“Want to eat dinner now?” Amelia asked as soon as their celebrations were over. Mark shrugged. “Good we can eat and discuss how we are going to take out that bastard, while we wait for our unique reward.” It only took them minutes to sift through the dinner options.
“So…which technology do you think we should go with?” Amelia asked, as she twisted her fork in the spaghetti.
“Well Advanced metallurgy has a predictable benefit. Stronger, more durable, and lighter swords, shields, armor... It should also decrease interference with our enchantments and magical embuement,” Mark started.
“But with the gnomes aren’t we kind of getting around that?” Amelia asked in a challenging manner.
“Yes…but we have only a dozen of them working in the forge. Not enough to produce enough to outfit an entire army. Why… are you leaning toward going with higher learning?”
The gnomes were an effective circumnavigation of the limits with their dungeon’s equipment. The gnomes were already producing various metallic alloys for their own equipment, and even after effectively joining them, their work was still not limited by the interface’s limits that kept dungeons from doing things that they had not researched. The red hobgoblin smiths still could not produce steel or work the mithril they had found, but the gnomes could. At the goblins current level, even exceptional quality enchantments were still pretty difficult, but with the gnomes it was a near foregone conclusion that their equipment could be enchanted to that level and it had made masterwork quality enchantments even possible.
“Yes,” Amelia replied. “We already have mass stockpiles of equipment and armor, even after this attack. Battles are not happening on even a monthly basis at this point, so we should be able to equip our elites from battle to battle since very few will actually be goblins since it is starting to look like we might be shifting more towards using beasts and plants for the mass of our force, with goblins using our equipment in support.”
“I mean you can’t tell me a green goblin having a steel sword versus an iron one would make much of a difference, and as far as arrowheads… A single gnome smith can mass produce several hundred in just one day. That should be plenty for our top enchantments,” Amelia trailed off.
Mark thought about it for a minute. The number of good quality enchanted arrows in their two warehouses numbered in the hundreds of thousands at this point. Easily enough to last them through 3 or 4 full scale battles. However, they had just depleted the majority of their exceptional quality and a handful of their masterwork equipment with this attack.
Not going for advanced metallurgy right now would limit the amount of exceptional quality stuff that could be made, but it would not affect masterwork quality at all. For masterwork quality the main limiting factor was materials. Stuff like the petrified wood and mithril they had just started to excavate. It also required base essence as an inscription material at the very least, whereas the better enchanters like Amelia could manage exceptional quality quite frequently on high steel without it.
“Well you are partially right. I doubt our masterwork quality and future artifacts will be affected. Still I would say we will only be producing a third of the exceptional quality enchantments that we could if our goblin smiths could get to the same level.”
“You’re the one who has been saying we should not put all our eggs in one basket. By now all of the dungeons know our enchanted gear is one of our main features, so perhaps we should see what the higher learning tech would give us. For a tier 3 tech it should not be completely useless, and we are effectively already getting advanced metallurgy already even if only at a reduced capacity.”
Mark finally nodded. “Okay I can’t argue with that. At the very least hopefully the tech will give us more RP.
A moment later Amelia selected Higher learning and they both looked at what it unlocked. Mark glared at her a second later, and she smiled back sheepishly. Higher learning gave absolutely nothing… At least not until they built another core building.
“I will get Cedrick to get some gnomes to start working on the institute,” Mark sighed.
Once that decision was made, the two could not help but to ruminate as they waited for their unique reward. Mark felt both excitement and anxiety. This would be their fourth reward. The other three had given them what they needed at that stage of the battle. Mark was not exactly sure about what they needed now. There were many things that could be improved, but they currently had a pretty versatile hand to work with.
As the last of the time ticked down on the counter, Mark and Amelia both watched with anticipation, and the message was pulled up as soon as it hit zero.
The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.
[Unique Reward: Choose between one of the three options
- Take the money and run.
- Surface Spawner
- Power of flight
Time remaining 60:00]
The first option was predictably the same. The whopping 10,000 MP was very tantalizing, but Mark did little more than note the amount as he moved to the second option.
Each of their dungeon floors could have a spawner that could summon defeated enemies from prior attacks on their dungeon, but the surface spawner was one that could be built outside of the dungeon. From there it appeared to be highly customizable on what could be summoned. It just had to be a unit or upgrade that they had available to them. The main limit was a 100 power rating worth of units summoned with a few caveats. Adding a skill or something else that did not exactly touch power rating would cost a currently undisclosed amount.
But there were a few other limits. Only a 100 power rating worth of units could be summoned each week, and only that amount could be in existence at once. Through some rough math, Mark put the value at about the same level of around 80,000 MP to summon about 50 elite units. That value would be more than doubled if they were to summon an army's worth of weaker units. However, no units could be summoned while the dungeon was under attack, or until the corresponding value of units were slain.
Used correctly it would definitely be better than the MP option. The MP option would only be better if and likely when weeks passed between attacks and they were stockpiling forces. Still Mark could see some utility. What would prevent him from spawning an army of weaker units every week to batter down an enemy forcing them to expend resources. Amelia and him had just been talking about how much extra equipment they had laying around.
Perhaps the army would die, but if they killed tens of thousands of MP worth of enemy units, perhaps they could use the spawner to weaken their enemies as they developed their own killing blow.
However, Mark was itching to move onto the next option. The power of flight was a unique feature, meaning that dungeons could not normally get access to it. The option enabled flight in all aspects. But Mark was less concerned with Ezekiel trying to build some Leonardo da Vinci type flying craft than with the fact that picking this option would also unlock two new tier 2 units.
Power rating wise tier 2’s were obviously a bit obsolete to be considered elites, but flying by itself would open a host of options. Even a rock carried hundreds of feet into the air could become a deadly projectile. Add on dropping enchanted or explosive payloads, who could say what would be possible.
Then there was the obvious benefit to scouting that flying units could provide. Fact was Mark still had no clue where exactly Daniel’s dungeon was in the northern mountain region. They had narrowed down some locations, but even the linked thrash bears Mark had sent were quickly found and dealt with by Daniel’s own forces.
Honestly, Mark had to think about the choice for a little while. Power of flight would add a lot to their capabilities, but it was hard to pass up a potential respawning army. Even a 20% increase to their daily production could be extremely beneficial, versus having less MP and paying for the units that the power of flight would allow. Mark finally sighed and chose power of flight. Their versatility was one of their strengths, and flying could offer a lot. Mark had to trust that he could use it effectively to their advantage.
Mark got nearly immediate confirmation that he had made the right choice just the next day. The first thing Mark had inevitably done after getting their unique reward was to send out flying scouts. The main objective was to locate Daniel’s dungeon, although they sent units in other directions to help uncover the rest of the map.
The weaker of their new tier 2 units was the ‘winged’ goblin or what Mark and Amelia would come to call the bat goblin. An orange skinned goblinoid with an upturned bat-like snout and leathery wings that stood five feet tall. The winged goblin was fairly weak even for its 2.0 power rating with strength equivalent to the 1.2 power rated legionnaires. Intelligence wise they fell at the level of the yellow hobgoblins meaning they would be mediocre as fighters or as mages. Still since they followed the humanoid class and skill system, there would be a lot of possibilities that Mark could tryout.
The second unit was the weevil. A unit from the creepy crawly branch the weevil was far more powerful with a 2.7 power rating. The bulbous creatures had a furry black thorax and abdomen covered by four folded wings. The long hook-like nasal appendage added an extra two feet to the seven foot long beast. Unlike the bat goblins the weevil was as strong as any other beast with the same power rating. It had the best intelligence and wisdom stats of the branch, meaning the weevil was now their best beast tree mage option.
In flight however the two units could not be compared. The weevils in flight were steady and could build to a decent speed given enough time. However, it took them quite a while to get going, and when they maneuvered they had a very wide turn radius. The bat goblins on the other hand could quickly accelerate to their top speeds and could break into a hover or turn on a dime. Effectively they had a flying tank and a mediocre in all other aspects but highly aerodynamic unit. Mark could certainly make them work.
Finding Daniel’s dungeon was a touch more difficult than any other dungeon, but with a dozen winged bat goblins scouring the area they found it soon enough. The dungeon encompassed a valley between two hill ridges. Hundreds of trees were still scattered throughout the area, but there was no undergrowth in the dungeon proper and only patches of grass that had not already been trampled to death. Then there were also caves carved straight into the earth, some large enough for a double decker bus to drive into the opening. There were no buildings, and currently not too many beasts present, likely due to the recent expeditions, but Mark was sure they had found it.
Because they had found Daniels champion. A large mound of red flesh and scales with much larger leathery wings curled closed around its body, forming a ball at the very center of what must be Daniels territory. It was a dragon the size of a hay barn, being at least 50% larger than Daniel’s primordial earth dragon. The power rating was also double that of the earth dragon at 29.9.
“I suddenly fill jipped,” Mark could not help himself from remarking. “What did we unlock the power of flight for everybody?”