The attack, led by Cedrick, to retake their dungeon’s surface proceeded smoothly. The bugbear captain led the other five bugbears alongside the three arachne to storm the inner earthen wall. Lesser straw scarecrows peppered them with arrows, but only one bugbear succumbed to the ranged attacks. The others and the three arachne each had a concerning amount of shafts protruding from their bodies, but even without the extra defense provided by the rock skin pill the bugbears could endure quite a bit and the arachne were also quite resilient.
The bugbears and arachne slammed into the fifty awaiting clay golems and the carnage began. It was not till the three jack o lanterns lobbed their palm pumpkins that more of the attackers fell. These jack o lanterns were of the normal variety, so their summoned palm pumpkins looked like legitimate miniature pumpkins. However, they acted closer to grenades. When they detonated pumpkin shrapnel was sent in all directions. The attack was not any weaker than the flame or acidic versions.
One exploded in between two bugbears, and instantly killed one and seriously wounded the other. The other two pumpkins targeted arachne. One shredded the goblin upper half of one of them, and the other detonated to the side of another arachne. Shrapnel shredded and severed all but one of the four legs on that side, on top of blasting into the spider abdomen. The arachne went down and was swarmed by clay golems.
However there was no chance of Mareth’s forces turning away the assault as soon as the gnomes got into range enchanted arrows streaked toward the defenders. Seconds later two magic lances streaked forward toward two of the jack o lanterns. Most of the straw scarecrows were caught by one of the hundreds of flaming arrows. Several of the jack o lanterns went down. The last, seemingly taking stock of its sides chances, proceeded to remove its head and throw it at the last remaining arachne.
The arachne's entire body was shredded along with everything else in the vicinity including a good 10 clay golems in the area. Another one of the bugbears went down despite being a good 25 feet away from the blast. Apparently he had caught a piece in the neck. A handful of clay golems and a couple of creepers bounded over the wall intent on taking down whatever they could manage in what little time they had left, but they barely made it to the final two standing bugbears.
Cedrick’s gnome brawlers slammed into them immediately, pulverizing the rest in a matter of seconds. Mark only paused briefly to ensure the last of the red dots disappeared before checking the main dungeon screen. Sure enough, the battle had registered as over and they had received their MP from defeated enemies.
“Whoa,” Amelia exclaimed. Mark was equally as flabbergasted. Switching over to the log gave the exact figure. They had received 106,431 MP all at once, but since the garden sanctuary was still up and running they had accumulated over 3,000MP on top of the little they had prior to the nighttime assault.
“Holy crap. Mareth spent a lot more on her forces than I had thought,” Mark said amazed. In truth he had been anticipating getting 50,000 at the very least but had been expecting around 70 or 80 thousand. This would give him a lot more leeway, and Mark immediately knew what he wanted to do with it. “Amelia, can you settle things with Cedrick and get the essence of life essence? I need to run the numbers a bit.”
Amelia glanced at the main dungeon tactical screen that showed a dirt field filled with charred buildings and bodies. “Sure,” she said finally hesitantly walking towards the room exit.
Mark quickly went through what he had planned to summon immediately following the attack. He needed to make a decision quickly. The bodies on the surface would start to dissolve into the ground in a matter of hours. He needed to recover as much of the enchanted gear as possible. In addition, he needed to summon the 10 spiritualists. Then there was the only slightly less time critical subjugation force he needed to summon to retake their outpost.
However, Mark had already decided on what he wanted and would need. He just needed to make a few adjustments. Despite only having a couple hours of sleep for the last two days, it only took him a couple of minutes. Mark smiled as the numbers fell into line. Mareth should not be able to send a force anytime soon, so Mark needed to take the opportunity to increase the power of units that he would summon.
Mark flipped to the unit upgrade page and selected mage level 3. Upgrading the mage class to the third level cost 50,000 MP. It was a lot considering how vulnerable their dungeon currently was, but it was a big step in increasing their future potential. However, the main reason was that now he would be able to summon 10 level 3 spiritualists for 7,000 MP. Each spiritualist getting an extra 5 power rating worth of spirits under their control would slightly offset Mark not using the MP to increase their forces to protect them in their current vulnerable condition.
Perhaps Mark should not have taken the risk, but how often did he have hundreds of enemy units for his spiritualists to choose from. Not to mention, the level 3 mage class would give their future mages a big boost. Not only would they get a 10% increase to their power rating they would also have access to another basic spell. The level 3 mage gnomes had just demonstrated how powerful magic lances could be. Magic bolts were good for a quick attack or for dealing with weak units. Fire balls were good for crowd control, but neither was really good against powerful individual units.
Mark continued on. He would need the life essence the gnomes had collected on the way before he could summon the spiritualists. Mark next unlocked level 2 of the scout class and the associated archer class for 15,000 MP in total. It was another long overdue boost their forces needed. Their enchanted arrows were a critical part of their dungeon’s strength. Increasing their accuracy and stopping power should not be a waste. Mark wanted to get this little upgrade before he started summoning new units.
Next Mark moved to summoning units. First, he would summon two divisions of goblins. Both divisions would include 269 green, 20 horned, 10 yellow, and 1 red for a total of 300 goblins. All the horned goblins and above would get a class. One division would get the level 2 archer class and the other division would get the new sapper class. All 600 would be sent to scavenge from the battlefield, but when things were over one division would rebuild the defenses and man the tower in case of an attack. The other division would mine. In total the 600 goblin divisions would only cost 20,290 MP leaving Mark with plenty to build a subjugation force.
However, before Mark purchased the units he noted several things on the unit page. For one, three bugbears had survived retaking the dungeon. Two of them were just a part of the rank and file. The other was the bearbug captain, his status was highlighted indicating that the unit could now be named. Mark had been needing another goblin commander, but before Mark could get too excited he noted that one of his other units was still alive.
What the… Mark thought. Ezekiel was apparently still alive. How had he missed that for the last 12 or so hours. Before Mark could wonder how the mad scientist had managed the feat, he noticed the white haired red hobgoblin off near where his nutcracker contraption had fallen. A compartment door had been kicked off allowing the goblin to emerge out from within. The goblin was now ranting and raving holding both arms up like he was in supplication to the heavens above.
Wasn’t he supposed to be a non combatant class, Mark mused. His smile somehow got a bit bigger and he chuckled. Good luck to the interface getting Ezekial to understand that fact. Mark hardly bothered with the goblin since he hardly listened anyways. Mark had told the scientist about getting into the builders hut during the attack, but had not gotten any confirmation. Now, Mark knew why. In an act of finality Ezekial kicked the wooden nutcracker, before settling down. Then with a surprising amount of strength the scientist started to drag the contraption back toward the charred remains of the research lab. Was he planning on rebuilding it? Whatever, Mark went back to task.
Amelia had collected the life essence which immediately made it available allowing Mark to summon the spiritualists. A minute later 600 goblins were already at work scavenging. They would have done it anyway since there was a lot of goods up and free to grab, but Mark directed the bugbear captain to direct the efforts. He needed samples of enemy equipment as well since some of it was enchanted.
The spiritualists had also scattered throughout the field, apparently they could choose from among any of the enemy dead including those that had died the night before. Which meant they had a whole lot of corpses to choose from. Although they would likely prioritize level 2 units and only include weaker units to round them up precisely to 15. Once again true to goblin fashion the spiritualists argued over the most valuable corpses despite the vast selection seemingly available. Mark just shook his head. Hopefully, they would all fill up their capacities in time.
Cedrick and the gnomes departed and Amelia started walking back. Mark quickly summoned the subjugation force. Mareth only had around 30 units occupying the outpost, so Mark did not need a lot of power. What he needed was a force that would move quickly and through the night to get to the destination. Luckily creepy crawly units were made for that. Mark summoned 5 spiders with 3 bloodline upgrades a piece. They would serve as the mounts for the goblin mages. He summoned 25 roaches to serve as fodder.
Mark decided the bearbug captain could lead the attack. He could sleep on top of one of the spiders through the night, but for support Mark decided to send an additional 4 red mages and 1 red healer. The mages could take on the more powerful units while the roaches dealt with the weaker ones. Mark decided to include a healer, having learned the lesson from their last attack force. There was no sense in losing units due to not being able to heal them. Besides, one of the surviving bugbears was not doing so well. The healer could heal him before they set out. In total the force would only cost 9,800 MP, leaving them with just over 8,000 MP. They could save that for later. Mark summoned the units and told the captain what he expected. The subjugation force could set out immediately.
Amelia rejoined him. “Cedrick said the builders, crafters, researchers, etcetera will come and reset up their camps tomorrow afternoon, just before the buildings respawn.” She plopped down on the couch next to him.
“Yeah, Mareth did us dirty. I think the last time her units scattered our respawning buildings was about 30 minutes before we attacked, so we should get them back around 1800 or so,” Mark scowled. “But… at least we got a new named unit.”
“What!” Amelia exclaimed, bringing up her interface to investigate. Mark waited patiently. “Ohhhh, can I name this one? I got a perfect name for him.”
Mark shrugged in response. A second later the bugbear captain became Henry. Mark looked at her, raising an eyebrow in question.
“Oh, my family has a big n’ tall butler who also has shoulder length curly hair. Just made me think of him…” Amelia smiled. She went on for a couple of minutes telling Mark about the butler, who Amelia was apparently quite close to. She had never really talked about anyone from back home before. Mark had always assumed it to be a touchy subject.
“Well I’m sure Henry will be thrilled that you are thinking of him,” Mark decided to go with that, and not the more sarcastic, ‘Well I’m sure Henry will be thrilled being compared to a big hairy man with a pig snout.’ Amelia was reminiscing about someone who she might actually like, it would be pretty stupid of him to bring it up… At least for now, later there might be an opportune moment to slip it in.
Mark did not dally around in the core room for much longer. He was running on only a few hours of sleep. There was nothing that could not wait till tomorrow at this point.
Day 123
Mark did not even get out of bed to watch the subjugation force retake the outpost at first light. Conversely, Amelia did not even bother to wake up. She got the alarm, same as him, but had silenced it and rolled over in her bed. The attack did not last long.
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A couple of roaches were lost in the attack, but the rest of the force passed through the battle just fine. The mages had immediately targeted the jack o lanterns with magic lances. While the jack o lanterns were not all killed outright, none were able to perform their ultimate move. Next thing they knew the roaches were scrambling over them along with the rest of the enemy units. Henry and the mages dispatched the constructs easily once the roaches had their full attention.
Mark scanned the unit page to catch the exact number of roaches that had fallen. Only 6 had been lost, but Mark’s attention was immediately drawn to something else. He almost shouted aloud, but settled for subtle fist pumps on his cot, that squeaked from the movement.. Henry’s experience level had risen to veteran status. The bugbear had only been summoned for something like three weeks, but had already caught up to Nasal. Perhaps going through a major battle and then two small skirmishes, all in about a day, had really worn in the bugbear captain. But the status increase was not the only thing Mark was excited about.
Henry’s rank was now highlighted indicating that Mark could now safely upgrade the unit to colonel without any adverse effects. Mark quickly did so, before bringing up Henry’s status.
Henry (4/125) Warhammer lvl 3 (veteran) Power lvl: 5.6 Morale: 55 (content) Strength 22 Attack: 5 Defense: 3 Endurance 21 Abilities/Skills Agility 14 Soak Skill Vitality 29 Intelligence 12 Wisdom 12
Henry only had a base power rating of 2.2, but after it was increased by 1.55% due to his class, rank, experience level, and named status, his power rating had jumped all of the way up to 5.6, putting it at the same level equivalent to that of Dragon. Mark imagined Henry being a god of destruction in their next battle, but only for a moment. He quickly recaged his thoughts. It was true they had the same power rating, but they were definitely not equivalent. The behir was a 25 foot long monstrocity, while Henry was a 6 foot something tall humanoid. Henry would be explosively powerful, but was far more vulnerable and could potentially fall in battle quite easily. Still it was a good pick up.
During the previous battle, Mark had just selected one of the red hobgoblin mages to serve as the ground force commander. Now since the red had died, it could be said the position was open. Mark definitely planned to continually rebuild the bugbear warhammer platoon until at least Mareth was dealt with. After that, he could tailor the limited bugbear population to what dungeon they anticipated going up against. Still going forward, the platoon would only have 44 members, since Henry would be holding higher command. The loss of one member would not change much, and it would give Mark the opportunity to pick a new captain to lead the platoon.
That being taken care of, Mark decided to just stay on his cot and go through his menus. Despite having to sleep for two days, he felt pretty good after being out for a good 10 or 11 hours. He definitely would not be able to go back to sleep, and it was still a bit early to be out and about.
They were currently sitting midway between 11 and 12 thousand MP. Not surprising since they only had one outpost going for the last 24 hours. Their main base, the biggest production site, would be back up and running later that evening, and the Crassius outpost would be back up tomorrow morning. They would miss out on quite a bit of MP during the down time, but it had been mitigated as much as possible. The 100,000 MP windfall they had gotten from fallen enemies meant they were recovering quite quickly.
Mark thought about what their next moves would be. The masonry tech was complete, so they could start building stone walls. Mark was looking to build a fortress for their home base, but he was also looking to build a wall to span the crevice entrance from the garden sanctuary. Mark quickly decided he would need three more divisions. One to go to each outpost. For the Crassius outpost, the division would just further fortify what they had and guard the location. After all, they had just under a hundred days worth of coal to mine from the location. There was no need to build it up any further.
The opposite was true for the garden sanctuary. Mark had been saving DP to potentially open a fifth dungeon level for their dungeon, but their dungeon was pretty secure for now. Instead they would upgrade the garden sanctuary outpost to a settlement for a 100,000MP. They were currently at 89 DP, so should only need four days to get there with the 3 daily DP. The goblin division could both build the wall and make other buildings to give their dungeon a second base with full capabilities.
The next division at the home base would start the fortress under the guidance of the gnomes. By the time the coal supply ran out, construction should be well underway allowing them to move everything inside the developing fortress. However once the archer division was done repairing what they could on their current site, they would work on crafting. The scout class focused on attention to detail and hand dexterity, so they would be the best choice. Mark needed tens of thousands of arrows to replace what they had just lost among other things.
After creating the three divisions, Mark would resummon the bugbear platoon. He would send one group of goblins through the barracks, but would swap to getting the bugbear platoon back up to full strength after one round of goblins went through. Mark would have to see how things were going before he solidified his plans after that.
Research wise they had contributed 11 of 12 RP required to unlock the sunflower unit. After that Mark would route their RP to the blood rose and midnight lotus units, unlocking the last of their level 2 units. Mark scanned through the tech tree. There were several that he would like to work towards, but for now he felt unit upgrades would be the best place to send their daily 5 RP.
After all they could unlock some things in a matter of days, they could even unlock warrior lvl 4 after 10 days. Another 15% boost from the associated warhammer class would definitely be beneficial. For level 5, the cost would likely be 100,000 MP corresponding to the price for level 4 of the mage class. Mark shifted from that train of thought. It was fun to speculate, but right now he wanted to focus on the next step.
Mark finally moved to their next research page. For enchantments, they had several research projects underway. The manna reserve project was sitting at 99%, so should be done within a few days, once things are back up and running. But new to the list were protection, stun, and the fire resistance enchantments. All of which showed promise.
The latter two were pretty self explanatory, but Mark had to look up protection. Protection was apparently something that defended against non physical attacks, including magic and curses…? Okay, he had not known curses were a thing in the battle, but it was nice they were getting something to protect from them. However, Mark’s mind quickly dismissed the intangible concept as it saw the last thing on the list. Protection also protected against incorporeal beings or objects.
Mareth’s shadow creepers had basically shifted away from their physical forms to become incorporeal beings. The spiritualist’s spirits were also incorporeal. Mark knew from talking to Cedrick that physical attacks could still hit or effect the spiritualist’s spirits, but Cedrick had to work bloody hard to dissipate wolf spirits that probably had a power rating at or around 0.5. Since both Mareth and they themselves had incorporeal fighters, it was likely that other dungeons had also discovered them.
Sure things such as magic or the light and flame enchantments had proved effective against the shadow creepers, but the two enchantments had been on the opposite end of the spectrum than shadow or darkness. If they ran into something like a fire elemental the same two enchantments might be less than useless. Whereas the protection enchantment might be good against all types.
Mark moved on. They had three classes underway. The tattooist class was at 91%, so it should be complete soon. The beast handler class was at 67% so still had another month or so. The witch doctor class was fairly new at 14%. Looking into it, Mark could glean a little. It was a specialized class that fell in the healer category. But unlike the standard healer, the witch doctor could perform attack curses.
“Haha ha,” Mark laughed quietly. There it was again. Perhaps there was a little cross pollination going on. Someone had looked up something in the infinite library of information the researchers could sift through, and then had spoken about it giving another of the researchers an avenue to pursue. Both projects were basically brand new, having moved from the undefined category the day prior to the attack. Mark just had not gotten around to looking into them yet.
There were only two projects underway in the essence category. The hardening project which was more than halfway complete. The gist of that project was that stone essence could be used to make materials denser, potentially upgrading the quality of the material. Mark was excited to see how that project would affect weapons and enchantments.
The other project was a combination project with the new embuing focus, toxin embuing, but the project was only at 8%, so they would not get it for a longtime. It was the first project to make use of their toxic essence which they literally had almost an infinite supply of. Mark hopped it panned out.
There was only one other embuing project underway. Manna embuing, at 11%. It sounded simple, perhaps being the base concept of the focus. Mark did not exactly know what it would entail, but embuing was basically storing power in a high quality material, such as one of the gems from their mine. In turn that power could be used. Mark assumed it was the equivalent of say a magic sword pulling energy from a jewel in the hilt.
For the pharmacology focus they had three foci, stamina potion, enlightenment pill, and a soldier pill. Besides for the first, Mark could only infer what benefits they could provide.
Mark sighed, swiping away the interface. Nothing having changed from the last time he had checked, was the worst part about having to wait for their buildings to respawn. Mark continued to plan for another hour before a dark gray blimp appeared on his tactical screen ringing the associated alarm.
“Figures,” Mark said after taking a look. A harpy was already showing up to try and get an award. Too bad that there were no domesticated animals for them, but if the information was good Mark could at least promise something at a later time. Mark put on his shoes. Nasal was not here, so Mark would have to attend to the matter for now. Perhaps he could task Henry with the duty in a day or two, when the subjugation force returned, but for now he was the guy.
None of the goblins were up and around when Mark emerged from the portal. Luckily the dungeon entrance had been expanded and there were currently no guards, so he would not have to step up over anybody. The harpy winged her way down to land right in front of the inner wall. Mark did not even bother to walk down the gangplank. The harpy did not seem to care, but was craning her neck looking over where the pig pens had been. Mark did not recognize the harpy. He only knew she was not the matriarch.
“We should have pigs and chickens again in another day or so. If your information is good, we can get it to you then,” Mark offered.
“Very well, landlocked. Did you know that the lizard forces and giants were moving in this direction…” the harpy said. She paused to preen one of her wings. The information was hardly important to her, but Mark’s eyes bulged.
“Yes, they apparently set out some time in the morning. Lizardmen and 30 giants. Perhaps about 800 total…”
They most definitely were not in a position to face Gale right now. The first three floor guardians had yet to respawn, and they had no enchanted arrows. Mark was not so concerned that they were going to get wiped off the map, knowing how powerful their dungeon levels were, but the attack would drain more resources. Being caught between the two other dungeons would be the death of them, but then the harpy continued.
“Although they turned around at some point near nightfall.”
“You could have led with that,” Mark’s eyes narrowed.
“Well we could hardly report it to you yesterday, could we…? Then this morning I saw that you all were back in control of things, so figured I would drop in. And you don’t even have a piglet to reward me for the effort,” the harpy said in an offended voice.
“Its fine, is there anything else?” Mark said rolling his eyes. The self absorbed harpy would be offended, when they were going through the most minor of slights. God forbid she had to wait to be rewarded for her information.
“No, thats it. I will stop back by once you are back up and running. I trust for this I will get a piglet for this…?
“Yeah sure, whatever…” Mark stated dismissing the harpy as she winged off. Not as if he cared about the goblins' precious food supply. He cared more to keep the information coming.
Timeline wise, Mark figured that Gale had sent her forces that way first thing after seeing that Mareth had conquered the surface of their dungeon, but had decided to turn her forces around after the remnants of the bugbear platoon and gnome war band had retaken their surface.
Apparently, Gale had been looking to fish a bit in muddy waters, but had decided against facing even a moderate bit of resistance on the surface and then having to conquer the dungeon levels. The army had only around 800 units in total. It did not seem like a lot, but that included 30 reported giants and powerful lizardmen. Fortunately, the giants all seemed to be the same unit type so Mark could assume that whichever giant humanoid branch Gale had unlocked only had one level 2 unit option. It was good in that it limited the amount of powerful units she could field, but it also would limit Amelia and him when they unlocked one of the branches themselves.
In some ways it would have been an opportune time for Gale to attack. The first three floors of dungeon guardians had been slain and would not have respawned before the prospective attack. Then there was the fact that they would have hardly had any enchanted arrows or other gear ready, but Gale had apparently decided it would not be worth taking the gamble and elected to conserve her resources instead.
The feint would serve as a wake up reminder that although Gale had not made any moves as of yet, but that could change at any time. Perhaps what was even more alarming was the stockpiles of MP and advancements that she must be making, without having to constantly expend MP to deal with other opponents. As far as Mark knew, Gale had fought and eventually killed off the bullywogs, but other than that she had remained practically untouched. If and when they finally dealt with Mareth, Gale would be a much more difficult nut to crack.