Mark had expected hostilities to start up at some point, but never did he think that Amelia and him would be the ones helping to kick them off. “What did the message say exactly,” he said, running his fingers through his hair.
“Here,” Amelia just said, bringing up a chat window from the interface. There were multiple messages, back and forth from past interchanges between Gale and Amelia, but Mark’s eyes focused on the latest.
[Gale Barbary: Amelia, I am proposing a team up between the two of us. My plan is to take on Mr. Holt, hopefully with your assistance. He is the bigger threat to all of us. Unfortunately, if you are unable/unwilling to send a force in assistance, my plans will change. I cannot risk sending my forces so far with your dungeon right on my doorstep. You might not be the most dangerous threat, but I cannot disregard you, after your accomplishments in this battle. If you do choose to join, we will have to coordinate, so I can ensure that you are sending a sizable portion of your might in this endeavor. My forces will march south in 3 days. I hope your forces will be able to join us 4 days from now. Plan is to take out his volcano settlement before moving on to his home dungeon. I will standby, expecting your answer sometime this morning, and then we can work out the details.]
“So, what do you think?” Amelia asked frantically. Mark held up his hand as he thought about it for another minute. Amelia shifted her weight back and forth as she awaited his response. The message did not read differently his second time through.
“It’s an ultimatum. Either we join her to take on Nicholas Holt, or she will attack us instead,” Mark sighed.
“Duh… I got that much,” Amelia said, rolling her eyes. “I was asking what you wanted to do. Honestly, teaming up with her seems like the way to go. Maybe we get Avery to join in forming an all girl alliance, and we can take out all the guys,” she added excitedly.
“Well it would definitely be too late to add Avery in all this since it would take her far longer to move an army across the map,” Mark stated, giving Amelia a depreciating look. “As far as siding with Gale versus Nick, siding with Gale is clearly the better option given the alternative. Knocking Nick out would be great in the long run. However, I would not say this is really an alliance at all. She is not giving us a say in the matter, other than join her or she will attack us.”
“Well from her side of things, it would be pretty difficult to make a big move, when her next door neighbor who took out the last two dungeons in the area does not. If she is planning on moving on Nick, then I am sure she would be capping out her best units,” Amelia reasoned.
Mark nodded. The line of thinking was definitely sound. It would be difficult for him to send a large army away with such a nearby threat, but he did not have to like the fact that Gale was basically twisting their arm to participate in her upcoming move. Mark knew what was driving, Gale’s new move. Gale had finished researching Settlements III. It was evident since she had established not one but two new outposts. Gale had maxed out dungeon level 3 MP production. Perhaps now she was trying to push the MP production advantage while she still had it.
Mark was fairly confident that if Gale were to attack their dungeon, they would be able to win the battle. However, it would also mean that the two dungeons would have to go at it until one dungeon emerged as the victor. Avery was too busy building up her dungeon since she clearly felt behind. Daniel Hale had not made any indication that he wanted an alliance. The other two would for sure not help in the conflict. Mark would love to bet on himself in the matter, but a more realistic part of him knew that the conflict would delay progress substantially. The other dungeons would only get stronger. Who could say a unique reward that they would get from defeating her would make up for the delay.
“We will join her, try to ask for a full week of time to prepare though,” Mark said finally. Amelia started thinking through how she wanted to say it, as Mark took stock of their situation.
They currently sat at 289,324 MP, 52 DP, and 56 RP toward unlocking the black funnel web spider. The spider would not be unlocked prior to the army having to set out, so their top level 3 unit options would not be in play for the endeavor unless Mark wanted to use MP to unlock them.
They would net more than another 120,000 MP in the next 3 days, meaning that Mark would have a good 400,000 MP to work with. Not that Mark wanted to use it all. In total they had over 1,800 units at their home dungeon, and that did not include the 100 auxiliaries. However, the 1,900 included a 1,000 unit mining refinement, a 450 unit archer division, and just under 100 plant units that would not be pulled for any reason.
Mark had a 100 unit platoon of bugbears and a small squad of bugbears that would work separately under Henry to lead an army. However, he only had just under 300 other goblins to start out a force. At this point, an army would have to be in the thousands, but Mark would also have to consider the logistical support for such an army. It would not be cheap. Thankfully, he had already done much of the planning legwork. After all he had anticipated prospective armies, and spent no small amount of time refining it, but Amelia cut him off before he could start the preparations.
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“She responded. Says, it will have to be in 3 days. No, she did not give a reason. I already asked,” Amelia said, looking at him.
Mark sighed but nodded in affirmation. MP wise, they would definitely have enough to send a decent size army. He was more frustrated with the fact that they were being pushed into it, but then again he would rather hundreds of giant humanoids and lizardmen march on Nick’s dungeon and not on theirs.
However, the ensuing exchange that Amelia eventually gave up on mediating made Mark feel like changing his mind. Gale started to inquire about the forces that they would send. Mark knew that he would have to make their offer sound reasonable, but he also knew that Gale would want to push for them to send as much as possible. Nobody wanted to go full out on an attack, when their allies only sent a token force. Gale wanted their help, but she also wanted them to spend a lot of resources on the endeavor.
Mark had thought that a full regiment of 1,200 units would be a good initial offer, but Gale wanted to know the force makeup. Amelia gave up at this point, giving Mark access to the chat with Gale. She was less than thrilled that the army would be made up of mostly tier 1’s when her force would have hundreds of tier 2 and tier 3 giants and trolls.
Mark had already explained that the goblins did not have any tier 2 units besides the bugbears and they would be at capacity with them already. Gale obviously knew about their ‘insect’ and plant branches, so Mark had to argue that most of them would just slow down the army. Their enchanted weapons were their strength anyways, so they would want them for the assault.
A good hundred messages later, Mark and Gale came to an accord. Mark would have to send five full divisions of the lesser goblins, the bugbear platoon, 100 mages, and the spiders that he had planned for logistics. In all the force would be around 2,000 units. It would definitely squeeze their available MP, but Mark could not overly complain since the force Gale described that she would send would most definitely cost quite a bit more.
Mark started to shift numbers. Four of the divisions would be infantry. The only limiting factor was that goblin legionnaires were capped at 625. The lesser goblins just could not fill in the role for forming a defensible shield wall. Mark decided that 150 for each division should be plenty. Mark could only sigh when he realized 600 legionnaires with level 3 classes would cost 162,000 MP. However, they should be the biggest single expense for him to make. The rest of the infantry would be made up of horned goblins. Mark decided he would only give them a level 1 class for 10 MP. In total the infantry would cost 233,400 MP.
The fifth archer division on the other hand was ridiculously cheap. Mark would be spending less than 6,000 MP for the cheap units. He would not pay for classes for those he was required to summon, but half the force would be the leftovers from their attack on Mareth’s dungeon anyways. Many of them had been sent through the barracks over the months. Mark also would not be paying any MP for the mages or bugbears. He already had capped out the bugbears, and had more than 100 level 4 yellow mages ready to go.
It meant the only other expense would be the spiders, that would be used to carry supplies. At 600 MP per a base unit they were already fairly expensive. Mark definitely was not going to pay to evolve them, nor would he pay 300 to get them to bloodlines level 5. However, level 2 was fairly reasonable at 30 MP. Two fierce bloodline upgrades would help them carry a bit more.
Mark had of course already established a logistical base for the wolf spiders. Five spiders without enhancements would be able to support the needs for just over a hundred units. Mark sighed. It would take about 95 spiders to carry everything for the army for a week's duration. Mark cut the number down to 75, they would lose a lot of units in the first conflict at the volcano. Not to mention, the goblins would be carrying some of it themselves.
Mark did the final calculation. The total endeavor would cost them around 292,000 MP. Mark checked their status, after several hours of working things out with Gale and doing his calculations, they already had enough to summon everything. Of course he would wait to minimize support expenses, but at least the attack would not require any of the MP that they earned from here on.
The cost included summoning the required units and rations, but in total the endeavor would cost them far more. After all, a lot of manpower went into gathering and making the supplies that would be taken. Not to mention the MP and time it would take to rebuild the units that they already had. Just replacing the bugbears would be 150,000 MP, and that would not include them having more than 1 skill. They would all have to be re-sent through the gymnasium. Saying that it was a half a million MP army would actually be an understatement.
Unfortunately, some of the new research projects would not be in play for this battle. Mark was especially looking forward to the grenadier class that was still in its infancy. Other than black powder stuffed into hide bombs, they did not have a use for their newly researched tech. The thunderstrike spell completed the day before, but it would not be in time to send units through the gym to learn it.
On the other hand, they had plenty of gear ready to engage undead. Mark knew a bit about what they would be facing. The incorporeal spirits would be a definite threat. Luckily, they had things to use even against them. They would take some of their very first essence project the vitality bombs. Mark had a whole shelf full of them, despite never having used them. They also had shields that were double enchanted with defense and the protection enchantments. They would give the goblins some defense against curses or incorporeal beings.
At least with the warehouse, he would no longer need to physically set aside gear for summoned units. He could do it all on the interface now. He could match any equipment in his warehouse right to the unit before summoning them. That had been the biggest heartache with preparing the army in the past. Managing goblins was a real chore, best to be avoided whenever possible.