Things solidified fairly easily after day 345. It was clear there would not be alliances at this stage, unless someone could manage to team up two of the three other dungeons, but after Daniel cut Avery down from behind, there was little chance of that. But he had not been the only one to make additional moves. Nick Holt had successfully sent a secondary force to capture the central island shortly after the other battles had concluded. Nothing had been quite formalized, but the battle had clearly devolved into the two southern dungeons facing off with one another, leaving Mark and Amelia to face Daniel.
Perfect world, Mark and Amelia would have been able to reach dungeon level 4 and get their own champion before the face off, but Daniel was not going to give them time to breathe. As soon as he reinforced the remnants of his army that survived the assaults' on Avery’s dungeon he sent them right back out. They set off the very next day, headed south skirting to the west of the swampland. Their progress was slow, but they would still reach Mark and Amelia’s home dungeon in exactly a week after the coalition attacks.
The only good thing about the swift attack was that Daniel would not have half of his named units that he had lost in the battle with gale. Midnight the shadow cat, Vivi ‘the wanderer’, and Luna the moon wolf, had all fallen in that battle. The downside was that two of the three he was bringing were the biggest and baddest available. The earth dragon ‘the first primordial’, and the treant ‘World tree,’ were two of the biggest units in the succession battle. They would be accompanied by Vince, the other caval cat. Of course they were all dwarfed by the giant dragon that would most likely make an appearance. Mark’s only hope was that Daniel wanted to keep that particular card a secret from the other two dungeons that would likely learn about it if he used it for the attack. However since the giant beast had winged its way over to nest on plateaus near the approaching army, it was a faint hope.
The army itself had thousands of tier 1 beasts. Then there were a good 500 of the higher tiers. It was a true elite force. Daniel knew that his attack would be no surprise, his dragon had even shot after and snapped up a few bat goblins that had winged too close, so he was throwing everything he had at them. The likely intention was that even if he lost everything while taking their dungeon, he would still be able to rebuild before the southern dungeons could even think about targeting him.
Most would think that it would be enough to accomplish the task, but Mark was determined to ensure that Daniel would pay for looking down on them. Then Mark would take the bare minimum amount of time to get enough resources to launch their own counter attack. A week was not a lot of time, but they would still have accumulated more than 350,000 MP when all things were said and done. Mark already had their defense all planned out.
Now Amelia and him were just working on their finishing touches. To be exact, Amelia and Crouse the inscribing gnome were shooting for artifact quality enchantments. They had already completed a handful of single artifact quality enchantments, but those were of little use when trying to bring down such a highly mobile dragon. For shooting something out of the air, you needed a shotgun not a rifle, but to pierce the hide you also needed greater piercing power, so despite them having some 73 enchantments currently available to them, they were working on something tried and true.
Currently, Amelia was working on one of Mark’s most ambitious designs yet. At the artifact level dual or triple enchantments had to be interwoven with one another adding a depth and complexity that would result in the exponential increase of power required. For this design, Mark had downplayed the duplicate projectile enchantment. Success would mean only 3 duplications, only a quarter of some of their masterwork quality enchantments, but if piercing or more duplicates had to give, Mark wanted to keep the stopping power. Hopefully, the slightly less complicated design than when he had gone full tilt with both enchantments would allow Amelia and Crouse to succeed this time. If successful they would then have the rest of the 2 remaining days before Daniel’s forces arrived to use up the rest of their materials.
Mark glanced around the crafting house. Dozens of goblins and gnomes were busy with their own crafts or enchantments. A group of gnomes were forming even more petrified arrow shafts and mithril arrow heads for Amelia and Crouse to work on. Others were shooting for just exceptional or even high quality gear.
Over the battle they had researched a bunch of different enchantments, 73 in total, but they really only got around to using a fraction of them. Of course things changed over the battle. The firecracker enchantment arrows had long ago lost prevalence due to enemies just being too strong for the average quality enchantments stolen from Nehemiah’s dungeon to be effective. However the reverse was also true.
Mark had not really known what to do with the weight change enchantment, but with the addition of power of flight, different avenues had become available. Now a bunch of inscribers were busy enchanting polished rocks. Based on his design a good quality enhancement would weigh an eighth of its normal weight and be duplicated into even more projectiles, allowing even a bat goblin to take a handful up and devastate weaker unit types. Mark had then locked at about 30 pounds before the extra weight would make them too heavy laden to be effective.
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However a couple hundred pounds of duplicating rocks would slam down like meteors on ground forces. The higher quality variants were tetrahedron darts made of solid metal. They were larger, heavier, and would duplicate into more copies than the lower quality rocks. However, even with the 1 to 15 weight conversion they would still be too heavy for a bat goblin to carry more than 1. Of course the weevils would be able to carry a dozen of them. They would then be able to fly over the battlefield like carpet bombers infusing each payload before it dropped, but due to time constraints they would not be able to make that many runs. They just would not have enough built. This next battle would be mainly the rock variants.
A chorus of shouts erupted from the Crouse's workstation. Mark drifted over. A petrified wooden shaft with a blue tinted metal arrowhead basically reverberated in the vice that held it aloft. Mark appreciated the sight for a minute, before glancing back at Amelia who was still hard at work. She still had a good half hour to go by the look of things. Each bolt would take a good 2 hours to finish, meaning Mark could not expect to have too many of them even with a half dozen inscribers working on them, but what was important was that they had finally succeeded. They already had some single artifact quality enchanted gear, but this was the first dual artifact. Not wanting to be a further distraction, Mark departed wordlessly back to his own station in the brewery. Dozens of reds were already working diligently, but Mark paid them little attention.
He was the best at making inscription designs, but he was only one of the many that could brew at their dungeon’s top level. Mark focused exclusively on enlightenment pills. It was a bit of double effort, but he or one of the others would have to make an average or good quality enlightenment pill, for an inscriber to even have a chance at artifact. Even masterworks failed more often than not without the pills aid. A human or gnome just did not have the appropriate levels of awareness for such intricate work and concentration without help. For each enlightenment pill, they gave an inscriber a shot at the higher levels.
Mark did not mind contributing his part, since he could still spend half of the time thinking through various things. For the past five days it had been all about how to stop Daniel. As the defending force they would have some advantage, but that was assuming that Daniel's dragon did not swoop down and roast hundreds or thousands all at once. Mark had not seen any proof, but he felt it was prudent to assume the thing could breathe flames, allowing it to kill units far more quickly than if it had to rely on its teeth and claws.
Even before the coalition battle, ballistas had been in mass production, so they had quite a few stationed along the wall, but ever since Daniel had turned his forces south Mark had some hauled up to the top of the plateau and started fortifying the edge of the plateau right above their dungeon. If their advance party failed, then it would be up to them to deal with the dragon.
Several thousand goblins would man the plateau and the walls and towers down below
More beasts would be waiting underground to ambush Daniel’s forces outside of the walls. Daniel likely would not expect such a tactic to work, but the tunnel egress points were all sealed with solid stone. The earth shaper enhancements could drop the wall allowing their creepy crawlies free access to insert themselves behind enemy lines without warning. Of course then there was the air support, both for the battle and for the group that would be sent to down or hopefully kill the dragon.
The real limit to Mark's plan of course was resources. Goblins were of course extremely cheap. A 100,000 MP was enough to summon the required goblins. Mark was able to summon 2,500 in total. Of course half of that money was to pay for the more expensive bugbears or mages, which Mark summoned sparingly. It also did not include their new flying units. Mark spent another 100,000 MP on them alone, but since the bat goblins' base price was 800 MP they had far fewer than he would have liked.
They already had all of the defensive plant units summoned. Every one of the sunflowers had survived the assault on Gale’s dungeon. Their number would be supported by blood roses and a handful of midnight lotuses.
Mark had spent the rest of their MP on their beast assault force. Tier 2 and 3 units were expensive, but with the proliferate skill a bunch of elites could be turned into a decent sized army. Mark went for a mix of Carnivorous centipedes and the two tier 3 spider variants. The spore spiders were a must, their unique ability was just too useful against other living units, although thankfully the creepy crawly units were an exception to the rule. The spore spiders could choose the enemies while the carnivorous centipedes and black funnel web spiders delivered the majority of the lethal attacks.
Every one of the beasts were fully evolved. They would still be at a disadvantage against Daniels double evolved on a power rating basis, but hopefully a 1,000 or so unit swarm would still be effective.
On top of all of this, Mark had a couple hundred goblins and other unit types already summoned. Then there would be a good 1,000 miners that he would keep in reserve. Of course Mark hoped things would not come to them. There was one more card that Mark had not demonstrated too much outside of a dungeon.
There just had not been much point in bringing out the golem balls against Gale. One giant would probably wade through a hundred of them like an adult wading through a bunch of toddlers after all, but for flesh and blood beasts… In all honesty, Mark felt they were a bit of a cheat. The only limit was manna. The green goblins just did not have enough, the other non mage goblins would only be able to activate one normally. Of course with their stockpiles of mana potions, Mark could afford even to allow non mages to launch around three. Much more than that, he would risk losing fighters to manna depletion.
In total, Mark expected to have a good 1,200 units falling anywhere from 0.3 to 1.5 in power rating. They would not be terribly lethal, but would hopefully add pressure on Daniel’s forces if used correctly.
