Sonya used her warlock powers to create giant dirt fingers with which she would open the trolls up.

The thing that no one tells you about trolls is that they have layers of visceral fat and muscle. If you want to get their soul card, you have to go through all those layers. No one wanted to get up close to any of the trolls.

Bob had summoned his companion to try and get past that but it was only so strong. Though Ca'at had the sharpest blades of anyone in the Caravan, the viscera was just too much. The feline say on the side, dejectedly playing with the trolls kidney.

Thus, they went to ask her to do the best she could to slice them open. The Goat Lord had specifically given Sophie powers that related to disposition of bodies. In abstract, it was supposed to be about returning it to the soil and the renewal of resources and magic. In practice it was just more of a magically induced headache.

Cara, Sonya's patron had given her powers that were also earth or dirt related. Anything that seemed to fit into the theme of traveling overland and doing drug deals was well within her realm of power to grant.

So it fell to Sonya and Sophie. Sonya used thearth to open up the bodies and then Sophie would turn them into a garden of sunflowers. It was just like the men of the group to leave the cleanup to the ladies. Anthony would hear about it later.

It was rough work. It was squishy and moist and everything that was uncomfortable about the new world.

Then they had their three cards, covered in troll guts.

Uncommon card: Regeneration

The wielder of this card regenerates at a faster pace than normal.

Common card: Giant Strength

The wielder of this card can use an oversized weapon as naturally as a weapon that is the correct size for them.

"Well that does it. Next time I talk to my patron, I'm going to be asking for a summon like Bob has," Sonya said. "I doubt that I'll get anything. Maybe a hippo like Pablo Escobar had?"

"She might just give you a little goblin or something. Actually, are there even goblins on this world?" Sophie said.

None of their normal tour guides were around. Sonya was going to have to ask one of them later.

She didn't think that it was going to be a problem, but just in thinking about how useful it would be to have a combat capable summon with her, she realized that she might be opening herself up to omething ridiculous. If there was one thing that Cara loved, it was probably a joke. If there were two things, then it was a joke and a toke.

She didn't have either.

Those troll cards would be really good in a pinch. She handed them to Finley. Somebody was going to have to make a decision as to who was getting those cards and it was definitely not going to be her. She did not want that responsibility. Finley was a neutral third party.

"Well these are pretty nice," Finley said. "I haven't seen a regeneration card before but I heard they're really good. Looks like self regeneration though. Maybe the one of the front line fighters could use it."

"That's what I was thinking too," Sonya said. "Keep it out of my hands or it's just going to do nothing but sit in my active deck."

"Still pretty good," Finley said. "Thanks for that excessive use of Mana"

Finley looked ragged, definitely close to exhaustion.

"Are you doing all right there? I saw that one move, that flash of green, and it was pretty damn cool."

"I will be alright. Something inside of me decided that it had a visceral response to seeing three trolls coming at us. It makes me kind of wonder what they were going away from."

Sonya sniffed too much troll in one go.

"Now you done fucked us up," Sonya said. "Hey guys, I think Murphy's going to make an appearance."

There was a chorus of groans.

"Mount up!" Anthony yelled. "Any wounde get up to the front and get in my wagon."

There was a lot of shuffling around as they all got ready, but they were back on track shortly.

An outsider would only see the new gardens with the strange yellow flowers that were far out of place. Sonya knew the truth of what lay there.

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

Anthony called for a halt two hours later. The rain has finally let up. They needed to clean up their waterlogged wagons and check that none of their food had been destroyed. Wagons didn't come with good drains when you bought them. They acquired little holes as a matter of course otherwise one was just carrying around a big wooden bathtub on wheels.

"Is this a normal amount of rain, would you say?" He asked Valerie as he sorted through the second wagon. Already drenched up to his elbows, he wasn't looking forward to the rest of the clean up. His hands were moist.

"That was a bit heavy all at once, but it's been known to happen. Two centuries ago, General Noz fought a battle through one of these storms and it's one of those things that they teach you not to do in the academy. Hole yourself up instead, because you will sink into the mud. This water can become contaminated."

This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.

She turned a barrel over. Anthony realized that he might need to start getting some help to replenish some of what they had lost. He was going to ask Andrew to make some more covers for the wagons. He was considering actual drains as well, as the retention they had continued to annoy him on the next wagon.

"Are these all designed to just hold standing water in them?" Valerie said. "Can you have one of the druids open up a hole in one?"

"See that's why I pay you the big bucks," Anthony said.

"You don't pay me anything. Finley pays me and I don't want my pay in venison, thank you very much."

"Bucks are like- ah you know what never mind."

"I'm not learning your human slang," she said, turning another barrel over. "This one is also contaminated. Who has the cleanse skill again?"

Anthony got Sophie over by waving like a madman. She was the current holder of the card. It got passed around the women of the ground frequently and he knew that she was happy to have it that day. The men in the caravan had all tacitly agreed to not say anything at all about this shuffling of cards.

"Is he trying to make fetch happen, bestie?" Sophie said arriving at the back of their wagon.

"He so is," Valerie said.

"Wait, I thought you said that you weren't going to learn any human slang? What gives?" Anthony said, glaring at Sophie.

"I believe that what I said was 'Your human slang' emphasizing the 'your' in that," the teenage dwarf said, smiling back and getting in between Anthony and Sophie. "Also please don't flirt when I'm between you, it's super weird."

Anthony laughed.

"I'm not flirting with her. Sophie is just one of my best friends out here," he said. "We had a good swim the other day, right? Also can you cleanse just about everything here?"

Sophie activated a card power, causing a sphere of white to encircle all three of them and the wagon.

"Anthony is definitely one of my best friends also," Sophie said, winking. "This rain makes me want to get wet again so I can get dry again. It's too bad that Valerie here is afraid of the water."

"I-I am n-not!" Valerie stammered.

The after smell of the cleanse skill had always reminded Anthony of clubbing in the early 2000s; it had too much teenage boy hormone adjacent smell. Plenty of people had called it the worst version of axe body spray possible. The fact that it meant that the wagon was now clean and dry was enough for him.

"I'll hit up the other wagons in short order," Sophie said.

"Thanks," he replied, checking the box he had been handling. Inside it was a guide to the common cards that he had been meaning to read. Hopefully whatever water damage had occurred was fixable. If not they would have to get another copy of it. He picked it up to check. The first few pages felt dry but still intact.

He handed Valerie the book.

"Is this one any good, or am I wasting my time reading it?"

She looked at it, then checked the back.

"Oh this one is a second edition. You're good with this one. Actually maybe we should go on a trip to the academy library and see if we can raid the card library. There's all kinds of rare cards there, or there was."

"Card library?" Anthony said.

"The only problem is that it's inside of Heirisburg."

"Well, fuck."

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

On their second trip back to the academy, Sonya brought a few more friends.

"You want to get started on that door over there?" She said to the dwarf.

"Aye, lass," Andrew said moving to inspect the roll-up door.

"We're going to go check around the inside of the academy and see if anything broke in, check for dragons, you know the usual thing," Sophie said, dragging Valerie along with her.

"See you in a bit," Sonya said, closing up the gate.

With the extra help they were getting better at using the gate and then returning quickly. If they could figure out a way to make a gate through the miracle of dwarven engineering, then they would. They had drilled on what to do if part of the group made contact and a fall back plan to their previous staging grounds if the worst happened. Sonya didn't want to admit it, but for the first time she felt over prepared, like a grad student walking into middle school again.

Not five minutes later, the scouts returned.

"The outer walls are intact. The only building that we haven't cleared of zombies is the big one," Bob said, downing an entire water flask. "Damn. Empty already?"

"You have to drink more before we leave Bob," Stella said.

"And eat your vegetables," Sophie said, bringing up the rear. Brandon and Brianna were behind them, guarding the door.

"I take it that we are ready to open those doors, then?" Bob said, looking between the dwarves and Sonya. He fully donned his cloak, obscuring his bald head.

Sonya really wanted to reach out and pat his head. It was a lot of self-discipline that stopped her from doing exact that. He looked like a little kids ideal image of a medieval assassin. He exuded badass, but she knew that he was as sweet as a puff pastry on the inside.

"Let's go fortify these walls then," Sonya said. "No dragons, right?"

"No dragons."

The best thing about the place that they had chosen for their supply cache was that it came with supplies. The second best thing was that it was on the outside of a large city but inside of its own fenced-in area. That would let them look back onto the big city without worrying about all the zombies that were definitely inside of it.

Sonya was pretty sure there was over 10,000 zombies inside of that City. She had really wanted to use her tower defense skills to construct a large elaborate maze where they could slowly weed the zombies out. But there was such a thing as zombies dying and then becoming in effect a stepping stone for other zombies.

She didn't have infinite space to work with. Her walls could only go up so high before affecting the integrity of the earth around them. She found that the two meter tall walls did the job exceedingly well for what she wanted.

Sonya was a simple woman. She liked her brew, her man, and to not be eaten by zombies.

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

"This one is the one you're talking about?" Valerie said. "This is or I guess this was a Lordling. I forgot his name. You said that he had an obsidian card?"

They were standing on the third level of one of the academy barracks. Stella had brought Valerie up there on a hunch while the rest of the team asked up the fences.

"He had the anchor card that we're using to enhance our gate skill," Stella said. "And why are you showing me him again?"

"Doesn't his corpse look a little bit different than all the other zombies? Like it could be that he wasn't turned or something right? He just looks like normal dead, not undead," Stella said. "Again, I'm really sorry to be showing you this, but you know door was a lot better than me and Andrew is a little bit occupied right now. There's something going on with the people that had rare cards before all this happened."

Valerie looked down at the corpse of one of her classmates. She had seen this person before but now he was missing half of one leg and had bite marks all over his chest. He had definitely lost a lot of blood or someone had decided to drop buckets of brown liquid on him after he passed.

Half of his torso was gone, looking like a kid had eaten it, based on the size of the teeth marks.

Most of one leg was completely off. There wasn't much else remarkable about him. The half of his face that was still there was well preserved. Nothing had changed to the corpse in the days they had been away.

"Valerie. Did you know that Borgan and Song both have rare soil cards?" Stella said, turning back to face the stairs.

Valerie turned to look at her as if she had three heads on her shoulders. Stella was taken aback by this. Finally, it always seems so even tempered that she had inspected the teenage dwarf to had any sort of outburst ever, but she had been through a lot recently. Stella was willing to give her a lot of slack.

"I did not know that. That seemed like it was something important for me to know," Valerie said.

"Well you know now and I don't think it's a big secret. If telling people what's in your deck is taboo then fuck it. I'll tell you whenever you want. We are on the same fucking side," Stella said.

"What do you think? If.... If people with rare cards were able to resist whatever this was then maybe he was alive when all this happened. That's unthinkable," Valerie said.

She grabbed a bed sheet and placed it over the corpse.

"Stella, if we're going to be here long-term, you know coming in and out of the supply section in the back. We need to think about disposal of the bodies. Our veins are their disposition. Because being next to a guy like this is just asking to get sick."

"That's very wise of you. I hope that Sophie is going to be able to come through here and help us deal with all these bodies. Then we can ask for Sonya to take us a big hole and let them be buried at the academy they were living at."