The assault on Elyra’s dungeon was truly the opposing side's last push. It was fierce and bloody fighting, Peter lost both S tiers and most of the other support he had sent. Only Delilah, Glenda, and a few C tier mages had made it until the end. The battle came to a decisive conclusion thanks to Elyra sending in several thousand C tier auxiliary types, many of which could phase in and out of the alternate realm. A few hive formations tried to push through the basically empty floors to make an attempt at her core directly, but they failed to get past the 2 A tier guards and the last second force sent through to her tenth floor teleportation run from Gabriel’s dungeon.
Soon after the attack's failure, their own assault force finished things up with Agatha. The starting situation for the two sides in this battle had now completely reversed. Instead of their opponents outnumbering them twice over, they now stood in that position. However things were far from decided. Their forces were beyond weary at this point. Elites had cycled in and out of battle, but they had still fought for more than a day and half. Plus the elite’s support forces had taken heavy losses. Successfully slogging their way through two more dungeons was far from a foregone conclusion.
“Lets only send alternate dimension elites against Hive, rest, and save our forces for Eli,” Peter suggested.
The others quickly agreed with the tactic. Generally sending alternate forces against a core would never work. The defender would simply have its physical forces focus fire on the entrance and exit platforms where the alternate realm units had to cross over in the physical plain, but they had to try something. Plus there were a few things in their favor. Their opponent had very few elites and his alternate realm forces were pretty much harmless obstacles that could be generally bypassed. Then there was the fact that they had 5 S tiers capable of making the feat, including the freshly respawned ether tearing dragon.
The idea was to send a small group of highly mobile S tiers to bulldoze through the entrance and exit platforms. Pushing through the trash stationed in the alternate dimension was a mere foregone conclusion unless Hive had something saved up. Even if he did a couple A tiers would not make much of a difference.
Peter and Elyra both contributed 2 S tiers with Gabriel filling in the last slot. Delilah was honestly too slow, too squishy, and not strong enough, so Peter sent only the ether tearing dragon and the mirror soldier. Elyra sent the dimensional terror rabbit and then some undead skeleton mage. The final unit was an obscurant pit demon, just one of Gabriel’s many demon based units.
The four of them could only laugh as they watched the 5 S tiers enter the honeycomb-like tunnel dungeon. It only took a matter of seconds before the 5 forms made it safely off the entrance platform and phased over. Hive had hundreds of alternate realm defenders, but all were C or even D tier. The 5 elites simply rushed through their numbers since all were dexterity types; they easily avoided most of the enemies as they ran. They tanked the ones they couldn’t avoid and continued on, leaving hundreds of alternate realm defenders in their wake.
At the exit platform they were all forced back into the physical realm. Already Hive had likely guessed their intentions, but word had not made it down. They easily made it back into the alternate realm on the other side. Less than 10 minutes later, they duplicated the feat once more, something that would only continue on for several more floors. Six floors passed with the S tiers only obtaining minor scratches. However, they eventually made it to the point where Hive had been able to get word down to his defenders. The first coordinated response was at the exit of the sixth floor about an hour into their delve. It was just a bunch of C tiers bunched up at the sixth floor exit and seventh floor entrance platforms.
Hundreds of insects swarmed the 5 as they entered the physical realm on the sixth floor exit platform. The ether tearing dragon nimble dodged, easily sucking the life out of any weaklings that made contact. Elyra’s dimensional terror rabbit used its zoom skill to avoid them entirely and was actually able to get into the alternate realm on the seventh untouched. The other 3 including the mirror soldier had to cut their way through. All 3 managed to get through the swarm on both sides of the portal, but not without a few marks highlighting their enemies' efforts. They soon joined the ether tearing dragon and the dimensional terror who had waited for them. Hive did not have alternate realm defenders anymore. Perhaps he had thought he could retreat some floor to floor, so had put them all on the earlier floors. Which of course meant they had easily fallen behind the 5 S tiers storming forward.
Success continued all the way until the exit portal on the ninth floor. Hive had likely saved all his elites for a hard stopping punch for when the expected assault army was even more weary, but honestly there had never really been a chance for Hive even if they had proceeded with a standard attack with only this much. The four allies had only feared their losses would be too heavy to enable them to challenge Eli immediately afterwards. Every single one of the allies believed that Eli had plenty of elites squirreled away in his dungeon. They would have to conserve where they could and literally strip their defenses bare if they wanted to finish him off.
Still Hive had sixteen A tiers and a hundred plus B tiers attack as soon as the 5 S tiers phased back into the physical realm on the ninth floor exit platform. Immediately an energy shield flashed into existence preventing the dimensional terror from immediately zooming through as he had done on prior floors. Instead the mangy, masked rabbit bounced off the yellow shield not even causing cracks. The S tier immediately shook off the daze and gave up pushing forward as the others started reacting as well. There were hundreds of mages in the wings on both sides of the portal gate maintaining the shields, but most of the S tiers were already embattled with enemy elites out for their blood.
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The ether tearing dragon corkscrewed through the air weaving over and around attacks before it impacted into a large praying mantis. The somewhat nondescript galactic swirl of energy took on the hard shape of a dragon with both its front claws dug into the front breastplate of the mantis. The rest of the dragon’s body was already twisted around on the mantis’ backside, while the dragon’s fangs bit into the long stick-like neck. It would take less than 15 seconds for even an A tier like that to be drained to death.
The mantis started staggering as the energy drained from its body. There was nothing the bug could do. Not once had Peter witnessed something caught by the SS tier escape its grasp although Peter had not seen it try to tackle something in the S tier yet. Even for the B tier ether tearing dragon victims, there usually was no way out once caught. Once something was in their grasp it was almost as good as dead, the only exception was the intervention of another unit. Tens of crustacean units had been saved when all the incorporeal dragons got caught by that radar pulse in Elyra’s dungeon, including the victim of the original SS tier.
However, the ether tearing dragon’s process was too slow here. Even 15 seconds was a long time when its allies were heavily outnumbered and forced to fight for their lives. The mirror soldier twirled as its arms elongated forming silver scythes that it used to cut into the two beetles pincering it, but their hard shell and mandibles that were harder than iron promised that the two would not go down in such a short time either.
The skeletal mage was busy fighting off several more A tier beetles with blue energy pulses, while simultaneously defending all of them against the more powerful of the incoming magic attacks. Luckily, the mage seemed to be quite good in the thick of things unlike most mages that could fall quite easily in a melee. Gabriel’s Pit demon was fighting savagely on the other side against yet more beetles although the pit demon was producing far faster results with each of its mace attacks crushing deep into a beetles carapace before it imparted some abyssal energy.
It seemed Hive had mainly kept back highly defensible A tiers to protect his dungeon. A good thing for the 5 S tiers since they could easily overpower the defenses, and did not have to face attack focused elites. However it also meant that they would have more staying power in prolonging the fight, which was a bad thing since there were more than a hundred B tiers of all types working themselves into the cracks. Without focusing on a single aspect, the screen would just look like a writhing mass of bodies, where the insects acted in near perfect coordination.
However Elyra’s dimensional terror was going after the root of their problems, the mages that prevented their forward progress. The masked rabbit had only needed a second to reorient itself before it immediately shot towards the mages supporting the energy shield. The rabbit once again hit an energy shield that had been in place to protect the mages on the left side of the portal, but this close up the unit’s terror inducing visage caused the C tier mages to lock up even more. The terror soon zoomed right into the shield a second time causing it to shatter. Enemy B tiers followed the terror in to try and stop it, but even they would have difficulty stopping the slaughter, when they themselves were underpowered.
The ether terror dragon barely had time to finish a second A tier unit before the dimensional terror finished the job. The terror zoomed back across the platform. The shield rippled a second time when the S tier crashed into it once again, but it held with no obvious cracks. It was just a brief test for the S tier which continued its zoom right towards the opposite group of mages. Several A tier beetles had positioned themselves up as guardians for the mages, but the S tier zoomed right in between their seemingly delayed reactions. This time the barrier held for only a second with cracks spreading out from impact as the terror’s momentum stopped for a second or two. Just long enough to cause some worry for the allies, but the worry was needless since the shield shattered entirely after stalling the S tier for a moment. The dimensional terror took a deep wound to its side by one of the A tiers and narrowly avoided getting bisected by the mandibles of the others, before it once again started slaughtering the mages as the higher tier enemies followed after it intent on eliminating the threat.
Peter however had already moved on. The shield guarding the portal had winked out almost immediately when the second group of mages came under direct threat. The Ether tearing dragon detached from its third victim before shooting forward. The mirror soldier and the obscurant pit fiend tried to follow after, but they were too deep amidst a sea of enemies. Soon they decided to only slog their way forward as they tried to stay alive. Not that it would matter, the ether tearing dragon was too fast for most units. Seconds later it was already in the alternate dimension and shooting down the main tunnel.
Likely the mages and A tiers had been the core room entrance guard because the defenses were just laughable. The ether tearing dragon popped into the physical realm, before twisting through a mangle of C tier bodies. The SS tier chose just to take the hits as it continued forward. Seconds later it was over.
[The hive core has been eliminated from the battle. Opportunity will be made available at the end of battle for any enemy core to use double tap, provided that the hive core has any core’s remaining after core burn through protocol.]
Hive like cricket had gotten at least one spare core somehow despite never winning a battle, but it would hardly matter at this point. Most of the insect cores were already eliminated for good. Agatha and cricket were the only other exceptions. As long as they defeated Eli, the core burn through should easily finish off the three. Peter had 7 spare cores himself, which already might be more than enough.
