Peter blinked back into the lower level of the congregation cavern. No notifications flashed up asking whether someone on his team wanted to double tap, which meant the core burn through had gotten them all. He found himself taking a moment breathing deeply and just letting things wash by him. They had done it. He had of course felt they had a good to decent chance to beat the insect faction despite being outnumbered by more than 2 to 1. Otherwise he would not have pushed forward with the battle no matter their issues with Eli.

  Honestly there had been only a few surprises in the battle, but even then none of them had made Peter feel threatened like the hex spiders had in his first battle with Agatha. Although the lack of threat was mainly due to how far he had come, rather than their lacking capabilities. They had performed about as Peter had expected, with Eli being the lone exception, and now Eli was gone, falling with the faction he had chosen to take refuge with. Peter did not feel too terribly jubilant at the outcome, although there was a sense of satisfaction. However, Peter’s mind was already shifting forward.

  Eli like the many other rookies were just a blimp far in his rearview mirror at this point. His defeat of Stone golem last year had proven that not a single rookie, likely even two other rookies, would be able to challenge him now. The rookie division had not been very difficult for him. There had been some close calls for sure, but that was only because he had pushed himself in prepping for the future. Still it was a milestone that was now past, with the next congregation basically starting a new phase of his life.

  The next phase would likely be the most difficult step of his path other than perhaps taking down the millennials themselves. There was also the integration into the centurion division, but Peter would have an entire lifetime, 90 more years, to prepare for that. It should be more than enough time. The integration into the intermediate division however would likely be extremely dangerous for him based on the nugget that Helen had dropped on him late in the game.

  Peter had anticipated that the lack of rewards for beating him would keep far older intermediate cores from challenging him more than a time or two to serve as an example, but that may not necessarily be the case if the millennials were willing to guarantee a stress free integration into the centennial division. A prospect that would be sure to be happily accepted since they would lose far more resources even if they survived the integration otherwise. Peter could only hope that Void would subtly put a stop to the blatant subverting of the divisions by the other millennials.

  Peter had to continue on believing that things would somehow work out and he would have a potential path forward regardless of what others did. However even if Void or the lack of rewards could keep the older cores off his back, he would still likely be under threat from the cores closer to his year group. None of the cores going forward should be easily discounted.

  Even a weak intermediate core had still managed to survive their own rookie trial period. Plus the worst of his competition would have an additional decade of preparation, an additional decade of receiving a higher amount of essence, and an additional decade of accumulations. That was for the cores that were only one decade older than him. What about the cores that were two or three or more… It would certainly be an uphill battle for him to bridge the gap. Peter spent another 10 minutes ruminating before he chose to drop the line of thought. Likely, he could get a line on things once he got back upstairs. Plus perhaps his rewards would help bridge much of that possible expanse. Peter felt like he was taking his first steps on the next path as he opened the reward notification.

  [Dungeon battle awards: Battle essence collected: 7,221,413

  Win Rewards: 16,400,000 essence, 180 support card packs, 2 support card unlock, 1 spare dungeon core, 8 Long leg spider type cards, 1 Hive type card, 7 Fire ant type cards, 3 Dung beetle type cards, 7 Cricket type cards, 5 Katydid type cards, 4 woodlouse type cards, 3 Crustacean type cards

  Rookie battle condition met, ‘participate in 9 dungeon battles as a rookie dungeon’: 1 S tier Design type card

  Rookie battle condition met, ‘win 9 dungeon battles as a rookie dungeon’: 5,000,000

  Rookie battle condition met, ‘fight and win 9 consecutive years worth of dungeon battles’: 5 user chose cards

  Rookie battle condition met, ‘Win a dungeon battle where you are outnumbered as a rookie core’: 50 support packs

  Rookie battle condition met, ‘Eliminate 7 cores as a rookie’: 3 user chose cards

  Rookie battle condition met, ‘Eliminate 9 cores as a rookie’: 3 user chose cards

  Rookie battle condition met, ‘Eliminate 10 cores as a rookie’: 3 user chose cards

  Rookie battle condition met, ‘kill 1,000,000 units as a rookie core’: 3 user chose cards

  Rookie battle condition met, ‘Meet 5 standard battle conditions as a rookie dungeon’: 2 user chose card

  Rookie battle condition met, ‘Meet 7 standard battle conditions as a rookie dungeon’: 3 user chose card

  Battle condition met, ‘Face enemy cores equal or greater than twice your sides years of existence’: 12,500,000 essence

  Battle condition met, ‘Eliminate 5 cores with a single battle’: 5 S tier design type cards

  Battle condition met, ‘Eliminate 7 cores with a single battle’: 7 S tier design type cards

  ]

  Peter felt his head swim… ‘Holy cow…’ He had met a mind numbing amount of conditions. Peter remained in a daze for a moment before he shook the stupor free and started analyzing the results.

  From the looks of it, he had gotten credit for the elimination of most of the cores, at least 7 of the 9 according to the battle conditions. It was not too surprising since he felt he had done much of the work. It was not just the conditions he had gotten most of the type cards as well. The pittance of 1 card for Hive was the one notable exception, but then he supposed all his unit had done was kill a few elites and destroy the core. Gabriel had likely killed tens of thousands since Hive had been the one leading the invasion on his dungeon.

  Peter’s mind diffused in wonder for a while longer as he focused on the actual rewards. There was so much of everything. He could not help but to quickly total them up. The 41 million plus essence alone was a supreme award and it was perhaps the least of them. Still Peter would be well set for what was to come. Often rookies had a hard time with the transition due to the addition of 80 more floors between their two dungeons.

  It might look like rookies had 2 years to prepare for a potential intermediate division battle, but the reality is that they had to walk a fine line as they once again focused on dungeon expansion versus preparations. It was the reason why many cores took several extra years before year 9 to ensure they could at least build all the collection dungeon floors on day one. Then they would slowly expand their battle dungeons with all the rest of the essence they felt they could spare. Peter would likely do the same. There was no reason for him to build all 50 floors of his battle dungeon when he could not put up a fight to defend them. He would rather spend it to improve battle capabilities even if it dragged out getting all the floors.

  Peter moved on. What was more unbelievable, was that he had just received 13 S tier design cards. That was a lot of S tier cards to receive and that was before even opening the… 240 support packs he would be able to open today… Hold on… Peter’s mouth twitched. He remembered getting a lot of support packs for eliminating 3 and then 5 cores as a rookie. The 3 user chose cards sounded like an amazing reward for his elimination of 7, 9, or 10 cores as a rookie, but in reality he could easily get more than 3 epic cards in 100 support packs. The eliminated 5 cores as a rookie condition had given him 200 support packs, so this was in fact a worse reward by far. Then by the looks of it, the interface had gotten tired of scaling him up by each odd number and capped it at 10 as well.

  If you discover this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the violation.

  Peter’s mind fumed. If things had progressed as they should have according to the pattern of the lesser conditions, he should be sitting on something like 1,000 support packs. If he had gotten that many… Peter shook his head. Nothing he could do about it. It was obvious the system gave rewards for battling, but apparently it did not want to give him the keys to the kingdom.

  If Void and Dragon were correct and there was some over dungeon watching and coordinating things. It surely did not want to spoil the game by keeping to a pattern that he was somewhat exploiting by defeating a bunch of weaklings. What fun would it be to watch someone in a competition where one individual was grossly overpowered at the start with no chance to fail. Only hack entertainment consumers would enjoy something like that.

  Peter sighed. Getting a thousand plus packs would have perhaps made the integration far less concerning. Nope, he guessed the interface wanted to see him squirm, but the consolatory prize was not awful. He now had 18 ‘user chose’ cards. Which of course he would use to make more free maelstroms. Which should be enough to perhaps double his B tier maelstroms once he hopefully got more epic maelstrom cards from opening his packs. Speaking of which…

  The first thing he needed to do was to unlock his 20th support card, which would be his fifth epic card. Then he could make one of his common cards uncommon. Normally, he would like to save the best for last, but this time he would be forced to complete the initial set of 20 before he could replace one of their number.

  Year Off (E)

  Add S tier Feature (E)

  Design Steal (E)

  Peter blinked. This was the first time that every single one of his options was something he had seen before. A bit odd, he had been hoping to see something new that would suit him perfectly, yet here his choices were. Peter’s eyes instantly gravitated to design steal, there had to be a lot of good units in the intermediate division. Surely someone from one of the higher year groups would want to crush him on year 11. What if he copied some of the core’s, who was tasked with making an example of an upstart like him, best units?

  The add S tier feature was also not a bad option. If today's battle had proved one thing it was that units of the same tier were not equal. The insects forewent combinations, which meant that the majority of their units were fairly basic. Most with simple defensive or physical alterations. Occasionally they would get something decent and spam the crap out of it, but their forces were nothing like Peter or one of his allies' more diverse casts. What kind of unit could he make if he could add an additional feature to something that was already a combination of three type cards. The choices would be random, but he would at least get 3 options. More often than not, there should be at least be one thing that was helpful.

  Then there was the year off option that was likely what he should go with. The interface had literally put it first, almost as if to say, ‘dummy chose this one,’ but Peter could not help but feel conflicted about it. It was the safe option. The option he had discounted after his battle during the year 6 congregation. It had been easy then since he still had quite a few more years left before the integration. Now however, he was right at the edge. The way he saw it. There really might be a group of older cores that would be looking to attack him repeatedly until they knocked him out. He was pretty sure the undead, demons, and insect factions would love nothing more than to strangle him before he could spread his wings.

  However he was also sure that once he survived the integration, he would likely be fine and the year off cards would accumulate being utterly useless to him… Then it occurred to him. Was that really an issue? If he had spare year off cards, surely there would be cores willing to trade for them. Peter looked longingly at the options that would actually add strong new facets to his dungeon before going with the safer first choice, year off.

  That being decided, Peter almost half heartedly used his second support card unlock. Except this time he was offered the opportunity to get rid of one of his 20 cards, upgrading it for one of the next higher rarity. He currently had 5 of each rarity, although his uncommon triplification pulled at the same rate as a common card. Unfortunately, he would have to start from the bottom, replacing a common for an uncommon card. He would then be able to keep the flow up all the way to epic before he would have to start once again at the common cards.

  There were quite a few thoughts and theories on the best way to do this. One was to do exactly that, move a common all the way to epic before starting over. Another method was to get rid of your common cards completely, basically ridding yourself of the bottom rarity tier for a huge boost in your chances at opening epic cards. Peter was not sure on what to do, but he did not have to decide that now. He only had one more support card unlock after all and had to use it on a common card.

  There was no doubt in his mind which card to replace. The common equipment card had to be the first to go. Pretty much after year one or two the card had pretty much been worth less than nothing. His mine and smiths had quickly got to the point where they could put out stuff that was of the same or better quality. What was an extra sword when his dungeon was producing thousands at the same level or better. Peter was more than happy to get rid of the worthless support card, but he grimmaced as he looked through the options.

  Greater equipment (UCM)

  Unit of Intermediate resource (UCM)

  Add aspect (UCM)

  The direct equipment upgrade was likely not any more useful than the common variant. The rare version he had was still useful since the weapons all generally had high intermediate or low high tier materials. Plus he could get resources currently not being produced by his mine as well as items that had added capabilities such as the fey scroll or replicator pad, but Peter did not expect much for the variant at the uncommon level which would likely offer intermediate material weapons or items.

  It was the same with the unit of intermediate resource option. Peter was already equipping all his B tiers with items at that level. Sure he could potentially get a more rare intermediate resource that his miners rarely found or that could be grown, but that just meant his smiths or herbalists would not be practiced making the best use of it anyways.

  Peter took the add aspect option. Unfortunately, unlike its epic brethren Peter would not get a choice with its use. It would just add something random to the unit he chose. Peter could not help but feel he would have some extremely bad ass unit with some weird oddity added to it. Of course he could also get something extremely beneficial, but the addition would not change the unit’s overall tier so it could not be too great. Plus leaving things to chance was kind of the antithesis of his core type, design. He wanted to make things the way he wanted and not rely on chance, but it was the best of the options and since he would have it, he would certainly use it.

  Peter pushed it from mind as he moved to the best part. It was time to open the packs. As always he bought the 10 packs for the year, bringing him up to 240 in total. A moment later he had the results. Peter pulled 19 epic cards including, 3 maelstroms, 6 S tier design cards, 2 random S tier type cards, 3 pinnacle dungeon upgrades, and 5 year offs.

  Getting 5 year offs might seem like he had a lot of breathing room, but only 5 of these epic cards would not grant him 5 years off in a row. There were usage rules that would burn them far faster. If he used one, one year, then the next year he would be forced to use 2. Then it would cost him 3 cards for the third consecutive year. There were more spoken and unspoken rules about the cards’ usage, but it would give him a break from back to back battles when he really needed it, or he could trade them.

  For his rare cards, Peter got 8 new block challenges bringing him up to 28. Using them with the year off cards he could perhaps buy himself a bigger break, or at the very least force factions to expend a lot of effort to take him on. He only got 4 new resurrects bringing him to 6 in total, which was a bit worrying since he could have his entire force wiped out next battle. Letting 2 of his not as useful S tiers go despite not eventually needing the cards had still likely been the right call. Then he got 3 masterwork items, 7 tier up increases, and 8 missed connections.

  As far as his common and uncommons… Peter might really need to consider selling some of them. He was well over 100 tripplifications now. He could not see himself using too much more than the 10 he got annually on top of the ones he got from packs. It was the same with doublifications, the cost of type cards was just too high to do it as often as he was accumulating support cards. Then again once he did not battle every year, he would only get 10 support packs each year. That would cut down the flow substantially, when he was used to opening at least 60 or more each year. Regardless, Peter would have plenty for his purposes. With the task completed it was time for him to go upstairs and see where things stood for them going forward.