The tactic was far from revolutionary. Most of the older dungeons actively prepared against it, maintaining both a rear guard for their army and guards for the dungeon entrance. This would give them forewarning as well as to let them know in advance about an attack from behind. Peter did not know whether it was from cockiness or inexperience, but Agatha had definitely not done the latter. His horde of beasts quickly passed through floor after floor. A good thing because things were not going in their favor at the front. The white spiders had reappeared and were casting curses directed at Peter’s A tiers, who were already outnumbered. Michael and his subordinates struggled to aid them all. They were by no means succumbing quickly to the curse’s effects, but being weakened in the battle with other A tiers made them extremely vulnerable.
Two moves kept them alive. The first was that Delilah sent a good chunk of the blink and phantasmal dragons to bypass the enemy and attack the white spiders directly which cut the curses off at their source. The second move was the two S tier dragons entering the fray. The armageddon dragon had recovered enough void energy to cull 2 more of the white hex casting spiders with his void beam before it became entangled in a swarm of A tier enemies. The holy armor dragon faced an equal amount of opposition although its defenses allowed it to withstand them better.
A moment later a purple streak flared from the room's corner taking out a B tier enemy. Delilah had also abandoned the alternate dimension leaving things in the spectral armor's hands. It took less than a minute for the enemy to capitalize. The moth A tier and the spectral spider A tier both made their appearance. The A tier spectral suit came forward to meet them both.
The spider slammed against its shield even as the armor’s sword came up scattering a ball of acid shot by the elite moth over them both. The sword continued down severing a leg before moving forward to stab the lunging spider. The sword sank all the way to the hilt, even as the spider’s fangs sank into the armor’s shoulder plate. The spider began to pry and tear, but it did not get far before the armor pushed the spider body away with its shield. The spider was strong however. Its braced back legs redoubled its efforts forcing it up and over its enemy. The spider was going to use its weight to bear the reanimated armor down. All while the moth came in from behind and started savaging the back plate and helmet.
Things looked pretty grim for the armor until a sudden twirl removed the sword, before bringing it up and around bisecting the A tier moth in one cut. It allowed the spider to savage the armor further, but the armor simply dropped its shield and started pummeling the underside of the spider’s head. After two uppercuts pulp started leaking. A half dozen more and the spider sagged briefly before the armor tossed it aside. All the enemy elites dealt with, the alternate dimension was effectively his.
But Peter felt far from comfortable. Only seconds later, Boris got his attention pointing to the opposite screen. The S tier armageddon dragon had fallen under its enemies. Peter wasted no time using a resurrected card. Less than five minutes later, the holy armor dragon succumbed as well, forcing Peter to expend a second one. The resurrect card had to be used within one minute of their deaths, but it did not bring the units back immediately. It would take 24 hours, which for rookie dungeon battles meant they would not be able to return to the fight. Still they were too valuable to lose for good here.
The number of his remaining A tiers and their B tier support also dwindling, things would have started to look hopeless if not for the appearance of the beast army. They were currently jumping from stone pad to stone pad over the water on the fifth floor. Agatha did not have a rearguard ready to protect the back of her forces, just elite units held in reserve. More importantly Peter saw that there was indeed an end to the seemingly endless insect and spider forces as the beasts broke onto the sixth floor. There were still thousands waiting to enter the seventh floor entrance.
They had less than half a minute to prepare once they realized that a horde of beasts was coming up from behind. The murder crow unit broke into a thousand plus, normal sized crows that quickly moved deep into the enemies ranks. The crows raked their claws over anything that moved. Every second some were caught, but even more whipped through a tangle of swinging bug appendages as they maneuvered to rake their claws against the main bodies. There was no chance of him losing the A tier since a small fraction had separated to the rear. Enough to reconstitute the murder crow.
The front ranks of the beasts had been led by the two A tier bull types. Like a snow plow they slammed into the A tiers that had stepped up to stop them. There were not too many A tiers, maybe 10 along with a couple hundred B tiers. The bulls continued on throwing them aside their charge barely slowed. Hundreds of C tier bulls followed in their wake creating a nearly unstoppable wedge. Rage tigers, canines, and bears came behind ripping into enemies who had been cast aside.
An A tier dragon fly had sped around to the side before cutting back to attack some of the beast A tiers from behind, but it was tackled mid approach by the near equally fast blink dragon. The two soon tumbled through the air as they tore at one another. There were not too many other A tiers, meaning Agatha had committed nearly all of them to the seventh floor. It looked like Boris' lower estimate of 150 A tiers was closer to being true. By all accounts the number of B tiers was on the lower side as well. C tiers wise Peter did not even know. Likely they had already killed more than 10,000 plus of them, let alone the D tiers.
Still it was all clear that their enemy had not outnumbered them nearly as much as Boris fear projections had hinted they might. Unexpected expenditures had surely come up for Agatha the same as it had for them. A good thing too since they were already struggling.
The matchups however started concluding, with the results clearly showing why insect dungeons usually relied on higher numbers. The blink dragon despite not being the best of fighters managed to win its dogfight with the dragonfly although the dragon’s wounds forced it to fall back from the battle. Gnther and his tempest fowl had started the fight on the seventh taking on seven A tier wasps. While both sides air underlings fought to the sides of their air currents. Gnther and his mount had somehow come out on top.
The spectral armor had rampaged along killing the B tier’s in the alternate dimension, truly cinching that sides victory. Without break the tireless armor popped into the physical realm to help out.
The A tiers Peter had summoned specifically for the fight were nearly all gone. Only a few struggled on. The C tiers had fallen to a fall back point, but were under pressure of collapsing. Things would look completely grim for the seventh floor, if the beast forces did not break through. There were still plenty of enemies alive on the sixth floor, but more than half of the beasts had cut right through them and continued to the true fight.
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The A tier Rage tiger spit out black blood as several white spiders cursed it, but the tiger continued on hacking and slicing with such ferocity that the spider lost legs or bits of exoskeleton continually until it died ten seconds later. The tiger continued on to the next spider. It was basically a berserker unit that seemingly did not care that black blood flowed freely from its maw.
Then five A tiers including the two bears, bulls, and single canine met a clump of A tier enemies returning to put a stop to the spectral armor who was seemingly impervious to the spider's curses. More than twice outnumbered, a bitter battle began. The C tier beasts joined in on the flanks as well as to meet the lower tier insects that had come back to help. Glenda was finally back into the fight, but she was struggling just to maintain the focus of several A tier mages.
It took less than five minutes before the battle's outcome became all too obvious. Once again the spectral armor stood victorious, but it was a step away from having been turned into scrap. Presumptively if it had taken enough damage it would just collapse into parts. Peter could only assume that the armor had been pushed close to that point. However, the armor was one of the only ones. All those A tier beasts that he had built an entire beast army around had fallen. Only three remained including Glenda’s familiar, the murder crow whose remnants had fled to recover, and the tempest fowl, who flew victoriously in control of the skies along with her sky gnome rider. The only other elites were Glenda, Michael, and Delilah.
Once all the enemy remnants were cleaned up, Peter took stock of his forces. Other than his elites he had less than 2,000 units, most of them C tier and down. Many of them were wounded. Half of that number were the alternate dimension units who had fared much better through the battle. The largest number of their casualties occurred from joining the fight in the physical realm including his only other alternate dimension A tier, phantasm dragon.
Peter was hesitant to move forward with such a force, but it was not as if he could resist trying for the win. Instead he gave Glenda several hours to rest and recover. Peter considered burning through some original cards, but eventually just settled with using up some of the 50 ember and ape B tier cards he had acquired last year. Hopefully, Agatha had not held back too many elites.
When his attack began Peter almost laughed. Likely, Agatha had a fairly formidable defense at the beginning of the battle. Then likely she had pulled from them to join the attack. In the end she had maybe 20 A tiers and five times as many B tiers, in addition to thousands of C tiers. By numbers and tiers it would have still seemed that Agatha’s forces were superior, but his units were generally better and fought together with coordinated efforts. That and they controlled the alternate dimension entirely. Agatha’s presence in the other realm just was not as deep.
Peter had lost a lot of units in the battle, but after resurrecting his 2 S tiers the only two casualties that really mattered were the phantasm dragon and the holy knight. Peter had once again lost his ability to create one offs to spam troops for his physical realm infantry. He would also need a replacement for the phantasm dragon since the blink dragon one offs were just too weak in a melee despite their other uses. Peter had felt tempted at using a resurrect card, but he had resisted. He only had 2 more.
Peter dismissed it from his mind to see what he had gained.
[Dungeon battle awards: Battle essence collected: 3,285,466
Win Rewards: 3,500,000 essence, 50 support card packs, 1 support card unlock, 1 spare dungeon core, 5 A tier long leg spider type cards
Rookie battle condition met, ‘kill 100,000 units as a rookie dungeon’: 1 S tier Design type card
Rookie battle condition met, ‘participate in 5 dungeon battles as a a rookie dungeon’: 1 S tier Design type card
Rookie battle condition met, ‘win 5 dungeon battles as a rookie dungeon’: 3,000,000 essence.
Rookie battle condition met, ‘fight and win 5 consecutive years worth of dungeon battles’: 2 user choice cards.]
Peter was blown away he had met 4 conditions, only two of which he had somewhat expected. He had of course expected the ‘win 5 battles in a row achievement’, although its rewards was perhaps the worst of the lot only helping to replenish a fraction of the essence he had actually spent. However, he now had quite a nice bit of pocket change since he also had 6.7 million essence from the standard reward and the rebate for units killed inside his dungeon.
Peter had also expected the ‘5 consecutive win’ condition despite not getting it for 4 wins the year prior. The surprise conditions were ‘killing 100,000 units’ and ‘participating in 5 battles’. The prizes for both were great, proving it paid to battle. Peter only stood there smiling stupidly for a minute before he eagerly continued on. Who was to say he would not get something else good.
Peter first used his card unlock, putting him at 15 available support cards. He was now half way to the max of 20 cards. After that he could start replacing cards with better cards although he could at most increase a card by one rarity each time. Other than tripplification, Peter planned to replace all of his common options, and then most of his uncommon cards, which might take him all the way up to the point where he was ready to fight one of the millennials. For now, he would open a 3rd epic card. After all, if he did get something good, he had 2 user choice cards he could use it on.
Random S tier type card (E)
Spare core (E)
Add S tier Feature to unit (E)
From the get go, Peter could dismiss the spare core option. It was not even the first time he had been offered it, and he now had 4 or them.
The random S tier type card was the epic version of the one he had been offered last time and had such a difficult time passing up. It was like the interface was rewarding him for being patient. There were a few differences. This random type card would be S tier, also there would be a 20% chance of getting a restricted unit type versus 10%. It meant he would get a restricted type at least every 5 times he used this epic card. There was one downside. This option was not an original card meaning he would not get stock options although the card type would be unlocked for him allowing him to use his uncommon card transfer support cards to make more.
The ‘add feature to unit’ was also good. He could add a physical feature such as wings or something else to a unit or even another special attribute whose attribute would fall somewhere in the S tier. The card offered the choice option meaning he would get to pick from 3 options, but he wouldn’t know prior to use, meaning he could get 3 amazing options for something not equipped to use it effectively. It was likely better than he gave it credit, but he could not pass up the other option a second time. He chose the epic random card S tier type card. He had felt bad for a whole year after having refused the rare option.
Now he just needed to open his card packs. He immediately bought the 10 for the upcoming year and opened all 60 simultaneously. Peter scowled when he did not get a single epic card, but then again he had gotten 4 rares, 1 of each of his four options.
