Mark watched the first two floors as if on autopilot. They were manned with peak tier 1 lizardmen centurions but that was hardly a concern at this stage. However on the third floor, it was immediately apparent that Gale had already had a level 2 dungeon since lizardmen dominators and salamanders started storming into their ranks or blasting their forces with fireballs and these were just the wandering defenders from a maelstrom. Still not really a concern.

  Mark and Amelia could not communicate with their forces in the dungeon, but Henry was handling things just fine. Advanced teams pushed through the tunnels and secured adjoining tunnels to prevent ambushes, minimizing the losses. With over 800 goblins, frogmen, plants, and spiders, they had plenty to spare. Mark even sent the remaining frogmen back with some claimed booty from the surface. They would not be much help in the dungeon anyways. It was better to use them for carrying back enchantments and magic equipment for study and use. Despite that they were proceeding cautiously. Henry was on top of things to ensure that the right forces with the right weapons were ready for the fights. The giants later in the dungeon could quite potentially fall quite easily with the right enchanted arrows or tactic, and they had all the time they needed to succeed or fail.

  Mark spent the time ruminating on where they would go from here. Naturally, he had sent linked scouting teams to give them a glimpse of both battles that took place down to the south. It had been easy to monitor them while his units sieged Gale’s walls. Unfortunately, neither Avery or Nick were able to overcome the cavalry units that destroyed all opposition. It had been far more intimidating than the impression they had of his forces based on his assault into their dungeon or on the central island.

  Nick’s forces were literally trounced despite using the same tactics he had used against them just North of his volcano settlement. Avery’s forces had lasted quite a bit longer, her plant units were far less susceptible to being slammed by a wall of moving steel and flesh. However, Leonard's forces also had magic swords and powerful enchantments. In reality, he was the only other force that Mark had seen that displayed similar acumen to their own dungeon in that field.

  “That rotten bastard!” Amelia shouted.

  Mark’s eyes snapped to her as she furiously got to her feet and began pacing. “What is it? What happened?” he asked intrepidly.

  “He’s attacking Avery,” she stammered. “Daniel,” she clarified upon seeing his blank response.

  “You’re kidding!” Mark stated just as shocked. Daniel had brought a decent sized force in his attack against Gale. Not large, but it had a bunch of elites including at least 3 units with unique titles. He had not only done that, but he had also staged an entire army to deal a deathblow against Avery. Mark had always known their little coalition would likely fall apart immediately after the attack, but this seemed to soon. It was no wonder that Daniel had his leftover units including the unique titled cat skedaddle before word could get back to them.

  “How is she fairing?”

  Amelia turned toward him. Her face was contorted in anger, and she was crying, angry crying. “3,000 units, including at least 2 unique titled ones. She doesn’t think she is going to survive this…” Amelia's voice trembled during the last sentence.

  “Good night,” Mark replied leaning back into the couch. How could he have that many more units and two more titled units hidden away. It was no wonder that the guy had been ranked first for the first few rankings. Mark’s mind was scrambling for an answer, but then Amelia collapsed back on the opposite side of the couch. Perhaps it was not the time. “Are you okay?”

  “Yeah, I’ll be fine,” Amelia said, much more calmly than Mark expected. Mark watched as her facial expressions took on a more somber but resolute feel. “I guess it was always going to come to this…eventually. At least we never had to go against each other, so we could remain friends till the end.”

  Mark nodded. There was not really much that he could say to comfort her. There had only ever been the possibility that only one of them would walk away from the succession battle. The friendship had an expiration date from the start, but still Avery and Cynthia had been her only real outlets beside himself. Amelia was not like him, who could ruminate on the various battle features all day every day.

  “Is she really certain that she won’t be able to… uh make it,” Mark finally asked.

  “She sounds fairly certain,” Amelia said as she started describing their forces.

  Daniel’s forces were already on the third level of her plant-encrusted palace. After that it was just the nine levels of her dungeon. Avery had apparently elected to start giving Amelia full details since she knew she wasn’t going to make it out of this. After ten minutes of listening, Mark could tell that their own dungeon would have been easily overwhelmed by such a force, even if they saw it in time and used up all their remaining MP and DP, not that they had much.

  It had really just been Avery’s misfortune that she had been chosen. Mark did not know for certain why she had been picked, but it was likely due to the fact that Daniel was certain he could surprise her. Avery’s first notice had been a blaring alarm and red blimps appearing on her tactical map. Mark and Amelia definitely knew how that felt.

  Still Avery seemed to be taking it rather well, since she was giving them such detailed accounts of his forces. Mark could not help but to sarcastically smile, thinking of the saying about a ‘woman scorned.’ Avery seemingly was more worried about ensuring that they had as much information that she could give. Mark doubted it was only due to her friendship. More likely she wanted Daniel to get what was coming to him.

  “We are going to take out Daniel next, right?” Amelia asked with a harsh tone.

  Mark did not respond immediately, as he played through the various scenarios. “Yeah, I don’t think we have a choice at this point,” Mark finally responded. There was no way that they would be able to perform another joint attack with the guy after this, and Mark could not see them going after one of the other two. After all, once Gale and Avery fell their own dungeon would lie in between Daniel and the other two. It would be better to focus on the northern dungeon while the two southern dungeons kept each other occupied.

  Then their dungeon would only form a point of a triangle with the two southern dungeons. Hopefully, Leonard and Nick would fight things out with each other while they faced off with Daniel. They should consider each other their biggest competition, but then they had not exactly always acted that way up to this point. I guess time will tell, Nick thought as he refocused on the ongoing battle.

  Their forces were on the final room of the fourth floor. Gale had already unlocked her troll branch by this point since they mainly faced troll regulars. Although it appeared that she had limited MP at the time since half of her defenders were composed of the weaker lowland trolls. Not too surprising, Mark thought after remembering dungeons falling one after the other after dungeons started to reach level 2. Gale probably needed stronger defenses right then despite using weaker units.

  Gale’s fifth floor was manned fully by troll regulars. The only difference was the quality of gear. Each wore thick metal armor with various enchantments. Gale had moved them forward to the beginning of the floor in an attempt to surprise their forces. They easily wiped out the 60 goblins forming the advance squads, but by the time they were defeated, Henry had already moved up the goblin mages and pyromancers and burned them alive inside of their armor.

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  Gale had already unlocked giants by the time she built her sixth level. Twenty five armor plated ogre defenders were waiting once again to surprise them in one of the opening rooms. The room was well suited for the task since a long chasm separated the two sides with only two ten foot wide bridges leading across. However it actually ended up working against her. Those powerful door shields did not protect from the black shrunken head curse. Once ogres started running across they fell quite easily to the exceptional quality enchanted arrows, and once the initial ogres were spurned to cross by the curse the others quickly followed suit. Each ran down in two single filled lines, right into a hail of arrows. The powerful duplicating piercing arrows punched right through. It was Gale's fault for allowing them to get set up.

  The next three floors had nearly the same compliments of defenders. They mostly had ogres, although a few mages were interspaced to provide some variance. Gale had changed tactics to have the ogres attack when they could approach ambush from multiple directions. It was far more effective, but at this point even the wandering maelstrom units were mostly all ogres so Henry had the appropriate forces arrayed in waiting at all times. They took losses, but they were acceptable.

  That did it for the level 2 dungeon floors, but Mark was hardly surprised when the next floor opened to a tenth. Gale had been among the first to reach level 3, so it was not too surprising. A scouting unit quickly scampered back after getting a good look. Twenty fully armored hill trolls carrying door shields stood guard up a fortified hill. Five cloud giants stood waiting on top, ready to blast their forces.

  It was the final room of the tenth floor. Based on the lack of wandering units, Gale had not gotten around to unlocking the maelstroms for her tier 3 floors. Still the set up allowed Henry to get their forces ready. Ten minutes passed as Henry prepped. Then the damn burst.

  Hundreds of archers poured into the room without warning, scattering across the wide open base of the hill. The assault started virtually without warning so that the cloud giants could not blast the single opening leading into the large chamber.

  Next ballistas started being wheeled in. The first went to the right and the next to the left and so on. It took half a minute for the cloud giants to charge their ice blasts, which they sent toward the attackers. One obliterated a ballista and a couple goblins surrounding it. Another missed another ballista that was still being wheeled to the far corner of the room.

  Hill trolls started charging down hill realizing that they were just targets on the hill, but hundreds of powerfully enchanted necrotic arrows started streaking uphill from the hundreds of archers scattered along the base. It was extremely effective, but the hill giants were still extremely tough. They quickly bypassed the archers that scampered to the side. Gale had apparently ordered them to take out the ballistas, which they promptly did. Only one ballista managed to fire a bolt right into a hill troll's center mass, knocking it back and mortally wounding it.

  Then the fight became reminiscent of their fight with the dragon the behir, their 3rd floor guardian. Archers scattered away and peppered the lumbering giantoids. The cloud giants continued to support, but the goblins were all acting individually so it was hard to bring down more than one or two with a single spell. It had all been a part of Henry’s strategy. Mark remembered Nasal having discussed their underground assault on the behir to the goblin commander. Realizing that this was not going in her favor, Gale quickly sent the eight remaining hill giants down the hill toward the tunnel.

  Henry had anticipated this and had their forces ready. Powerful waves of arrows encompassed the entire passage slamming into the approaching hill trolls. Although Henry and a few other bugbear elites had to step in to put down the last two. After that, their forces took only marginal losses charging up the hill to deal with the cloud giants. Henry ordered the units to rest once the floor was taken.

  After a couple hours they continued on, to find an eleventh floor. Mark was far from surprised to find another floor awaiting them. Gale had likely spent every drop of MP and DP she had left upon seeing the attack on her dungeon. She could very well have the full 14 floors. Hopefully, there would be fewer, assuming that Gale had run out of resources.

  They still had over 400 goblins, all the sunflowers, and spiders, including pretty much every elite that had entered the dungeon. However, Mark was doubtful that they could manage a full 4 more floors, so at 200,000 MP a piece to unlock the floor along with what she would need to spend to summon the defenders. Hopefully Gale had not been able to build them all.

  The eleventh floor gave a good indication that this would be the case. It was just one long tunnel leading to one giant room that was filled with the unarmored two headed ettins and cyclops. It looked like it was unplanned, so Gale had likely built it earlier that day. The room was large and flat, extremely open to allow the giantoids to move around easily. Of course they were loosely clustered around the opening, ready to smash swaths of units as they exited the tunnel.

  Henry took a minute to configure their forces before having them pour out of the tunnel like bees pouring out of a hive. The front wave was led by the elite bugbears with Henry at the front. Five bugbears worked together to block the ettin swung club from the right as Henry by himself blocked the one to the left, his shield flaring up a magical barrier. Others continued forward cutting the two ettins as they passed them moving forward to the next ring of giantoids.

  Spiders followed immediately after the 21 bugbears. The black funnel web and spore spiders emptied into the right side of the room in seconds. One was crushed under a second swing of the right ettin, before the ettin was brought down by a group of bugbears. Henry was pushing back the one on the left.

  A group of spore spiders immediately moved into a cluster of waiting cyclops on the right. Several were instantly crushed, their wooden vine like frames turned to splinters. But then the remainder all poofed out yellow clouds that quickly spread. Seconds later the cyclops started wheezing and coughing. They still killed the tier 3 spiders a kill with each successful hit, but they became far more clumsy and started staggering back further into the room.

  The bugbears continued forward and to the left, taking the vanguard on the left side of the room. Despite each having a full complement of skills and top gear, a third were killed with the first pass as they broke into the secondary ring of giantoids. Once they were amidst the giants they started fairing far better, weaving in and out using the giants awkward size against them. Then out came the archer goblins, uncontested. They quickly spread along the wall to the left and begin their hail of arrows.

  The spore spiders were wiped out nearly to the spider, but they had effectively scattered the clump of cyclops to the right side of the room. The black funnel web spiders followed up targeting individual giantoids. It was the first time that Mark saw them in combat. Even he was taken aback as they launched tens of feet latching onto the sides of the giantoids. In a flash they bit into a cyclops flesh. Delivering their toxic payload. A second later they shot back off and out of range. A few of the giant black spiders were swatted out of the air or while they were attached, but most were nimble enough to escape the clumsy and slow counters.

  Mark had evolved all of the funnel web spiders with their toxic essence, so their bites should be fairly lethal. Still it looked like it took several before the giant cyclops started stumbling about. Still it looked like the spiders would be the ones to prevail, with their uncannily quick reactions. Their numbers were about the same, but the spiders would prevail in a matter of a minute or two. The unarmored cyclops just were not suitable opponents for them, especially when they were struggling to breath and focus.

  The fight on the left side on the other hand was an open melee. Several ettins had nearly immediately charged to deal with their biggest threat, the archers. Henry intercepted one but the rest started turning whole clumps of archers into mulch. One swing could find a half a dozen despite them all being spread out.

  But more archers were pouring in every second, and the ones that were able to make a successful shot were doing so with powerful effect. They were finally taking heavy losses, but it was still clear that they would have a victory on this floor. Still Mark could only grimace each time a goblin archer was turned to paste. He did not particularly care for the goblins, but their quiver full of arrows. They were losing a lot of powerful enchantments with each one that was killed. Most were only good quality, but Henry had handed out a handful of excellent quality arrows to each archer as well. Over the months they had made tens of thousands, but their stockpile would mostly be gone after this was all said and done. Mark had only kept about 25% back at the home dungeon for defense.

  It was after the fight was finished, that Amelia finally informed him that Avery’s last floor had fallen. She had sent Amelia one last goodbye message. A moment later they got the notification.

  [Notice: Contender, Avery Kingston, has been eliminated by another contender. Contender has been given a unique reward. Contenders remaining 5/35]

  It was sobering news, however it was nothing compared to the next notice a little more than an hour later.

  [Congratulations: A dungeon had reached level 4 ushering in the final era of the battle.]