N’terrin was the dean of ecology. He was in charge of managing all the beasts including where they lived and how they were fed. His current project was breeding dungeon units. Right now they could grow plenty of food for the gnomes, dark and moon elves, and other sentients including the mining apes from the various gardens on floor 10, but feeding the new dragon and other beasts were another matter. Right now the expense was not observed. An F tier unit only cost 2 essence, building even the first spawner would only cost 200 to 300, which would provide 5 of these ‘feeder units’ every day. Still already they had dozens of these spawners of various F tiers.

  It already added up, and he was not near the point where he had tens of thousands of units that he needed to feed. Looking to the future, it was not a bad idea. The last thing he wanted was to spend thousands of daily essence each day to feed his army. Of course the project had begun due to a different reason once Peter realized dungeon units could be bred when it happened by chance.

  With every dungeon’s essence collection being about the same, he would take any edge he could find. Breeding his own armies had of course seemed quite attractive, but apparently breeding could really only happen effectively at the lower tiers. F tiers did not seem overly hard. They bred quite easily and their pregnancy was ridiculously short, only a matter of days. Then with essence they could become full grown in another few days.

  N’terrin had quite a bit more trouble replicating it with E tiers with any reliability, so far with D tiers there had not been a hint of a success. Which kind of sank the thought of breeding his own armies since even if D tiers were successful they would not add much to the current dungeon battles. The project had then shifted to what it currently was.

  N’terrin had been set up in a far corner of the tenth floor. Peter had dubbed the area the stock yard, since the large number of pens and smell were reminiscent of trips to the state fairgrounds in his past life. Currently N’terrin had hundreds of varying F and E tier units. Not all of them were as conventional as pigs or sheep variants. There were also things like giant slugs, rodents, amphibians or reptiles.

  They arrived to find N’terrin knee deep in the muck. The stockyard was on the moon elf side of the mine much to all the moon elves chagrin. But the extra lighting was needed for many of the different beasts, and for N’terrin to manage them easier.

  “Delilah said you have an update on your project,” Peter posed.

  “Oh, yes,” the dark elf said, making his way out of the pen. He had been holding several squealing piglets. He unaffectionately dropped them into the muck. Peter worried for a moment that they would drown, but they quickly showed that even at their size they could navigate the terrain since their light weight did not make them sink as far.

  N’terrin was a complete auxiliary type unit unlike Delilah or even Khan. Technically he was a B tier, that Peter had summoned fairly early on the second year, but it was doubtful whether the dark elf could win a fight with something in the C tier let alone in his own tier. As a domestication specialist, Peter had deemed him the dean of the ecology college. Up till now he had really only been a manager. His last project had been working with N’tuma to train beasts. Of course most of those trained beast type units had died in the previous dungeon battle, but it had shown some utility.

  It would really show for the dragons who were more intelligent than regular beasts, and took to training like fish to water. Even with a little training N’terrin could have them be far more effective at targeting certain units based on orders or performing other coordinated maneuvers.

  “I have a new S tier dragon on floor one I will need you to take care of, as well as one of its one off spawn. I also made a maelstrom of it.”

  N’terrin raised the glass goggles he wore to keep his eyes clear of the splashing muck up and off his face onto his forehead. “Finally… I guess we are going to finally start saving toward a Holy armor dragon maelstrom then?” he asked. It was true, buying a maelstrom for 6.4 million would still be quite the expense, but it was a unit worth keeping. Unfortunately, it likely meant he would not be buying anything else since he wanted the rest to prepare for battle. That one maelstrom was already a third of what he expected to receive this year.

  “Yup, that's the plan, so what do you got for me?”

  “Oh, well obviously we have successfully bred lower tier beasts for a while, but since the process still requires essence to grow them it was hardly cost effective. We might just as well buy new F tier units full grown to feed the dragons. However, did you know,” N’terrin paused to clean his hands on a rag on his waist before picking up a book. It was the dungeon core manual Peter had lent to the guy. Peter was not overly worried about the guy destroying it with his dirty fingers since he could just resummon it.

  “It's not very clear here,” N’terrin said, holding up the manual. “But I was able to talk Borris into expanding the floor a bit in this area.” N’terrin indicated the near wall which was offset from the hard lines from the otherwise square floor. Peter had of course already noticed, since it would be kind of hard not to. He could collect 500 essence daily from each floor of his collection dungeon. Beyond that expanding the floor would only allow for more space. Which definitely could be useful, but it seemed like an unnecessary expenditure when he still had plenty of room.

  “Like I said it is not clear, but through careful reading the manual only mentions that you can only collect up to 500 ambient essence per a floor, and that you can only build a floor up to twice that size. It doesn’t mention what happens to any uncollected ambient essence after that initial 500.”

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  “So you're saying that you can use that uncollected ambient essence to take over the breeding cost?” Peter asked. He was not overly enthused. After all, how long would it even take to break even since it would take tens of thousands of essence to expand the first floor, when that floor was the cheapest. Although he now knew why Boris had asked to make a first floor expansion not too long ago. Boris had said he would see what it was for in the future, so Peter had okay’d the expansion since it was only a few thousand essence.

  “How long would it take to break even?” Delilah asked, apparently coming to the same conclusion.

  “Not just that? I think we could use it for a variety of uses,” N’terrin said, answering Peter first. “As far as how long it would take to make it worth it, It would be just a bit over what it would take to make the expansions. Say it takes you a 100,000 essence to max out the first floor. I would estimate it would take about 220 days to pay it off assuming a little waste in the process. I would have to do some better calculations to figure out the exact amount of wastage. Of course, “N’terrin paused, scratching his chin. Some mud was caked on it, potentially irritating his skin.

  “That assumes we have an actual use for all the extra essence since we can’t store it. At this point I doubt I could even use a 100 hundred essence daily right now, so we should moderate the expansion taking that into account.”

  Peter was floored. N’terrin discovering something of such vital importance had been the furthest from his expectations. The guy was well off on how long it would take to max out the first floor since it would likely take under 50,000 essence. Not too steep of a price since it would pay for itself 3 or 4 times over in a year. Potentially more room on the earlier floors might even draw in more adventurers increasing his yield. He had considered expanding for that reason alone, although he had held off since their seemed like plenty of room once things had normalized and the mad rush had abated.

  Peter checked his interface and sure enough it showed that 504 ambient essence was being generated. It was very easy for him to miss since those numbers had not changed for over a year. However it clearly differed from the 500 essence being collected which was in the column right beside it. He now remembered wondering why the two columns had been differentiated, since they had always been the same.

  “Very good, well it sounds like we should at least max out what we can use. Work with Borris to plan the necessary expansions. Let me know when you have the amount of waste refined.”

  With that Peter left the animal wrangler to it. “Sounds like a good way for us to conserve resources,” Delilah said, falling into step with him.

  “Sounds that way, but it is not as simple as that. We also will have to consider space limitations, not to mention it will likely be years before we could use all the extra ambient essence from even one floor. Unless you think Glenda or Greg could find some use for it.”

  “I could ask Greg and gearhead for you,” Delilah said. She clearly left dealing with Glenda to him.

  “Ohhh, I never really hear much about Gunther. Except when he asks for more air forces. How are things working out with him at the magic college?”

  “He’s insufferable as with anything else. It almost makes sense that he is able to get along with Glenda…” She said with a contemptuous smile. Peter lowered an eye at her.

  Delilah had worked in the magic college since she was summoned, but had not really added much. She was after all an ‘innate’ space sorcerer. The innate being the key part. She had no clue how she actually did it, or the theories behind the magic she was using. Whereas Glenda and apparently Gunther understood the theory behind their types of magic and could figure other things out using it as a base.

  “He is helpful, then…” Peter teased.

  Delilah stopped looking at him. “I am plenty helpful… Perhaps you just need more time to understand that.” She teased him right back with a sarcastic expression. She then turned and walked ahead.

  Peter sighed. He had basically been dating her for nearly 2 years already. The elven timeline for getting things done was frustrating as hell. With the ability to live for thousands of years, they felt no hesitation about extending certain things out. Still he could not help but to make a follow up comment that would not exactly help his case of minimalizing the courting period.

  “Its like you’re secretly a moon elf at heart,” Peter said, referencing the even longer courtships of the fairer skinned elves. It did not help his case either.

  “Want me to add another year?” she turned, raising her eyes.

  “No,” Peter sighed, hanging his head. Internally he could not help but to wonder if it was not too late to change his romantic pursuit to somebody else.

  Sure he liked Delilah. She had exactly that confident bad girl vibe, that apparently he found quite appealing… Still it was frustrating. ‘I should have traded for a succubus race first…” he mused. Now something like that would be naughty in all the right ways. His head hung lower when he realized he probably would never get the chance. Then he perked up.

  Although perhaps if he got something like that, Delilah might feel a bit threatened. Now that was a good idea. The moon elves or gnomes did not work. The moon elves had far longer courtships and every female gnome he had seen was in short hideous. Peter only half heartedly paid attention to Delilah as he made his plans. Humanoid races generally did not fare too well. On the same tier they were normally far weaker, unless helped by appropriate equipment.

  Probably the reason the moon elves, golem like races, and clockwork were the only ones with any representation in the centurion division. There were only a handful even in the intermediate division, but Peter could not think of one that would have anything appealing.

  Then Gretchen was the only remaining one from their year group. Peter had no clue how she had turned things around. a loss in the tutorial to winning a year later. He supposed she had somehow equipped her units early, or perhaps had relied on other core’s cards. She had been trading all over the place.

  Peter shook the tangent. Summoning another dark elf would not work since he doubted an elf of the same race would ever step in the middle of a romance, so no threat would be created. He supposed there would likely be a handful in the next year group.

  His mood fell again. There would not be another year group for another 6 and some years. He could only hope that things had progressed quicker than that with Delilah. If they hadn’t… and there did happen to be a useful new core type he endeavored to pick some cards up before they got wiped out. That would add some pressure on his one eyed dark elf girlfriend.