Scarlet

Almost immediately upon his tower appearing, I find myself rather shocked. Because Leonidas actually did almost the exact same thing with his tower as Belle did with hers.

Except that his tower is even better suited for this sort of strategy than hers was.

Belle ended up being placed at about seventh overall, but that was largely because of her little obsession. Since I know she’s very obsessed with only defending a certain way. Kind of like how Aria defended, actually. With a large focus on sending the void creatures or whatever she’s defending against in a tower defense game flying. Winning via pushing them around into traps and the like, or off of environmental hazards.

But her setup, which was fully focused on that, wasn’t very good for her tower, which didn’t have that many environmental hazards to begin with. Which I’m sure she was rather upset by.

Leonidas’s does. And I’m honestly shocked that he would go with a strategy like this.

I was kinda expecting a brute force method. Not a slow but sure method like this one.

Leonidas’s tower honestly seems to have been made strictly for this strategy, actually. So maybe that’s why he went with it. It’s almost like the tower was shouting at him to go about it this way.

It’s completely filled with hazards like lava, poison pools, and places to drop void creatures from.

In fact, I’m a little jealous of it.

That said, regardless of his good strategy and tower, he still doesn’t manage to beat out Aria’s time. Although he almost beats Purple’s time. And he does beat his wife’s time.

Which ends up leaving the top three at Aria placing first, Purple placing second, and Leonidas in third.

And if I’m being honest with myself, I doubt I can beat Aria’s time.

I might be able to beat Purple’s though.

So without wasting any time, I immediately begin flying around my tower once my turn starts. Meanwhile the other competitors don’t waste any time starting their assaults, going all out from the start.

Which may not necessarily be a bad thing for me, considering the setup of my tower.

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I watch as the void creatures begin making their way through the traps in the surrounding rooms before they reach the center room with a good chunk of damage done to them. Then they all get launched into the lava at the center of the first floor’s central room. Lava that is set up to deal a lot more damage to the void creatures than it probably should, just for the sake of the competition no doubt.

For this room I have monsters stationed at the exit of the room with quite a few traps of all kinds and towers with the express purpose of pushing the void creatures into the lava. Traps to slow or bind them so that another trap can push them into the lava, other traps that just massively push them in, and some traps that even shoot out harpoons that latch onto them and begin pulling them into the lava from the other side of the room.

Meanwhile, as my points begin going up, I spend some of them on upgrading the monster spawners at the end of the room, following which I upgrade some of my traps on the floor above this one. In the central room of the floor.

Specifically the ones meant to send the void creatures flying back down to the first floor.

That said, I also make sure to upgrade some of the defenses against flying void creatures, even though the ones the other competitors are sending haven’t arrived just yet.

And as I do all of this, I make sure to keep an eye on the void creatures passing through the first floor.

I repeat this process for a little while until the void creatures finally start inching past the monsters spawned by the spawners and enter the next floor. At which point they are met with the upgraded defenses and fall back down to the first floor, many of them dying by the lava.

So far so good.

Then trouble comes in the form of dozens of breeders entering my tower at the same time, creating an army of spawn from them. And it’s not just breeders either, but also a bunch of flying void creatures alongside them.

I grimace at the sight of the spawn just rushing the defenses on the first floor and wasting them when they would’ve been far better used against the breeders. But I don’t let it get to me, because it takes too long for them to pass through, giving the defenses time to reset for those that are meant to push them into the lava. And once they do reset, at least a third of the breeders are sent into the molten depths of the lava.

The rest make it to the second floor while the spawn distract my monsters though.

But they also get pushed back down on the second floor, making me let out a breath of relief.

Unfortunately for me, the competitors don’t give in that easily and begin sending more void creatures at me. Proving that they’re rather set on knocking me out of the running in this competition.

Which is rather rude, but I’d probably do the same in their shoes.

That said, it’s also giving me quite the number of points racked up. Points that I then spend on upgrading the second floor defenses again before moving on and upgrading some of the top floor traps.

I also realize that upgrading the towers now isn’t a great idea, with the exception of a few towers. Because their upgrades don’t help much at all. Just deal a little bit more damage.

But the main issue here is that most of the towers are already killing in a single blow, with the competitors all focusing on rushing the towers instead of using powerful void creatures to attack.

The set of void creatures available to send is just built for a rush strategy after all.

I grit my teeth slightly as I focus all I have into managing my defenses.