Homesteading in a fantasy world

First elder homesteader: You are the inspiration and the shepherd, the first to guide the others and the first to be an elder for all homesteaders. This class lifts all restrictions on every skill used in homesteading.

Lands authority is upgraded to land keeper. Trait gained aura of Rich Dirt. Ability gained potential evaluation, and voice of an elder. This class gives a chance to upgrade a skill or ability into a more specialized one.

Of course, I was going to choose it. Being 16 years old and already an elder, I mean, that’s got to be some kind of record. It once again upgraded my land connection ability to what seems like a higher version, like it did during the last class upgrade. It also seems to have given me two new abilities, and the flavour text changed a little bit.

The biggest thing, however, was the new trait: Aura of Rich Dirt. How could I get a trait that gives an aura that I already provide if it's named after me? This didn't make any sense to me. Wait, would other people be able to get this trait? I hadn’t heard anything about named traits, although I have heard about named abilities.

Named abilities were named after the people who made or came up with them. They were incredibly rare and incredibly powerful abilities. If the system acknowledged this ability and named it after you, others could get it as well. Did it work the same with traits? I did not appreciate how much weirdness was going on with my traits lately.

Nevertheless, it was time, so I picked the class upgrade and felt how a part of me changed into something new with a lot more potential.

Level up First elder homesteader

First elder homesteader now level 1

strength +22

dexterity +22

vitality +22

endurance +12

empathy +12

intelligence +12

wisdom +20

Immediately, I was bombarded with information. It was coming from the land keeper ability. Now, I was not just getting the current information but also the wants and needs of the land.

It was hard to explain; this was so much different than a person’s need for food. It was like I had a new part of my mind. It was fast, and it seemed to constantly give me information that it deemed important.

It took me hours before I could function normally again, and then it was all broken down once again when a monster appeared near our border.

It wasn’t even anything dangerous, but the land screamed "wrong" and wanted to get rid of it. “Relax!” I sent down the connection I had with the land through this ability. Immediately, my mind calmed down as I was barely getting a trickle of information now.

I continued to meditate on this ability and finally understood what was going on. It was like the land had been mute this entire time, and now, through this ability, it finally had the ability to speak, so it couldn’t stop talking. I took a week where I didn’t do anything else but just listened to the land until it finally started to relax properly.

During this time, Alan also helped me. He was able to connect this ability to my mind palace. He said it would make it safer for my mind, so no one could use the land against me, and it seems that whatever entities the different parts of the land had were now able to better communicate with each other, so they didn’t need me to talk.

This required a redesign of a part of the huge citadel that protected my mind, as now there were meeting rooms where blobs of different colored ideas were able to communicate with each other. It was still really difficult to understand anything, but I could understand some things, like one part of the forest telling it didn't have enough water.

At least now they had a place to communicate their problems without me having to listen to them constantly. Finally, I could continue as I still had other things to test out.

The aura of Rich Dirt was as I suspected, a weird trait. It didn’t seem to do anything. Then it hit me, and I had to slap my forehead. Of course, it wouldn't do anything extra; I already had my aura. Now, I just had it represented on the achievement page.

Next, I tested out the voice of an elder. It basically made everyone listen to my words and truly think about their implications. I had been a little bit worried that it might be a mind-influencing ability, which would be bad, but fortunately, it just made people truly think things through and, while it was at the border of being illegal, it actually wasn't.

Potential evaluation. At first, this ability didn't seem to do anything. That was until I tried it on a kid. It was a young boy, about the age of nine, who walked past me on the street of the capital.

I hadn’t expected anything, so it came as a surprise when I got a brief impression of three and what felt like a decent-sized blue ball next to a smaller white ball.

What the hell was that? I continued to test the ability out. It didn't work on adults but also didn't work on anyone over the age of 12. It did, however, work on everyone under the age of 12, so people who didn’t have access to their achievement page.

Most of the time, I got an impression of two and a decent-sized white ball. The size of the ball was never exactly the same; sometimes, however, there was the blue ball, most of the time really small, and sometimes there was a really colorful ball that had every color of the rainbow represented.

It didn't take a genius to understand what was going on. The ball represented a person’s potential or perhaps compatibility with different resources. The white ball was obviously energy, the blue ball was probably mana, and the colorful ball represented holy power.

It took me a bit longer to understand what the number meant, and while I wasn’t completely certain, I think it means how many class slots would be available when they get access to the achievement page.

This means a lot more work for me. I didn’t have to change my destination, as I was already going to see David. His office was no longer in the city hall; he had his own building. It was next to the library which was a bit smaller than the records hall. I didn’t enter from the front entrance, as that was for people who needed something from the records hall; I, however, needed to visit David.

As I entered and passed the security, I eventually reached a large room that looked like a huge library. The books here were very special and expensive. All of them were connected to the owlbear whose image appeared in front of me.

"Greetings, Rich. I have not seen you in a while." We had bought a lot of upgrades for him, and thanks to his work, we were able to run our entire nation's paperwork through him.

"Good day. It has been a while. Could you show me the way to where David is? And while we walk there, we can catch up?"

He gave me a deep bow and started to lead me deeper into the maze that was this room. It was nice to catch up, but a lot of what he talked about went over my head. While I could understand some economics, the level David and the owlbear were at was beyond me.

When we reached David, he was sitting on the floor surrounded by towers of books. "Good day, David?" My voice seemed to scare him, as two towers of books were knocked over by him turning around too fast.

"Damn it," he said while scrambling to restack the books. "Good day, Rich. What can I do for you today? I’m a bit busy."

"I was able to upgrade my first homesteader class." He immediately stopped moving and slowly looked at me. "What?" I repeated myself, and he only blinked, not understanding.

Then, finally, whatever restart he needed to do ended, as he quickly gathered up two books and then started to practically run deeper into the room. "What are you waiting for? Quickly follow. I will record everything down." His actions made me smile.

We were in his office, which actually looked decently organized. "Well, tell me already, please?" he said while preparing to write everything down. I began with the description of the class.

He whistled when he heard all of it. "That's impressive, but I think I would be a little bit insulted if I were called elder at the age of 16." I then showed him the point gain from the first level.

“Wow, that's so many. That's a ridiculous amount of stat points. You will be gaining 122 stat points at every level. That's like 20 or 30 more than average. Well, congratulations, you have gotten yourself a legendary tier-five class.”

“I wonder how many stat points just an elder homesteader will gain. And I wonder if the abilities and trait would be the same or different. I guess we will just need to wait. I’m guessing George will be the first to upgrade his homesteader class. I guess we will see then.”

We continued to talk for a little while and we set up a future meeting to discuss what we can do with the potential evaluation ability I got, but David was quite busy, so I left to go back home and started to prepare for winter.

Most of the winter I was going to spend in Connection, and we were going to take the wagon out once again. We now had nearly 100 members, and it's about time we had a proper presence in the Fort as well.