Homesteading in a fantasy world

The next day I woke up in a pleasant mood. I was still getting a huge endorphin rush from the finished secret room. For the entire breakfast, all I could think about was if there was any other place where I could make a similar thing.

Unfortunately, there wasn’t anywhere currently that fit that description. So, I finally ended my daydreaming and took a look at my achievement page more specifically all the new abilities I have gotten.

I think I need to find a way to increase my elemental armour tolerance and heat tolerance. With any luck, both can be trained when I start smithing some more, but I do not know how effective this training could be.

I got a lot of abilities that only work in combat like call of the ancestors, unit boost, and myriad units. I do not want to wait for another big battle so I think it’s time to go to the dungeon but this time bringing my apprentices with me so I could test out everything.

But before that, I should really test out this energy compatibility and energy hardening and see what they actually do. Elemental access is still something that I am unsure of. It feels like I am missing something to truly use it but what I have no idea.

My stealth is also close to a tier up but it's not there yet. Because it’s a Friday my apprentices are going to the dungeon which gives me some free time to work on the energy side of things.

But before that, I went out and tested out flying slash. It worked beautifully it was fast to activate and moved only a bit slower than an arrow. Sending wide slashes moving away from myself was amazing. The ability did have a limit and after about 50m it started to disperse and lose speed and soon after it disappeared.

While still outside I activate energy zone, but this ability drains my reserves fast. I didn’t want to mess around too much but when active I felt I had control over everything energy based inside the zone. This ability will need a lot more training and testing to truly understand what it's capable of.

Then I start testing energy compatibility. Activating it did literally nothing. I didn't have any other option but to concentrate on the ability to see if there was any information available. It sort of gave me the feeling that it was not about me but something else.

That still wasn’t that clear but there was an obvious way to test that. I picked up my sword and flooded it with energy while using energy compatibility and to my surprise, it did do something. My energy was flowing better now through the sword and after a few more tests I found that using this ability makes using my energy on any object a lot smoother and that meant I will damage that item less when I channel more energy into it than the item can handle.

During this little testing session, one thing came to my mind. Calling Goose back down from his flight I touched him and tried to give some of my energy to him. While I need to concentrate a lot, I was able to change my energy to match his but I needed to be careful as my energy was a lot more potent than his. But this gave interesting opportunities not right now but possibly this might be extremely useful in the future.

Next came energy hardening and it did exactly what it says. It makes my energy harder. It doesn’t help that much when I am forming something out of energy but free energy that moves around in my body is now a lot harder.

This means outside forces will have a harder time affecting it and yes that also meant mana although this still wasn't the perfect solution. But the ability was just at level one, and I had great hopes for its future. Still, this wouldn’t be the final solution I need because mana also gets more potent the longer a mage wields it.

It will still take a few days before we can run the dungeon, so I need to think about things to do during the next few days. I could start working on my smithing, but elemental access is something that’s been annoying me for quite a while.

The ability itself doesn’t give any useful information, just some basic understanding on how to control elements, but nothing I have tried has worked. I tried to use my true nature connection to find out this information but even after half a day I didn’t get any information so perhaps it's time to try again and if needed meditate for days to get the answer.

I leave a note and walk to the bridge. Even here everything was covered in thick snow but the tower was still above it and clear of snow thanks to me cleaning it periodically. I made myself comfortable on top of it and started to meditate.

I could feel the time passing but it was at the back of my head. Everything felt fuzzy like it always does when I was meditating like this. Eventually, everything cleared up and I opened my eyes. The sun was rising meaning at least one day had passed but thinking more about it I came to a startling conclusion that almost three days had passed, and it was now Monday.

I could feel a little bit of hunger but other than that I felt great. It was still weird to do superhuman things like this and currently, this feeling was quite strong. Thinking about the answer I got I could only let out a heavy breath.

I had learned from the teachings from the village that sometimes you might get abilities that you could not use but I never thought this might happen to me. Elemental access is an incredibly powerful ability unfortunately it’s something that I will never get to use. Well never say never but it would be quite hard to get something into my body that isn’t there currently. Perhaps a trait might help but that's just hoping for luck.

Elemental access unlocks access related to using energy form of energy magic, but you need aptitude in a certain kind of element to be able to manipulate elements and as it turns out my body has big zeros for every element.

This is extremely unusual but not unheard of so, unfortunately, I just got unlucky with this one. All I could do is shake my head. Ever since I heard about elemental magic an image of me using elements like an avatar came to my mind, but I guess those images will just need to be inside my head.

It’s still disappointing but I tried to shake off this feeling as I walked to the farmhouse to get some breakfast and to talk to my apprentices to hopefully take them into the dungeon and test my commander's ability. Why I hadn’t done this before I have no idea. For some reason, I thought I would need to command a larger force and be in the battle but I was able to activate it for myself meaning any number of people perhaps even animals could be used to make this ability work.

They were quite excited about this opportunity. The plan made everyone went to gear up. When I got my armour on I almost slapped my head with my hand. “How could I be so stupid?” I tried to activate my commander ability and it worked. There was no need for me to be in a battle to activate it I just needed the intent that we were going into battle to make it work. So, I started to test it as we were walking towards the dungeon.

Like the last time when I activated it, it sort of zoomed out my vision to a bird's eye view. Unit 1 was displayed over my head but this time I wasn’t alone in that unit my apprentices were with me as well. I haven’t had time to think about it the last time as I only activated it just before combat, but this looked a lot like an RTS. I could even rename my unit and call them whatever I wanted.

Splitting myself off from my apprentices a new unit tab was added over them. Holy fuck this might be so useful. I then activated myriad units, and this gave me more options to add to the current unit. I could now make myself a commander unit. Unfortunately, this didn’t seem to do anything, but I refused to think that this is just flavouring. I picked the unit where my apprentices are and marked them as infantry. That gave me an extra option to pick a sergeant and I gave that to Arthur.

Nothing changed for a moment but then I noticed some green arrows next to the unit tab. Concentrating on that I saw their constitution stat being boosted by two, their movement speed by 5% and their toughness by 10%. Holy fucking shit this is awesome.

Then I remembered my unit boost ability and activated it. Instantly all the stats went up and even more, boosts were added. I looked towards them and saw them all looking at me with weird expressions.

I quickly explain to them what was going on and after a few clarifying questions they got really excited about this development. Even before going into the dungeon, we did a lot more testing. I was now able to mentally communicate with my sergeant if he was close enough. He was able to do the same to his troops although his range was a lot shorter than mine. I suspect the range was affected by both stats and how high up in the command structure you were currently listed as.

I could see a lot of influence from modern army command structure but there was also a lot from the earlier periods and even some specialities that I’m guessing are more from this world. Well, this was extremely useful to give out boosts and to make a correct and effective command structure, but it wasn't a complete game changer. It was still extremely useful. I think some influence from my love of strategy gaming bled into this ability which I think is quite a good thing overall.

After hours of messing around with it, we finally went into the dungeon. I stayed out of the fight for most of the time, but my apprentices expressed extreme pleasure in how easy it was to use teamwork with mind communication and the boost were also quite good.

When we were in the 2nd-floor boss room, I finally got to fight and my apprentices were the ones to watch. Before the fight even began, I tried to use the call of the ancestors to aid me in this battle.

From me, several golden ghosts detached. Perhaps ghost is a wrong word as they were completely formed humanoids. Some had a shield and a sword while some had only a two-handed sword. One even had a bow.

There were seven of them currently and they rushed the bunnies at my command. While they look ghostlike, they were solid. Unfortunately, they didn't seem to be too strong every one of them was weaker than my apprentices currently were but I’m guessing upgrading this ability will increase their strength and using higher-tier energy will help that a lot as well.

Still, their teamwork was excellent, and they were able to clear the boss room all by themselves. When the fight finished they stayed for a little bit but then started to turn into mist and return to my body. They slowly merged with me leaving no trace of them in only a few minutes.

We were all quite dumbstruck, but my apprentices were a bit more than me. I had to answer a barrage of questions about what just happened. I started to think about the skill while my apprentices started to push into the third floor.

I wondered if I had more control over the ghosts that I was able to bring out. I guess those questions will be needed to answer at a later date because I would need to wait until tomorrow before I can use this ability again.

This might get me out of some tough situations and perhaps make dungeon runs a lot faster. Not having to chase around all the rabbits will be nice. I’m guessing if I keep pumping my energy into them, I could keep them out for longer but if I’m not in combat they will soon disappear. I still feel I have a lot to learn about this ability and currently I’m just scraping the surface of it.

I had to help them finish the third floor as they were unable to clear it on their own but when we got out, we remembered that today was Monday, and we were supposed to be in the village today. It was already past lunch and quite close to evening, so we were hopelessly late.

We were so caught up on my ability and then running the dungeon that we completely forgot about today’s visit to the village. What relaxed us was that nowadays all we did was combat training, so we didn't miss anything that important. It was still a mistake and we needed to be a lot more mindful in the future.