He still wanted to expand down at some point but for that he'd need a lot more people. For now, he was content to keep expanding along the surface. There was also the issue of the spawners, he really should stop neglecting them. Well, perhaps neglecting isn't the right word but he hasn't been upgrading them like he probably should. The spawners were all such high level that it would take a few days to save up enough mana to upgrade them. before all that though came the matter of recon team beta. To be honest he wasn't really sure where to send them at the moment. He couldn't risk attacking the elves to many times in a row without having kobolds or some other race to blame the attacks on. They weren't as dumb as the goblins or as stubbornly prideful as the kobold after all. He would need to be careful when dealing with the elves lest he reveal too much. After giving the issue a great deal of thought he decides to send beta team down to observe the elves anyway. He does still need to keep an eye on them and besides he doesn't yet have a reason to attack any other race. Dwarves do also take human slaves, but he hasn't worked out how to get a recon team into one of the heavily guarded cave entrances to even get a look at what the rescue team would be facing. He absolutely refuses to go in completely blind if he can help it which leaves him at an impasse when it comes to dealing with dwarves.

Recon team alpha returns a few days after team beta departed. It seems that they are only sending a few kobold to that camp at the moment. Just enough to maintain a presence their it seems. Furthermore, there doesn't appear to be any human slaves at the camp anymore. Based on what he saw at the other kobold camp he would guess that there are very few slaves left in the kobold empire. He allows the recon team to rest for a few days before sending them out again. This time they are sent back to the northeastern kobold camp. He takes a few minutes to decide his next move, but finally decides to send a group of fifty warriors and ten mages. He tells them to go ahead and 'remove the camp' and bring back anything of value. There are no humans to rescue after all, so he doesn't need to worry about collateral damage.

With that taken care of he decides to upgrade one of his spawners, but which one. After some thought he realizes that the slime spawner has the most versatility as far as area control. Upgrading it gets him a ... slush slime. He is confused until he sees it demonstrate. Apparently, it can shoot out a ball of water that freezes solid seconds after impacting anything. Further cementing in his mind that slimes are meant for area control. He will have to be careful that the slush and slag slimes don't end up working against each other though. Three days after that he upgrades the wolf spawner as it is, in his opinion, the second most useful spawner when it comes to defense. This upgrade gets him a Stone wolf who, as the name suggests, appears to be entirely made of stone. He's not exactly sure how they are able to even move but doesn't question the magic too much. The spider spawner he decides to leave alone for now. He knows he'll need to upgrade it at some point but given the current pattern he is worried he won't have enough room for spiders as big as what he'd get. This means that the next spawner to get upgraded is the boar spawner. As he upgrades it the spawner begins to grow until out pops the aptly named giga-boar. A truly monstrous beast weighing 1000 kg with tusks larger than most swords. They weren't nearly as sharp as the razor tusk's ... well, razor tusks but at that size it hardly mattered.

Before he could continue with the upgrades however, the recon team he'd sent to check up on the elves came running across his boarder. This caught his attention as they weren't do back for another few weeks. When the leader finally caught his breath, he told Cid that they had encountered a huge elven army heading this way. It was larger than any elven force they'd faced before by a large margin. They had run back as fast as they could to give the sanctuary advanced warning. It would appear that the large number of slaves guarded by a relatively low number of guards was bait, and Logan had fallen for it. They had a few men remain out of sight and follow the attackers back towards the sanctuary. It was the only explanation that made since. There was no other reason for the elves to be marching this direction in such large numbers. He briefly considered that it was the orcs or goblins they were after, but if this was about the 'there can be only one' nonsense there had to be targets much closer. The recon team informed Cid that the army would be here within about three days.

Three days didn't give them much time to prepare but fortunately he didn't need much time. He hadn't exactly been sitting on his proverbial hands this whole time. He had been sending slimes and other creatures to patrol his boarders and working out the best places to engage the enemy depending on where the attack came from. He merely tweaked it a little is all. To start he sent the bulk of his slag slimes to set up a defensive barrier about ten meters inside his territory. They weren't exactly rapid responders, but three days should be more than enough time for them to get into position. After that he had his larger creatures set up a secondary perimeter about two meters behind the slimes. This secondary perimeter aside from serving as a secondary line of defense would also hopefully draw their attention such that they don't even notice the slag slimes until it's too late. The slush slimes he sent to the southeast and southwest corners of his territory and told them to hide for now. He planned to have them flank the enemy and if the battle took as long as he was thinking it might they would have plenty of time even as slow as they are. Everything else he had line up behind his secondary perimeter just in case. With the exception of the mantises, as well as a few dozen dire rat and rat swarms. They would be setting up shop behind the various gates to do their usual thing. As for the gates themselves he planned to close the southernmost outer gate and northern most inner gate. If he was going to die here, he would make them go the long way around to do it. It took almost a full day for everything to get in position do to how slow the slimes were but finally he was ready. Nothing left to do now but wait.

Two days is a long time when you're waiting for something to happen. He takes this time to buy one final upgrade before the battle. He was tempted to go ahead and get the spider spawner upgrade considering the current circumstances but ultimately still decided to wait until he had a bunch more room before getting what would surely be a mountain of a spider. Instead, he upgraded the gopher spawner which spit out a gopher with fur the darkest black he had ever seen. It then looks around for a few minutes before diving into the nearest shadow as if it were a pool of water only to reappear several meters away from a different shadow. it seems he has the ability to move between any two shadows so long as there is a chain of shadows linking them. This could come in handy for sowing chaos within the enemy ranks.

After such a long wait he finally gets word from his scouts that they will be here within a few hours. He has all the humans gather in the 'starting area', to act as a last resort. It was the best compromise he could make as he didn't want them directly in the fight and they refused to set out completely. Then he closed the gates just as he had planned. A few hours later the first elves crossed the threshold into his territory. The first thing he did was send in the wasps after they had gotten about 5 meters into the territory. He also had the various paralysis, poison, and acid slimes begin their attack focusing on the mages. Between the paralyses and the poison this proved to be much more effective than he expected it to be. He had intended for it to distract and disorient them, but it actually managed to kill a fair few of them. Then the elven mages got involved and immediately began targeting the wasps. All the while moving ever closer to my slag slimes while keeping their attention on my 'big boys'. Once they were well within the slag slimes attack radius, he gave the mental command to begin the attack. Instantly nearly 20 elves simply melted where they stood. and another 10 or so walked into the invisible flames before they realized what was happening. As soon as they did, they began throwing the 'magic grenades' at the creatures in front of them. Unfortunately for them the telekinetic snakes had been practicing and were more than ready and willing to catch them midair and send them right back. The few that landed on or near the slag slimes had no effect. Eventually, they got smart and sent out their water mages. At first it looked as if it would result in a stale mate but even working in tandem, they couldn't maintain the flame wall indefinitely. While the heat was a naturally occurring part of them projecting it forward like that still required a great deal of effort and energy. Something he, admittedly, should have expected. Seeing this Logan had the slag slimes retreat about ten meters to recover while he sent out the 'big boys'. Meanwhile the wasps were still harassing the group although admittedly their numbers were already vastly reduced. The lava wolves kept up the fire attack by pelting them with flaming chunks of rock and dirt. While this was happening the slush slimes were inching ever closer completely unnoticed. Eventually though lava wolves began to fall in battle and were quickly replaced by the ice wolves. This caused the elves to respond by sending in the fire mages. Unbeknownst to them drawing out the mages was the whole point of Logan's strategy so far. He was waiting for the mages to be dealt with before sending in his creatures that couldn't cast magic of some kind. By this time the slush slimes had made it to the enemy flanks and with the fire mages preoccupied with the ice wolves were able to create chaos within the enemy ranks. They were slowly found and eliminated, but they had done their job as the group in the back was no longer as focused on pushing forward as they once were. Logan seizes the opportunity to have his shadow gopher start working his magic on their back lines, amplifying the chaos created by the slush slimes. He also has the nightmare and fear gophers come forward and use their abilities further amplifying the growing chaos and confusion in the back lines. Taking advantage of this and with most of the enemy mages dealt with he sends in his monstrous spiders and giga boars. The giga boars of course having their strength, speed, and overall health bolstered by the tiny little pack boars nearby. The elves to their credit do fare much better than the goblins did. The monstrous spiders were dealt with eventually but the loses were already starting to mount. It was then that Logan decided to close the net and he had his really giant spiders, armored boars, and lightning rats surround them to prevent any escape. By this time the few remaining slag slimes had recovered a little bit and to their horror the elves realized they were being forced into the invisible flames. In an effort to escape the flames the elves inadvertently separated into two smaller groups which now made their way around the outside of the exterior wall. Naturally Logan was all too happy to take advantage of this turn of events, sending the remainder of his spiders and wolves to hinder their progress as much as possible. This of course was on top of the creatures already engaging the elves. The three headed wolves in particular were especially brutal ripping the elves unlucky enough to be caught by them into tiny little pieces. Arms, heads, legs, and torsos, as well as all manner of other viscera. sprayed the battlefield. Ther elven armor was great, but it wasn't designed to prevent the wearer from being ripped apart. By this time, it was clear which way the battle was going to go so Logan focused more on making sure not a single elf escaped to tell the others what to expect. He wasn't naive enough to think that these were the only elves that knew of the sanctuary, or at the very least knew that there were a large number of humans here, but that didn't mean he was ready to just give away all his secrets. The two groups did eventually meet up again at the northern gate to the outer wall although their numbers had been significantly reduced. As soon as the first few elves passed through the gate the fire mantises lit them up. After seeing yet more of their comrades get their faces melted off the other elves tried to flee only to find that the groups attacking their flanks and rear had been joined by boars of various sizes. Little did they realize the tiny boars they were basically ignoring were the ones they should have been targeting because they were boosting all the others. Eventually they made their way through the gate. They didn't get very far though as the elves that were left were quickly eaten alive by large rat swarms.

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"Considering that was the largest elf army I've ever fought that went surprisingly well" he thought to himself while replaying the battle in his head looking for anything he could have done better. He had to admit that if they attacked again soon it would not go nearly as well. Still, he's not completely defenseless having barely used any of his mantises and rats, and none of his dino chickens. On the bright side he now has a ton of mana to spend. Without thinking about it he reflexively buys six eastern expansions before he has time to second guess himself. He supposes that he really should finish upgrading the spawners instead, but this just feels right.

As he looks around, he notices something else too. Carver now has a lot more metal to use and Allyson has more magic grenades, as well as various potions to experiment with. This should keep the two of them busy for a while yet. Allyson in particular is excited to have more of the potent healing potion to experiment with.

Around a week later the team sent to attack the kobold camp returns with several bits of iron gear, weapons, and some as yet unknown substances for Allyson to study. after getting everything sorted beta team, which had been resting during that week was sent back down to check on the state of the elvish camp. They are told to be extra careful since the elves now seem to know that there are free humans in the area. Shortly after this alpha team returns with news that there are only around 4 human slaves at the kobold camp, guarded by around 50 kobold. Hearing this he makes plans to send his entire human army. A bit overkill perhaps but that particular camp is close to not just one but two goblin camps. He does manage to hold the recon team back from going with them. Normally he would just let them join in the rescue but right now he is anxious to see what lies beyond the eastern kobold camp, and so, after letting them rest for about five days he sends them out to explore towards the east.

Turning his attention back towards his residents he first checks in on Allyson being vaguely curious as to what the other team had brought in. She tells Cid that although it will still be a while before she goes through everything, she is nonetheless very excited because they represent an aspect of alchemy she hadn't even considered before, namely animal parts. Logan just smiles to himself. Allyson usually enjoys studying but it's been a while since she was this visibly excited about something. He figures it's a lot like trying to decipher a secret language only to realize you were missing half the cypher. Letting her get back to work he checks in on Carver who is happy to once again be of use. Not that he was ever useless as even without metal he still made all of the glass vials for the potions and various other bits of lab equipment that would get damaged or destroyed as a result of Allyson's experiments. Maribel was busy with experiments of her own, trying to combine the silk with the thick leather to create something that was both functional and comfortable. She also wanted it to be fashionable but so long as it meets the first two criteria without diminishing either the comfort or protection, she would consider it a succuss.