. That was another major factor, that he would not have enough time to take down both dungeons. The battle duration only went up by 2 hours every year for rookie dungeons. It had been 1 hour for the tutorial. Now he only had 13 to defend, kill tens of thousands of undead, and destroy 2 dungeons.
That being considered, Peter still needed to play this carefully. He wondered what Allister and Bones were thinking when the battle started and his forces did not enter either of their dungeons. The two’s headquarters would be linked so they could strategize throughout the battle, so they would know. Hopefully, they believed that he had been full of false bravado and that they had successfully called his bluff. The first step was to destroy as much of their army in his dungeon as possible. Which would not only give him more essence, but would give him the defensive advantage. He hoped they sent in as much as possible.
Thousands of C tier undead flowed into his dungeon. They found themselves immediately beset by 50 various freshly summoned A tiers who reaped them by the dozens. Further back on the second level a 100 C tier and 1 A tier fairies started summoning units. Unfortunately, there was a restriction preventing them from starting the process until the second the battle began.
A minute from now 100 D tiers would be brought in to join the battle. The C tier fairies could likely keep it up for 2 or 3 rounds with the help of manna recovery potions. In ten minutes the A tier fairy would summon another random A tier. The fairies would fall back as required to stay well ahead of the battle and keep the summons coming.
The undead responded quickly to the elites culling their vanguard. Undead scouts dipped back through announcing the situation. Moments later A and B tiers came out in mass. Peter's tiers only fought back for less than half a minute before retreating into the one tunnel. Not a single elite from either side had fallen, but a few were seriously wounded even from that much.
A physical sigil barrier popped up to cover the tunnel’s mouth. Michael and Merlin were further back in the tunnel sitting on top of 2 C tier Saber bears. Michael’s sigil only lasted a couple of seconds, friendly units had passed through without being affected, but enemies had slammed into the barrier. Seconds later the barrier sigil was torn and the undead poured into the tunnel. The sigil had allowed the friendly elites to gain some separation, and the 2 seconds was enough to allow Merlin to activate the trap.
Several undead A tiers crossed over a magical pressure plate, magical projectiles exploded from above, a good four A tiers. Like comets magical bullets of energy collided with bone and rotting flesh. Three of the A tiers were killed outright. Another skeleton had an entire side of ribs ripped away along with the opposite arm. The rest of the undead froze for a few seconds to evaluate allowing his A tiers more time to retreat.
In the alternate realm pale ghasts supported by the D tier dark elves were fighting a horde of undead. The undead side did not bring out elites, so neither did his side. Like for the majority of his past battles, Peter was planning on ceding his first 4 floors quite easily. This time there was a reason other than testing the enemy forces. He needed the undead to bring in as much of their forces as possible. Then hopefully, they would even send in more reserves from their dungeons.
The whole first tunnel was full of magical traps, and Merlin and Michael and their mounts would keep in front of the forces to arm them all. However, the undead did not heedlessly surge forward, nor take the time to disarm. It took fifteen seconds, but after the activation of the second trap killing another enemy A tier, the undead had just elected to bring forward C tier fodder to activate the traps. Merlin’s traps were not near sophisticated enough to discern or choose targets. Enough mass entered the space over them or a pressure plate triggered and it would go off.
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The C tier undead started activating the traps so fast in quick succession that Merlin had to stop activating the ones in the later half as Michael and he had to force their mounts forward to keep ahead of the battle. They popped out of the tunnel right and found themselves retreating among dozens of A tiers who had engaged the forces coming from the other direction. The undead had walked along the bottom of the first room’s pool of water emerging into another path that also led to the final chamber. It was a far shorter path.
The A tiers fought, blooding the undead ranks for a half minute as the pale ghasts and dark elves retreated out of the alternate dimension and through the portal to the second floor. Peter lost 2 A tiers during this stand, but they had killed 3 more A tiers as well. The undead were hot on the friendly elites' heels when they came onto the second floor. The first thing they ran into was the guardian spirit who was possessing a giant golem made mostly of cobalt with only weaker more pliable metals at the joints.
Glenda and his two new elite mages along with their corresponding C tiers immediately began their support. The A tier undead floundered under the sudden high level defense. Even when a powerful zombie mage and a lich came onto the scene they were still grossly overwhelmed. A minute later more high tier undead mages arrived, only to find the defenders evaporating into the tunnels in full retreat. Once again magical traps were set after the last friendlies passed over.
Peter was quite satisfied. They had killed 21 more A tiers along with 2 mages, and his side had not lost a single elite other than those first 2. However the enemy was adapting to the magical traps and hit and run tactics from his elite. On the third floor, Peter lost 8 A tiers while only killing 13 of the enemy elites. On the fourth floor, both sides lost 5 each.
Then came the fifth floor. The friendly elites retreated across the stone lily pads as a good 1,000 D tiers stalled the enemy already the fairies were well onto the sixth floor. The A tier was working on his fifth A tier summon. The C Tiers were now taking a break. They would be able to do another full round of 2 or 3 D tiers a piece in a few hours.
Ballista started firing as soon as the undead entered. Even an A tier would suffer a grievous wound if hit directly by one of the large bolts. Lower tiers were typically killed outright if struck center mass. Undead lichs and mages started throwing up magical barriers to at least keep their forces protected from the magic raining down from the other side. Weaker mages were throwing up smaller magic shields to protect the valuable undead mages from the physical bolts.
Undead immediately started crossing over what looked like unoccupied stone columns. Halfway however the undead at the front found themselves landing in tar. Peter had put a line of B tier nightmarish creations on the platforms. They were difficult to discern in the darkened room, especially since the undead had mainly been focusing on the far platform where the spells and bolts were coming from.
The battle ground to a half as the undead found themselves unable to progress forward through the line of B tier tar slimes that were difficult to kill by the non mage units that had been crossing over. The undead mages back on the platform had hundreds of undead scattered on the various stone platforms leading up to the line. Peter had basically caused a traffic jam, and even the few A tier undead that had been surging forward to quickly take the opposite platform found themselves entangled. They were then easy pickings for his mages.
The stalemate continued as the mages on both sides kept their platforms safe, but Peter’s C tier mages picked off the undead spread out across the stone lily pads with impunity. The first attempt to break the stalemate came from the alternate dimension. Nearly 2 dozen A tiers ran across the stone columns before slamming into the spectral armors arrayed to hold the last layer. Delilah’s rifle blasted a nearly intangible spirit near point blank as it went right over the line. Along with dozens of tier 2 dark wood arrows the spirit fell apart into the ether. B tier spirit catcher dragons started intercepting others, which they proved to be extremely effective against. Peter was pleased to see that 2 or 3 of the B tiers could easily deal with a single A tier. A very good thing since he had not divested as heavily in the alternate realm expecting this.
The fifty spectral armors holding the line fell apart quite quickly, allowing the undead A tiers and the rest of their army through. The spirit guardian stepped forward. It was its second body, the first having been destroyed several floors ago. The spirit could easily come back into the fight with only about a 30 minute limit to inhabit a fresh body. This golem body along with all the rest had the altered alternate dimension anklets built into them. Peter did not have the resources to build new ones himself, but he had hundreds courtesy of the weevil attack.
The A tier pale ghast and skeletal wraith knight also stepped forward along with another wave of spectral armors. The spirit catcher and blink dragons supported from above. The undead forces in the dimension were taking horrible losses thanks to waves of arrows and a sturdy line defense. Still with time the greater number of alternate dimension elites would succeed.
It apparently was not fast enough, as the undead played a card they had likely been saving. Hundreds of flying units entered the fifth floor streaking through the upper portion of the floor entrance. Peter analyzed one after another. Vampires… There were a handful of A tiers, but hundreds of C tiers. They started crossing the room quite quickly. Merlin and his C tier wizard subordinate's hands started waving and unison and a call of ‘cease fire’ echoed through the chamber. Ballista bolts stopped flying as did arrows. The A tier vampires outpaced the rest, but the horde of living undead was close on their heels.
None of them noticed the dark crystals that soon flared with purple light. The elites made it there first triggering the trap. Purple laser like lights flared all the way through the airspace from both sides, creating an ‘entrapment’ of purple lines. They only existed for a few seconds each, but the purple crystals continued to flare to life, working their way back toward the enemies platform cutting through everything in the air. Peter was not sure how many were killed outright, but many of them went down, their wings cut to ribbons. Only a handful of the hundreds had nimbly dodged through the web of lasers, and they had all been at the back of the room closer to their own platform. Most of those had simply ducked down below the lowest lasers since Merlin had purposely not installed them to ensure they would not hit the traffic jam of undead stuck across the platforms. However, the air attack was effectively stopped with that one trap.
“Haha… Well it was effective, but that was an extremely expensive trap,” Khan mumbled.
Peter sighed. The guy was right, but could he not just be happy for once. Sure they had just blown 1,500 dark crystals in that one burst, but he had stopped a wave of air troops that would have quickly turned things around. Peter checked the data his E tier clockworks were furiously inputting. They were positive that there had been 3 A tiers since they had outpaced the rest, but their best estimate was around 400 C tiers for the swarm that followed. It sounded like a decent number, but they had burnt through most of their dark crystal reserve. In contrast Merlin had only used around 500 dark crystals for all his other magical traps. Only about 300 of those remained, in fact they were all in one location, right under his defender’s feet, but Peter did not plan to blow them anytime soon.
The floor was held for another 10 minutes. The alternate realm defenses broke first resulting in a bit of a chaotic retreat. Peter lost at least 100 C tier warlocks and mages along with hundreds of others. Once the allied support was lost it was not too difficult to bring up undead mages to deal with the B tier nightmarish creations. Still the tar slimes kept the undead from proceeding for several minutes allowing his sixth floor defenses to get into place.
