Peter soon found himself inside of headquarters watching as the clock ticked down. The room looked like movie representations for NASA. Several large screens would show the battle at the front of the room, while each of the E tier clockworks had their own personal screen at their work station. Probably a bit overkill for battles at this period of time, but he would probably expand this set up several times over by the next battle. Peter was set up with his own personal screens at the top of the room, with Boris by his side. Boris also had screens, but would mainly be working to collect inputs from his subordinates and give recommendations to Peter.
All preparations were completed, now he had nothing to do but wait. Peter felt uneasy despite having a spare core for if things went bad. Two lives did not really seem like that much when every year he could find himself on the receiving end of a hoard of monsters. Still he was also anticipating the battle. To see how far he had come after a year’s worth of effort. His battle last year had been basically a chaotic brawl. This year would still be far from what he could envision, but there should be a little more structure.
“All ready,” Borris stated as the final few seconds ticked away. Unfortunately, since he was battling he would be unable to witness the other dungeons of his year group duke it out. Their battles would all occur simultaneously. That meant that Borris and his 20 mini-me team would all be helping to observe and coordinate his defense and assault. They would also observe and note capabilities. Not only was Peter determined to win, but he also wanted to learn everything he could.
Masses of units exploded through both dungeon entrances all at once as the timer ticked down and units in no man’s land started their assaults. The dragon flies whizzed through and scattered into the opening room as the large clunking metal units slowly followed at ground level. The entrances into the dungeon and down to following floors were as big as the side of a hay barn so dozens could pour in at once. They had to be large enough to accommodate the large units in the future.
The extremely fast dragon flies were already attacking and dodging by the time the slower support units made it a few steps. The iron fly guider killed a D tier purple and black frog within seconds of having entered, and quickly moved on. Its 4 metallic wings were stationary thrusting magical energy behind them, making the unit look more like an odd looking spaceship.
Three armored frogs led the charge into his own first floor. Each of them were armored with various looks, as chance dictated when they were summoned. One wore only a football-like helmet. More C tiers followed into the dungeon hot on their heels. On this first floor were the more random and weaker D and C tiers that Peter could not place. The reptile faction units quickly and steadily pushed them back with few losses of their own.
Harrice, the dart frog core, had a variety of different reptile or amphibian type units. Peter only saw a handful of units that did not fall under the reptile faction banner. Mostly material type units, odd metal, earth, and stone golems clunked their way into his dungeon behind the quickly advancing reptile elite.
“Sir, I think pull back what forces we can to the fifth floor and give up the first four.” Then the crustacean army can make its stand on the fifth,” Borris recommended. All together Peter had 1,223 units, with 703 being designated defenders and 520 advancing through the enemy dungeon. Three quarters of the defenders were throw away random garbage units. All the 82 D and E tier units he had summoned throughout the year and then decided not to use in the collection dungeon were the only units on the first floor. Wastes that would challenge, but were mainly there so that his team could observe what their enemy had in store for them.
“Do it,” Peter commanded. Borris pointed at a waiting E tier clockwork runner. The unit blinked from existence. It would carry the message as fast as it could, but it had to run through all the floors beginning in the core room and then through the sixth.
Peter found himself watching his own assault on the enemy dungeon versus the near one way slaughter on his own first floor. His own assault force was hardly facing any problems. It was likely Harrice had put his worst defenders on the first floor as well. The first floor was a bit of a maze with multiple tunnels, but the dragonflies were mapping the whole level quite quickly, impervious to the traps set to catch ground based units. They found the dungeon exit and quickly reported back.
Peter felt a bit of relief when his forces moved on to floor 2 slightly ahead of the opposing force in their own dungeon. The second enemy floor looked to be more like an underground sewer system with various adjoining tunnels filled with murky water. The dragon flies instantly went about mapping it dodging occasional projectiles shot from below. The ground forces however only slowly advanced.
The tunnel had traps and drop offs where the floor suddenly dropped off and the water got very deep. There were routes or a path through, but it might be easier just moving forward swimming through the deep water, although certain units would have to even be ferried across to prevent them sinking like a rock. The Armored lightning unit could not even enter the level, so started retreating back through the first level at the direction of the accompanying clockwork field commander. It would go back to help in the home dungeon. Regardless, his advance would be incredibly slow.
All the while the frog units well at home rained ranged attacks with impunity. There had to be hundreds of E tier frogs with some a spit ranged attack on this level. They retreated away from the slowly advancing ground troops to keep out of range. The iron glider fly and its army was the only thing on the attack. Its B tier speed and defense kept it safe as it whirred through the air killing E tiers easily with a single blow. The rest of the dragon flies had the level mapped in less than two minutes and joined in.
Peter could only marvel at the strength and ferocity of the units. A normal armed human could take on E and the weaker D tiers, but already against even mid D tiers, Peter could only assume that even the most elite commando would fall unless he was using modern weapons. Likely only the weakest of C tiers would fall to rifle fire, only armor piercing and explosives would work.
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The metal gliding fly as the only B tier on the field reigned supreme. Peter could only compare it to a predator drone although his unit only used physical attacks, but its sickle like legs did the job easy enough. It was a speed based unit at the top of the B tier. It killed D tiers easily like scything grass. The other C tier dragon flies were also killing E and D tiers quite easily, but the 100 one off metal gliding flies he had summoned for support struggled to even seriously wound a D tier on a single pass.
It proved that the metal gliding fly was only dominating due to the disparity in strength. For units on its own tier its attack might have difficulty even getting passed natural armor, hide, or as in this case rubbery skin. Still he could not help but to wonder what a strength or defense based B tier would be like. Even the special attribute for C tier and below seemed a bit benign.
The enemy army advanced all the way through the 2nd, 3rd, and 4th floors of his dungeon while his assault force slogged their way through difficult terrain and far too many E tier units and the occasional D tier elite. There were several lessons for Peter to learn from this. The use of weak units as a stalling tactic, and that he would need to consider logistics more. The armored lightning was one of his heavy hitters on the assault force. They had no way for it to proceed at all. Others were having to be ferried. At least the clockwork Peter had sent to lead the raid had enough presence of mind to make these calls since Peter had no way to relay orders to the assault force. It did not feel good, but it was certainly better to learn hard lessons here and now.
However, Peter was far from concerned as of yet. His assault force was not really taking many casualties; only a handful of D tier dragonflies had fallen, and only the worst of the worst of his defending force had been killed. The main stand was always supposed to be on the fifth and sixth floors.
Boris had seen the futility of having the units even fight on the earlier floors and recommended to pull back and consolidate what they could. They had saved the hundred defenders on the fourth floor. The E tier clockwork runner was doing what it could to incorporate them with the forces arrayed on the fifth.
A second E tier clockwork had left in time to relay orders and to explain some details to the awaiting defenders. The defenders were not all intelligent, and many could not speak, but they all could follow basic orders. For this battle they would listen to anything ordered by a clockwork unit. If the clockworks were all killed then they would just act like standard dungeon defenders killing all trespassers.
Once again the armored frogs led the charge. They found themselves in a long open room, but after a few hundred feet the initial platform ended. An opposing platform was on the far side but everything in between was a field of water with stone pillars sticking above the surface like stone lily pads.
Not the best floor given their current attackers, but then Peter had designed it before he knew who they would face. He was not about to waste essence to make overarching changes for this one battle. Plus the crustacean army was just as at home here, as were the 42 water type units he had gotten through using C tier design cards.
The crustaceans lay in wait on various stone landings making it impossible for the armored frogs to advance easily. But the crustacean units were soon forced off as a group of 50 C tier acidic spitting frogs advanced. Normally it would be impossible to get so many of the same unit without having one of a higher tier that you could spam weaker ones off of, but Peter knew there was an uncommon card called replicator, where you could expend the same cards and get the same result for a living unit up to 10 times. Obviously the dart frog core had gotten at least 5 of them likely due to his specialization. It was hard to remember despite only being a year ago, but he thought he remembered something like that.
The C tier acid balls were deadly projectiles and forced the defenders into the water. Behind them was a lone frog shaman walking upright with staff in hand. The leader of the dart frog assault force, and one of the first to die as the two plane monkey blinked into existence right behind it. The monkey savagely bit down on the leader’s neck while clawing at the rubbery hide with its paws.
The mage had shown itself to be quite deadly on earlier floors, but it went down easily right at the beginning of the fifth floor. The two plane monkey dodged attacks as a special crack continued to open right next to it. The two plane monkey could move between dimensions quite quickly, but it took the shifting vine a bit more time and effort.
The two plane monkey fought as best it could as the acidic spitters and other minions targeted it, but then the vine was there accompanied by D tier bone units. The bone units immediately went on the attack as the shifting vine retreated back through the tear in space The two plane monkey disappeared a second later. The crustacean force breached the water onto the platform and set into the acidic spitters as well. Harrice had brought 600 units inside their dungeon, but less than 100 of them gave any reason to be concerned about. There were hundreds of bipedal colored frogs with poison capability, but most of the defenders were impervious or highly resistant to the poison. The mage was down, the armored frogs were getting pulled off the platforms by water units, and the acidic spitters were not doing so hot in close melee. The crustaceans were susceptible to the acid, but their defense was unusually high meaning it took too long to burn through their exoskeleton.
Their own assault force was slowly slogging through another water heavy level. Peter really had not anticipated his assault very well. Then again, he was still at a stage where he had to use a bunch of random units that did not necessarily work well together or have much adaptability. Things would be different in the future when he had hundreds or thousands of the same units working together in an army, but then he would need units to help move through water levels and so on. Emma and Fellette had warned that it was not so simple, but he was just now beginning to realize what they meant.
Harrice only had five levels in the end. His assault had pushed through onto their sixth floor, but what had remained was dealt with quite easily by the ember and other associated units. Then it just became a slow slog to finish their own assault. It was rather anticlimactic, the other dungeon having focused on stalling with E and D tier units failed to put up much of a fight even for a last stand.
Peter won the battle while maintaining quite a few of his units including the malleable iron, all of the other C tier dragon flies, and two of his alternate dimension units. Unfortunately the supremely cool armored lightning had gone out in a blaze of glory when it caught up to the opposing dungeons’ assault force on the third floor. It had killed quite a few of the weaker units lagging at the back of the army, before it was brought down through sheer numbers.
