Peter stared into the mirror. Pretty soon he would be whisked away to the multi-layered cavernous room for his year 10 dungeon core congregation. To think he had lived this crazy life for 10 years now. His previous life was less than a distant memory by this point. It had been for quite a while now. For the most part he was normally far less busy than he ever had been back on Earth, but things were far from carefree. He might not give up the ghost this year or next, but if things went poorly his life expectancy could take a turn for the worse.

  Luckily, he had started things off on a good foot in the rookie division. He currently sat pretty with 8 spare cores, 28 block challenge cards, and even 5 year off support cards. It gave him a bit of wiggle room. Room he might certainly need since perhaps he had done too well as a rookie. Forget making waves, he had created a relative tsunami, far outpacing what could be expected from a rookie. Helen, one of the older cores, had stated that 7 S tier units was the most she had seen in the rookie division. Peter had beat that benchmark by more than 3 times, including summoning units from the SS tier. Then there was the fact that he had battled every year, culminating in their only being 7 rookie cores left to move on. It was quite possible that other cores would want to nip a potential powerful rival at the bud.

  This year however he was safe, and could not be challenged at the annual congregation. Instead 100 new rookie cores would be introduced and participate in tutorial battles while the cores in the higher divisions, that now included himself, had a get together. Still Peter felt a bit of trepidation along with the anticipation. While he was interested to see what new types the 100 rookies had chosen, the rookie division was the least of his worries.

  Instead he would have to start evaluating where he stood in the intermediate division. On top of that he would get the post rookie division rewards, assuming he got anything useful. Based on Peter’s understanding even the worst cores got something. Then he would finally be able to start developing his dungeon once again.

  Since halfway through year 2, Peter had been locked at 10 floors max for both his collection dungeon and his battle dungeon. For the last several years, things had been getting quite cramped. His collection dungeon currently had 9 floors available for the adventurers of Terra to dive, fight monsters, and ultimately produce the essence he collected. The final floor was an auxiliary floor, which was pretty much stuffed to the rafters by this point.

  In addition Peter had a battle dungeon. The battle dungeon’s only purpose was to be used at the congregation for dungeon wars, but during the year it was used as storage. It was also bursting at the rafters by this point. Peter was ready to relieve some tension by increasing the amount of floors five times over.

  Perhaps things were not normally as cramped for most rookies getting ready to shed their skin as they grew into the intermediate dungeon, but most other cores seemed a little more short sighted. Peter on the other hand planned to be in a good position to challenge the millennial cores when the time came.

  From what he had learned, the current order of 6 millennials had existed for at least 4 millenia. All the other cores including himself would eventually be culled by them assuming they survived long enough for the millennials to take notice. That left the question, how do you defeat someone who has accumulated far more resources than yourself. Peter’s conclusion was to squeeze his resources for everything they were worth.

  There were likely a bunch of force multipliers, but Peter had started with the first obvious thing he had noticed. While cores could normally summon units of various tiers, there were also summoning portals called maelstroms that cost between 500 to 1,000 times the cost of a single unit. He could base a maelstrom off of an elite A or S tier unit and receive 120 C or B tier units respectively each year. While it took years for them to make up their initial cost, they would eventually pay for themselves many times over, assuming that once again Peter could survive long enough.

  Over his rookie years, Peter had noticed quite a few other ways to stretch his resources further. Some were less intrinsic such as developing his dungeon capabilities or tactics. Then there was upgrading his dungeon to get access to better resources, or the development pond which would produce energy that units could use to become stronger.

  Ten years down the road, and Peter could look proudly at the fruit of his efforts. He had 5 SS tier and 25 S tier elites. After the last battle on year 9 his elites had almost doubled. Not all the S tiers he had ever summoned were still alive, but he had already summoned 14 S tiers and 4 SS tiers. Then there was Delilah, who was also an S tier now after having used the energy from the development pond, but she apparently did not count according to the interface’s condition requirements. Peter had to summon 11 new S tiers and 1 SS tier to meet the two desired conditions, both netting him 3 and 5 user chose cards respectively. That had given him a grand total of 27 free maelstrom cards, of which he used all of them on his new S tiers.

  Previously Peter had 38 B tier producing maelstroms so the amount of B tiers produced every year had been increased drastically. He would now receive 7,800 B tier units annually which was basically equivalent to 78 million essence. That was not even mentioning the 133 C tier maelstroms or a handful of D tier’s which would produce tens of thousands of units . On top of the thousands of auxiliaries that he already had, space had gotten pretty limited.

  Peter had of course taken that into account when summoning new elites. He had summoned 5 S tier fairy based mages of various elements since they would not take up much room, and based 10 of the maelstrom of them. Now hundreds of buzzing fairy lights buzzed around at all times. It would be a long time before his mage support would be lacking. For the other 6 S tier elite, Peter had summoned 6 new water and fire based units and based 2 maelstroms off each of them. They would serve as dedicated defenders for his first 10 floors.

  The final new unit was his new SS tier. Despite the confined conditions of the dungeon, Peter had still decided to go big since the SS tier would be a new staple with 5 maelstroms based on it. Peter chose to try a combination with plasma and dragon once again, but this time instead of using it with his own design card, Peter chose to use the rock demon type. The hope was some sort of statue-like being that would add no more logistical requirements, and it had worked. He had received a being that lived off of flame and heat energy, and a unit that was more than worthy of using one of his 7 tier up increases. The only unit he had elected to do so with. The rest he would save, since he assumed he would be getting far fewer support cards in the near future. The result was certainly acceptable.

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  Demonic Brimstone Dragon SS(-): ATT: S, DEF: SS (+), SPE: S (-)

  The new SS tier looked like a stone golem dragon with thousands of cracks where the dragon’s glowing hot plasma insides shone out with a golden luster. The creature had large wings so was able to fly, but based on the look of the picture prior to summoning Peter had chosen to bolster the defensive attribute rather than the special or attack. Peter had been more than happy with the result. The dragon would be terribly hard to kill and was still extremely deadly. Plus it along with its spawn were similar to his other plasma based elite in that they were at home in the various lava pools. Although unlike the plasma bathers who merely splash and played, Peter’s new line of dragons would gladly spend most of their time hibernating down at the bottom of the lava pools. A nice eccentricity for a new unit since space had been limited.

  For the final maelstrom, Peter had used it to create a third ether tearing dragon maelstrom. The SS tier and its spawn had certainly proven themselves, plus they could reside in the alternate dimension saving on space.

  Despite all that, Peter still had plenty of his rewards leftover to use this year. He had elected to save the 3 pinnacle dungeon upgrades for sure since he would have access to an unlimited amount of other things to use them on, but he had also only used 14 of his 19 S tier design cards. He still had 5 of them left. He had also decided to not use the 2 Random S tier cards since he had wanted known quantities.

  Hopefully, he would get some more post rookie division rewards and get a good gauge on who his next opponent would be. Then he could make his final preparations, although he also wouldn’t mind keeping some elites in reserve. It was highly likely that his opponent would be impossible for him to overcome anyways.

  The equestrian type core had been the standout of the prior year group, and he had been pitted against a core from year 41. Peter had made far more of a splash, so would not be surprised if he had to face someone from an even older year group. Was it even possible for him not to get steamrolled? Ideally, he could just offer up a core or use a year off card to save his resources, but that apparently was a big no-no. Doing so would be seen as an affront to the newbie crushing tradition. It just wasn’t done. In theory putting an honest effort forward on year 11 and getting crushed would prevent the factions from sending far older cores year after year. He might still be challenged in years 12 and 13, but it would not be by a core more than a decade older, 2 at the worst. Any older than that and rewards would be a pittance if anything at all.

  “What are you over here brooding about?” Delilah said, throwing her arms around his lower back, and holding her chin against his shoulder. “There isn’t even a chance at a battle this year, so nothing to worry about.”

  “Oh, I don’t know,” Peter sighed, as Delilah separated. “I guess I just can’t help but to think about things. It's a bit hard to spend all year relaxed, without focusing on the congregations.”

  “You’re saying there is nothing you do all year that makes you feel relaxed,” she said, running her fingers along his collar bone. She flashed a mischievous smile.

  Peter internally smiled, but could not help himself. “You mean like fishing?”

  It earned him a punch in the shoulder. “You… I’ll never understand your obsession with fishing, and it doesn’t even make sense. You have a hard time spending all year doing nothing but focusing on the next congregation, but you like sitting on the bank and literally doing nothing.”

  “Well where I’m from it’s a relaxing way to get away. Sorry we can’t all look forward to murdering a bunch of other dungeon units.”

  “Well that is kind of the reason for our existence… Besides, it's not like your hands are clean. Just how many cores were you responsible for eliminating as a rookie…?” Delilah asked, raising an eyebrow.

  “Just playing the cards I was dealt,” Peter said, shrugging. “Besides there is a lot more for me to wonder and worry about today. The congregation is only a part of it.”

  “You talking about all the new floors. You have gone back and forth on them for years. It’s not like you only have one option. If you stick with adding 3 more adventurer floors, you will still have 37 floors to do whatever you want with…”

  “Yeah, sure but then it will be 90 years before I get the option again… And I’m not really worried about that.”

  “Right, you just obsess on the numbers. Just how many calculations have you made? Things will be fine. Remember how outnumbered we were against all those bugs?”

  “Yeah, except they were basically waiting their turn to jump into the blender. From now on our opponents are going to be more wily.”

  “Wily…?” Delilah teased.

  “Yes, devious and tricky. Our future opponents have been around the block.”

  “Alright, alright since you seem to want to worry about something. I guess I will go ahead and tell you then,” Delilah said, her easy smile twisting to a grimace.

  “What is it?” Peter asked. Although he already had a feeling. There was really only one thing that Delilah managed for his dungeon’s day to day. She was in charge of all Terra affairs external to his dungeon. She got updates from N’tanner the B tier that led the external operations as well as from the staff that monitored dungeon delver’s conversations. It was something Peter rarely had to think about, but it was not something that could be altogether ignored.

  “A dispatch arrived from N’Tanner this morning…” Delilah’s tone got serious. “It looks like someone is making moves against us. We lost all 3 teams in Dawn’s capitol, and the king was assassinated.”

  “What?” Peter exclaimed. His mind immediately started going through the implications. If Dawn’s king was eliminated, there was really only one other country to be implicated. Hundreds of years ago, Dawn had broken free from Warsaw the country to the South. Ever since there had been a lot of tension between the two. If it had been just an assassination, that would be one thing. Despite his posted teams there was a distinct possibility that some human agent could have done it, but since his teams had been taken out, it was clearly a move by one of the other cores.

  It was clearly an inopportune time, which was probably why someone had done it. A war or political unrest could easily get in the way of his essence collection, if adventurers, guards, and soldiers got pulled to go fight on some battlefront, his essence collection would suffer. Sure he was still collecting 500 ambient essence per a floor, but if what he could bring in was cut in half… he would be in serious trouble.

  As far as who would have done it…? Peter’s first guess would be the Weevil core whose collection dungeon was on Warsaw’s western border, but there was also a demon dungeon in southern Warsaw. Both likely had cause to move against him. Then again, both would also likely be affected if Warsaw and Dawn went to war. Then again perhaps the Weevil core would not care if its own essence collection was affected. Apparently the insect cores held the more arthropod types like spiders of their faction in quite high regard, and Peter and his group had just taken out one of their numbers.

  The only other dungeon they knew the location of was Elm, but the blacklisted core would have no reason to make a move against Peter or anybody else. Then again that was only the ones they knew about. It was very likely that there were plenty of other cores that knew where Peter’s dungeon was located. Just based on word of mouth they had general information about a dozen of the other nearby dungeons in surrounding countries. They might not have maps or know exactly where, but they were all more established than Peter was. Perhaps were looking a bit further out from their immediate area.

  “So what do you think we should do?” Delilah asked.

  “I don’t know, but we will have to figure it out later,” Peter stated as he watched the counter tick down. “Direct Boris to pay extra special attention to Weevil and the other surrounding cores during the congregation.”

  “Okay, play nice with your new friends,” Delilah said with a quick kiss to the cheek before Peter blinked away.