The southern army had successfully breached the inner keep of the undead stronghold about a minute before the palace dropped its ramp inside of their dungeon’s own walls. While there were still a thousand plus undead fighting, Mark immediately started funneling troops in to start their dungeon conquest. Henry led the way along with an elite squad through the first floor as the corpse flower and its spawn and a thousand other goblins fought on.
Henry should be able to take the first few levels without losses, or using any of his skills. Then the regular forces would start bearing more of the weight giving the elite a breather before the final floors. Henry and his company waltzed right through traps and tier 1 undead without a problem.
Mark pushed forward with the fight on the surface until the supplies made it into the dungeon. Then he ordered for the units to collapse around the dungeon entrance to follow after Henry’s vanguard. He did not see any reason to continue the fight on the surface, only taking the dungeon mattered. Soon only the corpse flower, some of its spawn, and a few groups of goblins that had been cut off were left.
By that point Henry and his vanguard were already halfway through the second floor. In total there were 1,100 units that had made it inside, including around 250 bugbear or gnarled wood goblin elites. Mark also had about 30 goblin grenadiers, about a 150 mages/witch doctors/healers of various levels, a couple dozen weevils, a dozen carnivorous centipedes, breeder plant units, a handful of wolf spiders, several hundred corpse flower spawn, Ezekiel in his battle suite, and hundreds of goblins. About 80 of the goblins were archers. While not having a great showing against undead except for the specters, the archers were a critical piece. A big portion of the supplies brought into the dungeon were thousands of arrows. Every arrow was at least exceptional quality, but they had the full stockpile of masterworks and artifacts as well.
As soon as most of the army made it into the dungeon, Mark shifted his attention back to their own dungeon. It was all in Henry’s hands now since they would not be able to communicate with them. Henry was aware of the time crunch, and would manage as best as he could.
Nick’s spectral palace had shortened the time table even more. The undead were already pouring inside of their walls. Nasal was still alive at this point, but he would not be for much longer. The only fortunate thing was that there was no pressure on the goblins on top of the plateau, so they would continue to pound away at the undead until they had all entered the dungeon. Other than the archers still alive on the double pagoda tower they were the only group still able to fight. The sunflowers had blasted hundreds of the undead with their special ability and spells, but they fell fairly quickly since units were already inside of the walls. Every single one of the goblins in the towers, on the ground, and on the walls were tier 1 so they fell quite quickly once the defensive advantage was taken away. Henry would be lucky to have finished up on the second level before the undead entered their own dungeon.
Being ahead by two of the weakest floors would not mean all that much but it was a start. From here on they could only hope that their own dungeon slowed down the enemy dungeon more than the undead dungeon slowed their own army. Mark was certain that Nick would have the full 15 floors, so they were already going into this with a 3 floor disadvantage.
Before their dungeon completely fell, Mark’s attention shifted back to the surface of the undead dungeon. The skeletal dragon was nearly there. The corpse flower now stood practically alone fighting against hundreds of undead. A few of its spawn fought alongside it, but they were only those that had been cut off from reaching the dungeon entrance. Mark had instructed for the corpse flower to send as many of its spawn through to join the assault force as possible. Over the last ten minutes, a good hundred had made it in bolstering the dungeon assault force even further.
The corpse flower was near the edge even before the skeletal dragon swooped down landing right on top of it. The corpse flower tried to strike at the skeletal dragon with vine tendrils, but the dragon ignored them as it ripped the hero into pieces. It only took seconds before the feed went dark. Nick had retaken the surface of his dungeon, not that it would do him much good. If the dragon had arrived a mere 20 minutes earlier it would have been an absolute disaster.
A minute later the undead started pouring into their own dungeon. This was not the first time that Nick had attacked their dungeon. Last time he had sent multiple teams of adventurers in. His forces had made it to the third floor before Dragon the behir had ripped them to pieces. Now the best Mark could hope for on the early floors was for the floor guardians to kill a few units with them before they succumbed to the undead tide. From then on Nick's forces would be fighting blind same as them.
Mark and Amelia continued to watch the progress in their own dungeon. Henry and the elites with him were storming through the third floor as easily as they had the first two. Nick had carefully crafted and situated floors, but the tier 1 undead were just far too outmatched to even really inflict wounds or make the elites expend much effort.
Winnie on the other hand was strong enough to rip 2 skeletal knights down before it succumbed. The goblins with Winnie including Stein did not do much except buy a handful of seconds with their deaths. It was not really notable now, but the real advantage was what these early powerful floor guardians had allowed them earlier on in the succession battle. Only their first two dungeon floors had tier 1 units. By floor 3 Dragon was accompanied by tier 2 bugbears and so on. Most dungeon’s did not have some powerful floor guardian to make up the difference early in the battle, so they had to use tier 1 units through at least their first 4 floors since probably all had used one of the first 5 floors for the mine.
The same as Winnie, Bruce the drone wasp, was able to take out a few undead before his demise. The goblin mages were able to take down a few more. In Nick’s dungeon, Henry was already down halfway through the fifth floor. He was fighting tier 2’s now, but they were poorly equipped and of low level so he was still proceeding with relative ease. On another floor, maybe two, that would change. It was good progress, but things would get held up by the rest of their forces needed to push the attack. Half of the army was still on the second floor as they trailed far behind the vanguard. At some point progress would stall due to fatigue and other living being considerations. The goblins had marched for days including one day and a half straight several days ago. The undead on the other hand were proceeding tirelessly.
The undead entered the third floor to find themselves immediately in battle. Bugbear mages hurled spells from behind a wall of spawner skeletal knights that they had received courtesy from Nick’s last attack. Dragon only entered the fray to target a group of dominion users attempting to convert some of the bugbears. Dragon ripped through the clump of undead saving a few bugbears being dragged by chains to awaiting coffins. The fight was fierce although a bit more brief than Mark would have liked. But in the end they only had 60 units defending the floor against a tide of undead. Uncharacteristically the undead mages used fire attacks to slay the behir. Normally they used all of their manna on debuffs or necromancy, but against a fellow undead they were willing to exploit the vulnerability they shared with the undead behir.
Henry’s group was still fighting the defenders on the fifth floor when the undead moved onto the fourth floor. The open layout of their third floor had made passage onto the next level easy for the enemy army, causing them to lose some of the lead. Still the attacking army was proceeding more cautiously into the fourth floor since they had no idea on what to expect. It was the remaining gnolls that were getting sent in as fodder to identify dangers. While Nick had several thousand still in his assault force he could not afford to lose hundreds on each floor. He knew he would have to take down a hero at some point and needed to conserve a sizable force.
The slow down had allowed for Nick to see who was actually leading the undead forces. There were two of them, a unique titled Minotaur skeleton, Durin the unbroken, and a regular named lich. The lich was the one making the orders, likely having been named to feel an administrative function like they had done for Nasal. Both units were tier 1’s. Even the unique units power rating was only 8.3 putting it about even with some of the other strong undead elite, but the fact that it was a unique unit meant it was probably capable of far more. It was obviously a brute, and based on the title Mark could assume it would be difficult to kill.
Things slowed down for a bit. Their fourth floor defenders and maelstrom units ripped through the gnolls scouting through the tunnels. Giant scorpions with arcane mages killed with impunity. It took a few minutes for escort undead death squads to deal with each threat they found, but the tunnels allowed the defenders to move around, and the arachne could fire from hundreds of different openings from the second floor. The only entrances to the second floor were at the back of all the tunnels, meaning the arachne were relatively safe, or they were until necromancers started casting dark orbs of energy right through the openings. The black energy splashed against the walls or ceilings of the second level. Moments later the undead started dropping down to the floor. Individually they were not much of a match against the arachne, but there were soon hundreds of them. They started moving through the second level as the rest of the forces moved through the first.
Hiding the floor guardian like he had in one of the past attacks worked for a little bit, but with how many enemies that were soon swarming to look for it, it only bought them an additional 5 minutes. Mark was grateful, but he had hoped for far longer.
Henry had stalled their advance after losing two elites in the final room on the fifth floor. One bugbear was killed outright. A second gnarled wood goblin had one of its legs hacked off by a ghast, which was not much better. It was clear however, that the elites could no longer carelessly waltz through the dungeon levels. The attack resumed a few minutes later. Henry instructed for the carnivorous centipedes to be bred. A minute later 30 centipede spawn poured onto the sixth floor. Henry gave them a bit before sending some elites in after them. Henry himself decided to get a clear picture of the army that would be at his disposal. The main body of the army was still a floor or two behind. Only the elites and the beast units caught up to the vanguard.
The centipede spawn had a fairly easy time getting through the maelstrom spawned defenders. It was not until they faced the final stand room of the sixth floor defenders that they started incurring losses, but the elites joined in ensuring a quick victory. They continued onto the seventh floor. They suffered heavier losses at the end of the seventh floor, but after a few minutes to rebreed the centipedes they continued onto the eighth.
At about the same time the undead finally were able to drag out a dead defender scorpion and find King the fourth floor guardian. They turned King’s hole into a literal inferno with the help of some fire essence item. King tried to scramble out, but died before he could get clear and extract a toll. It was the first real use of the flame essence that Mark had known that Nick had. Nick had claimed the volcano essence source a long time ago once Mareth had been defeated.
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Nick’s forces continued onto the fifth floor with the same method. Hundreds of gnolls led the way. Before them was a march to and up the final mountain with one path barred by blood rose defenders at several locations. The gnolls swarmed into the blood rose barriers hacking at the tangle of vines as the sunflower mages rained down spells from overhead. The gnolls were taking serious losses, but it was all happening quite quickly as the gnolls ran seemingly heedlessly right into death just to hack a bit more off their opponent. Eventually, the sunflowers had to use their special ability once the last barrier was broken through. Mark had hoped to save the powerful ability against some tier 3 undead. Instead they just devastated the gnoll forces. In the end, Nick claimed the fifth floor, but there were only about 300 gnolls left.
The eighth floor of the undead dungeon was where the real fighting began. The undead were now tier 2 with class levels of at least 4. They had metal armor and their enchantments had improved by several tiers. The spawned centipedes were all killed and they lost two dozen more units, all elites. The vanguard halted at this point waiting for the main army. It was clear they needed support from the mages, archers, and other supports going forward. With the assumption that Nick had 15 floors, they were only halfway through.
About ten minutes later Henry arrived with the rest of the army. After getting a debrief on how the fights for the past two floors had gone, he spent five minutes restructuring their forces before pushing onto the ninth. Perhaps it was necessary, but Mark hated watching the undead progress while they were not.
The undead hit the sixth floor first. The lich leader quickly deduced that this floor was similar to the fourth floor and had necromancers immediately flood the second level with spawned undead. The hiding technique would not work so Mark had the floor guardian, Emperor, join the fight to cause as much devastation as possible. In the end more of the flame devices were used against the giant scorpions allowing them to be killed far more easily. The undead had difficulty killing the heavily armored scorpions otherwise.
In total Nick’s forces only needed about 15 minutes to clear the floor. They moved onto the seventh floor several minutes before Henry pushed forward onto the ninth. Henry found a floor full of the level 2 shadow units, so he brought the mages, pyromancers, and archers, putting them with a few elites that could protect them. The fighting was relatively easy once the teams were together. The protection arrows and flame destroyed the shadow units with ease. Nick had attempted to change things up with a fully incorporeal floor, but with the right counter the floor had fallen with relatively few losses.
On the other hand the fighting on their own seventh floor was incredibly fierce although once again short lived. This floor had 50 spawner myconids to defend as bugbear spiritualists and mages devastated the undead. Nick probably was not used to facing incorporeal beings from other dungeons. However as soon as the lich ordered for some spirit branch units to counter the spiritualist shadows the fight quickly turned against them. Nick’s spirits were stronger on an individual level so they only took moderate losses as they ripped apart the shades before continuing into bugbears. It was a deadly reminder that Nick was keeping some cards in reserve. The spirit branch was incredibly dangerous for units not equipped to deal with them.
Henry and the undead forces moved on to the tenth and eighth floor at nearly the same time. So far Henry had been able to maintain about a two floor lead, but the fighting was likely to only get more difficult from here on. In contrast, the undead were now leading with the units from their spirit branch.
The eighth floor had four sunflowers that could devastate the incorporeal beings, but the gnarled wood goblins, spore spiders, and spawner treants could only physically scatter their essence enough with physical attacks. The only thing that kept the fight from quickly being a landslide was the fact that the banshee wails did not affect any of the defenders and the blessed aurora from the lotus blossom. Normally, the healing aura that stretched out for hundreds of feet had no effect on anything other than healing the friendlies in its sphere of influence. It had taken a moment for Mark to realize why the spirit branch units were having such a difficult time all of a sudden. Once he did, he had the defenders fall into a tighter clump around the lotus floor guardian.
Still the eighth floor fell well before Henry was done with defenders on the tenth. The tenth floor defenders and maelstrom units were all elite tier 3 undead with magical equipment. Despite the archer and mage support, the southern army was losing 3 or 4 units for each that they took down. Not really surprising since Henry was sending in the weaker goblins at this point and still choosing to conserve the grenadiers, high level mages, and breeder’s mana. They still had five more floors after this one, and they would only get harder from here.
The spirit branch undead continued the charge into the ninth floor. It was the deepest anyone had ever come to this point when Gale along with Leonard had nearly sacked their dungeon. The attack had given them the last of their spawners. Just 9 units, but they were all tier 3 and their number included a cloud giant. The cloud giant was the only mage, but the essence evolved beasts proved fairly resilient to even the tier 3 wraiths attacks, and the banshee wails had seemingly no effect.
The floor guardian, stone giant centipede, and the five stone essence spiders, might as well have been impervious to the spirit branch attacks. The others could and would be brought down given enough time. However, only the 9 brimstone centipedes could kill the spirit units with much effectiveness. Being incorporeal did not provide enough protection from the acid spray these units could perform.
It was extremely good news for their lower floors. The incorporeal beings would be nearly next to useless from here on since their eleventh and twelfth floors only had plant and creepy crawly units. Of course the units on those floors would be even stronger, since they were all double evolved and also were even symbiotes with various flower units.
Henry exhausted most of the weaker goblins and all of the corpse flower spawned units on the eleventh and twelfth floors, preserving as much of their core strength as he could. There was not much of a difference from one floor to another at this point just like their own later floors. Perhaps the magic equipment was better, but each floor had tier 3 skeletal grave rippers, a handful of tier 2 zombie ghast mages, and a handful of banshees or wraiths. The banshees were extremely effective against everything but the weevils and centipedes so they were usually targeted first by the mages and archers.
The fight on their own tenth floor had dragged on. The lich leader had realized that the spirit branch units were having barely any effect after a few minutes and had sent in skeletal knights and wights to deal with the beasts. The undead had mainly been relying on their tier 2’s for the attack, but they were clearly having difficulty with the single essence evolved beasts. It was an extremely good sign, but they were not home free. The lich had been conserving around 500 elites. Most were still tier 2, there were only about 70 grave rippers since they were cap limited, but it was clear these undead had far better equipment.
On the eleventh floor the lich was forced to start including these elites to bring down the double evolved symbiotic units that each had a power rating in the double digits. The fight still dragged as Mark maneuvered the defenders across the floor to keep the guardian alive. Buying time was more important than more slaughter at this point, but the time buying tactic actually probably allowed for them to kill more undead. The lich had been forced to spread his forces thin and include more to box the beasts in, so the beasts could take out small contingents when Mark had them suddenly reverse course to break through.
Then the guardian centipede actually suddenly fell, getting suddenly one-shotted by a thrown magical spear. The gate to the dungeon guardian floor opened and the undead readily realized that fact. Once the lich realized the door was open the undead shifted to departing to the next floor instead of chasing down the remaining defenders. Mark had the seven remaining centipedes reverse course sending them in to kill as many as possible before they exited the floor. The result was that just over 1,200 undead entered the dungeon guardian’s floor.
In contrast Henry had just completed the thirteenth floor, and there were only about 700 left in their army. Then there was more bad news. It was good that they were in a fairly open room. It meant there was some warning before hundreds of undead came at them from behind.
It took Mark a minute to realize the attack was happening. Henry along with most of the force was already proceeding onto the fourteenth floor. Mark finally realized it when he saw that several of the centipedes were dead. Mark shifted the view to that area to find full pandemonium. Perhaps it was good that the centipedes and weevils had been stationed at the back of the force. The beasts could respond far quicker than a bunch of goblins would have to the sudden attack. If it had been goblins, Henry might have lost hundreds before they even realized and were able to coordinate a counter.
As it was, the centipedes were rampaging as a bunch of weevils hovered near the ceiling firing electrical blasts. There were hundreds of undead, and more trickling through the tunnel every minute. Most of them were from the lower tiers, and most just had standard equipment and weapons. In actuality it was fairly one sided, with the centipedes and weevils killing the mostly tier 1’s with ease, but the beasts were still dying. The undead, on the other hand, kept coming.
Mark did not have to guess where this force had come from. Obviously they had come from the surface. It had to have been a unique reward. It was supremely unfair if they had offered him something like that at this junction of the battle, but what could they do. There had likely still been a good thousand undead on the surface. All of them were likely on the way, led by Numerous.
Most of the goblins just on the other side of the beasts left off by themselves had ditched the fight running through the door to the next floor. Henry probably would not find out until just about the end of the floor. It would already be a blow to his plans to continue on without the beasts and their spawns, but even more of a blow was the fact that hundreds of undead would eventually catch up with them.
The undead army had entered the final dungeon guardian room of their dungeon to find themselves in what was basically a crack in the ground. The whole map was filled with these crisscrossing cracks with walls on both sides rising anywhere from 5 to 20 feet above the floor. Mark had thought of arid dry ground when he had designed the floor. In which case the enemy units and the regular defenders were basically like little ants stuck to the bottom of the cracks. Only the 70 foot diameter dungeon guardian, stone tarantula, hero reigned supreme here.
Before the undead was a set path that led to a T-section. The bottom and walls had occasional holes that led into the tunnels. The tunnels would allow his non guardian defenders to move all about the map. The lich also knowing that time was a factor had the forces surge forward. The spirit branch units were immediately sent into the tunnels to prevent ambushes and to start mapping out the tunnels. It should take the undead a long time to figure out the floor and to deal with the stone tarantula.
Mark was hardly comforted. Their forces still had one more fight to go before they made it to the guardian floor with their own assault. Henry received word about the ambush from behind just before the assault on the fourteenth defenders again. The bugbear commander looked back scowling for a moment before he had a rear guard formed and continued on with the attack.
A patrol of gnarled wood goblins led the charge. Several ghasts shot what in all appearances were disintegration rays from magical scepters. When a ray hit an arm or a leg or even the whole body of a unit became dust. The double protection and defense enchanted shields were not doing much to stop it. They only blocked a hit before disintegrating themselves.
The wood goblins slammed into a wall of waiting rippers. The tall hunched skeletal figures had claws instead of fingers. They did not use weapons, but they did not need them. They had magical gloves on their skeletal hands that likely enhanced their natural physical attack. They ripped through wooden limbs and torsos like a scythe through stalks of wheat. The wood goblins returned the strikes crunching in the plate armor and crushing bone with their war hammers. The rippers all had top tier magical gear, so they were not going down easily. The wood goblins were being turned to kindling far faster.
But then came the mage and archer support. Henry had done a pretty good job preserving the mages and archers. The mages he had rotated so that groups could recoup mana. The archers were the furthest from the action. In the end Henry lost another hundred units, mostly elites. It would only leave just over 500 to assault the final dungeon guardian floor. His plans to breed the centipedes and weevils one final time had fallen through. Although it looked like it would at least be a while before Numerous and other undead could caught up to them from behind since the last of the beasts had only fallen recently. Now he had about 100 elite warriors, 200 mages, 20 grenadiers, 80 archers, and 140 goblin regulars to take out 50 defenders and a hero and fend off a pursuing army.
