Chapter 271. Incursion.

Since they had emerged from a dungeon in my territory, I was able to catch a glimpse of what had escaped. Given the name of the place, I expected more of those creepy things that had appeared inside the cavern and attacked the marketplace. Instead, there was a group of around a dozen humans dressed in green and black robes walking into the desert.

On the map, I could see their destination was the closest city, Shoremarch. There was no way I wanted to have an attack from a dungeon I controlled hit my newest trading partner’s city, so I ordered my minions to intercept them. Given that the dungeon creatures were walking slowly, my minions, moving at a much faster pace, were going to get to them before they hit the city.

From their path, the dungeon attackers were heading toward the road first, the system probably calculating that using the roads movement bonus would result in the fastest journey. While I waited for my forces to arrive, I checked out the area around the tariff station that was under construction. I wanted to add some defenses there to prevent the dungeon mobs from attacking, at least until we found some way to attract adventurers to the dungeon.

I selected the defenses tab in the interface and had an option to upgrade the defenses already inside my cavern, and for a single structure, a watchtower, that I could place anywhere I controlled. The system description for the watchtower didn’t make it seem all that exciting, but there was probably greater utility when I upgraded it a few ranks.

Defensive structures:

1. Watchtower. Build a simple wooden watchtower that grants enhanced vision over the area. The watchtower will also make nearby creatures less likely to attack in the area it covers.

It didn’t take much in the way of resources to build one, but right now, my build queue was full, and my resource silo was just about drained. Out in the desert, my minions closed in on the dungeon generated people in robes. They would meet right before the dungeon forces reached the road.

Just before they came into sight of each other, I hit the drone with Duplicate. Once duplicated, the drones faded from view as they activated their stealth fields. The robed, dungeon spawned people kept their slow, sedate pace when my minions came into view, but they did adjust their course to head right toward my forces.

They soon as they robed people entered range of Glurk’s masterwork longbow, he fired off his first arrow. The arrow struck the lead figure in the chest, but he seemed to ignore the attack. It had done damage, and I could see blood leaking from around the arrow. To my surprise, the blood wasn’t normal, it was clear with a greenish tinge to it.

At once, all twelve of the dungeon creatures threw back their cloaks and screeched at my minions. Their mouths morphed from a normal human one, into an elongated snout filled with shark-like teeth. They charged forward, trying to close the gap as my melee troops formed up in front of my ranged minions.

Now that the range was closer, Khurr and Elida began to fire as well. Their weapons seemed to have the same limited effect as the longbow had shown. Glem, Glamb, and Blieek stood in the way of the attackers, and just before they reached our lines, I cast Entangle. The longer casting time that using it from headquarters imposed almost caused me to botch the targeting, but I managed to land it in a spot that hit all the enemy attackers.

Old, dried roots emerged from the sand, grasping at the feet of the attackers. They weren’t stopped, but the spell managed to slow them down, which was when the two drones dropped out of stealth. They had positioned themselves on either side of the melee line and over their shoulders, the grenade launchers were coughing out rounds.

Each drone only had three grenades in the weapon’s magazine, but the blasts tore apart the lead attackers. Limbs were blasted off, and shrapnel peppered most of the others. With the Entangle spell expiring, my troops advanced to attack the enemy while they were still disorganized from the effects of the grenades.

Half the enemy was down, and the six that were left seemed unfazed by their losses. One of the enemies tried to kick at an approaching drone. The blow should have never landed, but to my surprise, the dungeon creature’s previously human-looking leg, split into three grasping tentacles.

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The drone sliced two of the approaching limbs, but the third wrapped around his arm. Armor crunched as the tentacle constricted like a powerful snake. More appendages shot forward, this time from the arms of the creature. My drone used its smaller arms to try and pry off the attacking limbs, but I could hear the armor of my minion creak and crumble under the relentless pressure.

A second dungeon creature joined the attack, and between the two of them, they crushed my mana slayer drone like a tin can. I dropped a Health Bloom over the area, but the strange, robed creatures were tearing apart my minions. The duplicate drone managed to best one of the creatures, slicing and stabbing it until the monster collapsed onto the ground in a gelatinous heap.

Another monster latched onto the duplicate drone, and with the extra damage the duplicate took, it quickly was destroyed. I hit Blieek with the Ring of Final Sacrifice, just as another monster grabbed onto him. The explosion partially caught Elida in the blast, but she was able to heal herself and quickly return to the fight.

The blast took out the dungeon monster, but I was now down to Glamb with his chopper blades and Elida. Khurr and Glurk had fallen at some point, but I had missed what had happened. Three of the monsters were still fighting and one was already slipping a tentacle past the dual chopping blades of my goblin. With a sickening crunch, Glamb turned into mana vapor, and I had Elida run from the foe.

She was the lone survivor and could do nothing to stop three of the monsters on her own. Reaching the road, she began to run toward Shoremarch, but the monsters behind her were faster. In the distance, coming from the city, was a group of four travelers. Seeing Elida’s plight, they charged forward.

Too bad for my minion, the monsters caught Elida just as the travelers arrived on scene. Seeing them up close, I had a good feeling about our chances of stopping the attack before it reached the city. These four travelers were dressed as adventurers, and before my view over the area was cut off as my last minion fell, I could see one of the adventurers hurling a ball of fire at the dungeon monsters.

My entire team was down now, and it would be a while before everyone could be resummoned. Until then, I only had myself, Melvin, and the kobold warriors to rely on. I was shocked how easily my minions were overrun by the dungeon creatures. Thinking about it, the system described it as a tier two to three dungeon.

All but my most powerful minions were below rank two, so these tentacled dungeon creeps were likely a higher tier and rank than any of my minions. Of course, my team did have the advantage of the abilities and gear I’d unlocked for them, but that could only go so far when facing a greater number of higher tier foes.

I had gotten complacent with my team tearing through the relatively weak creatures we’d faced so far in the challenge. A few minutes after my team was killed, I received a system notification.

The wave of creatures from the Temple of the Forgotten Ones dungeon has been defeated. Bonus resources are granted for your assistance in stopping the threat.

A small batch of resources, about 10% of the silo’s capacity instantly filled in. It would give me enough resources to complete my current building projects without them starting and stopping as I waited for caravans of resources to arrive. My tariff station completed a short while later, almost immediately followed by the upgrade to rank one for the sorcerer’s hut.

The tariff station was a rank zero building and looked like a simple street stall with a counter and a tarp over it to keep the sun off the pair of kobold workers manning the place. They just stood there with little to do, staring at the dungeon. Their boredom wouldn’t last long, as the party of four that had finished off the monsters, turned out to be an adventuring party. They walked past the tariff station on their way inside the dungeon, giving me a good look at them.

It was a solid party composition. The elf in robes that I’d seen chucking a fireball was their caster. A human woman in a steel breastplate, shield, and heavy mace was either their tank or perhaps a healer of some sort. The main damage of the group was probably the cloaked halfling with daggers strapped all over his body, and a huge orc with an axe almost as big as he was.

I couldn’t get any system information on their tier, rank, or gear, but they moved with confidence, and I was glad to have adventurers enter the dungeon and hopefully keep any more waves of enemies from spawning out of the place. The fact they seemed willing to defend against attackers on the road also meant that new parties of adventurers would probably help keep the trade route secure.

For my upgraded sorcerer’s hut, I didn’t get any notification of new spells or abilities, but I did see three more kobolds enter the building to begin their training. Hopefully, with another rank or two on the place, we’d unlock more powerful magic and have a sorcerer for every squad of kobold defenders.

My attention was drawn away from the cavern, when a yellow marker began to glow on my map. It was on the trade road halfway between the human village and the kobold cavern. As it moved down the road, a system prompt appeared.

The Gavelox Trading Consortium had grown tired of waiting for your minions to interact with them and has sent an envoy to open negotiations. Do you wish to enter into negotiations at this time? Y/N.