Homesteading in a fantasy world

There was snow everywhere I looked. Currently underneath my feet was over 4 meters of snow. This was the highest peak I could find in the grasslands. Because of the wind, the snow was not uniform, but it rose and fell like waves on the ocean. The sun was high and warmed my skin nicely and I finally got to see what it felt like to have snow that towers over you and I thoroughly enjoyed it.

Even more than that I enjoyed channelling Legolas. My ability to control my weight helps me walk on the snow, not through it. The skill acted weirdly in some aspects as losing weight didn’t mean that I could jump like I was on the moon. It just simply didn't work like that nor would making myself heavy strain my legs as much as it should have. There were some limitations but also some things that made this version of weight loss better, so I was fine with it.

I continued to look around to keep an eye out as Goose was up high scouting further away. We were currently not on my land and were even further down south past the village. Ahead of me was the huge green sea as it's called where thousands of rabbits lived.

To my back were the farmlands that were broken apart only by small forests and rivers going through the land. As I kept waiting I thought back on the night when I made my decision to go all out and try to create something new. It was now over two months later.

Even with my decision I still tried to not overwork myself, but I had come a long way, especially in my weapon training. Now I felt a lot more comfortable with bladed weapons. One thing I still haven’t been able to do is to go all out even when I have fought with the few monsters that have wandered onto my land. The strongest of them was another mutated wolf close to the gold rank.

Everything had ground to a halt and only the strongest of creatures were still able to walk around. The training with the wolves had ended about a month ago. Same with our efforts of getting lumber and even before that our hunting for rabbit meat stopped.

We were still in quite a good state with everything food related and so was the village. We were still able to visit the village thanks to our constant moving back and forth from there creating a narrow walkway through the snow. It was like going through a maze but it was just a narrow road to the village.

This way the constant dungeon delves could continue but one thing that they told me was that the dungeon might be preparing to create another level which was incredibly good news for me. Although not for the youth who are still working on getting a decent way into floor 3.

I was quite fond of going to the village and so were my apprentices who all seemed to have their own interests. I didn’t interfere with their pursuits as they were human after all and at an age where chasing the opposite sex was at a high priority.

After the trouble with one of the instructors, everything had calmed down a lot although we did happen on one emergency portal where some injured people were brought here. From what I understand the bad times had begun and most of the food started to run out. That was bad news because the winter wasn't even half done yet.

I decided to look over my achievement page to see all the changes but before I could a mental message from Goose informed me that he had seen something of interest.

A few moments later I got his position, and he was quite the way down one of the roads that led to one of the bigger villages that was a gateway to the rest of the Kingdom. Then came a mental image of people in a convoy moving through the thick snow.

It took me a few more moments and a bit more information to understand what I was seeing. There was a large group of people that were pushing through the snow. Then came an image of the soldiers they had on the back of the convoy and for some reason, they were collapsing the trail that they had created so no one could follow.

I ordered Goose to get closer as he was pretty high up and even with his eyesight it was hard to understand why this was happening. With a few more images I figured out that there were mages in the front cart that were working on making the pathway through the snow.

Then there was a patch of people that were well dressed and had soldiers on either side. Then another big batch of people that looked like normal villagers and after that a group of soldiers worked on collapsing the trail that he had just created.

From my count there were about 200 people there and they all looked extremely tired, and I even saw one that had collapsed and everyone else just kept walking. When the collapsed body passed by the last soldiers but no one stopped their work as they collapsed the snow on top of the body and just kept moving.

There were only a few reasons why people would do this. They were either cruel beyond measure or they were running from something. So, I ordered Goose to climb back up and start going further down the road to see what were they running from.

The pursuers were further behind than I expected but I could also understood why they needed to push themselves to get as far away from them during the day as possible. They were being pursued by a huge amount of undead.

They even had one huge monstrosity with them that was probably 5 to 6 meters in height. The whole horde was focused on moving towards the escaping people. I had learned quite a lot about undead while killing them and I honestly didn’t understand why they would keep following them. There was no obvious trail left behind that the undead would understand how to follow and they had no visual on them.

I had Goose keep flying around them because I thought that there must be some intelligence controlling them, but I honestly couldn’t find any. It was certainly a mystery. What was certain was the direction of the convoy. In a few days most likely three or four they would make it closer to the village where the snow is a lot less deep because of the wind corridor that was there. Then they would have quite an easy road compared to their current one all the way to the village.

But now that I know what the situation was at least most of it I still couldn’t figure out why the undead wouldn’t stop. There was the question of what to do. Should I go try to save them?

That was quite a bad idea because I couldn’t fight an army on my own at least I thought so. Perhaps it was possible but it would still be better if there were other people around so that if something went wrong I would have backup. Should I rush in to try to save the people, maybe but I wasn’t out here to save everyone nor was that possible.

I guess the best solution would be to go to the village and inform them. If they didn’t already know about this, they did have good scouts, but I believed their capabilities are hampered quite a lot because of the snow.

It took me a few hours even with my movement skill to get close to the village, but I decided to use this as a training moment. I had to wait and hide a long way off using my rabbit cloak and my ability. I stayed and observed until Goose could be my eyes in the skies when I tried to sneak in.

The village was guarded on all sides and the guards were quite vigilant. They were using this as a training opportunity. But they couldn't be observing every moment and that meant there were gaps to be used.

Using my training in stealth and every ability that might help I started to make my way towards the wall that was towards the back end of the village closer to the village hall. Even here the snow was quite thick, and I think I could have used it to just dig myself close enough but I didn’t want to do it that way.

So, as I controlled my weight, I quickly moved through the waves of snow that the wind had created. There were obvious blind spots because of that but once I had to make myself weigh more so I could drop into the snow to stay hidden. Climbing out was a pain in the ass but again making myself weigh less helped immensely with that.

The hardest part was getting to and over the walls that were now quite close. I had to wait about half an hour for a moment that gave me enough free time to get over the wall without anyone noticing.

I pushed off as quickly as possible using my movement skill to get close to the wall then lowering my weight as much as possible I jumped but the gravity still worked like I was at my normal weight. This still helped give me the leverage to pull myself up with the slightest of ridges that were on the wooden wall.

With three quick pulls, I was at the top of the wall and quickly launched myself between two houses before anyone could see me. I needed to roll to break my fall so I could quickly get up and move away from the wall as if nothing had happened I thanked my sound isolation ability for keeping my armours noise from notifying everyone.

When I was a few steps away from the village square I looked around and saw that no one had noticed me. The guards were still in their regular routine. This brought a happy smile to my face as I proceeded towards the village hall to give the news to Falyr.

Hopefully, I will be able to hear him chew his people out for not noticing me enter using my supernatural senses. I had seen him angry once before when some of the youths fucked up in the dungeon and almost got one of their party members killed. The situation was serious but the dude's ability to get his point across using extremely colourful language was quite fun.

----

Rich made it to Falyr's office quite quickly and knocked on it fairly heavily to announce his presence. Inside the office, Falyr was quite startled as he had not expected anyone, and no one would knock like that if there was an emergency.

“Come in,” said Falyr in a strong and clear voice but he still didn’t understand who it might be. When Rich walked in with his stupid grin Falyr almost cracked the pen in his hand. He had just lost a bet with Rich, and he did not like it. Why in the hell wasn’t I informed were they all sleeping was the first thought that came to Falyr's mind.

“Good day Falyr. I’m here to bring some unfortunate news,” said Rich in a serious tone as the smile vanished from his face. To that Falyr put his thought aside and started to listen. After Rich told all he knew, Falyr was quite disturbed. Quick calculations started to run through his mind but nothing good came from them. He didn't have enough information.

He exchanged a few quick forced pleasantries and money was exchanged before he made it quite clear that he had quite a lot to do, and Rich should find another place to be. Rich was not insulted by that, and he was actually waiting for an excuse to go. But he did not go too far away because he really wanted to know what happened next. It didn't take long for people to rush out of the village hall and more people to rush back in.

To Rich’s delight, Falyr didn't start with the problem he brought but started to chew up everyone because somehow Rich had gotten into the village without him knowing and when he learned that no one had any idea that Rich had gotten in the colourful language got even better.

After a bit, the tone changed as they started discussing the problem he brought. Soon scouts were sent out to try to assess how big of a problem this really was.

After that Rich visited the inn to get a nice warm meal and spend some time playing gambling games that he was now starting to win more than he lost. After that, he went back to his training and went to explore and scout further into the grasslands away from the struggling people and the undead that were following them.