Homesteading in a fantasy world

***

The morning was cold when the first rays of sunshine started to illuminate the sky. In a small corner of the world, there was a wide area where the snow was not even past the knee.

On one side where the snow got thicker was a group of people that had been up all night working on their defences. Their breaths came slowly but were heavy. They made long furrows of frosty breath billow out.

It didn't take them long to notice the motion on the other side as the snow was being disturbed in a large area and soon undead started to emerge. Quickly word spread and as signal sounded out. The few that had been sleeping so they were fresh for the battle were woken up.

Amongst them was Rich Dirt who examined the enemies with his discerning eyes searching for any weakness. Soon he noticed that his battle plans were being executed as the bows that he had brought were being handed out to people who had abilities or skills to use them.

On one side the ballista was being prepared. They hoped that the ballista would be strong enough to help eliminate a large portion of the enemies and even help bring down the big undead if it was needed.

Other than that, horses were also being prepared and knights were currently being armoured up so they could take the fight to the enemy. Keeping them mobile would give them the best advantage possible. To the delight of everyone, it seemed that the fast undead truly were starting to get ahead of the main mass of the undead as they surged forward in loose groups.

Rich was the first to move and get past the defences. He walked a small distance away and got ready to intercept any that survived the archer’s attacks. If the situation got really bad the wizards would take action, but everyone hoped that their power could be kept for the second leg of the fight. Rich looked once more at his new ability and smiled as this ability would make the coming enemies a lot easier to deal with.

He had fooled everyone so well with his portrayal of a horrible noble that his acting skill levelled up from level 2 all the way to the next tier. Unfortunately, he got a few bad choices that he could not pick if he wanted to keep living.

In this world abilities that control the mind were met with open hostility and anyone confirmed of having some would find a knife in their back quite fast. Luckily Rich only had two of those ability options available to pick so he could pick the last one available. The last one although also a sort of mind control, was accepted by society and even looked at favourably by anyone who fights monsters. He was able to get a taunting ability.

It didn't take long as some of the undead were really fast and already made it to bow range. Those were the most dangerous ones as they had high levels. One was even closing in at gold rank but they weren't facing just villagers.

There were multiple people in gold rank against them and even more in silver but still, they were facing a lot of undead, close to 3000. Luckily most of those numbers were just low-level zombies. Still, numbers are a quality all to themselves.

Only one ghoul-type undead was able to get close but no warrior had to unsheathe their weapons as the archers were able to kill all the fast undead. Some of the abilities made the surrounding area light up with different colours and Rich enjoyed the sight the most as he could see a lot more than other people. But he could also see the coil that connected him to every undead out there but he was quite glad of it. It was the same coil that was connected to the now-dead noble.

It didn't take Rich Dirt’s eyes long to figure out why the zombies were following when he got close enough to the noble, but it took him a bit longer to figure out that there was another thread similar to this one yet unsimilar that ended inside the group of villagers.

There was a reason why Rich talked so loudly so everyone could hear what was happening. One of the villagers was the one who commanded the dead. Obviously, his control was quite bad. Most likely he was way over his head with the amount of undead in the horde, but Rich could also understand the hatred that could make someone do this.

There was a possibility that if he exposed the young man, the wizards might think of something and make this fight unneeded. Rich hoped that perhaps in the future that person might become useful and killing of someone for trying to avenge their village and family was not something which Rich looked down upon even if that someone decided to use the undead to do that.

Rich tried not to glance towards the person that he knew was controlling, or at least guiding the undead but he could see the struggle in the young man as he constantly tried to pull apart the horde of undead that naturally wanted to bunch up.

The change to the horde was minuscule but Rich was constantly monitoring to see if something needed to be changed or if an opportunity was to be gained. Now that the sun was shining a bit higher everyone could see clearly and it seemed that the big guy was truly behind the horde although not by as much as everyone had hoped.

By now all the runners were dead and some of the defences were being pulled apart so the forces that needed to go out and fight could leave. When Rich saw that he didn't hesitate and started to walk towards the main group that had the most concentrated amount of undead.

He didn't think that this would be an easy fight, but he was confident in his armour ability and his energy reserves. Still, it wouldn't take long until he will be surrounded but he will also need to retreat every once in a while so that they would get closer to the defensive works. That way the archers and the ballista could do their jobs a lot more effectively.

The only thing Rich was sad about was that his energy cores were empty of high-tier energy meaning one of his trump cards was currently unusable. He did have a small trickle of it but when he got close enough to the horde, he used it all and channelled it into his taunt ability combining that with other abilities. His voice boomed over the battlefield and every undead that wasn’t already focused on him now was and started to rush towards him.

The knights were closest to him. They had already warmed up their horses and were ready to start strafing runs against the horde. They were all impressed by the courage of the man who single-handedly walked towards an army with no sign of fear on him. There was no epic start to the battle just the single zombie that made it close enough for Rich to quickly bisect and kill. And so, it began.

The horde moved slowly forward even when their target was basically amongst them but still, they kept moving forward. There were only a few undead that weren't focusing on Rich but they were quickly either killed by the knight or a horse trampling them to their second death.

Rich was constantly surrounded as his blade whipped around killing anything that got close. Yet the horde was numerous, and he was constantly taking small hits although his armour was completely nullifying any hit that came in contact with him.

The slow retreat took about half an hour before the sound of arrows raining down was added to the battlefield. By that time almost 1/5 of the horde was dead and now their number started to diminish a lot faster, yet they still kept pushing forward.

In the minds of the archers and everyone else that were around the defence was not the horde that was coming but the huge behemoth behind them that was getting closer at an alarming rate that was beyond gold rank.

People started to panic as the horde was getting too close and the looming figure of the big undead was basically breathing down their necks. Yet they still fired as fast as they could. The only thing that comforted their mind was the sound of the ballista firing and taking out big groups of undead every time it did.

But then everything changed when another light joined the battle and the horde stopped moving forward. Everyone was dumbfounded about this new development except for a few individuals who know what this meant.

It was a signal that the wizards and the rest of the foot soldiers were waiting for. Explosions started to happen at one side of the horde killing dozens with every strike. On the other side, different weapons started to cut down every undead that was still focusing on trying to get to Rich.

By this point the horses and the knights were completely spent yet they continued their charge at the back of the horde trying to kill as many as possible. All the combined attacks were effective and a huge portion of the undead died quickly yet they weren’t dying quickly enough.

Rich even though he was fighting in the thickest part of the horde, understood that he needed to do something before the big undead reached them. Even though he was starting to run out of energy he focused and pulled on everything he still had.

He started to push through the remaining horde towards the big undead and gradually he started moving faster and faster. This gave an even better opportunity for everyone else to keep killing. Rich went with the good old tactic of moving fast and striking at the legs of the bigger target.

Still, he was quickly being bogged down by the rest of the undead that were still struggling to swarm him. Everyone fought desperately trying to eliminate as many of the undead as possible and finally there was a signal that everyone was waiting for.

In the next instants a pulse radiated out from the defensive structure and as soon as it hit, the currently moving undead fell down, lifeless. Bert had prepared a spell during the night. Unfortunately, it only worked on a certain number of undead. But the number target he was waiting for was met and the rest of the 1/6 of the living undead were now properly dead. Even the big one fell like a puppet whose strings were cut.

When everyone saw this, they all fell down in exhaustion. The big undead on its own would not have been a problem. But they needed to deal with the weaker undead as well, meaning everyone was out of energy to do any significant damage to it.

The spell Bert made would have been a lot less effective if it was used at the start as it was never meant to handle this amount of undead.

The battle was directed magnificently and no one lost their lives but the biggest gain was gotten by Rich who was also laying in the snow breathing heavily as he started to look at all the notifications he had gotten.