Homesteading in a fantasy world

I was in my office finishing up some paperwork when I could finally see that the sun was slowly rising. In about a month, it will be the winter solstice. It wouldn't be long after that before I have been on this world for another year.

The last month and a half has been really busy, but as I looked at my achievement page, it has also been really rewarding. A lot of my abilities and skill levels have gone up, and more importantly, I've gained two class levels in my Homesteading and Archer classes.

Slowly, I was getting ever closer to the level 80 milestone. I was kinda excited to see what would happen and what classes would be offered, if any.

When I finished reading the last document, I was able to stamp it by infusing some of my energy into the stamp so it would leave my energy signature as well. It was a recent change; before this, we had to sign everything with ink. This change has made my life so much easier.

I started to put on the armor, which was a little troublesome, but I had designed it so I could do this without anyone’s help. If I were to make full plate armor, there would always be a need for someone to help me put it on.

When finally, every piece was on, I pulled out my sword from my tattoo storage as well. Infusing every item with a bit of energy. Made them immediately respond back. Activating all the runes and enchantments.

With them activated, the next thing to activate was the set. The Eager Explorer was the name of the set I came up with. The enchantments and runes were simple ones, but they were by choice. This way, they wouldn't limit my ability throughput and energy control with my abilities. There was still a small dip in those aspects, but the benefits outweighed the negatives.

In the main 3 stats, I was now gaining a boost of 1200 to 1500. Strength was getting 1500, and both Dexterity and Vitality were getting 1200. Constitution was at a healthy boost of 1000. An 800 boost for Endurance. With 300 to Perception and Wisdom.

All of the items were more durable thanks to one of the enchantments. Only one of the items and all of the accessories wasn’t enhanced. It was my sword, which, fortunately, accepted being a part of this set.

It took me a moment to get past the lightheaded feeling I got from the boosted stats. After that, I picked up the backpack, which was full of stuff to sell in the markets of Connection, and of course, the needed tools so we need to start building a proper compound in Connection.

When I reached the portal station, I was surprised to find that I was the last one here. The other eight members were already waiting, with similar packs like mine, although theirs were a lot smaller in volume. We only chatted for a little bit before the portal mage came. "Are you all ready?" He asked, and I gave him my firm nod.

Promptly, he moved to activate the portal with the correct coordinates to the Connection portal. After the portal came to life, we stepped through it to find ourselves in a busy market, as this place never really slept.

"Everyone, you know the order: spread apart and sell everything before the prices start to drop." With those words, we all split apart to sell mostly food items that were highly prized here, but also a few other more difficult-to-get resources that would cost a lot to bring here otherwise.

The morning passed quickly, and about four hours later, I was the last to reach our rundown compound. The reason was quite simple: I had the most to sell. When I made it inside, everybody was bitching about what a shit place this was. "OK, enough messing about. I see that everyone's back. How much did we make?"

There was a moment of silence before Keldric the assassin walked up and handed me a small coin bag. "I went and exchanged the cores into small Mythryl coins. We got four small ones. With a bunch of cores left."

"That's good news. I myself got about one and a half small Mythryl coins." I pulled out the large bag full of cores and put the small bag I got into it, then handed it back to Keldric.

"This will cover the current operating expenses. I want half of you to always stay here while the rest go out to do errands or missions. It would be best if you went on missions with four people; otherwise, it might be too dangerous."

"If I remember correctly, there's a more secure-looking room in the basement. Get all the valuable things in there and make sure it's guarded. I know it's a lot of restrictions and being alert, but we will hopefully be getting new members soon enough.”

“Until then, we must endure. Goose should be getting here in an hour or two, after which I will leave for Breach. After we put all the things from my backpack into the secure room, I will be leaving to browse the market."

Everyone immediately got up and started preparing so they could follow my orders. After I got most of my backpack emptied, I went into the market to see if I could find something to spark my curiosity and hopefully help me figure out how to better move forward.

We needed to somehow get a lot of materials, and I was not really looking forward to buying all of it. If I did, I would need to constantly quest in Breach so I could afford everything.

Goose was only about 15 minutes away when I finally found something interesting. It was a large warehouse shop that sold transport wagons. When I entered, I found the place to be more lively than I expected. This place kind of reminded me of a car dealership, with the best wagons in front and even descriptions of their capabilities.

The closest one's description said that it was a medium-sized wagon with small space enhancement, high defensive enhancements, and high weight reduction enhancements. Almost immediately, a salesperson walked close to me, and I asked him to explain the differences.

“This is a medium wagon. It's your standard three and a half meters in width, two meters tall and six meters long. A small space enhancement means it's between two and three times larger on the inside.”

“High defensive enchantments mean that it could handle rank two beast attacks for about 10 minutes before they could breach the defense and get inside. High weight reduction means that anything put inside weighs about 80% less. This makes traversing the treacherous wilderness a lot more manageable with a heavy load.

The salesperson continued to give the sales pitch of the century, but I wasn’t going to be able to afford it because it was listed for 235 large mithril coins. That was way out of my price range, but I could now see how others operated. They probably used these types of wagons as mobile command and defensive centers, moving around the wilderness collecting valuable resources and then heading back.

"Thank you for your time, but I would like to look around a bit more," I said to the salesman who had finally stopped talking. He gave me a forced smile, but I commended him for his efforts. There were large wagons and even smaller ones with different levels of defensive and other enhancements.

Some of them even had places you could open so you could fire out from the wagon. The further back I went, the more the prices dropped, until some of the ones that had obviously seen battle before were only worth medium mithril coins.

The original salesman who had come to talk to me had stopped following me when I passed about the halfway mark into the warehouse. Now an older-looking salesperson who had obviously seen better days was the one to approach me. "Anything catch your eye?" he asked in a genuinely curious tone. It looked like he wasn't too worried about making a sale.

As he asked me that and I turned to face him, I did see an interesting and possibly the biggest wagon I had seen. It was also covered in a thick layer of dust. "Tell me about that one," I said while pointing at it.

He gave a hearty laugh. "This one has been sitting here for quite a while. Its defensive and space enhancements are one of the better ones in here. The problem is that it barely has any weight reduction. A long time ago, it was a special order for a Beastmaster who had four woolly rhinoceroses that would pull that behemoth.”

“It's also priced quite low at 10 medium mithril coins. In all honesty, it was the price we purchased it at, but it has been tested and taken up valuable space for so long that we're just trying to get rid of it. But even then, ten medium mithril coins is a bit too much money to just throw this piece of history away."

Goose had already waited for me outside the city for 30 minutes before I joined him. "Sorry for the wait, but I had to do some tests on an interesting wagon. You might get your stay in the wilderness sooner than we expected. It all depends on if Francis can handle that much weight."

Goose looked at me with the face I knew meant he didn’t understand what I meant. "Not to worry, I will explain it to you on the way. Let's go head to the Breach and let's also see about that trespasser who has been squatting in our building for the past three weeks."