Dungeon level floor 4 had a lot fewer features than the previous level ups. Mark quickly scanned through the interface pages to make sure before they settled on the main reason for upgrading to level 4. There were no level 4 techs and there were no additional unit branches or units from their existing branches. There were only three new changes.

  First was the sponsorship system being fully unlocked, but that can of worms had been unlocked when Daniel Hale first opened up the level weeks ago. While they had gotten some sponsorship packages, they would hardly be able to open up one a day for very long. That was unless they started to get an influx of sponsorship packages, which Mark was hopeful for.

  The second change was an increase in daily DP and RP. Both were increased by 5 bringing DP up to 15 and RP up to 20. Together with the institute, they would be burning through research focuses. As far as DP, Mark would use it exclusively to start building additional dungeon levels and even using it to populate the floors. All of their MP from here on was going toward armies, no research, no techs.

  The third change was the most anticipated, and resulted in a new main interface page, the champion page. At first glance there seemed to be quite a bit, but after a read through it was fairly basic. On the dungeon side, they received a guardian room for free, but unlike Daniel they would have to use DP to buy their dungeon guardian. Then they would also start earning champion points and could put them toward opening one of three different champions options. After they unlocked one, they would get three new options, or they could pay a 10% fee to see three new options..

  The non dungeon champions were named units. Theoretically once they were killed they would respawn accordingly, but since their power ratings fell from 20.0 to 29.9 it was unlikely any would respawn before the succession battle came to a close if things went according to plan.

  At first Mark thought it was just three standard options, the same as for unique rewards, but then he realized it was based on how many branches a dungeon had unlocked. Which for them was also three. Each time they would be offered one option based on each of their three branches, one goblin, one creepy crawly, and one flower.

  There were only a couple options to affect the timeline to get as many heroes as possible. Obviously they could choose the cheapest champion option so they could have a larger roster, but they could also dedicate resources, namely RP and MP to help pay for the champions to summon the champion sooner. There went Mark’s push to crush through unit upgrades with both RP and the institute. The institute would have to fight that battle on its own, because they were going to maximize their RP contribution toward more champions. There was a good reason to do so.

  Mark was able to break open what went into a champion’s cost. The base price for a champion was 2 million MP. From there it mostly went up. It was not quite linearly tied to a better power rating, but that was the biggest factor. Contenders also had the ability to add or delete some features from the offered hero to increase or decrease the final cost. Then there were also some meta considerations that could bring down the price. For example, the goblin branch had what looked to be a fairly steep 25% cost reduction since the branch was based on smaller humanoids. Even the flower unit champions would get a 5% cost reduction. The creepy crawly branch had no such reductions.

  As far as paying for the champions, dungeons would get an automatic 25,000 champion points toward their next champion each day. Then they could allocate up to 50% of their daily MP at a direct 1 for 1 exchange, but contenders could not take it the other way. CP could never go back to being MP. RP on the other hand went at a 1 to 2,500 exchange ratio, making it the best currency towards unlocking champions that dungeons had. Their 20 RP would become 50,000 CP each day.

  The normal RP to MP was only a 1 to 1000 ratio, and that even had a 10% penalty. It seemed the succession battle creators had figured that dungeons would be mostly through with their various upgrade trees by this point, and with the institute dungeons had less need to use RP for dungeon upgrades. It was exceedingly good in their case.

  Mark had to wonder if the other dungeons were even bothering going for the level 3 Higher level learning tech. If they did not, they were losing out on 12,500 daily CP. Perhaps it was not a terribly big advantage, but Mark would take what they could get.

  There was one caveat for champions that Mark had somewhat expected already based on the two example sizes. Champions could not enter opposing dungeons regardless of their size, and the dungeon guardians could not leave the boss room. It quickly shot a reason to automatically go with the goblin option. It meant that the champions could help secure another dungeon, but they would need standard units to actually take it down.

  It was a good thing, because if it did not exist Daniel Hale could have summoned a smaller champion and quite possibly taken all of the dungeons before the other dungeons were able to unlock level 4 and get their own champions and dungeon guardians. With the addition of a supporting adventuring team, it was doubtful that any dungeon floor’s defenders could stand against a champion by themselves. Mark had of course pictured doing just that with a pair of goblin champions if it was possible.

  A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.

  Regardless, Mark could now see why the battle managers had seen fit to give the other dungeons free tech after Daniel unlocked dungeon level 4. The red dragon’s cost would have likely been well over 3 million MP far surpassing even the most expensive 2 million techs that the dungeons would have gotten for free. Then there was of course the one time purchase for the dungeon guardian in DP. Which was a good month of DP accumulation. Giving a free 2 million or less tech was the least they could do, to keep them in the battle.

  Mark decided to look first at their dungeon guardian options since they actually had enough DP to buy any one of the three. The first option for the goblin branch was a spectral shaman. A goblin specter with a 26.2 power rating. The choice seemed to be highly similar to their spiritualist class, where goblin spiritualists could raise defeated foes to fight for them. Except in this case, the spectral shaman could raise any opposing unit that had ever been defeated inside of their dungeon. Not a bad option since they had weathered through quite a few powerful attacks. Mark could easily picture the shaman raising spectral giants from Gale’s assault, or orc chieftains from Leonard's adventuring parties along with a bunch of lesser units for support.

  The shaman operated based on a spiritual power that replenished like manna, so would effectively continue to raise forces the longer it survived. It would definitely be a good option if they could guarantee the shamans survival. However it was difficult for Mark to immediately put his hopes on this option since he did not have more information, like how many units it could summon or how fast the spiritual power would replenish. It would likely be pretty good on both accounts, but could the spectral summons and other 49 other floor defenders keep the shaman alive long enough to be better than a dungeon guardian like the hydra…?

  Without more information it was difficult to say. Mark assumed if the boss room floor ever came under assault it would be from a horde of enemies like they had just done to Daniel Hale. The hydra had valiantly fought and killed hundreds. The defenders had contributed to a lesser extent. The spectral shaman only had a 1.6 power rating difference between it in the hydra, so presumably the shaman and its summoned forces would be able to do near the same. However the spectral shaman was the weakest of their three options.

  The second option came from the creepy crawly branch. Once again it showed that a spider was the epitome of the branch. The stone tarantula was the most powerful of their options at 28.8. Presumably it was a giant tarantula made of stone. Likely the most survivable of their options since it was a rock plated behemoth. The prospective guardian had the ability stalagmite, which presumably meant it could shoot out spears of stone at enemies, but once again the interface did not give them a full scope on its capability other than noting the one ability.

  The final option was the perennial snap catchers. Unlike the other two it was not quite an individual entity. The perennial snap catchers were basically a field of Venus fly traps. There would not be one super strong entity smashing through enemies, instead enemies would have to fight through a field of flowers that were each formidable in their own right. Like the spectral shaman option, the Venus fly trap had a finite energy source that replenished over time. The energy could be used to grow new flowers or to strengthen existing ones. The interface did note that there was a limit on what can be grown, meaning that the floor would max out its growth at some point and would be unable to continue to expand.

  It was a viable option since Mark was fairly sure it would be months before any such attack might come. Sure if they survived such an attack the guardian might be weaker for successive attacks, but Mark was sure that if they reached that point they would already be on the verge of losing the succession battle.

  “So what do you think?” Mark asked.

  “Same story, I wish they gave us more information, but… I would rather not go with the tarantula… For personal reasons, though,” Amelia smiled.

  “Well I guess it's good I was considering the other two more,” Mark replied with his own smile. Amelia gave him the look for him to explain his thinking.

  “If our boss floor is attacked it will likely be by hundreds of enemies. The tarantula would likely be more durable than the hydra, but less capable of dealing with the same number of enemies as the hydra that had 7 heads. Something our other two options seemed to be built for. The shaman can presumably raise tens if not hundreds of specters to fight, while it probably supports with its own attacks. The perennial itself has its own army of flowers.”

  “I see they both would be pretty good at fighting a full army…”

  “The question is how powerful either of these two options are. The shaman would likely be the easiest to kill. If I understand it right, the full field of flowers is the perennial. No singular point for enemies to attack.”

  “So we should go with the perennial snap catcher then since I’m sure the enemies would quickly set their sights on the shaman, which they might be able to run through a ghost vanguard… Ugh it all just depends on their actual capabilities…” Amelia said exasperated.

  “Well, the only other thing I can say in the shaman’s defense is that one of our enemies is Nick. The shaman’s specters would presumably fight his specter branch units in a straight up melee. Inside our dungeon we don’t have a ton of things to stop a full specter assault…” Then it came to Mark.

  “Never mind, I think we should definitely go with the flower option… Think if all of the perennial flowers are basically their own units they would all benefit from the lotus blossom, as would the symbiote defenders we could summon. We could also work in a few breeders to keep producing even more units. The other floors would not last long enough to get much use of a breeder class unit, but the longer the floor lasts the more units it could.”

  “Well in that case shouldn’t we just breed the giant tarantula…” Amelia blurted out and instantly regretted it. Breeding a champion had clearly not crossed Mark’s mind, but once it had… It would be a gamble, but if it were possible…