Just like everyday for the past week, Mark and Amelia were hard at work. There was a lot to prepare for. Today was the last day before their forces would leave through the underground passage to take the troll village off the map. Oddly enough, it was the preparation and not MP that had held things back. They had already had a good portion of the force built.

Mark planned on sending the regiment and archer division. That would put 750 goblins in the force. Other than that Mark had planned to spawn 5 spiders, 5 scorpions, and 81 cockroaches, all with three levels of beast bloodlines. Added to the 5 spiders and 19 cockroaches leftover from the subjugation force that would give them 10 spiders and a 100 cockroaches. In addition he would send 5 level 3 arachne mages with the soak skill. The additions would only cost just over 39,000 MP.

Then Mark would also send the 10 spiritualists. Hopefully, they could be kept out of the battle, but sending an additional 75 power rating worth of shadow monsters was too good to give up. The force would be led by Henry and Nasal. The latter having respawned several days ago.

Sending around 900 units to attack a force of 500 that were all level two or higher would normally not be enough, but that is where their preparation would come in. Luckily, Mark had some idea of what their units would be facing having heard many stories with trolls back on earth. It was odd how so many things lined up with their mythology, but Mark had come to the conclusion that the lower realm with his earth had been used heavily as a reference for this battle.

If that was the case, it meant that things should line up more often than not. What did he know about trolls? They were bigger than humans. They were tough, and a good portion of lore said they had regeneration. Fortunately, they already had an answer for that. Their forge’s special aspect allowed metal to take on properties from whatever it was quenched in. They had already discovered that congealed corpse blood would result in weapons causing necrosis damage which directly fought regeneration. Mark had directed the collection from all three reanimated corpses whenever they needed more.

Fire was also supposedly, something that was supposed to be effective to combat regeneration, so thousands of arrows with both aspects were being prepared in addition to other things. Mark had spent the days producing rock and doing other things during most of the process.

Amelia was playing with her new toy in the crafting shop. The goblin miners finally came through yesterday. A decent sized source of base essence had been found in the mine. Once again some of it went to the research lab, but they did already have one use for the base essence. The inscription pens could be charged with it for enchantments. Amelia and Crouse were both hard at work to break through the good quality threshold they had been stuck at for so long. Mark would have to check up on her progress soon.

There was only one issue that Mark needed to deal with. Both Mareth and Gale were keeping tabs on their dungeon. They would have to fool them. Mark’s current plan was to have the mining division spend time topside carrying out various roles. Some would have to build the wall. Some would have to go in and out of the crafting house, and some would have to man the tower. The green and horned goblins were capped out, otherwise Mark would just summon more.

Mark thought through it a little more. No, pretending everything was normal would just slow down their progress. Who could say if their opponents would buy it. Then a spark of brilliance came to him. If avoiding attention was not the best idea, then perhaps he should go the opposite way. The more he thought about it, the better the idea was. Make something new and flashy to hold their opponents focus.

After unlocking the germination pathways, Mark had already wanted to swap out their home bases defensive units. Then the goblins and creepy crawlies could be used mainly for offensive purposes. The unit caps were too limiting otherwise. What better time than now, when most of the goblins would likely die in that troll attack to reconfigure their forces.

Of course there would always be a place for the goblins on defense as well, but until they hit level 3 the unit caps were too constricting. For the troll attack and for their eventual sneak attack on Mareth’s dungeon they would need to take as many goblins as possible. The plants and say an archer division could keep the home base adequately defended. At the very least the plant defenders would not need to be fed, so they were basically free units.

Mark checked on their current MP and did the math. Once all the offensive forces had been built, they would be sitting with 162,580 MP right now. That should be plenty to build a pretty good defense.

Mark flipped to their germination upgrade page. They had unlocked one tier 3 vegetative state upgrade. Mystic, the basic mage option, had been Mark’s first choice. The upgrade was the equivalent of unlocking mage level 3, and it did not disappoint. The mystic class gave a new spell, Concussion. Mark had summoned a cheap level 1 unit to test the spell.

Concussion had the longest cast time they had run across, costing the caster a full 30 seconds. It was hard to tell completely since it had not been tested against actual targets. The mystic plant could fire a transparent beam that had a duration of about 4 seconds. From what Mark could tell it looked like a line of powerful wind that would knock over units, but he was sure there was more to it. The name concussion and a 30 second cast time surely would not be associated with just a gust of wind used to knock things over.

Surprisingly, the mystic upgrade had only revealed one tier 4, budding option, with the same name. Either the vegetative state had already branched to all the areas or the one vegetative option just did not have anywhere else to go. Mark would not cry over it. The options were great, but at 50,000 MP per a budding state upgrade he would never be able to unlock all the options if the paths all continued to branch out.

Mark looked at the upgrade currently underway. His second choice had been the shield vegetative state upgrade. Something he would surely want prior to summoning a bunch of defensive type units, but they currently had only 20 of 25 RP toward unlocking it. Mark could convert MP to finish it up or wait till tomorrow.

It did not take long for Mark to decide. He could just stay up past midnight and use tomorrow's 5 RP. No conversion fee and the forces could still be in place tomorrow morning. He would not have to build everything tonight. Some shield blood roses and creeping ivy, and some mystic sunflowers. They could fill out the force more later.

Mark settled on 34 blood rose shields, 49 creeping ivy shields, and 49 sunflower mystics. It would cost just over 103,940 MP, leaving him with over 50,000 MP. By tonight when he actually summoned them, that would be even higher. The 135 plant units would not seem like much, but that was not taking into account the destructive power of the sunflower. Mark had only tested it once, when he was sure the spies would not see the result. A fully charged sunburst could turn multiple decent sized trees into kindling.

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Sure if Mareth attacked in the night they would only have one shot, and even that would have atrophied as energy atrophied off through the night. However, even at sunrise the sunburst would still be half charged. Enough to turn one or two of Mareth’s level 2 units into rubble. Then they would have their other spells using manna. Once he unlocked the healer vegetative state option he would make lotuses. They would heal the bramble defensive barrier and increase all of the flower units' strength by 25% with their malevolent aura.

Unless Mareth attacked, he could wait till they researched them normally. He could summon some in another 5 days. If she did attack in the next few days, Mark would have to summon yellow hobgoblins and other types that were not capped. Then he would summon a bunch of level 1 flowers to fight in the melee. Hopefully, it would not come to that.

Mareth had several weeks to rebuild her forces, the same as them. From the harpy reports, she had already built hundreds of units including a handful of level 2 units. It would take her at least to build an army similar to the last one, but it was likely it would be another week or two before she actually attacked. She had seen what Mark and Amelia had to offer. If she came again, it would be with additional measures.

Mark believed that the fourth level of their dungeon could deal with a lot, but if Mareth got the right units there she would be able to clear it. While Mark thought they could prevent her from doing so if he put his full effort against her. That was not the plan. Last time, Mareth had attacked their dungeon, she had only left a skeleton crew to guard her own dungeon. No other threats in the area had let Mareth focus on all out offensives, but next time she did there would be a surprise ready for her.

Best part is that Mark would not even have to actually endure her attack. If all went according to plan, they could attack once her army was hours away. Based on her previous attacks it would be at night, but that should not be an issue. There was only one issue to the whole plan. Feeding his forces at the advanced position. His forces could theoretically have to wait for weeks. At least a new outpost at the troll settlement would solve the logistical problem.

No longer would he have to constantly send supply trains back and forth. He could buy the food at the outpost right where he needed it. Mark loved when the pieces lined up perfectly.

Mark decided to duck his head into the crafting house. Amelia had been there for a good hour. He could see how much success she had with the base essence. Mark entered to find dozens of units scurrying about for last minute preparations. Amelia had separated herself off in a corner on a desk next to Crouse, the gnome’s main inscriptionist.

“How is it going?” Mark tried, but Amelia just shhh’d him in return.

“It’s going exceedingly well,” Crouse the gnome spoke. He was pale from manna deprivation. “Even I have been able to turn out a couple exceptional quality inscriptions with the base essence. However there still seems to be another threshold preventing us from turning out a masterwork. Our hypothesis is material quality. However right now she is attempting to put three inscriptions on a single arrow. Piercing, duplicate projectile, and the flame enchantment.”

“We have failed a couple of times, but it should be possible as long as all three enchantments are of exceptional quality. As long as we can work out the interference issues between the three.”

“I guess that excludes the firecracker enchantment since we can only produce up to average quality,” Mark frowned.

“That is true,” The gnome relented, but then his pale face widened in a grin. “But you should have seen our first test of exceptional quality enchantments.” Mark’s eyes widened in question.

“After we got our portion of the base essence, I could not help but work into the night using it. Of course, I eventually was too drained to continue, so I joined the festivities as normal. After a few drinks Cedrick suggested we try one out. The duplicate projectile caused the arrow to separate into 9 separate arrows that then burst in flame.”

“It doubled?” Mark exclaimed. The gnome nodded. From poor quality to good quality the duplicate projectile enchantment added one additional arrow per a quality increase, resulting in four duplicates at good quality. Crouse was saying that crossing that barrier had resulted in eight or double the payload. The same was likely true for other enchantments. Crossing the quality threshold would allow their weapons to double in strength.

“How much base essence does each one take?” Mark asked.

“”Hmmmm even with my experimenting, I think I should be able to produce over a hundred double enchanted arrows from our allotment. However we only got 25% of the base essence, so you should be able to produce three times that. Of course, if she is successful with the triple enchantment that number would be less…”

“Can you guys, go somewhere else,” Amelia spoke up frustratedly. Her attention was still on the arrow she was working on. The gnome shrugged.

“Okay, I’ll get out of your hair,” Mark stated. They could talk through his plans during dinner. At that point she would likely be far too drained to enchant again till later that evening, new toy or not.

Mark went to the apothecary expansion. The bugbear platoon was already fully outfitted with pills for the upcoming battle, but increasing their stockpile would never be a bad thing. Mark got the ingredients and got things going. After a few minutes he was able to sit back and think, only dedicating a bit of his attention to the task.

Mark could not help, but think what a rock skin pill would do if he hit exceptional quality with one. Mark smiled despite himself. He had just mastered average quality, and had yet to even produce one good quality pill yet. Scouts had brought enough herbs for some exceptional quality pills, but Mark did not feel up to the task when he could not even hit good quality yet.

Still, if the jump from good to exceptional quality held true for the pill… good quality would likely increase the defense stat by five, so exceptional quality could take it all the way to 10, Mark thought excitedly. To think he had been excited to get his bugbear units past 10 in defense with the use of rock skin pills, but with armor and an exceptional quality rock skin pill 10 did not seem like much at all.

Mark continued producing pills throughout most of the day, with just an hour break for lunch. By dinner time, he was thoroughly worn out. Amelia was just as worn down. She was already waiting for him on the couch. The new rankings were already pulled up. Mark had intended to be here in time, but to finish the last pill he had to accept being a few minutes late.

Mark instantly found their dungeon. They were ranked number 7. With Mareth, just behind at 8. First place had been held by Nicholas Holt, and Daniel Hale had stayed in second. Leonard Boulevic had jumped all the way up to third.

Then, there was Gale sitting in fourth place. She had crept up the list. It seemed that viewers were starting to realize that Gale’s strength was growing without opposition. Avery Kingston and Derrick Blackwell stayed in fifth and sixth respectively, although Gale had surpassed them.

As far as ninth through fourteen, Mark did not care too much. He had a feeling that if Amelia and him survived for too much longer most of them would not be a factor. Simon Heath, a contender from a major faction had dropped all the way to twelfth signaling that he likely was not long for the world.

Being in seventh place would have sounded amazing, if Mark did not read between the lines. While there was some bias in play, viewers should be ranking where they felt dungeons would end up. Amelia being in seventh meant they thought seven other dungeons would fall before Amelia. It likely meant that half of the dungeons were going to be gobbled up by the stronger ones in their area. Amelia and Mareth were just lower on the list since Gale, their local major faction contender, was turtling down.

However, Mark was glad that viewers ranked them above Mareth. It meant people seeing everything both sides had to offer, felt that Mark and Amelia would come out on top. However, Mark could not help but feel some trepidation at the thought of what the battle would be like once there were only seven or so dungeons left. Without the other distractions in their own areas, dungeons would start looking elsewhere.