Lucien started preparing their forces to finish things. If Mark had felt confident when their forces had started descending into the valley, he felt even more so now. It truly was not fair for Daniel. They had lost Kong and most of the reanimated beasts, but more were rising with every passing minute. Even the dragon would join their ranks, once again Lucien would raise it personally. They had gone from having around 350 reanimated beasts to having nearly five times that.
There was only one type of unit that failed to be reanimated, the tree units. The tree units were not reanimated along with the beasts, meaning that it was likely impossible. It did stifle Mark’s future ambitions a bit. It was also likely that the reanimation would not work against a good number of the undead forces as well. Perhaps the zombies and mummies might be the exception.
However, Mark could hardly worry about it now. For this battle the breeder and witch doctors had given them far too much of an edge. The dungeon was located somewhere beneath the surface, and Daniel had at least a thousand units in just what had retreated. It was still enough force to whittle them down enough, where they might not be able to fight their way through the dungeon levels.
Eventually Mark settled on a plan. The red dragon would be headed into the east lair since it was the biggest. Lucien and the bulk of the reanimated units would proceed into the northern lair. Other independent reanimated units, the spiderlings and the goblins would take the other two. All four lairs quickly branched out like an ever growing root system.
The resistance was fierce from the start as apes and beasts fought and ambushed from side tunnels, but Mark had expected as much. The dragon and reanimated beasts had an easy go of it. It quickly became apparent that Daniel had considered killing or even delaying the reanimated dragon a lost cause and focused on the other three fronts. The reanimated beasts were made for this environment so proceeded despite losses.
For the other two lairs, spiderlings were used as scouts and goblin grenadiers or mages were brought in to wipe out resistance. The strategy was quite effective. Progress was slow but constant. Unfortunately, the reanimated beasts did not remember the way, so they had to slog their way through the maze of tunnels.
But it was still Lucien’s force of reanimated beasts that found the final cavern first. It was a large cavern with dozens of entrances from the surrounding tunnel network. A good 500 units stood behind crude earthen walls encircling the dungeon entrance. Lucien did not dally. The reanimated beasts that accompanied him were more than doubled the defenders before him. The reanimated beasts attacked immediately.
The battle was fierce and short as the primate units fought to the death. By the time the fighting had settled another route from the southern lair had been identified. Soon after a route was discovered from the east. Eventually Mark had the dragon go back out to proceed down one of the discovered routes, but it would only be for protection since the dragon would not be able to squeeze through the dungeon entrance opening. The first primordial earth dragon would already be pushing it. A bit sad that the reanimated dragon likely would not be used for anything in the end, but at least it would keep the entrance safe for as long as it was able to last.
Lucein waited for all of their forces to gather before proceeding, but Mark shouted for him to call an immediate half after the first few spiderlings went through. Instead of some arbitrary dungeon level, the units had entered directly into the dungeon guardian room, and Mark had seen enough of it before several boulder sized rocks obliterated the unlucky spiderlings. A large cavernous room with only a handful of defenders, but one drew the eye far more than the rest. Daniel had one more champion, a hydra. A dragon with multiple long necks and heads, all pointed toward the opening ready to inflict death upon anything that entered. Although boulders from a couple girallons had taken the first opportunity.
“What the hell! Shouldn’t we be facing level 1 scrubs,” Amelia asked, clearly startled.
“It's the boss room,” Mark exclaimed, almost laughing.
“What about the other 14 levels?”
“He never built them,” Mark said grinning. What he had assumed would be a long slog through the dungeon levels had just turned into just one straight up fight.
“But why didn’t he build them,” Amelia exclaimed.
Mark shrugged. “He didn’t need to. Perhaps he saw the alternate entrances before he had the chance, and determined building levels would allow other dungeons to bypass his defenses. Makes sense, since his beasts hardly needed the mines, at least until he unlocked the primates later on. It looks like the boss room is just a super room with more defenders and a champion as the floor guardian.”
“And I don’t suppose we could bring in the red dragon.”
“Not unless we want to dismantle it first,” Mark remarked dryly.
Mark then relayed what they saw to Lucien as well as a game plan. It was not too elaborate. There was no secret way to bring down the hydra that held a power rating of 27.8. It was weaker than the red dragon, but it took up five times the mass with its seven serpent-like necks and heads splitting off from a main body that would be nearly double that of the red dragon. The front legs were quite a bit longer as well, leaving the body hunched up more like a gorilla when standing still. It was a bit awkward; so Mark doubted the body could move or react very quickly, but then he supposed it did not have to. The necks were each several hundred feet long as they writhed through the air.
It took only a couple of minutes for Lucien to prepare his forces before it began. Similar to some of their past attacks, they led with the spiders. Mark had them wait for a couple of minutes before the order came all of the sudden. It would prevent enemy mages from having a spell ready, giving them precious seconds to build their forces on the other side. There was nothing Mark could do about the rocks thrown by the girallons. However each rock was only able to crush or maim a handful of spiders as they poured out in high numbers.
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Spiders poured out of the singular entrance and into the room. Bat goblins and weevils followed after a few seconds, streaking in overhead. The cavern was pretty large, so they would be able to fly around out of reach to an extent. Undead beasts followed right behind the spiders. They died by the scores as the hydra made its first move. One head breathed flame, as another breathed a torrent of ice shards, and a third shot out one of those white moon energy beams. A large area was devastated all at once, even as several other heads targeted the air units that had tried to fly over it.
Weak as they were, hundreds of spiders were already seeking out to attack the other defenders. A group of orangutans worked together to form what looked like an orange wave that swept across, killing them by the score. On the other side the four armed girallons slammed their fists down or stepped on them as quickly as they came. A couple ankylosaurs crashed right through them without worry, as even more orangutan riders sitting on their backs supported them with spells. The spider lings could do little but to expand the defenders focus, as they paved the way in.
It was clear they would lose hundreds of spiderlings and reanimated beasts before they could even eek out a foothold inside of the cavernous room, but they had the numbers to spare. They were also only able to be reanimated for about a day or so, meaning it was use or lose them anyways, the perfect fodder.
A minute later the hydra and other defenders had been pushed back through sheer numbers from the constant inflow of undead beasts. Only a handful of defenders had fallen, and they had killed hundreds. However it was only near the end of the flow that the reanimated tier 3 beasts started to enter, and it was clear a foothold had been established.
By the time they dealt with the thousand plus reanimated units, they might not even have manna left. Except for the hydra, the creature seemed to have nearly unlimited stores, with each head performing its own unique attack that killed undead beasts by the tens.
Undead bodies covered nearly the entire entrance into the cavern as the last of the reanimated units climbed over into the room. Twenty reanimated girallons led the charge toward the hydra’s main body, as hundreds of undead primates started streaking into the room. Even the primate mages rushed into melee, further solidifying the fact that the reanimated corpses did not quite possess all the capabilities they had in life. He had not seen one use any sort of manna. It was certainly a degrader, that personally reanimated units did not share.
But the battle was far from finished before the real units from their dungeon had their turn to enter into the fray. Mark had hoped the thousand plus reanimated beasts would be enough to deal with things, and perhaps they might in the end. A good third were still alive, but Mark would not halt the flow of reinforcements with hope.
The ballista would not be able to be brought to bear since the platforms could not be moved over and around the mounds of dead bodies, but the goblin archers and mages could fire on everything with impunity. So Lucien had the goblins enter. The goblins stuck to the near wall as they fired from relative safety.
The hydra was putting up a valiant effort, but it was soon alone as a whole tide of enemies hemmed it in on all sides as arrows and spells rained down on it. It was all rather anticlimactic. Mark supposed the real decisive part of the battle had happened several hours ago on top of the ridges and in the valley below. The reanimated undead from those battles had been plenty of fodder for the hydra to deal with as their own forces attacked from relative safety.
Once the hydra fell the door at the back of the boss room became unlocked. Mark caught sight of Daniel, who displayed a disappointed smile across his handsome face. Seconds later the core was crushed.
“Serves him right,” Amelia said with a wicked grin. “If he had not backstabbed us, we could have all dealt with Leonard and Nick before we all turned on each other.”
Mark nodded as they got the notification.
[Notice: Contender, Daniel Hale, has been eliminated by another contender. Contender has been given a unique reward. Contenders remaining 3/35]
A moment later a timer started for their unique reward. Mark gave Lucien some directives to get their forces back to the home dungeon before the matter fell from his mind. As they waited he could not help but to think. Only 3 contenders remained in the battle. They only had two more opponents left. Two opponents who were more after taking out each other than taking on Amelia and himself. For the first time in a year, it felt like they were out from under a mountain of stone that was ready to collapse down upon them at any moment.
Mark was hardly surprised, when they received messages from both the other contenders. Both wanted an alliance to deal with the other. How far had they come, when seemingly it was up to them on which of the remaining two dungeons would be their final opponent. Only months ago both had gone along with Gale to go against them. Now they were both asking for aid against the other.
Still it was not too comforting that both still likely assumed that they would come out on top of a one on one confrontation with Mark and Amelia. They had both likely at least watched the battle that had taken place on the surface. With the appearance of a full army it was unlikely that Daniel had been bothered to maintain the supreme lockdown of the area that he had managed up to that point.
[Unique Reward: Choose between one of the three options
- Take the money and run.
- Dungeon Level four
- No capacity limits
Time remaining 60:00]
The take the money and run option was still only 10,000 daily MP, so Mark could quickly throw it aside. The second option was straight up unlocking dungeon level 4, which was 300 days worth of the extra MP by itself. Mark had the feeling that the battle would not last near that long, so no point in considering the first option.
The final no capacity limit option had its own draw. Tier 1, tier 2, tier 3, it did not matter. They would be able to summon as many of each unit type as they wanted. Not too big of a deal for the tier 1 units since dungeon level 4 would likely allow them to summon even more. Already they could summon 4,000 green goblins, tier 4 might up the cap limit from 1,000 by several fold. Which meant they would already be at the point of a five figure green goblin army.
The story was different for their tier 3 units. For their most expensive unit, the carnivorous centipede, they could summon only 25 currently at level 3. At level 4 they should be able to summon 65 if everything remained consistent. Mark could picture an army of hundreds of them, bred into thousands. It was truly a good thought.
But Mark had to think practically now. Unlocking dungeon level 4 was a huge up front windfall, whereas option one or three would be better if the battle were to last for an extended period of time. The 3 million worth up front would put them a touch ahead of Leonard and Nick in at least one aspect, which would be needed since both of them were opening a sponsorship package daily at this point in time. At level 3 a tier 5 sponsorship package would give six units with a power rating somewhere in the 5’s. Mark did not even know how good of units the tier 4 variants were giving them, but long story short even the level 3 variants would be basically giving them a free 10,000 to 15,000 MP each day assuming the packages kept coming.
Taking the cap limit would be nice, but they would still be limited in how many units they could have based on how much MP they were able to produce, while the other two contenders were getting basically free units everyday.
Amelia did not protest in the slightest, when Mark went with the immediate gains. He felt they were in a good position. They were effectively jumping ahead of the other two dungeons by likely weeks, perhaps even a month. But already the other two dungeons were basically getting 25% more than them everyday, and neither were chumps. They needed to wrap things up sooner than later.