"There is a distinct difference between one and two wagons. A marked but still distinct difference between two and four wagons. Now if you are talking about twenty wagons then I think we're going to have a problem. We only have that many horses. We can't run them into the ground like that. I think five might be the max and if we do five then we'll have fifteen horses who could be ridden or otherwise occupied. Let me give you an alternative. How about we work on Finley's storage space and see if we can, rather than expand the amount of wagons, expand the amount of space so that we have like a hotel on wheels," Anthony said.

"And what is a hotel exactly?" Finley said.

"It's like an inn but different," Anthony said.

"Then why didn't you call it an inn?" Valerie said.

"Humans right?" Finley said. "Always decide that they want to use their own words for things that have perfectly normal usable words."

"I think that you guys are missing the point," Anthony said. "I'm trying to make our travel a lot easier. So if it's the word choice that really matters then I'll call it whatever you want."

At that moment, the elf, the dwarf and the human were at an impasse. Finley had a working familiarity with his friend Anthony.

Both were new to Valerie, who had considered them hostile to begin with. Or at least, that was what Finley thought because of how aggressive she was. Maybe there was something that the academy rewarded in her aggression. Maybe it was a product of her upbringing. Either way, she made it clear that she was not above slinging stones to get her point across.

Her point just so happened to often be similar to a mining pick, very precise and very exacting under the right circumstances, but for most of the things probably less than useful. They could imagine her using a mining pick to take down a tree and then arguing that it was the best way to do it despite having an ax right next to her just to prove a point.

"So Valerie, what you're saying is we want to stop at five?" Anthony said, leaning in.

"I don't know how you got all these horses to come along. Your usage of handle animal is uncanny and I want to write a term paper on that but I don't think that's going to work out so well. As the only member of the academy. I'm going to graduate and commission myself. I'm also going to award myself the queenship as there's no other civilian authority so you may call me-"

"Lieutenant Queen?" Anthony said. There was a tinge of hope in his voice.

"That you'll do. And as my first royal decree, I demand to know where these horses came from and how they became attached to this Caravan," Valerie said.

"It's quite apparent to us that some of the death knights have abilities that far surpass what they should have. In this case, the death knight is an intelligent undead with the ability to find things. He found every member of the caravan except for the orcs, ourselves and Bob. You don't need to count, that's twelve," Finley said. "As the elf in charge of sustenance, I'm acutely aware of how many mouths that is to feed. That's part of the reason why we have stopped so much."

"The death knight... stabled horses for their Army?" Valerie said.

"That is correct, as far as we know," Anthony said, "They are able to effect a change to the undead close to them. This makes those zombies intelligent. Bob told us that they had posted sentries and that they had command tents and were preparing food over a bonfire. I'm reasonably certain that they were preparing to eat roast dwarf."

Valerie made a sound that was a cross between a gulp and a snort. Anthony probably should have dialed back the imagery a bit, but he wanted to hammer home their early situation.

"That is horrifying. That they knew enough to keep war horses and were going to eat dwarves..."

Anthony wanted to give her a hug. She was just a girl who was doing her best in the current situation. She might have been acting out a bit but he couldn't blame her.

"Perhaps we should move onto a different topic," he said.

"Yes. I do like the idea of a moving hotel with a storage power, but that is putting a lot on one elf," she said. "You both are doing a lot to keep this caravan running. Perhaps we should pick someone else to have the storage powers?"

"Unless you know where we can get some of these specific cards, I doubt that we can make any changes. Speaking of which, you said something about a mapping ability?"

"It's a part of the card that my father passed on to me, yes," Valerie said.

"Can you show us a map of Heirisberg?" Finley said. "This would help coordination in a big way."

Next to them, a wall lit up with a four color image. The entire area looked a lot denser inside with dozens of streets connecting the inner city. By contrast, besides the beltway that ran around the city, there was only a smattering of buildings next to the academy.

"Can you show us where people or zombies are?" Finley said, moving closer to the wall. He got close to the area where they had apparently set up shop. "Here is where we are, and this spot is where Sonya mounted her defense yesterday. If we just made walls here..."

Finley trailed off.

"You want to open the city gates and herd the zombies into Sonya's vulva defense?" Anthony said.

"Worse things have happened there already. What's one more score of troops? Valerie, how many people lived in the city before all of this?" Finley said.

"Tens of thousands," she breathed. "You can't be serious, though."

Unfortunately for Finley they were serious.

The genuine version of this novel can be found on another site. Support the author by reading it there.

"How old are you, Valerie?" Finley said.

"I'm uh... Fifteen," she said, stammering. "I don't see what that has to do with anything, though."

"I understand that you have been through it for the past two weeks. But we are deadly serious about this. If all of these chosen were summoned here to kill the death knights, then we need to find them. With Bob's pathfinder skill and Mork's magic touch, we can find and kill them. We might need to take an indirect route, but..." Anthony said.

"This continent is already lost," she said. "It will take a generation to restore it. The best we can do it connect with the Irumian foreign legion across the sea and the foreign diplomats...and make a plea to the gnolls or whoever will listen to us."

"The foreign legion?" Anthony said.

"It's a branch of the military that is called upon to do subjugation quests. They were called last year to the southern continent and they haven't been back since. They wouldn't be getting any messages from home and-"

"They wouldn't know about this," Finley said. "Right? Does the message spell work across the ocean?"

"Yes, but the mage has to be at least level five or so for that to work. Unless you have another skill?" Valerie said.

He hadn't considered it before, but there had to be a way that they communicated. Tinkers spread family gossip through word of mouth, though some of the chiefs had seemed to know a bit more than they let on. Finley hadn't really tried to use his Tinker King skill.

Epic Class Card: Tinker Level 3

Skills:

Appraisal/Barter Level 3

Identify Level 3

Animal Handling Level 4

Storage Level 4

King Level 1

This is a soul card and cannot be removed. As the last remaining Tinker you have the ability to induct new people into the family.

He wondered what would change when he began to induct people into the family. Somehow he knew that he had to travel with the person for a week before he could invite them to join. Beyond that? He didn't know.

"Anthony, can I try something?" He said.

"I mean sure?" The man replied, turning to face him.

"Alright. Would you join my family?" He said, smiling.

"I can't see why not?"

Finley pulled out five iron cards that he had marked as useless for their current predicament. It was a bit of a waste to use them for their utility power. He only needed so many copies of a card that did laundry. He probably had several spares.

He grabbed his frame and set it up about as fast as he could. Then he placed the five cards into it focusing on his abilities. The Tinker King ability in particular was front and center in his mind as he visualized how a family was in his mind. To him, the family was a living breathing thing. He thought about what it meant to be a family and the warmth of the Tinkers accepting him into their own. He thought about what he lost. He remembered that he could still add to his family. All those thoughts washed through his head and into his Mana as he clenched his fist over the frame.

Deep green Mana dropped out drip by drip onto the frame. The green filled in the frame around the five cards molding them into one. Charged with his intent, the cards glowed bright inside of the frame before the frame resized itself to the size of a single gold embossed iron card.

The golden seams in the center of the card shone a clear image of a tinker family around a fire. Their campsite looked like so many that he had seen in his time, warm and inviting. He inspected its attributes.

Uncommon Enchantment Card: Tinker L1

Provides a boost to class skills while you keep the faith.

"You can't turn your back on family."

He handed the iron card to Anthony.

"What an image. And is this a flavor text?" He said looking it over. "What does it mean, to keep the faith?"

"Most Tinkers swear an oath to do no harm to other enlightened beings. I figured you would do the right thing here," Finley said. He had considered that once but for a multitude of reasons he hadn't sworn himself, instead living by the principles.

Anthony put it into his soul deck. He smiled, then aimed a finger towards one of the corners.

He fired off a holy bolt.

"Ah yeah it's small, but it is there. Thanks, Finley. I guess we're family now. I'm glad that I met you."

The man hugged the elf.

"Humans are weird," Valerie said.

"I know, right?" Finley replied.

----------------------------------------

Sonya felt awkward holding a spear up behind the three scouts. She didn't know how to put her hands along the shaft at first. She watched how Stella held hers-like an implement of destruction.

That felt a bit too rough for her. She wanted a gentler touch against the hardwood.

Sophie held hers with a lighter touch. Sophie, with three classes, looked like she was born to hold a spear. Stella by contrast held hers like she was still going through spear academy but had been held back once or twice.

Sonya adjusted her grip to be more like Sophie. She remembered Anthony wanting a monk class, and she could see why. It felt like her first time and she didn't know what to expect. For as much as she thought that the scouts were a professional team, they seemed pretty casual.

Maybe keeping it casual kept them going. As they thrust their spear tips through one zombie after another, Sonya couldn't help but remember her days in the Zetas sorority. There was a lot of repetitive thrusting motion as they cleared room after room.

The three of them kept changing places though, running a train through the zombies one by one. The academy barracks had been locked and several students hadn't made it. If their cards were any indication, these were not the children of the well to do dwarven aristocracy.

Sonya had wondered what happened to soul cards linked to a person when they died. After several dwarves were harvested she began to see a bit of a pattern. All of the dwarves wore the same attire: the cadet uniform that they had died in. Some of them had more than one card in their soul decks. It wasn't till the third one that she caught something special.

Uncommon Class Card: Accountant Level 8

Skills:

Writing Level 10

Books Level 10

Mathematics Level 10

Eidetic Memory Level 10

As an accountant, you can store complex mathematical matrices in your head and perform functions on them.

It looked like someone had maxed out the cards skill levels, or that they had gotten them to level ten on purpose and left them there. There was a row of scratched out text at the bottom. It took her a minute, but the text read.

This is a soul card and cannot be removed.

Curious at how a line of text had been removed from a card, it wasn't until the fifth zombie cadet came after them and died a second death that she got some confirmation of what she was looking at.

Ca'at made quick work of the cadet's chest, pulling out two cards with the same text scratched out. This dwarf had two soul cards? That couldn't be possible. Unless he had inherited the wealth from another?

They passed by a small library. Sonya had to restrain herself from jumping into the piles of books.