The World Dragon's Heir

Chapter 523: Don’t Flood Yet

While Dominic was preparing additional mortar rounds, the staff rushed to take care of the malnourished, injured and traumatized children.

They thought about chiding Dominic for not helping them, but after half a second of consideration, they realized that it was only likely to traumatize them further. Whatever had happened down in that basement, he was the cause of it.

Having him close to them while they were still shaking with fear and hunger was only likely to make things worse.

“I will make something quick. We’ve got canned soup still to be moved that only needs to be heated. We can feed them before going upstairs. We’ve got that much time for certain.” The chef insisted.

Dominic nodded. “There is plenty of time. The rain should be slowing, and the water level increase will slow with it. Amie, do you have any ideas?”

The little mage shrugged. “If we build earthworks to fill the gate, then along the outside of the wall, there is a magitech pump in the yard we can use to clear the water. Then, we’re good until it breaches the top of the walls.”

Dominic looked down the hill. That time was not far off.

“Well, it might be too late for that. There is a lot of water between us and the wall. I don’t know if there is a pump large enough to clear the water in under a week without the flood level going down.

On the other hand, it will slow the influx. Might as well block the gate with magic, and seal the wall. It will slow the rise inside the wall.”

Amie rushed out to go do the work, but left Dominic with a hand signal.

{There are pedos among the men. Don’t let them near the kids.}

Dominic nodded, and sat down to relax in the kitchen with the kids, who were huddled in the corner.

“Let’s get you all seated for dinner. Ladies, can someone get a fresh cloth? Clean hands and faces for meal time.” Dominic insisted.

The bit of normalcy, the same warning every child’s mother had given them from time immemorial, was enough to help everyone focus on something other than the panicked need to move everything valuable to the upper floors.

“Of course, Lord Dominic. Ladies, you heard him. Get the guests ready for dinner.”

They used the water sparingly, just wetting cloths to wipe down small faces and hands. They were still conscious of the hard times to come, with everything around them flooded. But keeping some sense of normalcy and routine was all that they could do, given the situation.

Dominic felt an increase in mana use outside, and moved to the window to see Amie using a spell to move huge amounts of water out of the Manor compound.

That was not something that you could do with a magitech pump. At least not one that was reasonably sized for anything short of a hydroelectric dam. But it was doing a wonderful job of moving the water back outside the walls, now that she had them sealed.

The pump would need to be set up and run eventually, no wall was truly waterproof, as far as Dominic knew. But just having relatively dry ground inside the wall would be enough to keep the appearance of a safe space.

“Your Grace, mind coming to give me a hand? If we extend this outer wall another metre upward, I think that it will be enough to weather the last of the storm and rains.” She called as she saw him standing near the window.

Dominic waved to the kids as he left, and then realized that he had forgotten one critically important question of Amie when she arrived.

“How are the Daves doing? They had fire resistance spells, and their armour, but that spell was nasty, from what I remember.”

Amie shook her head sadly. “They’re Mountain Trolls, so they’re not truly dead, as far as I know. But even with the spells, they still took severe burn damage, and their armour melted.

Ingrid is taking care of them, but she says that it will be up to a year before they have fully recovered from the fire damage, even with the healers and mages helping.”

“Well, a year is still something. I’m glad that they survived. I wasn’t sure that they had managed it, even with all their defences.”

“We were all shocked as well. Mountain Trolls are seriously tough.”

As they talked, Dominic examined her work, and saw that Amie had created a thin layer of smooth stone over the outside of the wall to seal it against water ingress, while creating a mountain of rubble in the gate to fill it.

That would work perfectly for what they had planned, and Dominic got right to work extending the wall a metre upward with [Fieldstone Wall], then smoothing the surface with [Transmutation] to turn it into one piece of stone.

It was not pretty, and it took blocked the crenellations on the wall, so it would certainly be taken down again after the flood.

But it would hold the water out.

Step by step, the pair made their way around the Manor, reinforcing the walls and increasing the height so that the floodwaters were no longer lapping at the top of their security barrier.

It didn’t take long before they were standing behind a solid wall of stone, with only a small pond of water behind them, and the Manor grounds mostly visible.

Including the small boat, which had been the Nobles’ intended way out.

There were a surprisingly high number of bodies in the yard, Dominic noticed. Most of them appeared to be servants of the Manor and farmers, and almost all had sword wounds.

Most likely, the Nobles had killed the first round of commoners who tried to take the boat and flee, before Dominic turned the tables on them and the surviving staff finished the job.

At least it was quick. Better than sitting on a roof watching the water get higher by the second until you were swept away.