The screen blinked out, since he no longer had a friendly unit to anchor his view there. Peter’s heart had already sunk, but his mind immediately went to his support cards. He still had 3 resurrects left. He had used one for the mirror soldier and the nightmarish creation. He had however let the spirit catcher dragon go. It was a relatively weak S tier. He had revived it once, but that was before he had maelstroms for it. With 2 maelstroms producing 240 B tiers a year, he had at least maintained the capability.

  Peter watched her deceased status counter countdown from one minute. He had passed over an S tier and plenty of valuable A tiers in this battle. Even argumentally, he knew he could likely easily replace her battle capability. The D tier one offs were now the most valuable legitimate reason to revive her, but he had 5 maelstroms for her as well. That being said he likely used 3 to 4 times that for battles since they were archers and support in both the physical and alternate realms.

  Peter shook away the calculative part of him. She was worth saving regardless. What was the good of living forever if you did not have the things he wanted. Why was he making this harder than it had to be. Peter mentally moved to use the resurrect before he hesitated again. A new fear tugging at his mind. What if it was not Delilah who came back?

  Up till now he had only brought back up to quasi intelligent beings. Even with the dragons he had no clue whether it was the same unit. One offs and maelstroms always popped out different units. What if the resurrect just gave him a new dark elf with the same stats?

  Peter chided himself. Resurrect clearly meant bringing back the same unit… probably. He once again moved to use the rare support card, all the while crossing his fingers that he did not get some completely other dark elf, or a Delilah with her memories wiped or something. Even with the latter it would mean starting the courtship phase completely over, assuming she was into it again. Unfortunately, nothing really happened except his resurrect support cards decreasing by one. She would not respawn for 24 hours.

  Peter checked in on the fight. The number of C tiers between his beast horde and his defenders had decreased substantially, but it was unlikely they would close the gap completely before the next army arrived. Peter quickly jotted down a new message before sending the iron glider fly off.

  Thanks to Krista and the berserker ape, he had a pretty substantial assault force left. Gnther still had most of his air division despite the desperate fight. There were still a good 50 archangels left as well. Not to mention Glenda and a host of C tier mages burnt our or not. Peter still had hundreds of mages. He could very easily contend with another army with the given units. There were only 2 problems. His troops were all battle weary, and the beasts would not give a good accounting of themselves without any support.

  It only took minutes for Glenda’s headquarters to get the message. An archangel quickly winged over the thousands of C tier demons. There were still a few sentients among the beast horde. A handful of D tier dark elves and others riding on saber bears, but all of them had clear orders to follow orders from any archangel.

  Less than a minute later the beasts started condensing into a line led behind the A tier charge elephant and a small wedge of its C tiers. They would charge right through thousands of C tiers. They were midway on the seventh floor, so they only had to go a little over a full floor. This might cause their losses to be a bit higher, but it was crucial to combine his forces. That and it would hopefully give him 10 to 15 minutes at least for his beasts to rest. The next army was likely somewhere on the sixth floor.

  It took a moment for the wedge of elephants to get going, but once it did it proved unstoppable by any of the C tier demons in their way. The C tier elephants were about the size of a standard elephant back on Earth. The A tier was at least 5 feet taller at about 18 to 20 feet, with substantially more bulk. Most of the C tier demons were not even near as big as the C tier elephants.

  It worked better than expected. Any demon that did not get out of the way was either trampled over or brushed to the side. Most of the beast line had passed through before the demons tried to collapse the wake attacking both flanks. The Berserker Ape was of course rampaging, preventing any coordinated assault at least from its side. The last of his beasts crossed over without a sign from the new army that should be crossing over the sixth floor.

  The charger elephants broke through the last of the demon horde leading the beasts through their own defenders. It was far from elegant. The elephants were a menace as they broke apart running in between ballista and catapults. The shield wall had opened up to allow their passage making the front chaotic, but the passage of several thousand beasts and the S tier berserker ape prevented any demons from being in position to take advantage.

  Ten minutes later, things were fairly settled. His defenders had reformed the line. The beasts were all congregated at the beginning of the ninth floor where they were drinking water and resting. It was not perfect. They had left the water sleds back on the earlier floors of his dungeons. Still water scrolls filled low spots in the floor making temporary pools.

  A case of content theft: this narrative is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

  Somewhere in the last hour, Krista had led a party to recover her lost arm once she had recovered enough holy energy to make the foray. It had been easy enough with Gnther’s support. Peter had no idea how she had found it amongst the sea of bodies and living fiends. Perhaps due to divine energy emitting from the celestial sword…? Regardless, she had it reattached leaving nothing but a jagged scar. It seemed perfectly functional based on what Peter could tell. She also had her sword back since the arm had still been clutching it when they both had fallen. A very good thing since the next force had quite a few elites. Peter liked their chances, but then his forces did not only have to beat this force. They would then have to go help finish off 5 more dungeon cores.

  Glenda’s headquarters was scrambling to prepare for the arrival of a new force. Boris had sent plenty of more detailed missives on what was coming. There were plenty of new A tiers along with the S tier. Peter was fairly certain Bonefiend’s fourth S tier would be along as well. Bonefiend for sure wanted to finish things off here. He likely could not afford otherwise. His reputation with the demon millennial was likely on the line.

  Bonefiend probably had some A tiers and thousands of lesser fiends and demons to hold down his dungeon, along with any original type cards he would use if he got in a bind, but there was not a great force available to hit the weakened demon dungeons. Not until the allies had all ensured their own defense.

  It was right at about the fifteen minute mark after his forces consolidated that the stronger demon elites started appearing on the eighth floor. C tiers continued on the attack, while they set up. There were at least 2 A tier demon mages along with dozens of weaker ones, so Glenda did not attempt anything, saving what little energy they had recovered for when it really counted. Most of the lesser C tier mages were resting back on the ninth floor to recover from excessive potion use. What C tier’s remained would not be able to do much. Even if they won this battle, Peter would have to let them rest for several hours if he wanted to get any use from them.

  The S tier bone ripper appeared. It still did not have a right arm nor a good chunk of its shoulder. Delilah’s shot had been good for something. Perhaps not debilitating on a creature that could cause terror from across the field. To Peter it was the most worrisome unit, since it could lock up one of his units at a crucial moment causing them to die.

  Beside it however was the other S tier, a massive green flamed fiend with bull horns. The creature stood 12 feet tall and was clearly a melee fighter based on the sixth dagger like claws extending from both hands. It was called Third layer Flameclaw.

  Peter did not really know all the lore for the demons and hell, but he had the gist thanks to explanations from Elyra. There were seven layers and then the pit. The layers were not necessarily any more dangerous or worse than each other as far as the dungeon battle went. They were just 7 different types of torment that in theory were in contention with one another, but the demons clearly regarded the lower levels in higher regard.

  The first layer or both orange and red flame hell was basically the standard layer that most might imagine hell to be like. It seemingly existed for the other 6 layers to deviate from. It was by far the most common layer for units to be based on since many of the races, like flame whelp came from this layer. Out of all the demon units that he had seen, 9 of 10 would either belong to one of the demon races or this layer.

  Layer two was the white flame layer, or spirit devouring flame. Bonefiend’s core type was technically based on a race, but Peter assumed they likely lived mostly on that layer since the second layer included races that basically looked little different from the undead.

  The green flames of the third layer were supposedly mind searing flames. From Elyra’s experience he knew this S tier just ripped units to pieces, perhaps each wound caused some sort of mental damage as well. They did not know since all of her units had died during their fight.

  The fourth layer was based on extreme cold, taking ‘hell freezing over’ literally. If the frozen gate core participating in this battle was more accomplished, he would likely be held in high regard since his core type represented an entire layer. Pit fiend would have enjoyed even more regard, once again if he was more accomplished… and wasn’t dead, now.

  The fifth layer was the blue flame. The layer was also called the melting layer, since the blue flames were in theory the hottest. Peter had not seen a hint of something from this layer. Then again he wouldn’t since there was no current demon core based on the layer. Plenty of older demon cores would likely have some card types based on it, but the rookies had not been able to get their hands on any.

  The sixth layer was the violet flame layer, or the light consuming flames. Just like the blue flame demons he had seen some of them used by some of the older demon cores in battle, but there was not a current core type in existence. It was actually regarded as the most difficult layer for the demon cores to get a unit from, so it was rare even then. The blue flame demons had been fairly common in the older dungeon battles.

  The seventh layer was the black flame layer of hell. The infernal restricted type cards were based on those flames that supposedly would not go out once started. Not to say that all the black flame demons were infernal demons and fiends, the infernal flames were the worst of the flames on the floor. Lesser black flame demons and fiends were far more common.

  The pit of hell was as advertised. All across the hellscape giant pits would open up leading down to the heelish abyss. They were actually the primary means of travel. Like concentric rings each of the layers would be exposed on the way up or down. Pit fiends were known to be fearsome since they lived in the area and therefore able to survive on any layer. They typically had a wider range of resistances and capabilities. Luckily for them, the pit fiend had been a real chump, not nearly as capable as some of the other demon rookies. He had clearly won prior battles based purely on the strength of his core type.

  Peter’s focus went back to the battle as the demon elites from the new wave, prepared to make their move. It was time to see where the cards fell.