The good results of the battle just kept coming. The left ridge had easily been won without losing a single one of the four ballista. As for the right ridge, the battle concluded in a matter of minutes there as well. Daniel had probably figured that his high tier beasts would be able to stampede right through the goblin forces, and that it would almost take an act of god to bring Kong down.
However, just like pikemen could break a cavalry charge back on Earth, the goblin heavy infantry had withstood the charge stopping the beast's momentum. Which allowed the archers and mages to be devastated. Kong had been highly resistant even to the grenade explosions, but the lone champion fell just short of being able to claim Lucien in the end. Brought down by an overwhelming amount of debuffs, arrows, spells, and explosions. The giant ape had been embedded by thousands of arrows and had pock marks where flesh had been blown clean off, but luckily the corpse was still salvageable as were many of the beasts from the two battles.
For the dragon, the tactic had worked. After a good ten minutes of whipping itself carelessly through the air its crazy high endurance started to flag. Hundreds or perhaps thousands of pounds had worked to tire the beast with the addition of the necrosis and paralazation aspects the arrows provided. By the time there were only 20 bat goblins left in the flight, the dragon was having difficulty matching the bat goblins maneuverability. Which of course embolden them, allowing them to pepper the bigger beast with impunity while staying out of reach making each wing beat even more laborious. Eventually the dragon roared in frustration as it retreated back to the surface, where other dungeon beasts could support it. Not that the bat goblins followed.
The battle had entered a lull. Which was not to Daniel’s benefit, unless he had some unseen means of his own, but the break in the battle would allow the goblins to replenish their ranks to an extent. Even before the battle was over some of the beasts who had died in the sphere of corruption had started to rise. They helped to tear down the last knot of heavily armored girallons that were still resisting the inevitable.
The goblins had taken heavy losses, losing nearly two thousand during the beasts’ rampage. Nearly half of the tier 3 spiders had also died stopping the beast charge on the left ridge, so breeding was still an option although the time in between waves would continue to increase as it took even the rooted plants longer and longer to recover enough manna. The daisy breeding units that the weevils had carried from the home dungeon yesterday evening were already flagging despite only having sent out two waves of bred weevils. Currently Mark had some units inside of Daniel’s territory keeping him from summoning new ones, but the battle administrators would not let them be for too much longer. They would have to press the attack.
Fortunately, despite the losses they had gained several hundred dead beasts thanks to Lucien’s sphere of corruption. Even more were in process of being reanimated by the witch doctors who had flocked to the left ridge. Lucien himself started the process for the fallen ape champion. In another half hour, both the champion and the first primordial would be marching against their own dungeon along with hundreds of other beasts.
Daniel had messed up big time sending such elite units to strike out at their forces. He had to have seen the fact that they were able to reanimate the fallen back at Gale’s dungeon. Had he perhaps misjudged his own unit’s ability to finish the job? Then again, if the legionnaires had not broken the stampede's momentum, it could have been a completely different story on the right ridge, and the same for left where the spiders had carried out the same role.
If the beasts had not been halted it was quite possible they would have quickly and easily overrun the position killing the goblins in mass. It was even possible they would have been able to continue all the way through before circling back down to their dungeon. It was probably something that had worked for Daniel throughout the battle. Hit fast and hard and with the beast's high mobility and physical capabilities, it had probably worked fairly well up till now.
Regardless, Mark felt more confident in their prospects as their forces started down into the valley with their new undead beast complement. They quickly reached the goblin vanguard who had staked out to hold a section of land at the outer edge of Daniel’s territory. The goblins quickly abandoned the shoddy fort they had quickly thrown up and joined the main army as they marched further down into the valley.
With the dragon grounded the bat goblins and weevils had free reign in the skies. The weighted arrow enchantments would last for a few hours, but it was quite likely the dragon could take back off once it had rested enough, or perhaps when it was healed or had the arrows removed. Another reason for their forces not to dally. Just like how Kong had ripped through hundreds of goblins by himself, the dragon could potentially turn things around all by itself. However they now had another counter, undead Kong. The reanimated Kong would be only half as effective, but he was still a force to be reckoned with.
The dungeon proper was far from normal. There were no walls, just well trodden land and four massive holes leading into the earth. Several thousand units mainly composed of trees and ape units had positioned themselves to the Southwest ready to engage the enemies before they even made it to the openings into the earth. Lucien directed their forces right for them. The sunflowers and daisies bred what was possibly the final wave. Since over half of the tier 3 spiders had fallen, half of the surface spiderlings were the far weaker wolf spider spawn, each with power ratings around that of the green goblins. But Lucien had the spiderlings circling around the flanks. Since tree units comprised the majority of the enemy forces, goblin archers, mages and flame jugglers would be leading the main assault.
Enemy girallons were the first to make their move. They used their skill to pull up earthen projectiles before launching them through the air. Their aim was fairly precise with most maiming or killing a goblin or two, some bouncing off the ground prior to hitting a target. The goblins could do little about it, except try to put a tree between themselves and the thrower, but that bunched them up making them an even more attractive target. They would lose a good hundred goblins just in the approach.
Stolen story; please report.
The goblins soon made it into archery range, and many stopped in place before firing high into the air. However the ape’s had already fired their bows. The goblin arrows passed up and by the opposing fire that was already on its way down. Another hundred goblins were cut down as arrows rained down. The apes did not have very good enchantments, but they were agile and capable. Each already had a second arrow in flight before the first fell.
The tree units followed close behind by the ape units surged forward after the flaming arrows devastated their front lines. Since it was clear they would quickly lose the fight if they held back to just exchange fire. Goblin mages started firing fireballs as the tree units closed on them. However, many seemingly dissipated as they approached the treants leading the charge. The treants each had flaming arrows sticking in them, but they had some ability to dispel actual magic attacks. However, the mages continued and the flame jugglers swept up and manipulated the flames attacking from the sides or even the rear.
The goblin archers soon were quickly falling back in a frantic retreat, passing in between the reanimated beasts surging forward to take their place. The black haze signifying the sphere of corruption approached the front as Lucien approached the front lines. Undead beasts met towering treants in stride with collision of wood and flesh. Explosions rocked the front line as a shower of cherry bombs raked the front.
The remainder of the girallons had formed into a war band and were pushing together as one. They easily ripped through the line of reanimated beasts and weathered a volley of arrows from seemingly all directions without a single casualty. They were targeting the goblin commander. The haze had more than quadrupled over the last few hours, but it was still not a large distance for things of their size. The first primordial stepped up along with some other reanimated earth dragons as the final defense.
The forces slammed together not a hundred yards from the goblin commander who watched hesitantly from the side. Kong likely would have been able to take them on by himself, but Mark had instructed Lucien to hold the giant ape back. He was their counter for the dragon that Mark knew Daniel would have to bring out. It was likely that if they won this battle they would then have to fight through the caves down to wherever the dungeon was, but unless Daniel was an idiot the dragon would enter combat while it could still fight from the air.
Nearly on cue the red dragon launched out of one of the bigger lairs. Perhaps all of the weighted arrows had been removed or perhaps the dragon had just replenished its stamina regardless it looked to be in peak form. However, there were a good 60 weevils and bat goblins waiting to contest the beast and they were not the only ones. Kong still had the ability to pull up wrecking ball sized stones from the earth. It took twice as long as when the ape had been living but it was still effective. The four remaining ballistas also fired after the large creature. The dragon of course nimbly dodged the comets and spears streaking up toward it as it worked to take out the opposing air forces.
The dragon was far from being completely comfortable in the skies. When it pushed itself higher in altitude the opposing air forces let the dragon go, electing to stay down close to the battle where they had supporting fire. The dragon could not stay up there either. It was pretty clear that Daniel’s forces were losing the battle. The reanimated earth dragons had halted the girallons advance, meaning they were fighting as the very environment sapped their strength and vitality. It did not appear that they would be able to overcome the earth dragons in a timely manner. The earth dragons were just too big to quickly take down despite the girallons obvious advantage in the confrontation.
However, Mark had been wrong that the dragon was the only card. The left flank erupted in chaos. Mark quickly shifted their view to see that it was the caval cats that had used their camouflage skill to approach. There were several hundred of them, so despite their relatively low power ratings, Mark could hardly write them off. Then came an entire wave of mastiffs, long horned rams, moon wolves, and shadow cats from behind. They were all tier 1 beasts, but there were over a thousand of them so just by numbers they could not be ignored.
Lucien had of course already known about this force so had a force ready to receive him. The cavals had sought to find a gap in between the other fronts of battle and had largely succeeded, but Lucien still had a couple hundred goblins and a handful or reanimated beasts acting as his guard that could stop the unnoticed force. That and since the dragon was too high up, Kong focused his attention on the Cavals. Wrecking ball sized stones streaked in taking down groups in the witch doctor’s defense.
Their forces still looked to be the eventual victor in the battle, but it was also true that they were stretched a bit thin, and Daniel likely realized that as well because the red dragon came back into the scene choosing to sweep right through the opposing air forces to deliver a gout of flame across the front line. More than a dozen reanimated beasts were consumed in an instant. In less than half a minute the dragon came back around.
The ballista waited till the dragon came in but still missed as the dragon corkscrewed through the air. Another gout of flame started to sweep across even more reanimated beasts, but the earthen projectile streaked in dead on. The giant ape had moved closer toward the front after the first pass and had fired off the rock from only a couple hundred yards away.
The flames cut off abruptly as the red dragon’s body whipped around, but the giant stone struck anyways collapsing the wing against the side of the dragon’s body. The dragon fell several hundred feet hitting the earth like a meteor killing units from both sides. The dragon started righting itself almost immediately, with the clear intention to take back off, but undead Kong was already bounding across the field right for it.
The dragon had only enough time to rear up slightly before the giant ape leapt up onto it. The giant ape immediately found the dragon's neck with one of its hands while it used the other to bash down. The dragon had equally caught the apes midsection with its own front claws which continually raked furrows in the undead flesh. The two soon were rolling over crushing even more units, but the two behemoths could hardly worry as they worked to rip each other to pieces.
The dragon tried to use its teeth but Kong had enough control to keep the gnashing teeth away. Even a gout of flame was sent uselessly into the air as the ape pushed its head back at the last possible second. That being said, it was clear. The two were nearly equal in size, but the dragon had the higher power rating when they were both living, let alone now that Kong was fighting from a reduced reanimated state.
“Lucien, direct the ballista to fire on both of them. It took a minute for the goblin commander to comply with the order since he was still fairly close to the battle. In the meantime, Kong was quickly losing ground. Soon the dragon was able to overpower the ape enough to allow its teeth to sink into the ape's shoulder. Intestines and gore were already hanging from the ruined midsection. Kong was still fighting fiercely, but Kong did not last much longer. It had been enough.
Almost as one all four ballista fired. Sixteen artifact level bolts slammed into the two figures and the surrounding area. It was enough, both collapsed forming a mound of flesh the size of a small hill.
