The Third Dungeon Battle: The War Begins (Enemy POV)

Team Dragon King's Side

"Hahaha, everyone's fired up, huh. Alright then, let's begin… Five seconds, four, three, two, one… Three-team Dungeon Battle, START!"

At Father's starting signal, two gates opened in the designated room. Core 650 (Giant Snake), Core 651 (Giant Frog), and Core 652 (Giant Slug) immediately went on the offensive.

"Alriiight, go, my Bite Snakes!"

"Gekokoko, I'll leave the vanguard to you, 650."

"I'm the fastest one after aaaall～"

The moment the gates opened, snakes rushed through them.

To be precise, the gates appeared in a room already packed full of snakes. This way, they could block enemy intrusion while getting a head start—that was the plan.

"This is the numbers strategy we learned from 5-sama!"

"Gue gue, being able to summon this many monsters—you can do so much more when you have lots of DP!"

"There's no way we can lose with this many monsteeeers～"

Controlling the snakes as they flooded into the enemy dungeons, Core 650 first went to deal with the enemy forces in the rooms. Team Sovereign's dungeon had golems, while Team Demon King's dungeon was packed with skeletons.

These were probably each team's main forces. Their side had superior numbers, and both skeletons and golems moved sluggishly—no match for the Bite Snakes' speed. That's what 650 and the others assessed.

"Aaaahahaha! My snake-chans are the best!"

The snakes coiled around skeletons and broke their bones, gnawing the earthen golems down bit by bit. But the enemies were formidable as well—they fought back by smashing snakes, crushing them underfoot, or slicing them apart with their weapons.

Even with one-on-one superiority and greater numbers, they were still taking casualties.

Well, the damage they were inflicting on the enemy was greater, so it was fine for now. After all, they had more DP available than ever before.

—Of course, their opponents had the same amount of DP to work with—

But with the battle appearing to proceed smoothly, 650 and the others didn't think too deeply about it. Core 5 didn't say anything either, figuring they should ride the momentum while things were going well.

And then it happened.

The door to Team Sovereign's gate room burst open, and a massive amount of water came flooding out.

The raging water swept up the battling Bite Snakes along with the supposedly allied golems—and came gushing back through Team Dragon King's gate.

The gate room, which had been protected from invasion by being stuffed full of monsters, was flooded in an instant, and water invaded the passageway along with the snakes inside.

"Wh-wh-what is thiiis?! S-s-stop! It won't stop! Wh-what do I do?!"

"What…?! Damn, that 89 used such a cowardly trick!"

"Do you know about this, Dungeon Core Number 5-samaaaa?!"

Core 651 (Giant Frog) asked Core 5.

"This is flooding! It's a tactic of washing away enemies using stored water—deal with the water!"

"D-deal with it?! How?!"

"Calm down, 650! Snakes can swim! Stop the enemies flowing in and take them out quickly! 651, 652, collect the water from wherever you can and dump it outside the dungeon! You can collect ordinary water from places without enemies—hurry! A flooding attack basically ends once they run out of stored water—it's a one-shot strategy! Even if they do it again, we can buy time while they're gathering water!"

Following Core 5's directions, the junior cores got to work. Water came surging in with tremendous force, followed by enemies, enemies, and more enemies.

Clay Golems with wooden boxes on their backs—already reduced to wreckage—came tumbling in, crashing into walls along with several snakes.

When the boxes on their backs broke, something with an enemy signature came pouring out in large numbers.

"H-hey, what is this?! Fish—eh, fish? FISH?!"

"Calm down, 651! Use the frogs to eat the fish! We can't collect water if there are enemies in it! Damn, damn that 89! GAAAAA! If this were my battle, I'd evaporate all this water with my Dragon Breath!!"

If this were Core 5's dungeon, he would have lined up dragons and vaporized everything—enemies in the water included.

But this was a battle between junior cores, with a budget of only 500,000 DP—an extremely small amount (for Core 5). Could something where you couldn't even summon a single dragon really be called a battle? The best you could summon with around 500,000 was maybe a Lesser Dragon, a defective creature barely above an animal.

"Dungeon Core Number 5-samaaaa! There's too much water! I can't do anything about iiit～!"

"Just keep at it! If you don't deal with the water, the dungeon will fill up!"

Following Core 5's orders, Core 652 desperately collected water and dumped it outside the dungeon.

But most of the floor was already submerged. The water had reached the second floor, and along with it came not just the enemy's fish, but skeletons and golems too.

… Draining the water looked difficult.

 

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Team Demon King's Side

"Hahaha, everyone's fired up, huh. Alright then, let's begin… Five seconds, four, three, two, one… Three-team Dungeon Battle, START!"

At Father's starting signal, two gates opened in the designated room.

Snakes came flooding out of one gate. The other gate maintained an ominous silence.

She'd leave the snakes to the skeletons.

"Bone-domos. Advance. Trample them."

Issuing orders to the skeletons, Core 666 watched to see how things would develop.

She couldn't enter Team Dragon King's gate yet, but it was probably just a matter of time. Team Sovereign had golems.

During the battle, some snakes attacked skeletons despite having opportunities to advance past the gate room.

Core 650 and the others controlling them were probably incompetent fools who weren't thinking about anything. Advancing deeper when the chance arose was the whole point of an advance party.

… However, Team Sovereign still hadn't invaded. They must be plotting something.

Just as she was looking forward to seeing what it was, water came flooding out of Team Sovereign's gate. A flood—no, a great flood.

Golems and snakes came washing into the dungeon… The skeleton barrier was easily broken through, and enemies invaded the dungeon.

"Haha, not bad, 695! Now this is what makes you a worthy rival!"

Watching her own dungeon being ravaged by water, Core 666 laughed with delight.

Time to get serious too.

… First, she'd replenish the depleted skeletons with [Summon Skeleton].

Core 666 hummed the chant as if enjoying herself.