A defeated looking young woman spoke next. "You’re from the Academy then? We heard that Marimgar Academy was one of the awakened Academies."

Kalli nodded. "Indeed. You are currently in what was once the front grounds of Marimgar Academy. I suppose technically it still is, though class is not in session at the moment.

The original school buildings are intact.

Might I ask, where did you come from? I assume that you’ve been moving for some time now, going by your condition."

The woman nodded. "We came from the city of Hamin, on the border with Tehaquia. We heard sporadic radio transmissions from this direction over the last few weeks, so we were certain that there should be survivors.

During day five of the last trial, we were overrun, and when we lost the last of our people who were not heroes, the System informed us that our defence of Hamin had failed.

It said that if we didn’t find somewhere with survivors before the end of the third trial, we would be declared nomadic heroes."

[ Better than eliminating them, I suppose. ] Kalli thought grimly.

"That’s a long drive. I’m honestly shocked that you made it here in a day and a half. Did you see any other signs of civilization on the way? There should have been three cities on a roughly straight path here, I think."

The woman shook her head. "Nothing, it’s like the cities never even existed. It’s just open wilderness. I think that they were all eliminated before the Third Trial began.

There are survivors at Deriran, further south in Tehaquia. But they requested that nobody try to approach the city, as they’ve been overrun with zombies since the start of the trials.

They seem to be getting different trials than we have, as we have been receiving broken transmissions from both cities. We moved underground for the most part during the second trial, as the majority of the city was removed.

But their city remains as ruins filled with the undead."

Kalli frowned, and brought up the satellite feed of the region.

"Odd, there is cloud cover over it in every satellite feed that I try. We haven’t gotten a clear view of the city at all since the start of the trials. So, we had assumed that it was gone, as we hadn’t seen any signs of life, and we didn’t get any communications signals from them."

The woman took a tentative bite of the fried tubers, and her eyes lit up with joy, so another of the survivors took over.

"Most of us can’t communicate with the satellites at all. We can’t get a signal through. Nothing coming in, nothing going out. Do you have satellite feeds from orbit still?"

Kalli nodded. "We’ve even got satellite internet, though every single server on the planet is down, so it doesn’t really count. The important part is that we’ve got the weather satellites, so we can at least get a view of the world.

Or what’s left of it. Most of the planet has been changed to match the other world, but the continents still appear to be ours."

"Do you have any actual good news? Hope that things are getting better? Someone organizing against the monsters?" The man asked hopefully.

"You’re in the right spot. We’ve got System Quests to buy skills and resources with, advanced greenhouses, heavy energy weapons, and we’ve taken in the Kalkan Third Fleet. There is much more to this city than you would expect just looking at the surface.

We also finished the first week of the third trial early, by doing multiple waves in a day. So, we have some hopes that the next week will be manageable."

"Seriously? You managed to finish early? How can that even be? We had fortifications, heroes, even a stockpile of military weapons, and we were still overrun."

Kalli smiled gently. "We’ve got a System Store. Laser rifles, pulse cannons, power armour, all sorts of wonderful things that weren’t available before. Plus, we’ve got a dungeon that gives us extra food supplies, so we’re not entirely reliant on the gardens."

Those words seemed to only baffle the new arrivals even more.

But they could see the advanced armoured bodysuits that the heroes who escorted them here were wearing, so there had to be something to it.

Then, one of the Rogues walked in wearing a Flight Suit with the wings folded.

"Coordinator, sorry to interrupt. Three minutes to the award. We just wanted you to know that we would be flying overhead, and that it’s not a sign of an attack."

"Got it, thank you."

The newly arrived heroes stared at the door, where the Rogue had locked the helmet on his head, then rocketed up into the sky.

"Yeah, you see, we’ve got some pretty cool toys. They burn a massive amount of mana to fly and fight at the same time, but the Rogues are getting better every day."

"It seems that I have eyes, but I cannot see Mount Doom," the new hero laughed.

Kalli patted him on the shoulder. "During the first trial, we were nearly overrun. It’s only during the second and third that we have really started doing well. And now we’ve received more heroes to help with base defence once you’re all rested and fed.

We should send you for a proper medical checkup as well.

I know that we had the healers look you over, but that doesn’t always cover everything, and I don’t want to send anyone to the line that needs more time to recover.

And honestly, you all look like death warmed over.

Perhaps sitting out the next few days will be for the best. Get over the shock and trauma enough to properly function. A few nights of good sleep in a comfortable bed with proper meals will help.

I’m assuming you weren’t eating well before."

The heroes shook their heads. "We had more than enough ration packs, but every level that we went up, the more hungry that we got, and soon the strongest heroes were beginning to starve even on double rations.

Whatever you made these from is the first thing that’s seemed to fill us in a month."

Kalli nodded. "It’s a plant from the new world, similar to a sweet potato. Monster meat has the same filling effect, and we’ve had multiple waves of crab and boar monsters, so we’ve got both in stock.

Plus, we send our people fishing in the ocean.

We would have them fish in the river, but it’s been a bit polluted with monster bodies, and it makes people squeamish about fishing in it."

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