Chapter 41: Day 112
Cynthia
The battle was developing at a frightening pace over the last few weeks. Four dungeons had fallen since the last ranking. The only real surprise was her client knocking one out early in the month. An accomplishment that had perhaps helped them to stay above Mareth in the rankings. The weaker faction dungeons were starting to fall to the lower ranks. It made sense since the more powerful dungeons were starting to make their move.
Predictably, Wren Wright, the only contender left in the northeast dungeon group, had been the next dungeon to fall. The other three contenders in the group were all major factions in the top ten, so Ms. Wright’s fate had been long overdue.
The next two dungeons to fall, both belonged to the southwest dungeon group, both had fallen victim to Nicholas Holt, who had just begun his conquest to clear his area. The other two dungeons left in his area had fallen in the rankings to 16th and 15th, despite one of them being ranked 8th in the last rankings. Experts were projecting that he would be the first to clear his dungeon group, taking down the last two remaining dungeons within the next month. Taking down the last two dungeons within a week had been enough to bring him up to first in the rankings.
Conversely, the beastmaster who had held down the first place in the first two rankings had fallen to second. Simon Heath, the seventh rank from the magnum faction, had been able to hold the beastmaster off to a stalemate. Simon was clearly the weaker dungeon, but his defenses were enough to hold off the more powerful army. It was projected that he would be able to hold off for at least a couple more months. Simon had fallen to eight place, which was pretty generous considering that there were more indications that he would fall sooner than anyone in her clients dungeon group. But then again, he was from magnum. Despite them only having won the realm succession battle once, all of their contenders routinely made it far into the battles. It was not an accident that they were the only major faction with all three of their contenders still in the battle.
Of course only one was likely to make it to the final four or five dungeons. Avery Kingston was perhaps the strongest contender with support equal to that of Nicholas Holt, but she was in the same grouping as Richard Lambert, the main contender from the republic. It was a foregone conclusion that the contender that the republic focuses on would make it to the end.
Jack Wynham, the other contender from Magnum was likely going to make it the farthest. The Southeast dungeon group was the only group with five contenders still remaining. Although except for Leonard Boulevic the other contender from the republic, all three were ranked 12th through 14th. Jack and Leonard would supposedly gobble up the weaker dungeons. Then Leonard would likely play a stall game with Jack, while sending aid North to aid Richard Lambert in his conquests.
All of that being considered, Richard Lambert was actually a bit lackluster for being the top Republic contender. Sure he had to contend with the fifth and sixth place holders, but he had as of yet not done anything of note. Avery Kingston, Derrick Blackwell, and Richard were all fighting each other vigorously in a bunch of mini skirmishes. Each of them had difficulty establishing and holding off onto secondary and tertiary resource outposts. The result was that all three of them were frequently losing out in daily resource production. It was the likely reason that Richard had not moved up in the rankings.
Regardless, her client was in a decent position. Neither of the two dungeons nearby could easily conquer them in the near term. Then there was the fact that they had breached the top ten. Sure they were only in tenth place, but a minor faction making it into the top ten was far from the norm. Only one other had accomplished the feat in the prior eight battles. The post ranking talk shows were all noting that fact.
The talk surrounding the last few rankings had mainly been focused on the beastmaster. A medium faction contender being ranked number one was far more newsworthy than Amelia cracking into the top ten, but since Daniel hale had failed to deliver anything of note in the last two months, the hype on him was beginning to wane. He would likely be one of the five final dungeons, but most experts still projected for him to end up in fourth or fifth place.
The special Cynthia had put out had garnered a lot of attention for Amelia as well. Several potential sponsors had even reached out to Cynthia, but they had held off on actually pledging any support. Hopefully, the amount of coverage Amelia was getting now would get them off the fence. They might not make it to the end, but most projections had Amelia’s dungeon at least surviving another 2 or 3 months.
Mareth: Day 112
Mareth’s eyes shifted up and down the rankings. Eleventh was not too bad. All of the major faction contenders were above her, but most of the others were below her. She sifted through the five contenders above her. Was it a true representative of her strength or did viewers just not think that she would be eliminated anytime soon? Probably the latter, Mareth grimmaced.
Her eyes shifted down to the name below her, Amelia Crowwell, the youngest contender in the battle. To be honest, Mareth was a little irked to have the young girl from Altaire above her in the rankings. What was the highest ranking someone from Altaire had reached sometime before this? The twenties? At best the high teens?
If Mareth was not a part of this battle, she would likely even cheer the young girl on, but Mareth was a part of the battle. She could not help but be annoyed that the girl was ranked higher than her. It was a testament from the viewers. In the showdown, between them the viewers were voting that Amelia would come out on top, and the showdown was coming, Mareth had no doubt.
Gale was focusing on her defenses, content to let the battle go on all around her. She would have to fight it out with Amelia, before even considering challenging the swamp fortress. All the while, Gale could sit back watching, content to send a force at the most inopportune time to mop up whomever survived.
The stalemate between herself and Amelia could not last. Mareth had not scouted too much of the map, but she had a general idea of the creator’s intent. They had placed the various groups of dungeons around the map. Mareth had found the edge of the map to the west and found the Holt family's dungeon to the south. Nick holt was consolidating his group of dungeons even now. Once he had finished, where would he turn his armies next?
Mareth needed to win the fight in her backyard and start preparing to contend with the true threats in the battle. The sooner she settled things at home, the greater she would increase her chances of surviving. Perhaps winning was a long shot, but it was not like she could accept the alternative.
The problem was her opponents. Gale was like a thorn in the side, Mareth felt she might never be able to remove, and Amelia… She was very troublesome, as well. Mareth had scouts monitoring both the nearby dungeons, so she was able to keep tabs on any new developments. Luckily, constructs did not need food, water, or sleep, so they could just sit in a location day after day. Amelia, had yet to find even one of them despite a couple being so close to her territory.
The only issue is that Mareth only had three links. Mareth had resolved this by having tenders that would shift between the various scouts, collecting the information. In case of emergencies, the constructs could send up a smoke flair that would instantly draw her attention. It was a pretty good system. She could monitor the enemy dungeons and keep eyes on her entire valley.
Mareth had already known Amelia would not be as simple as one would expect from her prior attack on her dungeon, but her scouts had also been there to witness Nehemiah’s fall. Amelia had seemingly acquired a branch of bug creatures that she used as calvary. On top of that, her enchantments were extremely deadly. She could accept the enchantments, but how did Amelia keep getting different types of units? They certainly were not sponsorship packages. There were too many, and besides Amelia should not be even getting sponsorship packages. Mareth hmpfffed in frustration.
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Mareth’s frustration soon gave way and a smile took over her face. So what did it matter if Amelia kept pulling different unit types out of the air? So what if the viewers thought she would not win in a head to head? Mareth might not have a lot of different unit types to depend on, but what she did have would be truly frightening.
Mareth had only unlocked two branches, scarecrows and golems. In the future, she would love to unlock the only level 2 construct branch guardians, but what she had now should be enough. She had only gotten two level 2 units, one from each class. She got a rock golem with a power rating of 2.5, and she got a jack-o-lantern from the scarecrow branch simply called pumpkin head, with a 2.7 power rating.
Only having two level 2 unit types should have been fairly limiting, but Mareth had chosen unique units as one of her research lab focuses. Despite seeing a 3% undefined essence combination project under the focus, Mareth had used her research labs special feature to rush the research. She could only do it once every three months, but this second rushed project had not let her down. Instead of getting one new unit type, she had gotten something far better.
Mareth could use essence on any of her existing unit types to create an essence offshoot that counted as a unique unit type with its own capacity limit. The capacity limits mirrored that of the unit type she chose. If she chose a level 1 unit type the capacity would be 250, and it would be 100 for a level 2. Since she had access to three different essences, it basically meant she could make four times the amount of any type. Her two level 2 unit types had become eight level 2 unit types, with six of them having unique attributes of the associated essence used in their creation.
Mareth’s first essence was the brimstone essence that was located in her dungeon’s territory. The essence would give the units a green glow and their attacks would be corrosive in nature. Most of her other essence projects were focused around this essence since she had it the longest.
The second essence Mareth had gotten access to was shadow essence. Her golem miners had uncovered several different pockets of it in her magic mine. They had found quite a bit, but it was still a resource that was extremely limited. Mareth had not known that finding essence in the dungeon was even possible, nor did she know why her units were only discovering pockets of the same type of essence.
The final essence source Mareth had access to was actually found by Nehemiah. A near unlimited source of magma essence in a volcano. It was located halfway between their dungeon group and Nicholas Holts. Potentially, a gimmick the creators had put in for the dungeons to fight over. Nehemiah, had apparently been fairly behind in researching things since he had seemingly not found a way to utilize the essence, but one good point of Amelia wiping him out was that Mareth had been able to easily move right in to take the resource.
Mareth’s eyes shifted over her interface windows. She had maximized her MP production for level 2 on top of knocking out the metal casting tech. After hitting those crucial techs, Mareth had shifted to building her force's strength, while slowly researching other techs. Her next step was to take out Amelia. Then she would unlock the guardian branch for 200,000 MP and start working towards level 3.
In that respect, it was important for Mareth to finish this war as soon as possible. She had most of the classes and skills unlocked that she wanted, Now she just needed time to build a super overpowered force to take out Amelia in one go. The execution blade needed to be big and swung really hard to ensure the job was finished. She would only waste more resources if the attack did not finish the job.
Gale: Day 112
Gale stood atop the stone wall peering out into the swamp. For the last several months, all had been quiet. Ever since she had wiped the bullywog village off the map, Gale had little to no interactions with the outside world. There had been a couple of attacks through alternate entrances to her dungeon, but they were not too difficult to repel.
Afterall, Gale’s first dungeon floor had been the mine that her dungeon depended on. If she had known about the alternate entrances, she would not have even bothered creating dungeon floors. However, she had built her floor pretty late in the game. Just before moving up to level 2, so the first floor defenders were already well into the 2’s power rating wise. She had to build several more floors since she already had the first alternate entrance, which of course compounded the problem, but she was sitting pretty secure with the three floors she had.
Her dungeon had turned away the former ranked number one after all. Daniel Hale had hit her full force when she only had two floors, but despite sending six beast adventuring parties he had been unable to finish her off. The resulting spawner had made her second floor even stronger. Of course it had been close to falling, so Gale had immediately built a third floor. The next few attacks on her dungeon had been comparatively a joke compared to that first one. One of them, Gale, had not even bothered to grab a spawner despite doing so. She had the other despite the units being a little underpowered, they at least went well with her third floor defenders.
The fourth floor would be even stronger with her new branch. After maximizing production and metal casting, Gale had immediately set to unlocking a level 2 branch. It was definitely time since she had only one branch before paying the 200,000 MP it required to open the giant branch. Her force had always been limited, with only the lizardmen branch. She had only received two additional units with level 2 for the branch, so a second branch was a must.
It had been slightly frustrating to find that the giant branch only gave her one additional unit. Sure it was a 2.8 power rating ogre, but she had been hoping for a couple of units. Not to bolster her forces, her swamp castle would be difficult to take despite being undermanned. No she had wanted the additional workforce to speed up progress, 35 ogres was not sufficient enough.
Gale supposed she should be happy. The giant branch likely would have several level 3 options when she got there, but she had wanted the manpower now. Gale grimmaced that she would likely be forced to unlock the troll branch as well. The cost had risen to 300,000 MP, so it would take a couple of weeks of devoting all her resources, but she did not have too many alternatives. Six unit types was not enough, and Gale was skeptical whether there even would be any level 3 branches. She could not imagine something far formidable than giants being offered. Unlocking trolls, might be her only option to get a third branch.
Gale glared out across the swamp at something in the distance. The ever present fog was light enough that she could just make out the lone dead tree sticking up. She could not see it without using binoculars or her interface view and zooming in, but she knew what she would find. One of Mareth’s scarecrows clinging to the top and spying on her.
Gale had left the scarecrow alone. Better to leave the scout she knew about, than for her opponent to come up with some other method to spy on her. Not like the scarecrow could see much at this point anyways. The stonewall was over ten feet tall, so even the ten foot tall ogres would be almost entirely hidden from view.
Gale had yet to locate Mareth Ingall’s dungeon location, but she had hardly ventured out into the surrounding world at all. The swamps were her world. She had located Nehemiah’s dungeon since it had been only a couple hours from the edge of the swampland. She had also located Amelia Cromwell’s dungeon with her recent scouting parties. Nehemiah’s dungeon had fallen.
Who had done the deed, Gale did not know. Nor did she overly care. Her world was pretty small, but she was in a good position to build her strength uninterrupted. Instead of wasting MP fighting off attacks or attacking she could unlock higher class levels and skills. She doubted a force existed that would be able to take on the fourth dungeon floor she was soon to build. With level 4 classes and regular experience, her ogres would have a power rating in the high 4’s. Not to mention the skills or equipment they would all have. No reason to skimp on the MP expenditure.
Her forces were small, but they would all be elites. On top of raw power, she had two essences to utilize. It figures that the first that she had found was mud essence located just outside of her territory. She did not know what made the mud essence special since everything around her was mud, but had a couple of uses for it already.
The second essence source came from her magic mine, cloud essence. She had found a half dozen pockets of the stuff. It was a welcome surprise, and since she had been mining since early in the game her research lab had already discovered several uses for the essence as well.
All in all, Gale was quite comfortable. She would continue to develop. Her scouts would continue to look for Mareth’s dungeon. She had an idea of the direction, but her scouts were always wiped out before actually catching sight of the dungeon itself. Until then she would keep eyes on Amelia’s dungeon. Her lizardmen needed food and water unlike the scarecrow scouts that Mareth had, but they could sit still for more than a week due to their slow digestive systems.
Changing out the lone lizardmen scout on the bluff every now and then was more than doable. Luckily, after finishing the final add on to the research lab she had gotten a unique one unit class called the inventor. Gale just had to state a need and the intelligent lizardmen could come up with a solution. A binocular made utilizing cloud essence had only taken upwards of a month, but now her scout could get a pretty clear view of things.
Amelia’s dungeon defenses were of course underwhelming, but Gale was not confident that she could take the dungeon without devoting her full strength. Something she was hesitant to do since that would take away all her miners and builders. Perhaps, if the right opportunity presented itself, Gale thought smiling.