Homesteading in a fantasy world

Most of my days were filled with training. Arabella was a decent enough teacher. Because of this, I felt a lot more connected with the bow style of fighting. I wasn’t the only one who was constantly training, but I was one of the few who didn’t venture away from the wagon to fight with different beasts, except if one of our groups ran into trouble.

Most had never gone this deep into the wilderness, so of course, there were times when they were unable to judge a challenge correctly or were ambushed by some of the more sneaky creatures.

Whenever that happened, they needed to signal that they were in trouble and hold on long enough for help to arrive.

There was, however, a punishment if someone did that. Not a truly harsh punishment; we didn't want people not to call for help, but we also didn’t want them to rely on it too much.

One of the punishments was that they needed to eat rations instead of the cooked meals. This was already quite the incentive to quickly learn whether you should fight or retreat. The other type of punishment was doing shit jobs that no one wanted to do, many of them actually involving shit.

When I felt I was good enough with the bow, Goose and I also started to train. We had been doing this before, but now we did it against stronger opponents. Quite often, we would fly to the Fort to take on some quests that were close to the wagon so we could get some proper experience under our belts.

Goose turned out to be quite crucial for the rest of the members as well. Thanks to him, I was able to fly to Connection and complete quests and take on new ones that were near our wagon. We could also resupply if needed, but I also had quite a lot of food in my harvest storage. Thanks to all of this, we could basically stay out in the wilderness for years if we wanted to.

This was only possible thanks to the wagon we got and for Frances and Goose. If we wanted more of these types of wagons, we would first need to find someone who could build them and then have access to more animals that were as useful as Frances and Goose. That was an incredibly tall order, but Arabella had put in some information requests to try to find out who built this wagon.

There was a possibility that whoever built it might still have a business that was open. While right now it would not be too stressing, we figured that the upper limit of this type of expedition would be 200 members.

Otherwise, you simply had too many members who couldn't do anything or needed to go so far away from the wagon that they would need to camp out in the open, which would literally defeat the purpose of the wagon itself.

Frances and Luke were advancing at an incredible pace. Fortunately, we were planning on staying out here for a couple of months. Near the end of it, Frances should reach rank three.

How animals advanced was quite a lot different from how humans did, but one thing was in common: the more driven and passionate you are about doing something, the faster you will advance.

When the snow started to fall, we had pushed deep enough into the wilderness that rank two creatures became commonplace. Everyone was advancing at an incredible pace, and thanks to the skill training they were getting daily, they were only falling behind their class a little bit. Before I noticed, we were well past the harsh winter we got, and it was finally time to head back.

It had been an incredibly productive expedition. We pushed quite deep into the wilderness and towards the mountain range that protected the civilized lands from the high-rank monsters that were beyond it. Thanks to that, we were able to find three metal veins and mine them out completely.

Unfortunately for us, none of them were high-rank metals, but they were heavily imbued regular metals. They were good enough for our needs. During the trip back, I focused on making some weapons and armor for everyone. It would help gain me some skill levels while boosting the combat effectiveness of our members.

Before we got too far back towards Connection, Goose and I took another flight to the Fort, but this time to pay our tax in metal. You couldn't just go out and collect materials; you also needed to pay a portion of them to Breach or Connection.

Metals like this would be worth a lot more in terms of contribution in Breach, and since Goose could handle a lot more weight, it was the obvious place to take them.

I hadn’t seen the Fort leader since I first reported to him. He even seemed quite surprised to find me still alive and paying a lot of tax to him. He still seemed his gruff self, although I did see a spark in his eyes that I hadn’t seen before. I wondered what that was about, but when I was leaving after paying my taxes, I noticed a person I knew from somewhere.

My mood instantly soured when I recognized him. It was the same person I had seen in the company orientation and the same one who tried to read my mind. It seems like he was assigned to this Fort as well. He and the group he was surrounded by were heading towards the leader's hall. Just before they entered, he looked toward me and gave me a small smirk.

Damn, this was going to be trouble. It had been over a year now since the last troublesome event. It seems like I needed to set the accident calendar back to zero. This was quite bad timing, as we were going to send two teams to the Fort after they got some rest back in Connection. Those two teams seemed quite strong, and I was confident that they could handle quests around the Fort.

Soon, I should have finally been able to take a break from coming to this fort every month to do the quests, but now I don’t think I should leave those company members to deal with whoever that was.

Damn, I had really hoped that I could have a peaceful summer back at the homestead, but I guess I would need to keep a closer eye on the company so they won't get into any trouble.

Back at Connection, we couldn’t sell everything right away and we actually flooded the market a bit just with the taxes we paid. Francis was a complete hero to be able to actually pull so much weight. We were only able to get this much thanks to him getting to rank three.

What was also amazing were the enchantments on the wagon. I actually lost a decent amount of gold coins because I bet that the wagon would get over-encumbered enough that its wheels would sink into the ground. It never happened.

When I was finally done with company business, I headed back to UF as everyone was starting to prepare for the coming spring. Basically, for a month, I need to do paperwork. Once again, I had been away for too long.

If it wasn’t for the national holiday, I think I would have forgotten my birthday. However, the system also had a different way of reminding me. I had almost forgotten I was going to get this achievement.

Achievement gained

Rank three in five years

free points gained +1000

My mouth hung open when I saw the amount of free points. 1000 points meant that I would be a lot closer to achieving rank 5. This was good news, but I would still need a lot more free points. Speaking of that, I once again looked at the report Arabella sent me. One was filled with the current locations of moving dungeons; the other, however, was the single lead we had on whoever built the wagon.

Currently, one of the raid dungeons was located quite close to the city the lead was in. It also wasn't too far away. The city itself was connected to a fort that was located on the eastern side of the outer ring.

It was a bit more towards the south than Breech, but with Goose, it really didn't matter too much. I should be able to get this done and be back for the planting. Before that, I needed to finish up dealing with all this paperwork.