Peter had originally wanted to fill up the eighth floor with minions and open it up next once he had maxed out the tenth floor’s ambient essence collection. Instead he found his essence side tracked time after time to meet the needs of his new cantankerous tenth floor manager. The guy kept having new requests. The annoying part was that he always made good points, causing Peter to acquiesce. Most were small for mere hundreds of essence, but they added up. Then there were the bigger expenses required to summon the guy more subordinates.
First, Peter had expanded the floor. Half the floor, Khan determined, should be a dark wood although a mere fraction of the height as the proverbial actual dark wood that may or may not exist somewhere. He was still a bit unsure on that aspect despite that his new sapient units had memories and experiences in another world. Still something never seemed to quite add up when he engaged them too deeply about their past. Regardless, to accommodate Peter had to extend the ceiling up to 500 feet in that half of the room, which was the minimum Khan claimed was required for a dark wood.
Then there would be a dark elf village, plots of land used to grow produce and various herbs in various plots. Peter had already used all 10 original C tier dark elf cards giving the old guy 10 subordinates, but he had then been bullied into buying and using the resulting 47 C tier stock cards, giving the guy 57 dark elf subordinates in total. Then the pressure had extended to using the B tier stock options along with triplifications and B tier design cards. The guy had even insisted in seeing and deciding between the three choices.
Khan got his way for the most part, but Peter had put his foot down with one of the options. How could he pass up on a Innate space Sorcerer. The fact that it was a beautiful dark elf female did not play into his decision at all… So named Delilah since she was so enchanting, not that he would ever let Khan or Borris know the origin of her name.
Delilah not only had a natural ability to enter into the alternate dimension it had even been at SPE: B (+). Of course Peter had used his increase to enhance it further, and when that failed to push it up enough to tier up, he used an increased support card, which brought it up to rank A(-).
The reason for this was that when Peter made a maelstrom or summoned one offs based on her, units would come two tiers below. D tier units were normally not able to go into the alternate dimension on their own, but since Delila’s ability was A tier, units two below would have a C tier equivalent ability, meaning he had a unit that could be mass produced with dimensional access. Sure they would be the weakest things in there, but against other early dungeons with limited alternate dimension abilities the units based off her could be extremely helpful.
Maelstroms ranged from 500 to 1000 times the cost of summoning a one off. Delilah's initial maelstrom seemed like a bargain at only 650 times a D tiers cost or 65,000 essence. It was 3 days worth of essence, but Peter did not mind paying it. Even in the future they would have uses, and still be capable of taking down weaker C or B tier units as their gear got better. Then he bought a second one for 10% more at 71,500 essence. Even Khan did not raise a stink about his other requests being delayed for the 6 days it took to save up that much essence, after all the 2 maelstroms would summon 4 new D tier dark elves every week from now until Peter either decided to repurpose them or his dungeon was destroyed.
Still it was a bit of investment, that would take more than 5 years to pay off since each maelstrom would only summoned 120 units a year. It would be far more cost effective in the short run for him to just buy the one offs for 100 essence a piece. That is what most dungeons seemingly did, but he thought it was a bit short sighted since essence was the biggest limiting factor. If it was a unit he would want from now on, he would not hesitate to buy one. Still it would always be a careful balance, too many investments for the future would mean he could lose in the short term, but wasn’t that what spare cores were for.
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Peter felt a bit bad about sending sentient units into battle in the future, but if he wanted to meet his goals it was a must. Thankfully, the maelstrom would just as often summon male D tier copies as females. They were not exact copies of Delilah. He might feel even worse if it was an all women force.
The next task Khan pushed forward was building a dungeon mine, so that mining operations could begin. The dungeon mine went into some alternate dimensional space where they could mine continuously through infinite rock looking for metals, gems, and other resources. Peter could also just make iron or other materials using essence, but that was at a premium and he could not just buy higher tier materials. When he finally had the 100,000 essence required to build his first mine he got a notification.
[Dungeon mine 1: Build under the dark light? the associated resources will be so affected. Certain otherwise restricted resources will be available to find, but other various resources can not be found in this mine.]
Neither Khan or Borris knew what the implications would mean. Peter built it anyway. He could always build another mine later, although the cost for a second mine jumped up to 250,000 essence.
One of the C tier dark elves was a sapper, so was put in charge of mining operations. For the actual mining, Khan pushed for Peter to once again use his two ape original cards along with doublification and design cards. The result was two powerful brutes that could pound rock far more quickly than if he had all the dark elves mining instead. Peter then bought and used the eight resulting B tier ape stock cards to expand their mining force even more.
Not all the apes were as suitable since Peter did not get to choose from 3 different options, but they were still all far stronger even then the B tier dark elves. Peter would have to trade for more ape type cards from Fellette to expand his work force in the future, but for now 10 B tier’s were far more than enough.
Still with all his demands and the other tangents Peter had saved up essence for it all had only taken 3 weeks. They were less than 10 weeks into the new 60 week year, and he felt like had already accomplished so much. It took two more weeks to get floor 8 and 9 up to standards. Peter then unlocked both floors.
The boss on the eighth floor was the weakest of the weak C tier ember units he had left over from the last congregation. On the ninth floor he used up 4 dart frog originals and spawners to keep the floor stocked. In the final room, Peter stationed all the rest of the C tier units he had left over. They would prevent access to the tenth floor.
The number of adventurers was still increasing, although not as fast as they had at this point about a year ago. The original barbarian back wood residents of the region now only made up about a quarter of the total parties. Perhaps it was a good thing. He had gotten to know quite a few of them by sight and even by name since he had been so bored with nothing else to do at the beginning of last year. That was changing with the addition of the tenth floor and a whole village of other sentient beings.
He realized why older dungeons became so disinterested in what was occurring outside in the real world. He could not interact with the people personally, and he had his own interests to pursue. In nine years he would build the remainder of the floors that the humans and sea elf parties could visit. It was possible that soon after that they would only occupy a corner of his consciousness.
Peter no longer felt like he was missing the mark in regards to rookie elites like Elyra and Gabriel. They likely had not been any further along than himself at the last congregation. Perhaps they were not even as far along as he was. It was so simple, he was surprised it had not occurred to him. Of course it would be pretty easy for other dungeons to have a higher essence collection. They probably were averaging more deaths than he was.
If he wanted to catch them in that respect, he would only have to up his kill count by another few people each day, but he was not that far disconnected from his humanity that he was willing to purposely make things more difficult so that more died. If the result was that he would be taking on a bit of disadvantage, then so be it. He was determined to remain just as resolute on that decision as his decision to challenge and beat the millennials. It was not worth killing an extra person for a paltry few thousand essence, especially at this point. If they bit off more than they could chew knowing the risks then it was their own problem.
