The time had come. Mark could not afford to hold off on forward deploying their forces any longer. The harpy reports had focused heavily on the forces Mareth moved into the barrack equivalent building for the constructs. If she was going to attack after the next class finished, then she would likely attack in about 3 days. Of course it was always possible that she would send another class of units through, and even one after that. However, Mark did not think it would be too many more.
Mareth had likely taken several steps to ensure her attack would be successful this time. Probably unit upgrades and perhaps better equipment, but for the last week and a half there had been one clear indicator. Mareth had unlocked guardians, a level 2 branch on the construct tree, and they looked to be quite capable.
The guardian branch gave 3 reported unit types: forest guardian, stone guardian, and the bronze guardian. All three types were humanoids made out of wood, stone, and bronze respectively. Each wielded a sword and shield. Just from the name, Mark could guess that the latter two would be difficult to bring down. Like the stone golems, the stone and bronze guardians would be tough to kill, but unlike the stone golems, the guardians were more nimble. Since they each carried a shield taking them down promised to be extremely challenging.
On top of the three new unit types. Mareth also had whatever feature that allowed her to summon various types of the same unit, supposedly from using her various essence sources. Mareth had also seemingly changed her strategy. Instead of sending thousands of weaker units to act as a meat shield, she was likely going all in with level two units. Considering that she might be sending hundreds of stone golems and guardians to act as the meat shield instead, Mark was not sure that they could stop them even if they put their full effort into doing so.
The reason why Mark was fairly sure that the attack would be headed their way soon was that Mareth was cycling 50 bronze statues for her version of the barracks. Mark assumed she was giving her top units an experience bump prior to sending them to battle. Based on the numbers of different types of guardians, Mark could infer that the bronze statues were near maxed out level 2 units with a base power rating of 2.8 or 2.9. Another 10% boost on top of the other ones she likely had could take them into the high 4’s quite easily.
Mark doubted Mareth would allow too much extra time to pass while she sent weaker units through, although she might send one more group that would include the remainder of the bronze guardians through. Like them, Mareth would be wanting to finish things up sooner rather than later. If she did, it would actually work against Mark’s plans of hitting her hard after she sent her forces their way.
Mark’s attack force was ready. Mark summoned 100 yellow hobgoblin archers, 9 more spiders, 150 cockroaches, and 5 scorpions. These would depart tonight with the 5 arachne mages, 10 spiritualists, 50 yellow mages and the newly resummoned goblin regiment. The exception was the bugbears that would leave the day after, once they had finished their time in the barracks leveling up their war hammer class to level 4.
Once again, Mark had taken precautions to prevent scouts spying on their dungeon from noticing the difference. All of the new summons were summoned after it was dark and sent straight to the tunnel. Then Mark summoned 50 legionnaires and yellows to fill in some of the void felt by the 400 plus goblins that had just left. Mark did not have much more leeway to summon any more since most of the goblin unit types were either at capacity or right under.
However, Mark did not expect any issues. If Mareth had not noticed something weird when they had attacked the troll settlement, then she was even less likely to notice anything different now.
Mark checked out the status of their dungeon. They had just over 170,000 MP and 64 DP accumulated, but with a major battle looming on the horizon, Mark felt no inclination to spend their reserves. Best case scenario, Mark could unlock a level 2 branch soon afterwards. Worse case, he would have plenty of MP to resummon losses and to defend as required.
Things were proceeding extremely well. Amelia was churning out triple enchanted arrows and their new dual enchanted shields. Another slightly larger cache of base essence had been found allowing her to never have to stop. Additionally, the goblins had also found more electric essence.
Mark had several thoughts on why they were all of a sudden finding better stuff in the mine. First, he believed that it was a distance thing. Up to a certain distance from the mine's entrance they had discovered no higher level resources, but after hitting a threshold of some sorts, they now were able to obtain some. The second thought that Mark could infer having found the lightning essence twice in a row, was that it was the common essence source in their mine. Mareth likely had the same thing although Mark did not know whether it was the fire or shadow essence.
There was a chance that it could be both. Perhaps once they mined further they might find another type of essence, however Mark was certain that lightning would always be included. After all it took dungeons time and work to find uses for these essences, it would make sense for the mine to produce the same type or types.
The new shields were their newest enchanted item, combining the energy shield enchantment with the new manna reserve enchantment. Prior to this point, the energy shield had been difficult to incorporate into their force. After all, the only units with enough manna to power the shield were the mages, and even they could not power it for more than a few seconds.
However, the new manna reserve enchantment, allowed units to pour manna into the enchantment that could be used by the shield bearer. If Mark understood things correctly it was actually similar to what their imbuing projects would be like. The difference was that units had to pour manna into the inscription, where imbued items could recover manna from the environment.
Regardless, the result was shields that could provide a decent amount of protection. The shields had to be made of metal to take a fraction of the amount of energy that two excellent quality enchantments could make. Wooden shields would explode from trying to store too much manna. Only Henry and a couple of other elite units would be taking the shields for this exhibition. They were too new, and Amelia and the other crafters would not focus on metal shields since beside the bugbears or the arachne none could use one of the iron shields effectively.
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It might not be something used widely throughout their arsenal, but it was another step of progress giving their units another edge. Progress for their dungeon was not limited to the new enchantments.
The goblins at the garden sanctuary had finished the unit spawner and already switched over to building a barracks, and the wall spanning the base opening was already at waist height. In another month or two the settlement would be both highly defensible and capable of building a powerful fighting force.
It was important, since the swamp separated their dungeon from the center of the map. Now that their map was being unveiled, Mark could now see how large of an obstacle the swamp would pose to sending units east. Now they would have a power base on both sides. Once Mark was less cautious about other dungeons being able to easily conquer the settlement, they could start sending scouting parties out using it as their main base.
There was one very important reason why Mark needed a power base on the opposite shore of the swamp. Their scouting expedition had determined the boundary forming the western and northern side of the battle map. Their dungeon was perhaps three days' travel from the western boundary, and were a good 7 or 8 from the northern boundary, so having a power base on the opposite side of the swamp was a step towards the other dungeons.
At the home base, the builders were still hard at work on the greenhouse for the plant units. They were using a combination of wood, stone, and glass. It would take a good month to complete the project. Mark was not quite sure what it did since, the plant units did not have an experience level like the other units. However, it would make the plant units stronger somehow.
The outer wall of the home base fortress was also at waist level, but it also covered five times more distance than the sanctuary's wall. Another month or so, and Mark might go ahead and move the buildings over since the wall would be better than their current defenses.
For the underground outpost, Mark would also have them doing what they could to fortify the area around the carved out homes the trolls had dwelt in. They were limited into what they could actually do, since it was an outpost and not a settlement. However, the army was on its way bringing lumber and other materials that could make a rough barricade. It would not be much, but it might hold out against smaller threats that might choose to attack.
Overall Mark was quite pleased with their progress.
Day 173: 0330
Mark finally opened his eyes. There was a faint intermittent talking coming from outside their hut. Mark just lay there for a moment groggily. If it was not still there in the background, he would just go back to sleep. Mark felt momentarily annoyed at the fact, but it only lasted a moment. Mark’s mind snapped into focus in a second. Someone was speaking through the pedestal from the surface.
Mark hopped off his cot and out the door. It was Nasal frantically calling through the pedestal. A little ways off to the side lurked the solitary arachne that was supposed to be monitoring the damn thing, but the arachne just glared at Mark and the blue orb that were disturbing what would otherwise be a quiet night.
Mark would have been frustrated at the beast, if he had not heard the urgency in Nasal’s voice. There should only be one reason that Nasal was this worked up in the middle of the night. Mark brought up his interface as he responded.
“Nasal, this is Mark. What is going on?”
“Boss, the construct army has already come out of the nearby pass. They will be here in a matter of hours!” Nasal exclaimed.
“What!” Mark shouted. He was more than a little alarmed. They had several scouting teams that should have raised the alarm prior to the army getting to far from their dungeon. Nasal went into an explanation, the goblin scout team on the bluff had lit the warning fire, but it had been one of the gnomes enjoying gnome festivities that had noticed and decided to tell the goblins on sentry duty. How long it had been lit for, Nasal was not quite sure, but he had been trying to get Mark or Amelia’s attention for the last 10 minutes.
Mark was only half listening to the goblin leader. He knew what the first step was. “Henry… Henry…” Mark shouted through the link.
“Bossssss…” Henry said questionally after sputtering for a few precious moments.
“The construct army is already within our valley. You need to march on the construct dungeon now!!!”
Mark heard the affirmative from the bugbear colonel. He pulled up the interface for the outpost. The bugbear leader was already shouting for the units to assemble. It should not take long. Another 5 minutes and they would hopefully be on their way. They had half expected the attack, either today or tomorrow night, but apparently waiting for the attack that had never come the week prior had been like the boy who cried wolf.
Mark glared at the Arachne mage for a few seconds. The damn thing had the gall to glare right on back.. “Go to the fourth floor,” Mark ordered angrily. The creature hissed in response but moved toward the portal as ordered. Maybe Amelia was right about keeping one responsible unit to monitor things.
“Nasal have we sent out a scout team to find the enemy army?” Mark asked.
“Yes, boss, I sent several teams out. They set out about 10 minutes ago,” Nasal replied.
Good, Mark thought. At least someone had some sense. Hopefully, the army had not gone through the pass too long ago. Henry had a good hour march ahead of him. Then there was still the time it would take to actually conquer the enemy dungeon.
Mark opened up his units page. He quickly noticed the fact that the linked scouting unit that had been stationed several hours from Mareth’s dungeon were all dead. The other scouting team even closer to her dungeon that was not linked were likely dead as well. Mareth had likely located them both and wiped them out. She must have waited until dark to perform any preparations as well, so that Mark did not get an update from the harpies. Due to the signal fire, it was likely she must know that they knew now, so would be coming full tilt.
Mark swapped one of the links to the scouting team on the bluff. After a couple of questions he had the answer. The army had passed a good hour ago. The signal fire had burnt for nearly an hour without being notice. Mark was beyond frustrated. No longer would they wipe out Mareth’s dungeon while her army was in route. No, now they would be competing for who could wipe out the other dungeon first. Damn goblins, how much MP was he about to waste due to the fools.