Sonya embraced Anthony, kissing him with abandon. Then she just as quickly departed.

“I’ll see you soon, my guy,” she said, disappearing through yet another portal.

A squad of soldiers followed her. He ached to follow her. There had been so many times recently when she was called on to get another squad into position. The map of the area surrounding the Capitol showed a half circle of entrenchment around the already large city. There were even two purple sections that showed the intended place for the next companies to finally deploy.

Every time the Chosen went out, they brought at least a squad of ten dwarves. A sergeant led each line of ten dwarves. There were ten lines in each company.

Anthony had been rotating through brave company lines when he wasn’t working in the field hospital.

Today, he was going to see what the front lines looked like, and hopefully get some target practice in. The sergeant assigned to him, Samantha Ginko, had been up his ass all morning, like a child waiting for ice cream. He thought of his two boys and how they were.

“Sergeant Ginko!” He said, nodding to the middle-aged dwarven woman.

“Good to see you, Chosen,” she said. “I heard them calling for a nanny service today, so I’m here to ferry you to the front and back.”

“Ah, but you’re too kind,” he said, bowing.

The dwarf stiffened as if attacked. He drew in a sharp breath of the area, wishing that he had that clean spell that several of the caravan had gotten once their spell casting got to level five. His own card skill had only just reached level four. Perhaps it was lack of him being in actual combat and just using it to heal. Or maybe it was a lack of things to heal when he was presented with the opportunity. Either way, he had to find an attack magic that he could use.

When everyone else had picked a fighting class, he had picked a cleric. They had made him the leader. He had argued against it, but then if he hadn’t, they would all be listening to Bob. They still listened to him, but he was there in more of an advisory capacity.

Sergeant Ginko wanted to be a leader. He could feel it. For that reason alone, he respected her. She asked a lot of her soldiers and they both loved and respected her for the difficult thing that they all had to do.

This meant that whenever he could, he would do things to make them smile.

Things like him bowing to the Sergeant when she should have saluted him.

“Sir, you and I both know that isn’t appropriate, and I am tired of your antics,” she said, sighing.

“I’m here for you, Sergeant Ginkgo,” he said. “I wouldn’t be here unless you needed me.”

“Be that as it may, please don’t make me add to the list of things that I’ll be taking up with the Princess,” she said.

“The princess general,” he said. “Did she tell you I trained her?”

“She has yes,” she said. “She also said that you were a midwife and haven’t been married here and that she isn’t against making you get into marriage to strengthen political ties.”

She came in really close and breathed into his face. The warm breath smelled of beer and meat.

“And I just so happen to be the last living daughter of a Baron, so watch out or this living situation could become more permanent.”

“But,” he sputtered. “I have a girlfriend!?”

“She can come too. I’m not above having a mistress or my consort having one.”

Anthony gulped. She was threatening him with marriage if he didn’t stop his antics. He would stop.

“I’ll stop. I’m sorry.”

“All right now, stand and salute me,” she said, standing up straight and tall.

They saluted each other in the manner of the dwarves. The right fist to the chest clenched and then dropped.

“Sergeant Ginkgo reporting for duty. Sir, the front lines need you.”

“Understood Sergeant. Let’s go.”

Behind them, the fifth squad of Brave company formed up as they moved out. The dusty dirt kicked up, marking a spot where many feet had tread. They exited out the company area, following a line of dwarves that we’re moving in and out.

His drop-off point wasn’t that close to the front line. Intentionally, the company leadership kept himself close to the lines, and that was where Sonya had to appear. It was a few days before any of the Eric ships would be battle ready, and it was Anthony’s last chance to scope the battle lines out and see if there was anything they could do differently.

It took them nearly an hour to reach their intended spot. The smell of sweat and piss permeated the area despite their hard work trying to get it to disappear. It had to have been a while since one of the Chosen had come through able to cleanse the area.

“We’re doing a quick check of the perimeter,” Sergeant Ginkgo barked. “Volunteers to hit the top of the wall?”

The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.

Four hands went up.

“Alright, anyone who didn’t raise a hand, you’re up top. Let’s go. Move like you mean it.”

Anthony found the vine made ladder and climbed up after the first pair of dwarves. It would do him no good to show up and miss all the fun. Once they were up, a secondary wall about his height was on the far side of the wall. Every ten feet, there was enough room for a dwarf to fire a bow from.

Even though he had seen the wall, he still marveled at how fast it had gone up. The great wall of the Iru, they had called it, as it would eventually envelop the entire capital if they kept going.

Thankfully, the ladder wasn’t directly against one of the dwarf sized slots. When they came up, there was a little of a break there. A soldier took every third or fourth slit up. Every so often, they would move.

He found a spot.

Anthony peered out of the little bow sized window and decided that it was going to take a shot or two. The zombies had brandished weapons. Previously, I haven’t thought that they could not do so and so she coordinated the Manor, but they had proved a lot of their previous rules were no longer working. Sure, the zombies outside of this region where the normal dumb zombies and those efforts to clear those towns continue downwards, but these? These zombies were unequivocally planning something. And it was right in front of their eyes. They had dug a trench. Anthony could see that the trench was high enough for the zombies to hide behind, and every so often, he could see a fair bit of movement. He didn’t know what they were going to be doing. But he could see a pair of bean eyes. Looking at him. Anthony raised his hand side of town under his arm as if it was a gun and then fired a holy bolt. His aim was true, and the zombie kicked its head back.

This began a flurry of movement as several zombies rose out of the trench and attempted to charge the wall. Luckily enough for him, several of the soldiers that were on duty had ready to bows and had helped him with his small project. Of course, he wanted them to take all the kills. So what he did was shoot as many as he could. He was trying to level his fill casting skill, and he had half a mind to not leave until he had gotten to the next level. He was so close to getting clans. He could taste it. Or rather, was at the fart of the one in the door that just passed him? Yeah, that was one fart. He could smell it and taste it, and it was disgusting.

“I know who just passed by and farted, but you need to get more fiber in your diet,” he yelled.

He continually shot holy bolt after holy bolt. He took aim more and more, focusing on the intent of using his spell casting. Every time he fired, he was casting a spell. He knew this, and he needed the car to know that. And every time that he cited down it, he was using his card skills to cite and shoot the enemy. So, of course, with his intent, he might get to a solution faster. He didn’t know what was going to happen next, but he sure as heck was going to keep firing.

In about five minutes, zombies stopped coming up over the trenches. That had been dumb of. But now Anthony was bringing one tool that Android had made for him out. He cited down the small tube and adjusted it a bit. Satisfied that he was ready, he dropped a moat of magic in. Then he activated it with a slight touch. There was a small squishy explosion as the tube shot out his mote of mana at rabbit speed as it arched up into the air and down into the trenches. He had turned a set of piping into an artillery piece.

His first shot went a little farther. He took a second to adjust the angle. His second shot went a bit too close. He realized that he’d over corrected. He lined the tube correctly and shot off a shell of magical artillery. He wished there was some sort of whistling noise or as something to show that his Mana had just flown into the enemy lines.

Now that he finally gotten it into what I wanted, he needs to adjust it to hit a wider area. He did a double drop of Mana into the pipe. He positioned it and threw another two shots. Behind him, he could feel the eyes of the sergeant as he continued to lay waste to the fortifications that the zombies hadn’t thought to reinforce.

He could see that he was doing damage. He could also see that with every shot, he would clear an area just because it was holy magic that he was using. He was so clap at that point to have a divine blessing that had pulled him into this world. Of course, his use of the blessing likely differed from what the goddess intended. There was no way that the goddess had nominated Sunderland to get a legion of working dwarves to come back and combat the Undead ones before they begin their sweep of the continent. Or maybe she had wanted to do exactly that. He didn’t know. All he knew was that he landed on Finley’s lap, and from that moment, they had been working towards this day. It was the day that they would take the death knight inside the Irumian Kingdom seriously.

Anthony was ready to take it out himself. Now what? He had to give the air shifts the time they needed to arrive. They would be especially good. Having airships would establish air superiority. I guess a ground-based foe. I had seen neither hide nor here of the dragons. He was absolutely certain that the flesh fever was going to be creating more dragons. It’s an important time, but I just hadn’t reached them yet. With all these new tools, though, he was going to make a dent in the perimeter out of the intelligent undead.

Anthony moved down the line. He could find several spots where he didn’t have to do much adjusting on the pipe. He just put his Mana in and shot him out. In this way, he was surely had killed at least 20 before he moved on to a state location. Sergeant Ginkgo was still sitting behind him and washing him through all this. She didn’t say anything, but he was pretty sure that if she didn’t have to be on the war footing, she wouldn’t even be here.

Anthony had to really dig into her. The individual members of the legion had stuck around for so long. Why? Presumably out of a sense of honor. Although it could be something else. In the back of his mind, he was thinking about how they were going to replace the population of a kingdom of hundreds of thousands of dwarves. If not millions. It was going to take a lot of fucking and child rearing.

“Sergeant Ginkgo, again, I know that this might seem odd, but have you ever thought about having children? Understand that this is not me propositioning you.”

She stared at him slack-jawed, as if someone had asked her to give him a piggyback ride into the center of the Capitol. She would have done it, no doubt, but she would have grumbled internally the whole time.

“I don’t have any kids. I don’t really want any kids. But again, I am looking for a husband if you know anybody. And I’m not too picky, especially if I get my Baroness position,” she said. “I would have to be in a great position to have a child.”

“Do you know how many women are in the legion?”

“Off hand? No, I don’t. Maybe two or three hundred? That’s a very specific question. Why you ask me that?”

Anthony dropped another holy bomb into the trenches that the undead had set up. He was blanketing it with his holy Mana one foot at a tie. He would keep doing it if he really had to. He knew that he just really want to anymore.

“I think that there’s going to be a problem if none of you have any children. Unless there are some dwarven enclaves somewhere that I’ve not been tracking, I’m going to assume that that means that not only are you one of the few that could have children, you’re probably going to be asked to do. Otherwise, you won’t have a population soon.”

“And when you say replace us? I think you’re...”

She looked off into the distance. Then she grabbed him with both hands and shoved him to the ground. He was so surprised that he didn’t even react, just following sacked potatoes. Then, she set up like a potato mash.

“Maybe we should talk about what’s going to happen to Dwarven society after we save the Dwarven capital city. Do you think we could do that? Anthony?”