Watching the Gold Dragons fall, Amy—the academic overachiever and magical genius—finally responded to everyone's shock.
"Wayne's hero stats have increased significantly. Based on these attributes alone, the actual combat stats of his Skeletons have become 19 Attack and 9 Defense. On top of that, he's already Level 12, and the bonus from the Skeleton specialty adds even more. These seemingly insignificant Tier 1 units now effectively have 22 Attack and 11 Defense. The defense is still a bit low, but overall, these are the stats of a Tier 6 unit."
"While the dragons in the Dragon Utopia are powerful, they are neutral monsters without any hero attribute bonuses. Because the Skeletons have increased defense, the dragons' breath deals far less damage than expected, yet they take massive damage upon counterattack."
Hicks: "Damn! If I had known, I would have attacked it too. I sent a fodder hero to test it earlier, saw all those dragons, and just gave up!"
As they talked and listened, Wayne's Skeletons endured one breath attack from each of the four types of dragons. Since the Skeletons only had one counterattack opportunity per round, the remaining three types of dragons survived their first strike unscathed.
In this round of attacks, Wayne lost 81 Skeletons.
However, just as Verdan had experienced, when it was Wayne's turn to act, he had Galthran cast Animate Dead. At this point, his Earth Magic was already at the Advanced level.
Consequently, as the Skeletons charred by dragon breath were reawakened and resurrected by magic, Wayne's combat losses returned to zero once again...
Verdan once more rubbed the bridge of his nose with his fingers.
Wayne swung at the 8 Green Dragons, and they died instantly. The Dread Knights stood by in defense mode, watching the show the entire time.
In the second round, the Black and Red Dragons unleashed their breath on the Skeletons. The Black Dragon, attacking first, was cut down by the Skeletons' counterattack.
Wayne repeated his tactic. When his turn came, he first used Animate Dead to fully resurrect the fallen Skeletons, then delivered a single slash to the 7 Red Dragons.
The battle ended.
Wayne quickly turned off the monitor and said to the crowd, "You've seen it all now. Stop watching and go back to playing."
Except for Dughan and Verdan, the others returned to their seats reluctantly. Only Jyssetta asked, "Why didn't we see any blue dragons?"
Wayne replied "None for now," but inwardly he chuckled. If the "blue dragon" (Azure Dragon) appeared, the other dragons would be carried out on stretchers...
He returned to the game. Since the dragon count in this Utopia was relatively low, he only converted 6 Skeletons from the corpses, bringing his total to 633. More importantly, he gained gold and four artifacts: one Tier 2, one Tier 3, and two Tier 4 artifacts, determined by the number of dragons faced.
The two Tier 4 artifacts were the Celestial Wings, which occupied the cloak slot and allowed the hero to fly over obstacles and structures on the map, and the Tome of Earth Magic, which granted access to all Earth spells.
These were excellent items, but they paled in comparison to the Tier 2 and Tier 3 artifacts he received.
For the Tier 2 artifact, he got a plain Bone Breastplate that added 2 to Spell Power.
The Tier 3 artifact was named the Dead Man's Boots.
Upon seeing these two items, Wayne couldn't help but let out an excited shout. He was incredibly relieved that he had prioritized attacking the Dragon Utopia before heading back to defend against Hudson's forces.
Because he knew that this game was already over.
He equipped the Tome of Earth Magic on Galthran and, combined with his Advanced Earth Magic skill, cast Town Portal. At the Advanced level, the hero can choose which town to teleport to.
Naturally, he chose his capital.
Once Galthran was back, Wayne commanded Vidomina, who was out clearing neutrals, to run back to the capital as well.
The two heroes met and exchanged troops and equipment.
Galthran received all of Vidomina's Skeletons, totaling 331. As a Necromancy specialist, she could resurrect more Skeletons per battle than Galthran. In addition, he took 8 Dread Knights and 66 Tier 3 Wraiths.
Vidomina, in turn, received five items from Galthran: the Blackshard of the Dead Knight, Bone Breastplate, Dead Man's Boots, Amulet of the Undertaker, and Vampire's Cowl.
While clearing the map earlier, Vidomina had already obtained two other artifacts called the Skull Helmet and the Shield of the Yawning Dead.
When she received Galthran's items, two prompts flashed on the screen:
"Do you wish to combine the artifact 'Cloak of the Undead King'?"
"Do you wish to combine the artifact 'Armor of the Damned'?"
Wayne's choice was, of course, "Yes"!
Although the campaign, units, and factions followed the initial Restoration of Erathia version—meaning Conflux and neutral units like Sharpshooters weren't unlocked yet—the unit costs and combined artifacts were identical to the final version of the game!
Immediately after, Vidomina, leading 48 Power Lichs, 62 Vampire Lords, and 4 Ghost Dragons, charged straight toward Hudson.
Hudson was terrified of Wayne's Galthran. After all, Galthran had wiped out Verdan with low losses and conquered the Dragon Utopia with zero losses. The Skeletons under Galthran had made the "Westbrook Seven" tremble at the mere mention of his name. Seeing Vidomina charging instead, Hudson was momentarily stunned before checking the enemy's strength:
A lot of Power Lichs, a lot of Vampire Lords, and a few Ghost Dragons.
When Hudson told his teammates over voice chat that he didn't see any Skeletons and that the hero wasn't Galthran, no one believed him, suspecting he had miscounted.
It wasn't until they pulled up Hudson's perspective that their jaws dropped. What kind of scheme was Wayne pulling now?
Hudson had gathered the siege forces of all six players.
14 Archangels, 144 Royal Griffins, 183 Grand Elves, 50 Zealots, plus three separate stacks of fodder Halberdiers. Moreover, he was using the knight Christian, who possessed Advanced Artillery and a specialty in Ballistas.
Theoretically, the gap in military strength was so wide that Wayne's forces shouldn't even be able to handle the 14 Archangels—the strongest Tier 7 unit in the game—let alone the rest of the army.
Their analysis suggested this was a war of attrition; Wayne intended to use his secondary hero, Vidomina, to wear them down before making a final stand in the city with Galthran and his "trump card" Skeleton hoard. However, the massive power disparity convinced them to support Hudson in crushing Vidomina first to avenge Verdan. Even if they didn't face Galthran later, reclaiming the towns Verdan lost would be enough.
However, the moment the battle began, they all fell into a deathly silence.