Marc walked through the streets of the Canopy Ward, vigilant but generally relaxed. There were about 10 of them in “Berk’s crew”, Berk included. Marc, Jacky, and Lloyd were put together, another group of 4 was on their own, and Berk himself was with two twins from the Root he’d taken a shine to. Of course, they had to be supervised since they were, at the end of the day, thieves.

  The Canopy was not quite as unpopulated as Marc thought it would be. A large number of city elites, the wealthy and influential who were not born noble (or who didn’t have quite enough money or influence yet) were allowed in, as well as large swaths of the local non-adventuring guilds. At any given time, an elven carpenter would be rubbing shoulders with a royal dryad or icess merchant, and that disconnect was causing most of the issues that had to be solved.

  Such as, for example, what was happening right now. Lloyd was the one who spotted it, and now all three had to go in to try and break things up.

  “ - you dull brute!” A circle was forming around the elven noblewoman who was speaking. She was glaring daggers at the massive human in fine, expensive silks, and he looked somewhere between amused and annoyed.

  “Madam, I merely offered to -” he was cut off by her shrill voice.

  “You would do well not to offer anything to your betters ever again. Why, when this is over. . .” Her eyes finally saw Marc in the crowd.

  Something Marc had learned since arriving, and had been reinforced over the past two days, was that adventurers had a certain look. Even without the weapons or magical implements, there was a certain oddity to their dress that made them very easy to pick out from a crowd. They tended to wear mismatched clothing, armor of various styles and make, carry far more than needed for anything except the emergencies they always dove into. The apparent value of one’s clothing meant exceedingly little when undyed wool could repel dragon’s breath, or a rusted iron ring could allow one to walk on water.

  Marc was taking advantage of that, even if he didn’t really mean to. He was dressed very “adventurer”, with his armor (courtesy of Berk’s recommendations) and leather sandals. Not to mention the axe on his back. No one there knew what he could do but him and the other adventurers, but they all did know that he was there to keep the peace.

  “Is there a problem here?” he said, keeping his voice steady.

  The noblewoman looked ready to slink away into the darkness, and muttered something about the man bumping into her. The human seemed more relieved than anything, and actually responded, “I was just walking along, and the lady and I collided. I offered to assist her to her feet, but, well,” he shrugged.

  The lady grew red, and looked like she was fighting her instinct to start an outburst, but upon looking at Marc once again, decided against it. She huffed, “This boar of a man was charging through the streets and bowled me over. The indignity of it, well, caused me to react as anyone would.”

  Marc sighed. Whether she was an elven Karen or he was just an idiot with places to be, he was there to end it.

  “Sir, ma’am, please both be more vigilant of your surroundings. There’s no need for fighting within the city walls when the guard and adventurers are busy fighting outside, right?”

  The two nodded in something resembling agreement, and went their separate ways. Marc had no doubt that this would be the majority of the encounters he had during the flood.

  Then again, not fighting for his life for once was going to be nice. He could do with a break from that.

  Grant Roen was tired. He’d been creating and repairing wards, thorn walls, and deep trenches for days by now, and the dead didn’t seem intent to stop.

  Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.

  From a purely scholarly standpoint, he understood it - the undead had none of the energy limitations that mortals did. They did not need to eat, sleep, or even breathe in most cases. Their limiting factor was generally the number of corpses available and the minor, persistent drain they placed on the ambient magic around them. A single zombie could theoretically be sustained forever. Hordes of this size were unheard of, and pulled so much ambient magic that even some of Grants more advanced students couldn’t cast spells anymore, especially combined with their aura of silence.

  This left the few hybrid students, able to rely more on their martial skills than their magical ones, and the teachers themselves to be the sole defenders.

  The worst part of it all was that these zombies were made well, and Grant couldn’t figure out why. There were precious few groups that studied and mastered necromancy, and none of them were close to the Sage Lands. Even still, it had to be someone who had learned from them, or at least someone who had stolen their secrets.

  The only reasonable option in his mind was that they were from an Escha cult, and Grant had a theory as to which. The Doombringers were a threat from before he was even classed, but no one really believed they were fully gone. Groups like that had a bad habit of sticking around far longer than reason would suggest. The cult had a talent for raising utterly massive hordes compared to the number of necromancers they had. If he had more time, he’d look into it right now and put the theory to rest.

  If it wasn’t them, then a foreign nation had a defector, and a powerful one, roaming around or. . .

  Or one of the students had mastered necromancy. If it was alone, that was one thing, but there was always the possibility of it being some kind of outsider.

  He looked to the south, in the direction of Grand Vale, and hoped that the city was spared the onslaught.

  Nico looked out over the beasts. There were more Dire beasts than he’d think there would, but then again Helen had mentioned that it would be a very brutal Flood this time around.

  This was his first time actually fighting one. Being a city dweller, even if he was from Trinity, meant that he was always relatively safe. The city beneath was relatively tame, at least in his opinion, compared to what Barry and Helen described. Helen wove stories of naturally occurring undead, titanic spiders with too many joints, and an entire class of monster that hated nothing more than being seen in the first place. Barry’s were more reasonable, until he talked about a blight elemental that had appeared in his house during the previous flood due to his mother’s alchemy.

  Still, he was an adventurer now, and one well suited to exactly this task. Sappers, despite their general inclinations as being more destructive of things than harmful to monsters, were made to be smart. Nico himself was planning to pick up a Scholar’s historia later, though knew he had to be careful extending in too many directions too quickly.

  The dire squirrels, however many of them there were, looked at them with glowing beady eyes. There was hunger in them, and probably hate if they could feel it. But they didn’t get closer.

  Helen was the planner of their little strike team, which included a Glorifier who played the role of their defender.

  “Hey, we’re going to need to break that up sooner rather than later,” Barry called out.

  Helen nodded, looking to Nico.

  He began his incantation.

  The Hoplite, Griff, put his shield up and prepared to use one of his boons. He was bare chested, but his shield was large enough for an icess to hide behind, let alone a human. Some of the city guard, several yards behind them, took notice, gathering up their own implements of war.

  Unfortunately, so did the dires. There was a stir, with only a few moving forward. Then another joined it, and another, until the tide of dire rodents was charging them.

  Barry tapped Griff’s shoulder, and he used his boon. A full 8 ephemeral copies of Griff appeared around him in a phalanx, eyes glowing redder than even the dire beasts. Barry started casting some of his quicker spells. Small blasts of fire and trails of smoke. The dires were smarter than normal animals, but they still had some of the same instincts they couldn’t fight.

  Everything was driven towards the phalanx, even if their original aim had been Nico. Nico, whose spell had just completed.

  He pointed his finger at the rock wall that made of part of the natural defenses of this part of the city. A large boulder pulled itself free with a resounding crack, like rocks in a campfire. The dire beasts, if they were aware of the danger, didn’t change their course, fully surrounding the phalanx and attacking it, never wondering why the shields were pointed skyward.

  The boulder crushed the Dires, while Griff and his specters almost broke at the impact. By all means they should, were it not for his exceptionally high luck. After a tense moment, he somehow managed to push the boulder off to one side, as any dires that weren’t crushed before had scurried back behind where they were before. The larger, smarter beasts stayed far out of bowshot, while Helen picked off any stragglers not quite far enough away.