Taking pot shots at the undead inside, the two women updated their tally for the day.

"I got fifty," Sophie said.

"Forty seven!" Stella said.

"Twelve," Valerie said. "And I still don't understand why you have me scratching down all these numbers for you. But hey, I'm here."

Sophie and Stella both had a rogue class. It was part of the thing that brought them together initially. That plus they had become instant besties.

Today it was about training up. Valerie, who had a lot of theoretical experience in combat but hadn't really seen the front lines before. They had given her a crossbow and as many bolts as they could smuggle out of the academy in order to fire at something that wasn't stationary. Though they were lumbering, the zombies did move around a fair bit.

There was a whole other deal where they had to crank it back and get used to using a crossbow, but the two women were happy to help her experience the true joy of combat. Or rather, the unquestionable everyday mundane experience of it.

Sophie cranked back a crossbow bolt. She sided down aiming for the closest zombie.

After the night they had previously, Sonya had made several guard towers out of packed dirt. Those towers were right by the exit and conveniently located and high enough for whoever was in them to take pot shots at zombies that were exiting the port city.

"I've got another three coming through," Stella said.

"Girl power!" Valerie said, firing a bolt that crippled a zombie. "Did I do that right?"

"I guess if we stop teaching you how to do cool catchphrases then we would be in a mess, wouldn't we? We wouldn't know what to do with ourselves, right Sophie?" Stella said.

Sophie cranked back another bolt, this time passing the fully loaded crossbow to the Dwarven girl. Her rogue skills were telling her how to have the dwarf aim it. She minutely adjusted the dwarf's grip making sure that it was fully seated in her right shoulder as Valerie's looked through the Little sight port that Andrew had installed.

"I mean, really, this thing with the crosshairs. It's just wonderful and I wish that we had this kind of thing in our war against the sea monsters."

"You can't really call it a war when we just had one battle," Sophie said, loading another crossbow bolt.

"We've had one battle, yes. But what about second battle?" Stella said.

Sophie adjusted the crossbow one more time for Valerie who seem to be getting it. It was sufficient to blind-side a zombie.

Sufficient wasn't enough, they needed to do better.

Under Sophie's expert tutelage, the dwarf girl had grown exponentially in her archery skills.

"I feel like the both of you have lots of inside jokes that you're just not telling me about," Valerie said.

"One does not just simply walk into bestie hood," Stella said.

Once again, Stella and Sophie were going to get the better of Valerie. That is at the same time while they were going to make her better.

While they were having lots of friendly banter, they were leveling up the girl's first combat capable class. It had taken a fair bit of work to get her decide on her class finally but when she did, she had jumped into it wholeheartedly.

Like the other two Rogues around her, she had wanted to hit from afar. She wasn't a rogue because she wasn't thinking of being sneaky.

Valerie liked what Bob did the best. She had asked for Finley to craft her a ranger card and it had taken him that entire time throughout their journey from her academy grounds to the port city to finally make her the card she wanted.

She was super pleased to have at least some of the wilderness expertise that Bob had always projected.

She was less pleased that a lot of his special powers that she was admiring had come from Mork directly. This made her complain Sophie and Stella that perhaps he should have been a warlock of Mork.

"Are you still thinking about that thing?" Sophie said patting the dwarf on his shoulder after her fifteenth kill. If you really want to, we can get you a warlock class. We can change it out. I'm sure that somebody's going to want to trade for that ranger card that doesn't have a combat class that works just like that. Maybe even someone who's in our presence right now."

Sophie not so subtly looked towards her bestie. It was well known that Stella had gotten a rogue card and had capitalized on an ice magic card early on.

Then when they had more ability to pick more cards, she had suffered from what those in the industry call analysis paralysis.

She had wanted to be a trickster. Sophie felt that deeply in her soul. But there was no tricks to pull on a zombie. In fact, if there was a mind magic card, which Valerie assured to her that there was not, then it was more than likely not going to affect any Undead.

Valerie had come to them already with a class card. Due to a complicated system of rules that only she was privy to, being a native from this land, dwarves could only have two active class cards at a time. Her class card was a heritage one handed down from her grandfather. So the newest class card slotted in it easily but that meant that she couldn't also multi-class the way that the humans were doing.

Did you know this story is from Royal Road? Read the official version for free and support the author.

"I don't want a warlock class. Maybe I'll consider evolving this class card into some sort of ranger or warlock or something," She said.

"Is that something you can do?" Sophie said. "Just evolve a class card like that? Because this is new information. I have an epic skill card and a wilderness druid class card and I would love to have like some sort of artisanal class where I can open up a little bakery with my girlfriend and we can retire there where we are the only lesbians around that know how to brew a good cup of coffee and you have to come and experience it right?"

"That is not exactly what I was speaking about. I feel like this is like the fire inspector thing All over again. Really? I'm sorry about not giving you guys access to my library. You guys now have full access as long as you don't tell the boys about it," Valerie said.

"What was that about not telling the boys?" Bob said from the other side of the tower. "I would love to hear about that."

The two women and a dwarf looked at the man quizzically.

"Bob, for Mork's sake, go kill some more zombies for us. We're doing some girl talk right now."

Bob disappeared just as fast as he appeared. Sophie laughed.

"Someday that's not going to work. Stella. He's going to want to know what's going on," Sophie said.

"But we can just tell him that we're going to talk about women's issues, right?" Stella said. "I'm absolutely certain that our guy here actually attended sex ed and knows a few things, we just pretend that it's a girl's issue. He might just let us be and then we'd be fine."

There was a noise over from the other side of the tower and all three of them turn to look. It was just Bob lowering himself down.

"All right, looks like we have an idiot on our hand," Sophie said. "Let's provide covering fire while guy on the ground does his little dance."

Sophie took her position up quickly, this time more serious about her trigger time. Now with every shot, she imbued a small bit of mana that would envelop the creature that she sought to destroy. It was like a tripwire except that it would trip up anything nearby the zombie that she killed.

She didn't even have to kill the zombie. She just had to contact it and the vines would do their own thing.

That had been something that Finley taught her because the Goat Lord loved to turn zombies back into their base materials and return their souls to the Earth. Or something like that, she hadn't really been paying attention. The Goat Lord was only her boss in name. More like an absent patron or a sugar daddy that forgot to get his sugar.

Below them, Bob's two swords cleaved a line of zombies around himself. He had once been clumsy and reserved, now he flowed around the battlefield like he was dancing. It really was the closest thing that she could imagine to a deadly tango.

She had to admit, for all his failings, Bob had the heart of an entertainer. Of course, then he sliced through the head of the entertainer that he was fighting, but these were small problems in his life. He had been on television which meant that at some point in time someone had asked him if he wanted to be on television, and his response was yes.

This told Sophie that perhaps there was a bit of a narcissist in there. Or perhaps some bit of external pressure had forced his hand. It wasn't like he would have any shortage of ability to find foot traffic in Hoboken.

Sophie wouldn't know. She had never been there. She just heard stories straight from Bob's mouth.

"Hey Bob, move to your left!" Stella yelled.

Sophie swore that she saw him do a two-step before dodging a clump of zombies that was about to fall on him. She couldn't say for sure, but it was so smooth that she was getting chills.

In and out he waved, avoiding any zombies that got close enough, picking his battles as he stuck zombie at a zombie either in the throat or the chest. Sophie picked off zombies from the pack that had separated and began to charge on him. Valerie was on short notice duty, trying to take down anything she could take down. Charging up several ice bolts in between her crossbow bolts. She would shoot one, throw one and then reset.

It became clear, that the zombies were finally taking his threat seriously. About a minute into fighting, Bob was close to being cut off.

"Bob! Tactical retreat!"

Bob, without looking, threw a grappling hook up over his left shoulder. The grappling hook got purchas on their tower and he immediately began jumping up and climbing, rappelling in reverse.

"If I didn't see that in person, I would never have expected him to ever do something like that. I would never expect anyone to do anything like this. You chosen are another breed. I swear to Yil, that I will unlock all your secrets because this is so unprecedented," Valerie said.

Bob brute forced repelling upwards, defying the laws of physics. It was exactly the thing that kept him in Sophie's good graces. Then he took up a spot next to them and pulled out his crossbow.

Sophie handed him a crossbow bolt before aiming her own and taking down another two zombies.

They kept coming. The four of them kept firing until their arms were sore. Then, they began casting spells and flinging magical grenades at the zombies. Some of the zombies were stuck up more than others, the sticky magic grenades taking down more than a few just by proximity.

"So what's for dinner tonight?" Sophie said. "And more importantly, when are we going to get Valerie to show us where the good stuff is?"

"I don't know where the good stuff is. I only worked in the kitchen one time and it was a punishment that shall not be named," Valerie said, panting from the corner nearby.

"You can't tell me that you don't know what the good stuff is. There has to be like some sort of Academy student on the ground that you needed to tap into. There's always this subtext of people that are in the know because of where they've been at least in Earth fiction. Isn't that the same thing here?"

Valerie straightened up before answering.

"I don't know what you're talking about. I know nothing. Everyone made fun of me because one of my parents was an instructor. That made it hard for me to make friends. You can imagine how difficult it is when one of the high ranking officers has the same last name as you. Sure, the name is strong but I wanted it to be my own thing and now?"

"Now you can be the famous general that reclaimed the dwarven Kingdom. There will be stories about you for ages to come," Sophie said, getting up to peer over the side of the watchtower.

"I can't be a general. I don't have enough time in the Army. I'm not even old enough to commission."

"I hate to say it right now but you are the Army. There's nobody else. And until we get to these guys across the ocean, we are alone."

Sophie grabbed for a crossbow bolt and came up empty. Instead, she flung a snare trap down, trapping several zombies in it. The zombies had long ago given up on them and just now begun to flow back into the maze behind them. They weren't going to head back into the city. That would make no sense. Of course, nothing the zombies did made sense.

It was then, That she looked down and saw that there was an island in the mass of zombies. Or rather it was a figure in the center that all the zombies were walking around.

With the average height of a dwarfin zombie, not that tall, this figure more than doubled the height of the zombies around it. Worse, none of the zombies seem to care about it. As they ran around, the orc-sized figure with a black cloak, looked up towards them. At least that's what she thought that it did.

She was unable to see its face or make out any features underneath the dark black cowl.

"That can't be good."

She aimed her crossbow right at it, trying to scare it to move away. But no matter what she did, it didn't move from its spot. If it had been alive, then the zombies surely would have eaten it by now. This meant that something else entirely was going on and she didn't want to have anything to do with it.

"Bob? Your call?" She said, turning him.

But Bob was just as bewildered as she was. All four of them just stared there for a while at the scene that they'd never expected to see.

"That has to be a death knight," He said, readying his swords again.