Preparations for the next year began in earnest. Peter used the epic ‘free maelstrom’ support card to make a second armageddon dragon maelstrom. By the next congregation the two would produce 240 B tier armageddon dragons. Along with the holy armor dragons, he would get 360 B tiers for essentially free. He had just over 50 B tier survivors from the battle with tombstone which put him at or around 15 % of the B tier numbers Boris had predicted they would face.
As far as A tiers Peter could only hope to close the gap. To save resources he had decided he would summon using only A tier design cards. If he summoned about 50, it should be enough to beef up his forces, but Peter would not do that until the battle was confirmed, day of. God forbid another core like Temperance or somebody challenge him first.
His daily essence was holding steady at around 40,000, meaning he would collect about 17 million this year. He wanted to save at least 2 thirds of it for use for the battle, but he still wanted to make some future preparations. That and he wanted to lock some unit types down in case he lost the A tier originals. He would not use a resurrect to save anything other than his S tiers despite now having 4.
Peter built 5 vigil master maelstroms for just over 2.1 million essence guaranteeing 600 of the C tiers for the rest of time. They were just far too useful and versatile. Peter then built 2 maelstroms for the A(+) blink dragon, A rank holy knight, and A(+)half off hippo for just under 2.1 million essence. He would have loved to build more, but he was more worried about the upcoming battle. More than he had been for the confrontation with the undead. His dungeon capabilities were rising as if to meet the challenge, but it did not diminish the threat he was facing.
The treasure tapir was continuing to prove itself. It continued to find higher tier resources as well as to point out veins of lesser ore. The creature acted more excited the higher the tier a resource was or if there was a large quantity present, so anytime it started frantically clawing at the wall they knew they had something good.
The very next day after the post congregation summit it had helped to unearth a large quantity of tier 2 Cobalt. The blueish metal when worked properly was more durable than steel despite being slightly heavier. The real hold up was how to use it properly. It had taken the smiths quite a while to figure out a way to make use of the metal. Various forging techniques resulted in different end products.
If the Cobalt purity was too high, the end product was extremely heavy and far too brittle. Add a little iron, nickel, and other tier 1 alloys and the properties could change. Change the temperature of the fire, or how long the smith waited before quenching the sword or shield in water or in oil. Basically there were a million steps that the smiths could change that would result in a change for the final product. By the time they had used up all the tier 2 metal, they had some usable shields and swords, but they were still quite crude according to Greg. They would produce better equipment the longer the more they were able to experiment.
But Cobalt was only one of the many higher tier resources found. Dark crystal was actually more common despite it actually being a tier 3 resource, this was based on the magic mines environment of the dark wood. They found pockets of the resource every week or two although the pockets usually only contained a small amount of the resource. Still it was a wonder they had only stumbled onto a few pockets before the tapir. It was like they had been slightly out of phase, missing everything by a few feet.
Tier 2 true silver was another of the more common resources found in the mine although they found veins of it about a quarter as often as the dark crystal. However the amount of the resource mined and smelted into usable ingots was at least several times more relative to the dark crystal which was refined at the magic college.
They found a host of tier 2 gems, which were for the most part the same as standard tier 1 gems, just of higher quality. Peter almost felt like he was preparing for a wedding, when they started talking about gems' clarity, carat weight, and color. The last of which was usually the first indicator. There was say a green ruby which was for all intents and purposes still a ruby atomically at least, but the green tint occurred for one reason or another. In the specific case it was due to the gem being present near perhaps the most important find for the upcoming battle, magnesium.
The tier 1 metal was nothing by itself, but the vein with this green ruby had morphed into a tier 2 metal called enriched magnesium due to siphoning the fire potential from the ruby. Since magnesium is a metal that already burns it had great utility as a weapon. Gems had magic types they were better at holding, channeling, etcetera. It might be a bit hoaky, but rubies worked well with fire magic. Whatever god or happenstance that created this world had not been very original. Red gem goes well with fire. The other gems and other resources worked similarly with other magics.
Once the tier 2 magnesium was discovered, It actually did not take them long to produce more. They nearly ran out of ruby gems before Glenda discovered a way to bring back a ruby's potential with a slow infusion of magic along with a fire source. Their ability to make the enriched magnesium only became dependent on time and the amount of the base ore they could get their hands on. Since magnesium was something they had found and mined storing the ore in a pile for several years they had a lot of it.
By itself the magnesium would burn with a bright white light. They had already considered its use as a weapon. Against a standard human, it would have been very effective provided you could get it close enough or make contact, but by the time a unit hit even D tier its defenses were already pretty substantial. The enriched magnesium set a flame, would burn substantially hotter. It would not harm most A tiers or even the stronger B tiers unless there was substantial contact for a longer duration, but it should be quite effective against C tier’s and down. Perfect since they would be facing tens of thousands of them in their next battle.
It had not taken Greg long to build the delivery system which was just a catapult with a crude cobalt scoop head. The scoop head was made of pure cobalt to allow for as many launches as possible. The searing hot rocks would still damage the tough but brittle metal, but the cobalt would at least ensure a good number of launches unlike one made of iron which had a lower melting point.
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Greg went a step further making single use anti air rockets. They were a dangerous thing to use since if they were targeted or if there was a defect they would explode killing all those near, but they would also fire up splitting into hundreds of small burning projectiles. Hopefully they should be quite effective against the wasps Agatha was sure to have.
However despite having such a large quantity of the magnesium it did not go near as far as he had hoped when considering the numbers of weapons they were talking about. His units would not be able to continually saturate the air with it. They would have to be somewhat selective of its use, using it when the occasion called for it.
However it was during the end of the year review, where Peter became the most surprised. Gearhead and his clockwork subordinates had developed and built a rifle. Peter stared at it flabbergasted. Steam punk weapons were most definitely a thing amongst the dungeons, but they were by no means more powerful than any other way to power. An archer could be just as deadly as someone using some sort of plasma rifle, but there were also advantages to the rifle.
Delilah confidently shouldered the 1800’s looking bolt action rifle and fired. A purplish black bolt of energy surged out toward the far wall. Delilah could fire an arrow pretty far, a lot further than any archer ever had back on Earth. Peter could barely even cause the bowstring to quiver when pulling at it with all of his strength let alone draw it, but even her bow still had limitations based on the tier 2 dark wood it was made from. Delilah's arrows could only go perhaps 3 times further than something fired from a bow that regular humans like him could hope to draw back. Still this rifle could potentially go a lot further than that.
“How long have you been working on this,” Peter asked dumbfounded.
“Ever since the discovery of the dark crystals a few years ago,” came Gearhead’s curt reply.
Peter examined the rifle. A clip capable of carrying ten carefully cut dark crystals jutted from the bottom. The bolt action would pull one up. Then Delilah would charge it with manna causing a faint purple light to emit from the muzzle before she pulled the trigger sending a super charged crystal rocketing forward. Peter examined the dark purple crystals which had golden etchings on their dark surface.
“It takes a bit of effort to gauge how much manna a crystal can hold, since despite our efforts every crystal is slightly different from another. Not to mention they are pretty fragile to begin with. If a user charges too much it will explode in their hand.”
Peter remembered a point a few weeks ago where Delilah had both arms bandaged along with multiple wraps around her face. Those were only the ones that had been visible to him, and likely after they had been healed. It was evident that she had been the tester. Not too surprising since she was looking for a way to be of more use in battle. Still it was lucky she had not lost her other eye in the effort.
Peter did not mind his staff working secretly on their projects. They liked to surprise him with some new capability, and he did not want to begrudge them of that. However sometimes like now it led him to question that practice. What if the rifle exploding had killed her? He would not have likely been able to even revive her since he would not have been present, and he only had a minute to make the decision for a resurrect card.
Boris, unaware of his musing continued on. “To make the crystal rounds more stable and usable I was able to get Michael to inscribe several vigils on each round. Now the user can always put in the same amount of manna. As long as they fire soon after there should be little to no chance of a misfire. Although sometimes for a particularly bad piece of crystal ordinance it might explode midair, prematurely, before it hits its target.”
Peter sighed deeply. It was like they were literally shooting money. Speak nothing of the effort that went into cutting each crystal to shape and etching the sigils, each round was just slightly longer than his pointer finger, and at least as thick. He had seen what the typical dark crystal pocket looked like. They were basically large geodes. Even using one of the larger ones it might be difficult to get even 100 rounds out of one pocket of the crystal. Perhaps less considering that each round had to be one continuous piece.
Glenda and others from his staff had their own uses for the resource. Glenda was researching better ways to use the crystal for magic wands, staffs, or wearable jewelry. Already she had a large dark wood staff with one of the biggest crystals at its end. On top of that, there was the dark crystal collar worn by her familiar. The familiar was the exception since if its collar exploded it would reconstitute back to life, given enough time. Glenda still did not dare to use it for jewelry for herself or others. It was still a little bit too volatile for jewelry, which he guessed was what had led Gearhead to look at it for ordinance.
“How many of these do we have?” Peter asked finally. He guessed this was a suitable use as any.
“Just this one rifle for this year. Plus she is the only one trained in its use,” Gearhead indicated Delilah.
“And how powerful is it?”
“Based on our current standard round it should be quite capable of bringing down the average B tier if it is shot from close enough. Might be able to even kill an A tier if fired from point blank and the round does not pierce through the unit entirely,” Boris stated confidently.
Delilah made an exploding hand gesture. The rounds apparently exploded at the end of their flight, not necessarily on first contact. “And by last count we have 80 rounds,” Delilah said smiling.
Peter remembered how only a year ago she had been so downcast based on her feelings of inadequacy when it came to future battles. At that point he had not even begun to think that something suitable would be created in the span of a year. He would be all for it, since it was more of a long ranged weapon. It should keep her out of the thick of it, while allowing her to fight.
“What about the alternate dimension? Does it work there?” Peter asked. He knew that things operated under slightly different principals there. Some energy attacks would fizzle out faster. It was a known disadvantage of steampunk-like weapons.
“The rounds fly true, at least as far as I could shoot an arrow. After that they often slowly bend off in some random direction. However the sigils fare far better, at least compared to when in the physical realm. A lot of good that does us. Doesn’t mean much since the range is so limited for these rounds but it would likely hold true for other things with sigils as well,” Delilah admitted.
“So potentially you could use the other dimension to move to different spots to snipe from in the physical realm,” Peter said stroking his chin. The premise was at least sound. Delilah could move between the dimensions in a fraction of a second. She would only be vulnerable for the time it took to charge a round. Which seemed to be about 5 to 6 seconds. At least for the first few seconds she might go unnoticed since she appeared out of nowhere, but once that purple light started to build at the muzzle end it would be sure to draw some attention.
“At least for this year, you will have to continue to command our alternate dimension defenses. You can come into the physical realm when it is secure. Hopefully that will give Gearhead the field data I’m sure he is eager to collect,” Peter determined finally. Both were fine with that.
