Temperance had copied the layout of dart frog’s standing water sewer-like tunnel almost exactly. Only the shallow water paths were different, and the D tier iron glider flies zipped right over it all. Balls of water and magic streaked upward, but other than filling the air they generally lagged behind making them ineffective against the scouts already racing down mapping out the floor.
Ten seconds later a sky gnome who had been looking through the dimensional dungeon entrance popped back into no man's land. Another ten seconds and a flurry of bodies burst through. C tier lightning shrikes swept forward firing lightning at anything that poked its head up. It was effective regardless of whether it actually struck the opponent. D tiers were fried by the scores and the flock swept down the tunnel. There were occasional hits from the defenders shooting from the distance, but it took a while for even one of the C tier birds to fall from the weaker D tier attacks.
Similarly in their own dungeon reptiles and amphibians of all kinds were streaming through at a steady rate. They had 3,000 D tiers before them on the first four floors, but they were only a delaying tactic. Already headquarters was in a frenzy as nearly a hundred clockworks, dark elves, and moon elves scrambled and planned. Peter soon became inundated with reports and had to give up watching his assault force. That part of the battle was still important, but there was nothing they could do from here to affect it.
The A tier sky gnome led the air units streaking through the physical realm, and Delilah was directing the assault through the alternate dimension. The fiercest fighting was occurring in the alternate dimension since both assault forces in the physical realm were just working through several levels of fodder, but once again there was not much that Peter could do to affect the alternate dimension so he just visually checked that the spectral armors were indeed able to stop the assault in its tracks before he started looking through the data.
By the time Temperance’s forces had pushed into the second floor, Peter had a pretty good idea of all they were dealing with. There were 23 A tier elites, about 150 B tiers, and somewhere between 8 to 10 thousand C tier units. As he had expected they doubled their own forces in every category. That being said there was little to no force structure for the enemy force. They were just stampeding and rampaging forward. The lone exception was about 1,500 various types of lizardmen following behind the monster tide.
Already the training and preparations were proving invaluable as beasts that weighed anywhere up to a ton slammed into the shield wall of the spectral warriors and were repulsed. The ghastly soldiers had long spears to impale and hold jumpers who were then quickly cut down by those not on the front line. Behind them all were hundreds of dark elves keeping up a steady stream of arrows. This year the arrows were more than twice as effective since the heads were enchanted on top of having been made of a better steel alloy.
Temperance likely only had 2 A tiers with the ability to enter the alternate dimension, because there were only two types. Amidst their number were a handful of B tiers, but they were holding back. With the tireless spectral warriors holding the line, she would have to bring out her own A tiers if she wanted any chance of turning things around in the alternate dimension. Still Peter did not have enough extra units to help out with the physical realm. The A tier earth spirit had accompanied the assault force moving through the floor or walls popping out here or there assassinating units as the air force proceeded forward.
Temperance’s actual defense started a floor earlier than their own on her fourth floor. The line of beasts were basically ignored as the air units proceeded to fly right over and counter attack the lizardmen using slings to fling orbs that burst into a ball of acid into their midst. The blitzkrieg was working, orders had likely not made it down from the other core’s headquarters. This large open room had nearly 1,500 units and only about a third had any way of fighting back.
“Some sort of timed fuse,” Greg said with interest watching the exploding orbs. “But how are they starting it,” he mused. Greg was seated fairly close by, so far this was the first tech that Temperance had demonstrated that was not completely rudimentary, but in the future evaluating tech and coming up with counters would be up to the dean of engineering.
Less than quarter of the air units stayed to continue to kill the units after dealing with all the mages. The rest proceeded on. On the fifth floor they started meeting heavy resistance. Several A rank salamander mages blasted the flock killing ten C tiers with each attack. Another A tier had climbed up on the cave wall and launched itself down bearing down a few with its body.
A melee fighter it was probably the only thing that it could do, but the flock continued on, C tiers occasionally falling from their number. Then several B tiers swarmed the 2 A tier mages, but were immediately rebuffed by B tier guards. However, within a few minuets those with any sort of capability to attack units in the air had been slain. The main force once again moved on while some stayed behind attacking with impunity from out of reach.
The air attack was working out extremely well. Temperance was not well equipped to handle this kind of assault. They had killed 3 A tiers on the fifth floor without even having to use their own elites among hundreds of others. That being said, Peter thought, it was not like if someone attacked their dungeon with such a force that they would much better. He would have to shore up their own air defenses.
Temperance’s assault force could not get close to matching the speed of Peter’s so by the time they hit the fifth floor his assault force was already half way through the seventh. The electric shrike and other A tiers were now having to put in some effort, but they were still crushing the opposition since they had always outnumbered the units that could fight back and could skip over defenses.
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The ballista fired as soon as reptiles started pouring out of the floor entrance. Ahead of them was a wide open room filled with water and what Peter called stone lily pads. However this floor would not be much of a hindrance to the opposing army since most could swim. Hundreds of reptile and amphibian units jumped right in. There they would have to fight through every single one of the water units that had been summoned from the thousands of C and D tier design cards used just prior to battle. There were several hundred units, but they probably would not be able to do much more than slow the opposing force for a matter of minutes.
Peter watched for a minute before he realized that his own assault force had settled at the end of the opposing seventh floor. “Why did our assault stop?” he asked.
Borris was ready with the reply, “The sky gnome halted the charge. Many of our units are running low on energy including the A tier. He sent some units back to collect the rest of the stragglers as well, of which there are at least several hundred that failed to catch back up.”
“How long until they will be ready to push forward again?” Peter asked. In reality it did not matter. They had no way of getting a message to them with their assault force. It was up to Delilah and the new A tier sky gnome, and Delilah was still all the way back slogging through the third floor. Temperance’s forces were basically just harassing them to slow them down their progress. She had already siphoned off forces to take back to her lower floors. Delilah was progressing but not overly fast. The only thing she was really doing was tying down a small part of the defender forces and preserving her own forces. Which would be great as long as they won.
The sky gnome’s halt was probably needed, but it still meant they would take heavier casualties all across the board. Peter had been secretly hoping that the air division could finish things before Temperance’s assault even met their main defenders, but already his fifth floor had fallen. Her forces were preparing to come through.
What would await them was a wide open room with dozens of magma pools. There were three main routes to the end of the floor, left, middle, right, but they had many smaller routes branching off them. Peter however had troops stationed at the head of the three paths. The turtle warriors were probably sweating bullets in their armor despite the cooling enchantments, All of them were draining their water pouches before the battle began.
Mages on each flank casting frost type spells to help keep them cool. They had all trained here quite a bit to build resiliency and get used to the climate. In the future, Peter would have this floor saturated with purely fire type units to play up the home field advantage, but for now he only had a few hundred including a couple ember type A tiers.
Ten batteries of ballista started firing as soon as units started pouring into the large open room. Long harpoon-like bolts skewered the C tier fodder leading the waves. Seconds later they had crossed the opening platform and slammed into the three shield walls. The walls held despite bending back slightly against some of the larger reptiles seeking to force their way through. Claws tried to catch and pull shields down but the second line of turtle warriors did what they could to fight them off. A few shields were ripped from their owners grasp, but a new warrior quickly stepped in. All the while arrows started pouring down from behind.
Up to this point his data collectors estimated about 340-350 deaths, but Temperance would hopefully lose ten times that to take this room. Not that she would not pay back in kind. It took less than half a minute before B tiers and even a few A tiers started making their way into the room, brought in to break his defenses.
An A tier yellow salamander shaman carrying a staff with a tip that resembled a crescent moon shot an orange ball of energy that exploded against a pair of turtle man shields on the right flank. The whole screen flashed as a whole section of 15 to 20 turtle warriors were sent flying in pieces. Even more were wounded but a golden aura soon overtook them and they started retreating as reptilian beasts surged through. One A tier attack had broken the defense with a single attack.
But the attack wouldn’t go unanswered the first attack was a flame lance streaking from Pyro flinger, who already had several notches for A tiers killed in battle, but Pyro flinger’s attack was intercepted by another A rank reptilian with a large back fin. The reptile met flames with water. The attacks canceled each other sending steam and superheated water in all directions.
However white balls were continually appearing in the air at the far end of the room as Glenda poured magic energy into her star fall ability. Then at once they streaked forward, balls of white leaving white cantrails as they all plummeted toward the platform like comets. The yellow salamander shaman and a few others erected yellow translucent shields catching a few, but the rest slammed down all across the platform. A good ten plus B tiers and several times that many C tiers were ripped to pieces as their carcasses were blown into pieces. It stopped the tide long enough for the defenders to start falling back. The right flank was completely broken and a few B tiers had managed to threaten the middle path till it was in severe danger.
The reptile beasts could just cross over the initial platform from the floor's entrance too quickly to allow the backline enough time to pick out and target the B tiers and up. Perhaps a floor design flaw, well at least for how he was using it.
Reptiles were running amidst his retreating defenders on the right path. The dark mauler elves had moved in to deal with them to give the turtle soldiers time to reform. Peter had more turtle soldiers in reserve, quite a bit more, but they potentially had five more floors to defend so he could not commit them all here.
More A tiers moved onto the floor and started toward the right path. One of them was a literal yellow dragon with emerald eyes. Already the yellow salamander was preparing a more powerful version of its spell. Glenda was charging a single white ball in either an attempt to stop it or to counter attack. The finned A tier reptile sent a blue wave of destruction into the turtle gnomes retreating on the left pass killing another 20 or 30 of them.
“They are trying to break our defenses here. They have half of their A and B tiers coming forward,” Khan said urgently from his side. Peter had gotten absorbed in the spectacle occurring on the screens, he was supposed to lead through this mess. Then again what could he do, the battle on this floor would be over well before he could get new orders there. God, I need teleportation, he thought, remembering the older dungeon battles he had seen where it was used to bring orders to and from the battle field, but for now he was reliant on his battle field commanders.
