The corpse flower with the support of hundreds of its spawn was just able to hold out long enough. The bat goblins and many of the wolf spiders that had carried the armies provisions, now carrying goblin riders, were the first to make it to the fight. Together with the corpse flower’s spawn they were able to keep the hero alive. Once the main body of the southern army got close the undead were forced to pull back. Still the corpse flower was left in a pretty ragged state. It would not get near its peak condition before the battle concluded.
Perhaps sending the heroes in unsupported had not been the smartest of moves, but then again it had led to several favorable results. The southern army was now marching nearly uncontested toward Nick’s fortress instead of having to fight the entire way there. Something that was supremely important considering that Nick’s own assault force was already in their own valley marching on their dungeon. The bombardier spider and corpse flower card had been played early, but they had broken the back of resistance away from the dungeon proper, dealing with the mummy tyrant and hundreds of tier 3 elites.
Nick likely would have had the necromancers continually retreat while reanimating new groups of undead to send forward into battle, but a lot of them had been taken out prior to the engaging the mummy tyrant. The heroes had been effective bait to draw out Nick’s elite and his own hero. The mummy tyrant had eventually succumbed to its wounds leaving its red scepter to be carried off by Nick’s named undead ‘Shadow’.
Still things were far from certain. The skeleton dragon was returning. It had just passed the lone bat goblin that Mark had sent out. It was a bit of a waste to send out such a valuable unit for RECON, but it would stink far more to have only a minutes warning before a giant dragon made its appearance. The bat goblin had been flying for several hours, but that was far from comforting for Mark. The dragon could likely fly several times as fast. It would arrive within the hour and they were just now getting ready to assault Nick’s main fortress.
Nick’s fortress was not quite as big or as seemingly impossible as Gale’s had been. The walls were only about 20 feet tall, but they encompassed three times the area and held far more defenders. The inner keep would be a far easier nut to crack. The wall was only ten feet tall. Perhaps it had been his original wall when the survival battle was still in its infancy. As far as siege weapons, Nick only had trebuchets. They would not pose much of a problem since the air forces would be destroying them before the assault even began. Regardless, the fortress teamed with thousands of undead so it would not fall quickly.
On the homefront things were equally as serious. Mark had not spent overly much of their disposable MP to beef up their defense. He had however summoned a good thousand goblins as well as recalled all units from their other settlements. The outer wall was lined with a mix of fragmen and former goblin miners carrying axes and clubs, the most suitable weapons against the undead. The rest would fill the sky with enchanted arrows. It was not like they would run out, and the southern army had only taken the cream of the crop of their enchanted arrow supply.
Nick’s assault force was on the smaller side. There were only about 2,000, and most of them were seemingly on the weaker side. Over 1,000 of them were gnolls, tier 1 jackals and witch doctors with power ratings of around 2. Obviously they came from sponsorship packages. Since they were pretty weak at this point, Nick had likely gotten a bunch of units for each package he opened. The other 1,000 was a compilation of undead. Hundreds of apparent mages were among their number. From appearances this force would not be able to get the job done, but then there was the spectral palace.
A giant spectral palace hand formed and now hovered and moved above the army. It was the size of a freight ship. Its visage was a golden ark like ship, leading him to the assumption of what lay within. It was something that came from Nick’s dominion research focus or perhaps a unique reward. Seemingly it was projected from a large red gem carried by the army that marched with it. The 1,000 undead were likely only needed to move the red gem to its destination and ensure it was kept safe until it was able to summon the spectral palace.
The gnolls had joined up with the undead that had skirted around the map a few days ago. They were probably just added for the additional numbers. It did not matter. Mark was fairly sure that the surface of their dungeon would fall in short order once the opposing force got there. Since their dungeon only had 12 of the 15 possible dungeon floors, and Nick probably had them all, they were really working against the clock.
The goblin’s began their assault on the undead dungeon, but not by too much. The undead army would be entering their territory very soon. The southern armie’s assualt was led by two small groups, with the rest of the army following hundreds of feet behind. The trebuchets had all been dealt with by dropped enchanted metal darts that slammed down like meteors, so the undead had to wait until the goblins made it into spell range. But even the high concentration of spells slung at the approaching masses were absorbed one by one into the large number of void imbued shields.
Ten of the remaining wolf spiders moved two heavily defensive platforms forward toward the wall. A handful of goblins ran along in support, helping to defend the two platforms as they closed on the wall. They dealt with the undead spawned by the necromancers on the wall. They were the first to die as one by one they were caught by spectral chains. Several were hauled up the wall into waiting coffins. In half a minute they would be another chain bound mummy fighting for the undead, but in half a minute they would probably die with everything else on this section of the wall so it hardly mattered.
The two platforms made it, slamming against the stone of the outer wall. The undead had not been able to stop them. A half dozen spectres had tried to breach the platforms from all sides, but the platform was also enchanted with the protection enchantment warding them off. Ten seconds later the back opened spiders and goblins scrambled out running for the hills. That should have been the clue to the defenders, but instead they fired down upon the retreating figures. It did not matter, Mark doubted that any of them would make it to safety anyways.
Ten seconds later two sections of wall lifted into the air. The stone blocks began to separate going in all directions. As expected most of the blast had been focused out into the open despite Mark’s best efforts to shape charge them, but the explosion was of such force that the wall went down anyways. First there were two holes in the otter wall, and then the section in between them collapsed in on itself, leaving a gaping hole in the defenses several hundred feet in width.
The southern army charged. Henry had held them a good six to seven hundred feet out, by the time the last of the ruble fell to the earth their charge had already commenced. There was not a concerted effort to stop their charge until they started pouring in through the broken section and over the rubble. Ghosts and shadow units slammed into the front ranks staggering them backwards. The spectres were stopped by the protection enchanted wood shields that most of the goblins carried, but then the banshees let out their wails causing widespread devastation to the front line as hundreds of goblins dropped their weapons and shields to cover their already bleeding ears and eyes.
The ghosts poured in through the goblin ranks, but they were countered almost immediately by several new golden explosions that obliterated the incorporeal beings. Nick lost hundreds of units from the wave of explosions, but the southern army had lost near the same amount in just a matter of seconds. More goblins poured in after the front ranks and immediately found themselves facing heavy resistance. Hundreds of skeletal knights had formed a front line as necromancers and dominion undead set up behind them.
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Mark had wanted to save as many of the vitality bombs as possible for use in the dungeon, but they needed to take the entrance sooner than later. More golden explosions rocked the undead line. Few of the physical undead were actually killed from the blasts, but they were weakened and only a handful of debuffs or spells were actually cast before the goblins slammed into the undead. Goblin war drums were already beating furiously, and pyromancers and mages were sending tidal waves of flames out in front of the advancing goblins. It was like they had lined up dozens of flame throwers all at once. The flames only lasted about ten seconds before the pyromancers were all spent, but it was enough to destroy the undead trying to contain the breach.
Still hundreds of goblins had died or were dying. It was inconsequential since they were basically the fodder, or worst of what was left. The mages on top of the ruble fell in behind the second wave. The second wave included 15 patrols of bugbears in its midst. Each had skills and were level 4 or higher of the warhammer class. Mark needed to maintain most of the elite for taking the dungeon, but they did not have enough vitality bombs or enough manna for the pyromancers to continue the push. If this second wave failed they would really only have the last wave of elites left. The third wave numbered only about 800, but half of that number was lower level mages or pyromancers. Which were not really elites. They would push into the fort as soon as the second wave had pushed in.
The second wave progress stalled fairly quickly as tier 3 undead and more incorporeal beings started ripping through the goblins. The bugbear patrols quickly moved toward the physical tier 3 undead. It was up to a couple of hundred goblin archers to deal with the spirit units. The incorporeal beings could cause a lot of havoc in a short period of time, but they were easy to deal with, with the right method.
Vitality bombs were extremely limited, but the archers could fire non stop. Each archer carried two quivers, and several green goblin runners carried thousands of more to restock their supply. The bigger main bucket carried the ghost killers. Arrows with the protection and duplicate enchantments. The goblin archers fired irregardless of what lay beyond as long as they could take out the dangerous incorporeal beings. It proved to be quite effective, a couple hits from one shot by even the tier 3 wraiths and tier 2 banshees was enough to kill them. Groups of flame arrows were fired at clumps of physical undead, with far less effect.
The goblin army's progress started to pick up. With the higher tier 3 undead engaged by bugbear elites and the spectres being removed from the equation, the weaker goblins were actually quite effective against the weaker undead. All of them carried clubs and axes instead of the normal swords for smashing bone and hacking the undead zombies apart. All of their equipment was specific for use against the undead. If Mark had to use this army against Leonard they would likely have been quickly steamrolled unless they were reoutfitted first.
Decent progress was made, but the fortress was far from being taken when Nick’s own army set up to begin their own assault. Also aware that it was a race, the undead and gnolls did not even falter at the tree line. They quickly started streaming across the open field.
Ballista bolts split and caused small devastation on the advancing forces. Bolts fired from both the walls and the plateau up above. Small sections of undead and gnolls were blasted with each shot, like a shotgun blast in a group of ants, but the assault did not falter. The spectral palace continued forward across the open expanse with no sign of stopping. Fire was concentrated on the red gem, but there were a host of protections guarding the item. Ballista bolts were slamming into a shield wall and splintering or rebounding off, and the ballista bolts, including ones with protection enchantments, passed right through the spectral ark.
Nicholas Holt
Nick watched the progress of all three assaults from his chasse lounge chair, drink in hand. He would be lying if he said that he was 100% sure that he was going to win the succession battle at this point. Leonards dungeon would fall very soon. His units had taken a long break to recoup manna before beginning the assault on the dungeon guardian floor, but now his forces were well underway on taking the dungeon guardian down.
The guardian was some kind of demonic ram. Not a great matchup since it was using powerful flame attacks, but the amount of wounds and debuffs accumulating on the hero were starting to stack up. The fight would be over in minutes, the hero just did not have the strength to fight off several thousand undead by itself.
The surprise was Amelia’s assault. With the explosions his home fortress had been blown wide open and his defenses were buckling far quicker than he would have anticipated. The corpse flower hero was also back in the mix. Heavily damaged or not, Nick just did not have the forces to focus on taking it down. More and more of his units were being taken and turned into the corpse flower’s spawn. That was the most souring part of this, that was supposed to be his thing, but in this battle his forces were converting far fewer units than one hero from the other side. The skeletal dragon was on its way, along with Numerous, but it was clear they would not make it in time.
His own assault was proceeding just fine. The spectral palace was hovering above the earth as his undead approached the outer wall. The spectral palace gem was a unique reward. Based on his dominion research, the palace was an army carrier with a capacity of 2,000 units. Units held within did not count toward his capacity, although he could not surpass the capacity of an individual unit inside the arc either, meaning he could have 73 tier 3 wraiths both inside and outside of the arc. The caveat was that the extra units could only last an hour outside. They either had to be in the palace or inside of a dungeon. Not too big of a deal considering most dungeons should fall well within an hour of his forces leaving the palace.
The downside was that one part of the palace had to hover over the gem, meaning it had to be carried and guarded. Getting the palace to Leonards dungeon would have been an impossible feat, since the gem would have been targeted and run down. Here though his units just had to get it within a few hundred feet of the wall, allowing the front of the palace to be over the wall.
Leonard wished he could see their faces when the drop ramp came down and hundreds of undead units started pouring right into their dungeon. However, first he would enjoy the fact that the demonic ram had fallen and his forces were proceeding toward the core.
[Notice: Contender, Leonard, has been eliminated by another contender. Contender has been given a unique reward. Contenders remaining 2/35]
The timer for the unique reward started, but Nick was more engrossed with the current battles. The goblins had breached the inner keep. In another five minutes, they would be inside his dungeon. A shame since the skeletal dragon was just a bit farther out. The unique reward would be nice, but he doubted he would have much occasion to use it since he could not make changes inside his dungeon once they entered and he would have no way to get it to his own army.
Minutes later the front of the spectral palace fell down all of a sudden. A rickety archer tower that the front of the palace was just over was turned to kindling. The ramp had a steep decline, which only increased the speed of the undead that poured out of it. The archers in the double pagoda tower targeted the new threat instantly, but the front ranks carrying multiple units in the front ranks had magical items with force shields. The arrows rebounded ineffectually. By the time the shields wore down the inside of the fort would be flooded with undead. Golden beams of light swept across the undead killing them by the score, but they did not last for long. After that one attack the sunflowers were then limited to basic spells. The goblin fortress would fall within minutes of the surface of his own dungeon, and this battle would turn into a race through each other's dungeon floors.
An hour later, Nick laughed as he read through his unique reward options. The battle managers had given him some good options, but of course he would pick the one that would help him end things today.
[Chaser (unique reward): When an enemy contender has an army inside of your dungeon, you can already send units in after them. Note: This only applies to interface units already summoned prior to the first enemy unit’s entrance into the dungeon.]
Comparatively the other two options were far better. More often than not if someone was inside your dungeon they had probably wiped out everything on the surface that could pursue them, and the reward would not allow him to summon anything new. However, in this instance it might be just what he needed.
