Homesteading in a fantasy world

It had only been a day since my talk with David, and while being in my office in the capital, I was able to level up my heroic commander class by doing some important paperwork for the military.

It was interesting how classes gained experience. For a true crafter, they could not gain experience from fighting or killing creatures, the same way combat classes could only gain experience by fighting.

That was why dual classes, as they called them, were so sought after. All of my classes were dual classes, although my heroic commander had the least amount of ways to gain experience. Luckily, things to do with the military and training people under me counted towards experience gain.

It also seems that I have finally obtained enough stat points in my presence stat to finally gain a trait. Compression of aura—an interesting name for my new trait. I was quite familiar with how auras resonated out; I also knew that I could pull it back, making others who could sense such things unable to detect me from afar.

Now, however, it seems that I can pull it back, but by doing so, I am making the effect stronger near me. I do not think it would help hide me better, but it certainly had an interesting effect, and it seems like people who normally can't sense auras would now be able to.

Immediately, I thought about a few novels I’ve read back on Earth where experts were able to just kill weaker people by projecting their aura. I wonder if I could do that.

After thinking about it I didn’t think so. Even if I were to concentrate it even more because of what my aura is it won’t kill. While it projects my strength, it was mostly a positive feeling people got around me and wasn't meant for dominating.

Well, it was a nice addition, but I still needed to get everything done. I remember the famous saying that the only two things in life that were guaranteed were death and taxes. Perhaps it would be appropriate to add paperwork to that list as well.

It was quite a busy time, but even then, it only took five more days until we had a meeting about my potential evaluation ability and what it could provide us. It didn't take long for everyone to see the benefit. So, I was tasked with examining all children from ages 6 and up and recording their potential.

Fortunately, I was able to convince everyone that I needed a decent-sized team to deal with all the paperwork. While out of principle I didn’t want to do paperwork, I actually didn’t have the time to put too much effort into this.

We began in the capital. There were long lines of children waiting for me to evaluate them. It took a lot of energy to do this, but I had plenty. I have kept advancing in my adventurer class. It has reached level 103.

There have not been any good skill or ability choices. That meant I took the stat point option every time. I now had 3603 energy storage stat points. It was a massive number and I absolutely loved it.

Another positive about this project was that I was going to be able to go and visit every outpost, village, and town that was owned by the UF.

Everything started out normal, but the list of children I needed to check was quite long, even just in the capital. It didn't take long for us to see a curious pattern.

Basically, every child under the age of 9 only had 1 class slot, and the power balls they had were a lot smaller. We had only been doing this for an hour and a half, but there was already a pattern emerging.

It became quite clear that children who hadn’t gotten access to their achievement page, were able to increase their potential. Now, we didn't know how this worked: Was it a natural process something that couldn't be changed, or could a person influence their potential? It would take a lot of time and more work for us to figure all of this out.

Even without a meeting, the people around me all agreed that things needed to change in the future, but right now, we could just continue how we were planning to do everything.

Only about 12 children later, after we began again, I got an even bigger surprise. My heroic commander class levelled up once again. I was completely dumbstruck by this.

We continued, and a few hours later, I got another level up for my Heroic Commander. What was interesting was that my first elder homesteader wasn’t getting any experience for this, or if it was, it was little.

I knew that I got experience for my Heroic Commander when I made a training plan that was meant for the military. Was this something similar? Was I evaluating potential recruits and because of this ability, I was able to do it so well that I was gaining so much experience?

Whatever the case might be, I just found a way to power-level one of my classes. Now, I was even more excited about this project.

We continued to examine everyone, and then Goose took me and two others to different outposts, villages, and towns where we continued our task. We had nearly finished when it finally happened: I reached level 80 of heroic commander.

Once again, it seems that I got more stat points than the normal level-up. The 65 free points were awesome. The perk, however, Presence of a Hero, I was unimpressed by. I did not like the word hero or even its concept.

I did, however, feel how it melded with my aura, giving it a boost but actually not changing it by much. I was not amused by that fact. More excitedly, however, while once again holding my fingers crossed, I looked to see if I could upgrade this class as well.

Legendary field marshal: You represent the pinnacle of military strategy, leadership, and combat prowess. This class lifts all restrictions on grandmaster fighting skills, grandmaster army skills, grandmaster armour skills and grandmaster leadership skills. This class gives the trait field mastery and the ability field control. This class gives a chance to upgrade a skill or ability into a more specialized one.

The class's skill description was quite amazing. Now, it also had flavor text, and it seems like I can finally reach the grandmaster rank with some skills. The grandmaster rank was actually a bit of a fake rank. Up until that point, the system would give you information so it could help you advance your skill. The Master rank, however, that comes after the Expert rank, is the end.

Whenever you reach a grandmaster in any skill, it just displays that you have reached the maximum level in that skill, and the only way you can improve is by doing everything yourself.

More importantly, it means that you can no longer gain any new abilities from that skill. I was nowhere close to getting to that point, and in all honesty, most of my skills were low for my current overall rank.

Nevertheless, I picked the class and felt the power it came with.

Level up Legendary field marshal

Legendary field marshal now level 1

strength +40

dexterity +15

vitality +25

constitution +22

presence +16

The new trait and ability I would need to test a little later, but the amount of stat points was impressive. After adding them up, it seemed that I gained another legendary rank-five class.

That was more than I expected. As we continued examining the children, one thing changed, however. I was now gaining a lot less experience than I was with my other class.

All I could do was let out a disappointed sigh. I guess easy come, easy go, but at least I was able to upgrade my class a lot sooner than I expected.

Now there was only one class left, which had been trailing behind others for quite a while now. It looks like I would need to spend more time making some bows. It would be nice when I headed to Connection to have all three classes upgraded, of course, if I can even upgrade my renowned true Archer class.