There was a good 2.5 hour lull in the action, with no exchange between the two sides. However the allies were soon sent into a frenzy by an interface message.

  [Warning: No significant movement has taken place in the battle for 30 minutes. Battle will automatically end as a draw if hostilities does not recommence in 30 minutes (pause in hostilities is cumulative over the course of the battle.)]

  Peter and the other cores had of course known this would happen. However, the rule book was less than clear on what constituted movement or the associated time limit. It was left up to the interface. It would allow dungeon’s time to move units back through their dungeons after a successful defense, but would presumably kick in if they were dragging their feet or using the break in action to rest versus just repositioning. It could also trigger if a core was clearly only using a token force to keep things moving. The 30 minute timer started counting down, it would remain until they met the criteria to make it stoop.

  Fortunately, Peter’s forces had finished off all the directionless C tiers that had only continued to try to conquer his dungeon allowing him to wipe them out to the unit, a good half hour before the other skirmishes in other dungeons. It meant his units had plenty of time to move forward toward his dungeon's entrance, and a decent amount of time to rest.

  Elyra’s assault had finally been able to push forward to the end, eliminating Baelrock from the battle. It left them only 4 more dungeons to finish off. Outnumbering their opponents certainly felt good, but their forces were also pretty bedraggled. Still they wanted a victory over a draw due to the promised rewards.

  It had taken some goading, but Eli had finally agreed to take on flame whelp by himself despite the obvious water versus fire advantage since the majority of his mages were water based. Elyra, Predator, and Gretchen would send an assault force to take out beastfiend. They were also responsible for keeping a defensive force to potentially come to the aid of any of them that came under trouble. This was a plan kept from Eli, since none of them particularly trusted the crustacean core to get them out of a jam. This would leave Peter to take on frozen gate himself, which would leave Bonefiend for the end.

  It would also only leave bonefiend to potentially try an attack. Peter had no doubt that the millennial sponsored core would be able to pull out more A tiers and troops than he would think. If they attacked him first, they would have to devote most of their forces leaving the other cores free to potentially go on the attack. It also meant they might lose key units needed to put the others down.

  Peter’s assault on the frozen gate core was pretty much based on Krista’s continued ability to survive and kill a high amount of enemies. Other than her the only elites that Peter had left to send was Gnther and his mount and the guardian spirit in its new body. Peter chose to send the best of the remaining mages and sigil masters for support. The rest would stay with Glenda and the saint flame dragon to guard his dungeon.

  Frozen gate’s first floor opened into a wide open frozen tundra. There were thousands of enemies, but unsurprisingly most of them were from the lower tiers. Still there were a lot of them. Krista was proceeding carefully, to potentially prevent as many losses as possible. With a good 17 to 18 hours before any resurrected units should start respawning, they had plenty of time with which to work. Peter did not want to have to face that S tier demon mage again, especially now that Bonefiend would be using it on the defensive. Peter had no doubt he would do everything to keep it safe while using its exclusive one shot kill attack to take down the few elites they had left.

  Peter had anticipated his guardian spirit being near untouchable by the lower tier frozen gate, but the S tier lost a leg after suffering a water attack that was then successively frozen. The attacks were only at the B tier level, but the leg popped right off. The spirit guardian gave up on the body after trying to crawl with its other limbs. However it never could get close enough to any units who just refused to allow it to get close enough. So much for using two S tiers to carry the attack. Krista was effective in the air or to attack lone units on the floor, but they had all seen what happened when she went down into a larger group of enemies, eventually she would get unlucky. Fortunately, the demon cores had a pretty substantial presence in the air. Something they did not have for the alternate realm.

  Peter’s assault force consisted of nearly 5,000 units, but a good 2,500 of those were the D tier dark elf archers. Normally, they would not be too useful since they had only marginal support from other alternate realm infantry, none of the dragons, but Frozen gate had already expended his entire alternate dimension forces inside Peter's dungeon. It meant his D tier archers could traverse the floor in between entrance and exit platforms free of danger.

  Krista only had to ensure they made it past the entrance platform into the alternate dimension. Then the archers could pop into the physical realm and fire a shot or two before retreating back through the dimensional boundary. A few mistimed, but for the most part the enemy units had no way to respond quick enough. A year ago, this might not have been nearly as effective, but the archers now carried a full loadout of level 10 enchanted arrows. They made it easy to kill a C tier with a well placed shot, and even B tiers could be brought down if hit in a critical spot.

  Krista gained a foothold, let them run wild for a while before sending the beast horde in. Still they took 80 casualties on the floor and another 60 on the second. By the third floor the enemies were already countering the tactic. Units started bunching up together with little to no room to come in between them. Those with shields hunkered down behind them. Others just watched their surroundings. It was not as if the dark elves were invisible. Mages and enemy archers put themselves in the center of these groups. Each was ready to fire on any dark elf that appeared.

  While effective at curtailing the hit and run tactics from the archers, the enemies were not exactly in a good position to withstand the more traditional forces. The mages could hit a lot of units with one spell and the beasts loved having a knot of defenders to smash into. Still he took 250 casualties on the third floor, and 380 on the fourth. He just did not have the troops to finish off the frozen gate. Krista prepared to take on the fifth floor, while Peter sent a message to the other allies.

  “Hey guys, sorry to say I don’t think I will be able to finish things off with the frozen gate. I haven’t seen too many elites, but there are still several thousand units on each floor.”

  “I think we may have just enough to finish off beast fiend, the only troops we have left is our response force. All our defenses are already pretty thin. We will have to tell Eli we are pulling them from our defenses,” Gabriel replied. He had of course cut out Eli, who did not know about the response force.

  “I think I could spare 200 including 10 B tiers,” Eli finally said.

  “I will gladly take them, but I will need more than that,” Peter stated.

  “The rest of us will pull what we can spare from our defenses,” Gabriel replied for the group. The others grumbled, but there was not much they could say. Resources were limited, none of them actually had units they could spare from their already minimal defenses they each had.

  Soon 700 reinforcements were on their way, including the 200 mostly C tier crustaceans. The numbers were a bit lacking, but there were 8 A tiers and 41 non crustacean B tiers in their number. That doubled the amount of elites that he was able to bring to bear for this excursion.

  They arrived just in time to help Krista finish off the sixth floor. The numbers on each floor were pretty consistent, but there had not been a flying unit since the second floor. Frozen gate either did not have any more or was waiting to swarm them on one of the final floors. Krista still had 36 B tier archangels to support her along with Gnther and his forces which consisted of 53 mounts and their riders. Hopefully, it would be enough to keep Krista from getting swarmed, while she went to work.

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  By the end of the eighth floor the assault force was down to just over 1,400 including the 700 dark elf archers. Krista still had all the A tiers and most of the B tiers, but the force was clearly running on fumes.

  Unsurprisingly, Frozen gate was set for a major defense on the ninth floor. A vast horde of flying units. Several dozen A tiers and nearly 100 B tier ground elites. Performing the final stand on the ninth rather than tenth was not surprising since the tenth floor allowed access to the core room. Rushing behind enemy lines to get to the core room was usually a death gambit, but Peter had to consider it. Krista had proven to be a killer, but she simply did not have the strength to win the fight on the ninth floor let alone whatever the frozen gate had in store on its tenth. It was clear that she was also struggling on how she could manage it.

  Peter would make the decision for her. He quickly scrawled out a note before attaching it to an iron glider fly and sending it forward. It had a reasonable chance of making it in time assuming she elected to wait 40 minutes or so before attacking. It took only 18 minutes to get outside his dungeon. Once inside the Frozen gate dungeon it actually handed off the message to a second iron glider fly that Krista had stationed at the dungeons entrance to inform her of reinforcements. Now however, it would serve as a fresh message carrier. It made it right at the 14 minute mark.

  Krista had started preparing, but stopped when she received the message. She looked up after reading, smothering a sarcastic laugh. What else could one do when ordered to make an all or nothing gambit, that might kill her, but would definitely get almost every other unit killed whether it was successful or failed.

  Ten minutes later they started. Peter had them come in hot. The enemy defenders could not guess their intentions. They needed to be committed to a full scale battle not hanging back near the portal to the tenth floor. Krista led all the air forces through overhead as the mages set up a magic barrier. The D tier elf archers ran forward. Dozens went down to frost arrows, but hundreds of others made it off the platform before winking from existence.

  The C tier mage made a barrier around the entrance, ut it cracked and fractured and reformed. It provided at best a minimal amount of protection.. Peter watched as they all quaffed magic potions. Soon they would take another, and then another. It would eventually make them extremely sick, even comatose, but Peter needed them to hit hard. He had basically ordered them to die.

  Not for the first time in the last half hour, Peter felt he was becoming more like Garrett. Peter still recalled how he had looked down on the beast core for readily sacrificing in his own units in traps. Was he really been any better? He was sacrificing basically a whole army.

  The opposition hit hard. Easily over two thousand enemy flyers, most of which immediately headed toward Krista’s force of less than one hundred, when not considering the riders. Airborne spells caused Krista’s forces to scatter. Krista herself led a wedge of archangels forward. Her sword swatted javelins aside or intercepted spells. Not perfect, she was still getting burned by fire and dozens of bolts clinked off her golden armor.. Eventually the C tiers gave up the magic barrier and did their best to support the allied air forces. Already all the remaining beasts were thundering past into the jaws of death.

  Krista’s air division slowly fell back as if pushed toward the near corner from where they had entered. All the while Krista did what she could to defend herself and at least a few of her archangels. Apparently, it did not take much convincing to get the demons and fiends to go all out, even to leave the area right in front of the gate to the tenth floor.

  In the alternate dimension, the D tier elves were running as fast as they could. The remaining beasts and units from his allies scattered into the room drawing as much attention as they could. His mages had all started scattering from the initial platform, even as they continued to almost exclusively support Krista and the air forces. Already some of them were dropping due to potion poisoning or overuse of their mana. The others continued on.

  The attack looked like an all out attack, that was hitting extremely hard, but underneath the surface none of the units were supporting each other. They had been ordered to sprint and burn through their stamina to make them seem more deadly than they normally would when fighting smartly. They would soon die by the droves.

  Five minutes in, all his forces started to flag seemingly at once. All his mages had collapsed including the A tiers allowing them to be easy pickings for any who cared to find their collapsed forms. The enemy likely smelt blood in the water and started attacking themselves with a renewed fervor. It was as much time as Krista could hold back. A golden light flared from one of the last remaining B tier archangels around her. A sign that should be visible even in the alternate dimension.

  An iron glider fly had dipped through the portal. Seconds later Gnther, the tempest fowl, and 6 fresh B tier archangels streaked through. All of them were pointed at the entrance to the tenth floor. Krista could only afford to give them a good ten seconds before she burst forward with a flare of her holy power. She had been hanging toward the back keeping the friendly flying units between her and the majority of the enemies.

  Krista immediately streaked forward, like a jet that had turned on its after burners. She quickly moved through the swarm of black bodies, not fighting, just warding off any lethal attacks with her sword or free arm. Ten seconds later she was nearly free from the swarm, but plenty of bat-like units had realized what she was up to and started separating in pursuit.

  The purpose of the move could not be more clear, hopefully the enemy did not have the ability to counter. Krista could not keep up the initial burst of speed, but she quickly settled into something that she could keep up for 2 floors worth of flight. The bats immediately started closing, but a well focused gale of wind sent them spinning away. Gnther refocused forward.

  Time up D tier elf archers started popping into existence all over the floor from the middle toward the floor exit. All of them focused fire on the room’s exit, even if a threat soon closed on them from near them. Several enemy A tier mages soon found themselves beset by hundreds of arrows. Magic shields snapped into existence but they were centered on the mages who were clearly too distraught to think clearly. If they had thrown a magic shield in front of the room's exit, it would have resulted in the failure of Peter’s plan. Even a 5 second delay to Krista might prove enough to doom the plan.

  Krista used her increased altitude to speed up as she dropped toward the entrance. She actually hit it about the same time as the tempest fowl and the other archangels. They all popped right through, before instantly climbing up to altitude. The sudden appearance without warning took the waiting demons by surprise. By the time arrows fired they were already too high for them to be effective. A hundred flying demons reoriented on them from behind, including several A tiers. Even more were soon popping through the portal behind them, many of them were the bats that were quite capable of running down Peter’s slower units.

  Peter scanned for the core room entrance. A particularly nasty A tier fiend was waiting right in front of the whole entrance. Hopefully Krista could cut right through it. Gnther and his mount sent hurricane winds forward. The ballista bolts that had started to fire were knocked away. The airborne fiends were knocked aside as Gnther and his mount perfectly controlled their gusts. They had to cut it off soon enough. The archangels had taken the opportunity to have the strong winds accelerate them forward.

  It got them close enough where they could make their diving runs at the entrance. The B tiers were operating basically on fumes, but it was enough for his purposes. If they were not almost immediately successful then they would fail. Gnther and the tempest fowl immediately began using the winds to try to keep the other flyers off them.

  A laser shot from one of the A tier flying fiends, but one of the B tier archangels took the shot. The poor female went tumbling down several limbs spinning away. Krista hit the A tier fiend hard, bursting her holy power for a final burst of speed. It worked! She crossed right between its awaiting arms, her sword immediately sunk to the hilt. One final act of defiance the fiend chose to fall on top of her leading to her being pinned to the frozen tundra.

  That was fine, 3 of the B tiers were streaked right through the opening. The fourth and fifth slammed to the ground full of arrows. They had spread their wings wide using their bodies to shield from a last second hail of arrows. There were a few B tier fiends inside the core room who did all they could to stop the final 3 archangels, but once the enemy was in your core room things were already pretty much over. It would be difficult to fight off enemies while defending a stationary core.

  [Frozen gate has been eliminated. Rewards will be decided at the end of the dungeon battle.]