The fighting around the Katydid’s entrance was fierce. Peter had two teleportation ruins bringing in reinforcements steadily. All the allies were now taking turns, having realized that if the assault failed their chances going forward would be grim. Hundreds of B tiers and dozens of A tiers fell in the effort. Many of the dragons he had brought had already fallen as had all 22 of the other freshly summoned A tiers Peter had been forced to send.
The endless insect forces in the air were being countered by crows, demons, angels, and flame butterflies. The ground forces were occupied by a hodgepodge of the four allied dungeons. Gretchen had deployed a whole force of B tier dark elves, who fired screaming arrows that made high pitch wines as they streaked forward. They were fully capable of piercing all the way through a B tier insect or two before they fizzled out.
Five A tier Dark elf long swordsmen held a stretch of the front line by themselves. The five worked in tandem to keep one another alive and to hold the lines with their large oval shields and longswords. It was a sharp lesson for Peter, up to this point he had simply assumed that A tier melee fighters just went down far too easily, so Peter had mainly used them to support the weaker infantry units. But these 5 A tiers were well equipped in gleaming silver armor. They covered for each other, one attacking while others supported and defended. Pretty much how Peter used his lower tier infantry, but at the A tier level. He had apparently come to some wrong conclusions. A tier infantry might go down easily, but if working with others at the same level they could deal with things at least at their tier, just like the infantry at weaker tiers could generally hold the line at things near their level.
Gabriel had provided a force of beasts as well as some demons and angels, but they were either supporting the offensive or aiding in the aerial battle. Elyra had only sent a decent size force of her B tier one offs from the healing butterfly and some C tier flame butterflies, but it might have been the most welcome contribution for Peter since they far eclipsed Peter’s own sigil masters or holy armour dragon’s healing abilities.
Still with all their forces, the containment around the entrance was barely maintained. Hordes of A and B tier enemies continued to pour through. They were dying by the dozens, far faster than the allied elites that were sent to stop them. Then again, the insect cores had far more to spare. Peter once again started looking through the forces that he would be able to send as reinforcements.
Then all at once the attack broke across all the fronts in their own dungeons as well as in the katydid core’s dungeon. Broke, but not stopped, insects were still swarming in at a steady cadence, but the careless use of A and B tiers seemed to be over. Either the insect cores supply had dwindled or they had decided on a change of strategy. Now their forces were nearly devoid of anything other than C tiers that continued their various assaults. It would have been a welcome change, if not for the fact that many of the heavy hitters across the allied forces were either dead or spent, too exhausted to fight. It was a mere easing of the pressure.
“I assume they mean to keep wearing down our forces, saving up their remaining elites for when our elites are even more spent,” Gabriel proposed.
“To a point that works in our favor, as long as we can pull some of our elites back, or allow them to rest like my ether tearing dragons,” Peter added.
Since it seemed the insect faction had not made any preparations to counter his SS tier and its one offs, Peter had decided to burn the rest of his essence to summon 100 B tier ether tiering dragons, before sending them right over to the katydid dungeon. They had helped to relieve the load by targeting units of a higher tier when things got truly desperate, killing hundreds of A and B tiers before they were forced to go dormant at the back of the floor to regain their energy. It would take a few hours before they were fully charged and ready to go, but just like the others in Elyra’s dungeon they basically could guarantee several hundred elite kills with nearly no losses every 3 hours or so. They were by far Peter’s most dangerous force for the short period of time while they had energy to burn.
Peter used the last of the stored essence energy to send units with the rest of the incendiaries of various types forward through the teleportation ruin. He needed to reduce the enemy's foothold around the katydid core’s entrance while he could. Less than a minute after arrival, incendiaries started exploding across the floor and walls killing C tiers by the dozens. The infantry throwing the concentrated essence bombs walked them forward toward the entrance. It was all the elites working to contain the land forces needed to start advancing forward toward the entrance platform.
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Soon they would be able to hold things off with even a fraction of the effort. The barrage could only be kept up for a few minutes, but it would buy some breathing room. The constant source of buy goo swelled the fairies power, meaning that they started killing more enemies already on the floor. More teleportation runs brought more reinforcements, most of which started to move in the opposite direction to push the assault forward.
After 3 minutes the change in the room was evident. The allied air forces were still fighting tooth and nail, but the enemies on the walls or floors had decreased substantially. At the tail end of the barrage, Krista led her gathered archangels back into the fight. Half an hour was plenty of time for them to replenish their holy energy.
Peter sent orders to send the B tier fairies forward to push the assault. Only the S tier would remain behind to help hold the entrance, which had suddenly become far more manageable. His dark crystal batteries had long been spent and his mages were near the edge having been forced to take manna restoration potions several times already. They would need a long break if he wanted to be able to use them later. It would be up to his allies to continue to send reinforcements as needed. Which by the look of things, they weren’t. The assault force was only encountering a horde of C tiers, the same as those coming through the entrance.
Peter’s attention shifted back to his dungeon, where for the last 30 minutes the insects had only been subjected to small ambushes and a litany of traps. That break was over, now that the insects had reached the fifth floor. Hundreds of silverfish looking units stormed through before diving in the water. Their long tails swept back and forth propelling them forward to engage the quarter off hippos. Hundreds of crickets started launching themselves from stone pad to stone pad. They were safe from the lasers that were set to cut across at a certain height thanks to the insects flying overhead already having triggered them. The flying insects had instantly shot ahead of them triggering the one use shots successively. Ballista and spells worked in conjunction, but they were only taking a small bite out of the constant line of flying insects.
Honestly, Peter was a bit disappointed at the insect cores. Was this really all they had? Their capabilities were laughable. Did they really assume that their swarm attacks would be enough? Collectively, they had likely already lost several thousand A tiers and several times as many B tiers. Yet Peter had not seen armor or weapons that he would not consider rudimentary. The mages seemed to focus on only a few spells which they used in large numbers, making them easier to counter.
Peter knew the insect dungeons were capable of more, he had seen them at the centurion level. Garret and the pachyderm core had been ridiculously strong in his eyes, yet they had both lost. The latter had lost repeatedly. The centennial insects still used numbers, but they were capable of so much more. Perhaps their humanoid variants just took longer to think up and develop things. Regardless, Peter was thankful. Things had looked pretty grim there for a minute, but it was already starting to turn.
The katydid core had thousands of C tiers in front of the assault force on every floor, but their defensive capabilities were laughable. Numbers were all the core seemed to have at least at this point. They would finish the core off in under 3 hours if the core did not have some gas left in the tank. The leaders had pulled the collapsing star fiend off the line to save it for the final push if needed or later in the battle when it would surely be required. The guardian spirit which had fused to a second body and some other allied elites were enough to push the assault forward through the current fodder.
Peter was more concerned with his own dungeon. Soft bodied flying units had quickly expended all of his traps on the fifth floor. Now the flying portion of the assault consisted of purely beetle type units. They were only C tier and moved at a third of the speed as the ones before them, but their shells were tough, extremely tough. The ballista and mages were working extremely hard to keep culling their numbers fast enough. They had taken all the focus which allowed the crickets, hoping stone pad to stone pad to close in.
Peter’s new thunderfist golems were the ones at the water’s edge holding them at bay. The quarter off hippos were still able to hold off enemies swimming through the water, but that would not last for much longer. The hippos were dying since the silverfish outnumbered them severely after only a few minutes. Once they won the underwater battle and joined the assault on the far platform, Peter could very well lose this floor through C tiers only. Overall the insect cores were a disappointment, but he could tell the one in charge of the assault on his dungeon had planned accordingly. Peter could only assume it was Agatha, despite the use of spiders being pretty minimal.
Hive was clearly controlling the assault on Gabriel’s dungeon, which was clearly well organized as well. Elyra had an inordinate amount of dung beetles attacking her dungeon, so it was probably that type core controlling the assault on her dungeon. As far as Gretchen, Peter had to guess it was the woodlouse core although he could not be sure, since all the insects were using unit types from their fellow faction members, as well as being supplemented by the others not leading an attack of their own.
