“Uhhhg, can’t believe I’m going to let an angel join my group,” Elyra said with clear disgust on her face.

  “Well he is a fallen type core, so will prolly become a fallen angel or something if that helps,” Peter said shrugging. Both Gabriel and Elyra mouthed Oooooo like the thought had not occurred to them.

  Peter looked at the other cores that Elyra had gathered. They were all concept cores and all from their year group. All used their core type as their name, which a good number of cores did: Multiple, predator, and magic. All of their core types sounded interesting. They were all dudes looking pretty much human, so Peter only briefly glanced at each, only pausing on magic who had orange skin and white hair. Borris gave Peter a brief synopsis of each.

  Peter had gotten Emma, Fellette, and Garrett to go over the winners and losers of the first and second year battles from his year group, so he had it all at his disposal. The only similarity between these cores were that they were all from the concept faction, and they all had won all their battles so far. None of these three had chosen to fight in year two though. Borris did not fail to note that all the other unassociated concept cores from their year group had lost the tutorial, with four of them already having been eliminated.

  Peter glanced at Elyra who was talking about her vision and standing up to the major factions together. The girl likely had the first two year’s worth of battle results the same as him and many others. She likely already intended to invite Gabriel, disgusted at what he was or not.

  The predator type core was the next to talk. “Thanks for inviting me to your group. I considered going with the beast faction, but they are pretty weak at least for our year group,” he concluded.

  It was true, his ole trading pal Eli, the crustacean core, was actually one of the stronger beast core types with only a few others that won the tutorial. The largest percentage of the cores eliminated had been from the beast faction at 5 of the 14 eliminated. Concept was tied for the second highest with 4 along with humanoids. Gretchen the dark elf core was actually the only humanoid core left in their year group. Elyra most definitely would not allow her in. For one she fell under a different type category. Secondly, she had lost her tutorial battle. Peter doubted her surprise win in the second year would make up for it.

  The last core that had been eliminated had been the dart frog core he had eliminated. That was due to the dart frog core mistaking him for being weak. All of the other supposedly weak cores from the major factions had been guarded in groups difficult to approach. Would not stop, Peter today. He was just letting the time tick down to ensure that the other undead would not have the opportunity to make unfair trades that would put him at a disadvantage.

  Peter just absently listened as the group talked, only occasionally joining in as he kept his eye on his query. With only five minutes left in the challenge period left, he casually excused himself. Once again he approached the food table. He was not the only one. In five minutes the first round of battles would begin. The dungeons partaking would get an hour of time to prepare their forces and dungeons, but that time period happened within a few minutes of the overall banquet time. Luckily, his target was on the outer fringe of the undead group since he was a younger core. Peter mossied right up to the table piling on food as he casually moved their way.

  A few minutes to go he turned and moved forward, leaving his plate on the table. None of the other stronger undead dungeons had time to react. Another dungeon coming to challenge at the last minute was beyond their expectations, after all it was normally they that chose their targets.

  [You have challenged the Zorn, the ghost dungeon core, 2. Challenge has been accepted automatically.]

  Peter smiled as he turned back around and walked away from the bewildered table of young undead cores. He had planned this move, ever since the day that Khan had casually mentioned that dark wood was a natural counter to ghosts and other incorporeal types. Referencing what he knew about the ghost core was that he had lost his tutorial battle to a member of the demon faction. Of course that was before the ghost type could really access the alternate dimension since they would barely have D tier’s if Zorn had even chosen to unlock it before the battle.

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  The ghost core had decided not to partake in battle last year, but Emma had highlighted how the ghost core 4 incarnations ago had been quite strong before he was culled. It was before Fellette’s time, but Emma had already been a centurion. The three before Zorn took up the mantle had fallen quite early. Like the other factions, the undead sponsors always pushed certain core types when they were offered. Zorn was the fourth ghost core in about a 200 year period. Something that Emma had said had been underlined in his notes.

  The ghost core was absurdly strong in the alternate dimension, but was on the weaker side in the actual dimension, as were the other spectral type cores. That is why they usually trade heavily with the other undead to strengthen their physical front. Today, Peter was counting on his ability to smash right through Zorn’s preparations, while his dark elves equipped with dark wood arrows along with other alternate dimension elites worked to keep the ghosts there at bay.

  A minute later he was inside his core. “Borris, you know what to do. Delilah,” Peter said, pausing at the smirking dark elf. “Be careful.”

  “I’ll be just fine. Come On lets make a few A tier dimensional tanks. For me and my people to hide behind.”

  Peter nodded. They only had an hour so he got right to work. He started with the phase cards and triplification. “Oooo definitely that one,” Delilah said, basically purring. Which was funny because she was pointing at a pure white tiger with piercing blue eyes. Peter readily selected it. White out tiger ATT: A, DEF: A, SPE: A (-). It had a simple physical enhancement, but was by far the best option. Peter used his increase to toughen up the creature's hide which brought its defense up to A (+). Thankfully it could phase through to the other dimension.

  “If you can, keep this thing alive,” Peter said smiling. The tiger could cross the dimensional boundary near as quickly as she could. The C tier one offs would even be able to carry a rider. That was the part that likely thrilled Delilah the most.

  “Of course, I’m going to make N’torra make some saddles for our new rides in the future. But we still need a few front liners.”

  Peter used another triplification with phase and two A tier design cards. In the end he went with the rift roller ATT: A (+), DEF: A, SPE: A (-). Which would end up being the first unit to wind up with a S ranked stat after he used the increase on its attack stat along with a support increase card. There was no additional fan fare, just a unit with a supposedly ridiculously overpowered attack. It was a giant robot with 4 sets of and two arms that had garden sheer like hands.

  “That should do it,” Delilah said, twirling a pair of long knives with her two hands. Peter had used an equipment card for her since the weapons they could build so far were still comparatively crude. They were little more than top quality steel knives, but they should hold up to A tier battles.A second pair were sheathed on the sides of her legs. He got a reroll along with a 4 and a 2 giving him 11 stock phase cards in total. That was a nice present, but there was no way he could afford to buy too many stock cards. He still needed some A tier leaders for the physical realm and to spam a bunch of C tiers off of them. He only had 3.6 million essence left with which to play.

  For his physical realm assault force Peter used the ape original cards. One with a ember card, the other with a fallen card. Of the Fallen ape options, he chose the naked orangutan. It looked like a wrinkly mess, but supposedly it was quite ferocious along with A (+) defense. Perhaps all the skinfolds made it difficult to damage the ape. Then he got pyro flinger A (-). The flingers rank was low, but it was a mage unit with a special attribute rank of A(+) after Peter increased it.

  Assault force settled, he swapped over to defense. He made two more phase units along with 2 design cards each. Then he made 2 more A tiers for the physical realm. Once again he used the same two ape combinations. This time he got a necro chimp A (-). For the ember option he got coal ape elemental A (+).

  All his A tiers settled, Peter started spamming C tier one offs of them all. He already had summoned an additional 1,000 dark elves to help make and form the thousands of dark wood arrows and bows they would use. After that, Peter used 1.5 million to summon 3,000 C tiers, which he sorted out to favor the assault force. He would have an additional 700,000 essence to use if required for his defense.

  The battle began shortly after preparations were completed. Peter watched on multiple screens as the battle commenced on four fronts. Undead skeletons, wights, vampires among others streamed into his dungeon.