Tap, tap, tap. Nicholas holt grimaced as he considered on whether to send another group into the translucent door leading into the other dungeon. His fingers drummed against the lounge chair side. He was currently laying back on a exorbitantly oversized pillow on his chaise lounge chair. As in all things, Nick always strove for utmost comfort and relaxation.
It was kind of ironic since the Arcadian realm throne would only come along with a lot of work, but there were always others who could do the work for him. He knew that this would technically make him a figurehead ruler, but was that really any different than what any of the others would be if they won. A true leader could not be chosen so arbitrarily.
Nick was fine with that. There were plenty of people that were hungry enough to take on such roles for him. Jeeves was one such man. Nick glanced again at the old balding man urgently awaiting his response. He had put in a lifetime of effort to get to this point. He had risen quite high for a foreigner in the Altin Federation. A place where foreigners were normally kept relegated to the bottom class.’
Apparently becoming a second grade butler for the Holt family was not high enough. The 430 year old man had decided to cast his lot in with Nick as his champion. It was not unreasonable, since most considered Nick to be one of the contenders most favored to win this succession battle. Still it was too much of a risk for most of the butlers who were content to finish out their lives with their current status.
The difference was that Jeeves' family would not be able to hold its place once he passed on or was forced to retire. Acting as a champion for the realm succession battle on the other hand would ensure his family's place for millennia, as well as carve his name into the history books. It would only be a footnote to Nick’s own, but it would still be quite the feat for someone from a backwoods mining planet.
Jeeves was already old. Perhaps only had another 100 years or so left, so perhaps for him it was not much of a gamble for him to make. Most polls, even the ones in other factions, put Nick as one of the top three favorites for the battle, and history collaborated their chances since the Holt family had won 2 of the 8 succession battles, and they had even made it to the final four or five in all but one of the other battles.
The Holt family had an outstanding track record. Only that damn republic could claim the same. They also had 2 victories and always had one of the final contenders. The difference was that they were an entire faction, and the Holt family was only a single family, huge as it was. The scheming republic usually even played a bit foul, deciding on which of their three contenders they wanted to win and having the other two covertly doing what they could to support the chosen.
“Well my lord,” Jeeves said hesitantly
“I don’t think we can finish the job with what we have remaining. We will drop it for now. Amelia Cromwell is from one of the weakest factions in the battle. Getting the unique reward would have been nice, but unlocking the contribution feature is far more important in the near term.”
Unauthorized duplication: this tale has been taken without consent. Report sightings.
“A most wise decision, my lord,” Jeeves said bowing. He then turned to give new orders through the unit link.
They still had nearly 50 skeleton soldiers waiting outside the dungeon, but most were of the weaker variety. It would be difficult enough to finish off the bear. Then there was the fact that the defenders would soon start respawning. For all Nick knew they had an entire second floor for them to have to go through.
Both Jeeves and he had thought it was a windfall when they had discovered the secondary dungeon entrance. A chance to bypass a dungeon's settlement defenses seemed like a good opportunity, but this dungeon had more than the 25 defenders that their own had. Plus they had a guardian that would put Nick’s to shame. A zombie bear would sure be nice to have.
Perhaps it would be in their cards in the future. It was clear Amelia Cromwell had unlocked the humanoid tree, so the two undead they had must have come about through some other opportunity.
Jeeves had mentioned that perhaps they would have to unlock the beast tree for beast undead to become an option. They had three branches of the undead tree to include skeletons, zombies, and spirits, yet not one of the branches had an undead beast unit. It was what it was. They had three branches unlocked, and would not be unlocking any of the others. Three branches should be enough to meet their needs till the end of the battle.
Nick and Jeeves had decided on the global expansionist specialization, which gave them the Settlements 1 and Contender Capabilities techs. It also gave a reduced cost for various things related to expansion, but the main reason they had picked the specialization was to increase their dungeon level as quickly as possible. Few other contenders could match the Holt family in a contest of money.
Therefore it was imperative to get the contribution system going as soon as possible. Getting to dungeon level 2 was the primary focus. They had only briefly expended resources to make their dungeon defensible and to unlock a couple of extra branches, so as not to entirely cripple their future possibilities since unit trees and branches would be locked once the dungeon leveled up.
Since units had population caps, they could not just mass produce one type. Plus a little diversity would definitely be helpful. The zombie branch units were not too different from the skeleton branch, but the spirit branch added some unique units. Unfortunately, they had not actually built any of the units. Otherwise this dungeon would likely fall pretty easily.
Nick could only sigh the opportunity was lost. They no longer would have surprise on their side. They did have MP to spare, since they had been pulling in nearly 8,000 MP a day since the end of the second week of the battle. But their dungeon was a half day away, and the other dungeon could easily be able to make improvements before they could attack again.
The attack would likely be successful, but it would also cost them days in their goal of unlocking the level 2 dungeon. The unique reward would be good, but it was hardly better than getting goodies once the contribution feature was unlocked. Besides once they started getting unique units and other perks it would be pretty easy to stomp out weaker faction dungeons.
It was no different than the dungeons around them. If Nick wanted they could have easily cleaned up at least one of them by this point, but the contenders around him would not really be a threat in the end game, so they would just bide their time to reach their goals and then knock them out when it was convenient for them.