"So, there are still rat demons around. I had wondered where they got to. It looks like they just scattered when things went bad. That’s one more thing to watch out for, since they could be hiding behind anything, with their size," Kalli noted.

"There are Ogres and some sort of giant as well. If you go to the other side of the tower, you can see them past the docks. They’re not doing much, but even just standing around, a giant zombie is pretty easy to spot."

Kalli nodded. "The further that we get from the Academy, the worse the enemies get. We just need to avoid that side of the beach altogether until we’ve got strong enough heroes that we’re sure we can clear some of it.

We know that we can take out the Swineherds at least a few at a time, and we know that they don’t see well in the dark.

So, we can leverage that to hunt them in the evenings, and then retreat before they can find and follow us. Then we just need to defend the tubers from the boars in the daytime, and we’re golden.

We can pick off a few Crabs that stray too far from the pack, but I don’t think that’s going to be a primary concern, given how many of them there are, and their lack of urge to move inland."

It was also an easy mode quest, with one crab needed between a five-person quest, so they could keep the number hunted to a minimum.

"You sound like you don’t expect everyone to do every quest they can," the warrior on duty with her asked.

Kalli shook her head. "I expect them to do the minimum, protect our food supply, and keep the place safe. But we can’t have everyone burning out when the trial just started.

Everyone was going hard to get as much as they could between Trials, and now we just need to secure the area. We can do that fairly well if we can level up smoothly, we just need to be ready for when it throws a curveball at us.

The Flatfoot Hunters were not a bad challenge, but what are the chances that it’ll be that easy next time?"

The warrior sighed. "You think too much. Life is easier when we’re just fighting."

They sat in silence for a while, watching the tree line in the moonlight. There were no more signs of Swineherd near their tuber supply, and nothing else was coming toward the Academy itself.

There wasn’t much to do as they waited for the sun to come up, but unlike some of the others, they were still on full alert, just in case things changed.

Their side of the Academy overlooked the potential food, after all.

They had just settled in for the last few hours of waiting when flashes of light on the horizon to the north caught their attention.

"What is out there?" Kalli asked, not familiar with the geography of the area.

From what she could see, that was somewhere out over the water, past the horizon, but she didn’t know if there was an island over there, or the other side of a bay.

"If I’m right on the directions, that should be somewhere off the coast near Liliana Island. It might actually be coming from the island, but that sort of explosion looks like the bombardment of a ship battle.

It’s all over the horizon, but it’s coming in waves, like the broadside of a battleship.

It’s also all the same colour, so it’s not a collection of mages going wild on some huge monster. That was my first thought, and then that it might be a thunderstorm. But it’s almost definitely explosions from munitions."

Kalli sighed. "Well, that means we’re likely to get visitors in the dorm building."

For a second, the warrior didn’t understand, then he realized that was where Kalli had put the resurrection pod. It had brought others here, and the island was closer to them than Gomand was, so presumably the battle would be in range if there were heroes lost in battle.

The soldiers had the same idea, and not long after, one of them ran off and grabbed Yara to watch the spare room. If they needed anything, it was best to have a healer on hand.

Even if they were just having a panic attack, she could likely help.

They turned their chairs so that the battle was in their usual range of visual scans. It wasn’t letting up, and it seemed to be spreading further across the horizon as it got closer to dawn.

But there were no resurrected people appearing in the spare room.

That suggested to Kalli that either the battle wasn’t where they had taken the other students, or the battle was out at sea, and simply didn’t involve them yet.

The battle seemed to have spread as far as it was going to by the time that the sun came up, making it impossible to see anymore.

Then, the horizon turned bright white, and a massive mushroom cloud bloomed, extending into the upper atmosphere.

"They didn’t," the warrior on guard duty with Kalli gasped.

"I would say that they did. Unless there is a power plant there, I’m almost certain that they just set off a nuclear weapon."

Behind them, Sergeant Sanchez sat up in his cot. "Damn, think of all the kill bonuses that we just missed out on."

"You lazy fucks! Get down here and help me out," Yara shouted from the dorm building.

"And there are our heroes. Double time, let’s get them out of the resurrection bed."

Kalli ran down the stairs with Sanchez right behind her, until he simply vaulted from halfway down the stairs and overtook her.

Right, that was an option now. She had completely forgotten that most of the stairs were optional when you were Awakened.

Kalli grabbed a man off the resurrection pod the second she came inside, and another appeared, then another.

Even with three of them pulling people in different directions, they were getting people as fast as they could pull them out of the bed.

"Ask questions later. Move first, we need room for more of the wounded. Get out of the way." Sanchez shouted, encouraging everyone to move.