After that strategy council, Peter immediately conducted a mass summoning of the humanoid race original cards keeping a few in reserve. He started one dryad card, receiving a A (-) earth trotter. The B in defense and a B (+) in attack it was a glaring example of his card type’s ability to tier down, but luckily it was offset enough by 2 A’s in its 2 Special stats keeping the unit in the A tier albeit barely. It was the first unit of his to receive two special stats for its differing abilities. The first was a support ability to embolster which specifically targeted trees or tree type units, which Peter did not currently have any of the latter other than the shifting vine. It would speed up growth and strengthen, but the ability would wear off when used for units. Actual living trees would keep their growth, but plant units would go back to normal in a matter of hours.

  The second ability was earthstrike which was an ability that manipulated earth including launching earthen spears at enemies. The ability had conditions. The earth trotter had to be in contact with the earth, and the ability worked at like a third of its power if used on stone, which many dungeon floors were made of although he had seen plenty of other types as well. Still the unit was enough to get Khan excited since if Peter summoned enough D tier one offs of this unit, he could likely cut the time it took for the dark wood to grow by a good deal.

  Peter continued on with the moon elves. One of his first seven tiered down into a B(+) tier unit, the rest however would find some use in the dungeon. The 8th however not only got good stats across the board, but after a support card increase the special attribute was even bumped up into the S tier. Her class was something he had been looking for.

  White witch moon elf A (+): ATT: A, DEF: A(-), SPE: S (-)

  Peter had his dean for the college of magic, which might be one of the most important fields to develop. Delilah was clearly pissed because it was a beautiful female with luminous cream skin and platinum hair. He had gotten a few other females already, but this was the first one who she knew he would likely be interacting with more often. She would also be the dean of the college of magic so… Delilah’s boss. She obviously did not like that. Peter gave her the name Glenda. The name was obviously based from the witch on wizard of oz despite her hair being off, more platinum than blond.

  Peter finished up with the moon elves using 10 of his 15 original cards. After a brief interlude of assigning Glenda her duties and sending her and the rest off, he came back. Khan and Delilah practically fell over laughing when he complained about how few stock cards he had gotten out of the deal. He had gotten one reroll, but with 3 ones and multiple twos it was by far the worst series of rolls yet. He ignored the comments from the other two about how the interface clearly was protesting his use of the moon elves.

  In total, only those one moon elf had downgraded a full tier, but a decent number had it occur in at least one of their attributes. Glenda was by far the exception although some of the moon elves would have their uses. He had also gotten three other mages that would work under Glenda: light, runes, and elemental.

  Peter decided to reward the two dark elves staying to see what came for being patient while he talked with Glenda for nearly half an hour, by using the 2 A tier dark elf cards next. The interface seemed confused this time since he got a 1 for the first stock option, but then a double reroll followed by a 2 for 13 in total. Peter did not mention this fact and just observed what two units he summoned.

  Shadow mauler dark elf A: ATT: A (+), DEF A(-), SPE: A

  Huntsman dark elf A (-): ATT: A, DEF: B, SPE: A (-)

  Neither seemed to be something that met a glaring need, but the shadow mauler could join Delilah and the moon elves in the magic college. The huntsmen, he would have work with N’terrin, the ecosystem dean for now.

  Peter then used his 3 clockwork originals. It was actually one of the 2 B tiers that gave him something that sounded incredibly useful, clockwork gearhead. Peter of course named the unit gearhead. Would have been a contender for dean of engineering if Peter did not immediately move on to the gnomes next. Gearhead would be in charge of the gear works faction. The other B tier and the A tiers were both warriors, he would likely use them in the next battle.

  The two gnome A tier cards gave him:

  Turtle warrior Gnome A: ATT: A (-), DEF: A (+), SPE: A (-)

  Tinkerer Gnome A (-): ATT: A (-), DEF: A (-), SPE: A (-)

  The gnome tinkerer was a perfect dean, likely the ‘most know how’ guy in the dungeon. Peter named him Greg and put him over the college of engineering. The guy could do it all though.

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  Peter was pretty confident that he was one of the elite for the rookie dungeon cores. Therefore he should readily be able to trounce all but a handful of others, and those he should be able to push them to the limits at the very least, but as he progressed into year 3 reality set in. He was going to bring in over 14 million essence this year. According to his past years plan he should be leaving at least half for a prospective dungeon battle. The rest he could use to set himself up for the future.

  There was one problem. Other dungeons would be bringing in near the same,and many of them would be more short sighted. Not only might they have this year's full essence, but potentially reserves from the prior year or years ready to use in battle. These potential reserves would only compound and increase as the years progressed. But already for year 3 the prospect was daunting. Not a single other rookie core had battled both years after the tutorial.

  Then for every maelstrom he planned to build, many of the other dungeons would instead use that much essence to summon 500 to 1,000 C tier units for the here and now. Peter knew that making self renewing armies was the right answer, but in the short term it meant that he was really going to struggle. Likely all against dungeons that he should be able to blow out of the water. It was unlikely he would ever have an ‘easy’ battle.

  That left Peter and his council stuck with the problem of how they would potentially win the next battle while only using half the resources. Taking a year off likely was not an option since he had just slighted the undead rookie cores. Improving capabilities was one side of it, but Peter knew even the weakest of dungeons would also be doing what they could to improve, so at best he could merely outdo them in improving faster. He knew it would be a constant worry on the back of his mind, but he still had plenty of essence and things to do. He dismissed the thought as Khan sent the two gnomes off.

  First, Peter summoned 100 earth trotter dryad one offs. Together with their A tier progenitor they would work to speed up the dark wood's growth, herbs, and crops in general. He was not about to send the A tier off to battle when it was so beneficial to his dungeon.

  Unable to be used in a dungeon battle for now, Peter left the moon elves alone, summing about 50 C tier one offs to help their progenitors with their research and work. Then Peter moved on with his last main auxiliary purpose expenditure.

  This time Peter put out for a maelstrom for the C tier gnome tinkerer’s. It was clear they would be helpful in the forge, mine, and college of engineering. Since his armies would only get bigger the level of support he would need would only grow. Someday perhaps he would need thousands of them to support his armies, so he might as well save himself some essence. It was easy since the gnome tinkerer maelstrom was only 250,000 which was the cheapest a maelstrom could be for a C tier unit.

  Next Peter moved on, eyeing his 10 original ghost type cards. He had put himself out there to obtain the ghost type cards, and beefing up his alternate dimension was of first order. For these he would use triplifications . After 3, in addition to increase aspect cards, he thought he had gotten what he needed for now.

  Earthen spirit (Ghost, earth, design) A: ATT: A, DEF: A, SPE: A

  Spectral armor (Ghost, iron, design) A: ATT: A(-), DEF: S (-), SPE: A

  Gastly soldier (Ghost, iron, design) A (-): ATT: A (-), DEF: A(-), SPE: A

  The earthen spirit was a basic A tier. It was powerful in the alternate dimension which it entered by descending into the earth. The A tier was an incredible unit since it could easily get past any line in the physical or alternate dimension by swapping back and forth. However, based on a summoned one off, that capability did not extend to its C tiers. Peter elected to not build a maelstrom for it.

  The spectral armor was just what he had wanted. A highly defensible unit that could hold the line in the physical or alternate realm. Both the design increase and the support card increase had been enough to push its original rank A defense up two ranks from A to S (-).

  The cost of the maelstrom, 450,000 essence or 900 times the cost of a C tier one off for the unit. It hinted on just how powerful this unit was, since had only seen a few over 700. The white out tiger had been 750. Then again it had gotten owned in the fight so perhaps it wasn’t the best example. Even Glenda’s first maelstrom only cost 650 times the cost which seemed pretty high for humanoid unit types.

  Peter was so pleased he decided to perform the same tiplefication combination, using up 1 of the 2 resulting stock cards. The result was the ghastly soldier. Peter actually had to use the increases just to bring its attack back into the A tier, but the result was not bad. These guys would not be able to hold a line as well, but they moved far quicker with a zoom like ability that did extend to the C tier one off he built. The zoom ability made them sweep forward in a ghost-like state hundreds of feet in an instant. They became tangible in a fraction of a second and could immediately attack. Maybe not the most powerful units, but Peter still wanted them. Their maelstrom cost started at 300,000.

  Peter originally wanted to get at least 10 maelstroms built for each. But over the months he realized the cost increased of 10% made them just too expensive for his current budget, he had to settle for 5 for now. Already the cost was just under 2 million for the 5 ghastly soldier maelstroms. It would take 7 years for the maelstroms to break even with the 10 units they summoned each week. The spectral armor maelstroms cost him nearly a half million more.

  Peter did not have to summon new units to spend the rest of his future preparation budget on. He already had the gnome turtle warrior gnomes (350,000 1st maelstrom) and the shadow mauler dark elves (300,000 1st maelstrom. Peter actually dumped another 4 million building 5 maelstroms for them as well taking him over budget by 1.5 million essence. Peter just could not help himself, but some of it would be offset by the fact that his projections at that point pointed toward him pulling in closer to 15 million for the year as his daily essence collection climbed.