Homesteading in a fantasy world

I had reached as far towards the south as I was willing to go. Unfortunately, I didn’t find anything to fight. I was hoping to find something that could help me level, but the grass sea does seem to be a low-level zone.

I hoped that there would be a place with rabbits that were evolved enough to give me a fight and give enough XP to level. I would have liked to get my heroic soldier and true archer classes to 20 but unfortunately, I might have to fight the undead horde with my current capabilities.

I had been able to level up quite a lot thanks to the constant dungeon delves and the few monster fights. I was especially happy that I got my homesteader class past the milestone.

This milestone gave me a good boost to my stats giving me 3x the amount of stat than a normal level-up would give me. It also gave me 20 free points that I put into energy storage and an ability element access. The unfortunate part was that I was barely able to comprehend this ability. Because of that, I have made no progress in levelling it.

With all my gained class levels I was able to get quite a few traits from my other stat points. For the endurance milestone of 80, I was able to get strength from nature. This gave me a small boost whenever I was in nature which was basically all the time.

What it also did was give me an even better boost when I was on my own land. It was hard to calculate how big of a difference it actually gave towards my fighting abilities. If I had to give a number on how much it helped on my own land, I would guess I’m about 20% to 30% stronger and about 5% if not on my land and surrounded by nature.

For the 40-stat point milestone in presence, I was able to get iron will trait which helps in so many ways. I had not realized how many of my abilities depended on my mental capabilities. Everything to do with energy got better thanks to this. For getting this strong of a trait for a 40 milestone I must have been lucky.

For my perception 80 stat point milestone, I got extreme reaction speed. Which is incredibly useful as I was running into the problem of moving faster than my mind could keep up. It was hard to figure out how much faster I was moving compared to when I came to this world, but I would love it if I could get a side-by-side comparison of myself.

The last trait was in the constitution stat for also getting past 80. This was a bit of a weird one as it was called ironwood skin and immediately when I got it, I had to think of the iron oak tree that I have on my land. Was there a possibility that the tree was somehow able to influence what trait I got?

Putting that aside this trait was amazing simply for one reason, it made my armour enhancement ability get a better hold on my skin. So now when I use armour enhancement, I could make my skin into tough armour.

Speaking of the armour it was now fitting me perfectly. This was an unfortunate situation because I had grown in height too much. If this kept going I needed to make myself new armour every year if not even faster. Hopefully, I will not grow too big.

I am quite certain that the reason why I’m growing even faster is the trait enriched body. It simply doesn't have any patience and wants to get where it is going as fast as possible. Other than that, my training mostly involved upgrading my energy-based skills and abilities but I also got many other skills and abilities to level up these past months. I am most proud of my mind skill which is now up to level 14.

I had done a lot and gotten a lot stronger, especially on my energy side which I seem to have a good instinct for. If I compare myself to others, they all seem clumsy. When I’m teaching them things that came so naturally to me it's hard to understand why they are having so much trouble. Sometimes this even frustrates me.

It took me a while to understand why, simply because I have only felt like this once before in my life. I felt this confusion when I was still young and the war had been going on for only a few months. Back then it was hard to see my friends die to things I could have survived.

“Gosh I was so young back then and so stupid.”

It took a lot longer to finally understand that I was just better at killing than most others. It seems that in this new world there might be another thing I might be better at than most others and that’s everything to do with energy.

I took a last look towards the south and the grass sea that expanded towards there. Currently, it was all covered in snow and it was a magnificent sight. I burned it into my mind so I would always remember this.

I then gave a signal for Goose to turn around, I did the same and started to quickly move back towards my own land as we might have some company in the following few days that might not be so pleasant.

POV Falyr Hrasnel

It took the scouts an entire day to get back. Without enhanced tools to survive and move in this weather, they might have not made it back here earlier than the convoy. However, the convoy was making good time getting here.

I looked at Bert and I was glad that we had the capability of communicating fast. Thanks to that we were able to figure out who the leader of the convoy was. Our scouts figured out quite quickly that there was an aristocrat there. When they gave me the description I quickly penned down the same with every other piece of information that we got. This we sent back to the headquarters for Tom to figure out who we are facing.

The news was bad. At first, we were hopeful as the noble house of Gelld was quite the righteous one. I have even met the patriarch once. From all the rumours he was an extremely honourable man.

Unfortunately, it turned out that he did not survive the plague. Even worse neither did his two elder sons leaving only the youngest alive who by all records was a truly horrible person. It seems that fathers love was blind and no one else spoke up against the boy so he was left alive. This oversight happened because he was third in line and the other two were good apples so no one thought that this person might become a danger in the future.

Usually, the other nobility will clear out the truly bad people that might become owners of land and people. But currently, everyone is more focused on their own survival. I just hope that the oaths are no longer as strong as they used to be, or the boy has messed up so they will have a possibility of breaking them.

The forces that he commands are quite powerful even more than we currently have here and we are not certain if help will arrive from the company before or after they have reached the village so we truly need to be on our best behaviour.

The other problem is the undead that are following. They are quite high-level and have several different kinds amongst the horde. That is quite unnatural for an uncontrolled horde. If there is a controller the scouts could not find them.

This was a big problem because if they were being commanded with even a bit of intelligence our job will be a lot harder. We have gotten some reports not just from our kingdoms area but from all over that a lot more people are getting classes related to the undead. There are even some areas that have been claimed by the undead and their commanders.

In all recorded history this has never happened before. Currently, there simply isn't anyone that can handle the amount of undead in the world, so they have been able to gain a lot of power during the few years that the plague got truly bad.

Our current leading theory is that someone that commanded them give them an order to kill someone most likely the noble brat that's in command and they are just following their last order trying to kill him.

For all our planning we didn’t find a good solution. We just have to hope that the reinforcements can get here faster than the convoy because if we have to deal with the convoy with less strength than them we might be in trouble.

If an altercation happened that led to a fight. Well, that would be quite bad for everyone living in the village, but this is unlikely because they need our strength to help against the undead. But this type of logical thinking might not work simply because of the madman that's commanding them.

I could feel my head starting to ache. This happened every time I thought about the convoy and its leader. Why couldn't he have died instead of his father and why were they so far away from the lands that they used to own?

If they have come all the way from the other side of the neighbouring duchy, how are they still able to move forward? They should all be dead on their feet and how are there still villagers with them that are still alive? Usually, they break in this kind of situation and would run away or try to kill whoever is in command.