Homesteading in a fantasy world

Goose and I were flying quite high. Underneath us were the grasslands that extended from my land all the way to the middle ring. It occupied the upper center of this continent, filled with smaller wildlife, mainly rabbits of all kinds. The closer you got to the center of the continent, the more variety and stronger animals appeared.

This kind of trip should have taken me months, well, perhaps about a month since I’ve gotten a lot stronger since my last visit to a raid dungeon. Still, it kind of broke my brain every so often, just thinking about how large this singular continent was.

Goose seemed to also be absorbing all the new sights like I was. “One day we must fly over all continents. I think it would be a wonderful trip,” Goose immediately agreed.

Like this, we continued to soar past the landscape, heading to our destination. Goose was surprisingly accurate, but we still had to double back so we could locate the city we were searching for.

This one was called Supply. Whoever came up with the names wasn't really that imaginative or had a weird sense of humor. Like Connection, it supplied three different forts but was a little bit smaller, simply because it was newer.

This time, however, I knew the protocols better. We landed well away from the city, on one of the roads that didn't lead to a Fort but instead towards a more normal civilization.

“You can fly around and see if you can find anything interesting. Just remember to keep practicing your wind camouflage. This is a good place to practice, as there shouldn't be anyone here who could hurt you, but people around here would still be strong enough to potentially see through your camouflage.”

When I was done talking, Goose immediately took off, and I soon lost sight of him. He was getting really good at manipulating air and somehow found a way to manipulate the air in a way that helped keep him hidden even while flying.

He had gotten too annoyed at his prey running away as soon as they spotted him and making him fail many hunts. Now, hunting with him is ridiculously easy.

From my backpack, I pulled out a heavy cloak that would help keep me hidden. While using my company name would help in many ways, it would also hinder me in others.

While there was no law against companies expanding into other cities or even forts, the companies located in those places certainly didn't like someone else trying to get a piece of their pie, so to say.

Getting into the city wasn't the problem, although the guards did look at me a bit weirdly as I didn’t have any visible weapons on me, unlike almost everyone else.

It didn't take me long to find the place where I could register myself for the raid dungeon. Since this raid dungeon appeared on a Fort land, the companies of that Fort were the ones in charge, but even with so much manpower, they still needed to open spots for others who could pay.

There were a lot of people outside the building, and many were advertising their group as they wanted to join others so they could purchase a spot and try their luck in making their money back while also gaining some more permanent benefits.

I didn’t bother with them and headed straight into the building. As I opened the door, there seemed to still be a pretty long line of people waiting to be addressed by the person behind the table.

Currently, there was arguing coming from that table. "If you are not willing to pay the listed price, please leave the line immediately." "What list price? This is extortion! No one is going to pay your outrageous sum. I demand you..."

The person behind the table snapped her fingers, and immediately two people materialized beside the angry customer, who immediately shut up. From this angle, I couldn’t see his face, but I was pretty sure it was bone white at this point.

He didn't make a sound as they escorted him out. The line moved pretty fast, people looking down at the large book on the table, some made disappointed sounds, others angry huffs. Only two placed coins on top of the book, and soon after, it was my turn.

Finally, I was able to look down to see the price, and even my eyes widened. One medium mithril coin and eight small mithril coins. That was a ridiculous sum, and from my knowledge of the raid dungeon, there was no way to even make half on a single run.

"Is this only for a single run?" I asked her. "Yes, of course, only for a single run. If you are too poor, then move along," that made me raise my eyebrow.

"You know that you are overvaluing this raid dungeon by quite a bit. Most likely because the teams you currently have clearing it are a lot stronger than the people of this city. I would guess that most here would only be able to clear 5 waves in four hours."

She was halfway towards starting her normal response when she clapped her mouth shut. I pulled out the required coins and placed them on top of the book. I then marked an empty spot for tomorrow night and left.

When I got outside, the crowd had thinned out quite a lot. Most likely, people were off to do some quests to get more coin. Most probably thought that they would lower the price eventually, but they probably needed some extra coins too, to assure that they could run the dungeon.

Of course, every company would like to monopolize a raid dungeon, but by law, they were required to give up some spots to others. You could only get the best rewards for the first clear; afterwards, it became harder and harder to get anything useful besides monster cores.

Now, I had some investigations to do and hopefully find a clue about whoever built the wagon we had back at the connection.

What I found was a large complex that was quite active. It seems that the business was booming as I saw hundreds of workers moving around, bringing materials to the different buildings that kinda looked like large garages.

They also seemed to have a building where they displayed their wagons. I walked into it, but after looking at the garages, I was a little bit disappointed.

This was because of the newer design. They were smaller on the inside but instead offered a lot more weight reduction. Their defense also seemed quite good but wasn’t on the level our wagon was. I was beginning to doubt that this was not the place I was looking for, but the company symbol was nearly identical.

There were many other people here besides me, and it didn’t take long for me to be addressed. When I asked about custom orders, I was quickly led to the second floor, where another attendant brought out a few catalogues with different kinds of features and designs. There were three catalogues: one looked quite new, another a little worn, and the last looked pretty old.

The further back I went, the more the wagons started to resemble what I was looking for, but not even the oldest designs were anywhere close to what I was looking for. "Is there something wrong?" the person assigned to me asked.

"No, nothing’s wrong. I just think I’m a bit over my head. There are just too many options, and I’m a little bit torn between all of these amazing enchantments and my guild's Beastmaster."

"Not to worry, that’s why I’m here. But what's wrong with the enchantments? Does your Beastmaster not like some of them?" Laughing briefly, I nodded to his question.

"Yeah, I think so. When I left to come here, he told me to get a large wagon and to make sure he could use this wagon to train his beasts even more. The problem is he has six rank two Woolly rhinoceroses. I frankly think that there is no wagon in this catalogue that they would find even a bit difficult to pull."

When I looked up, I saw huge eyes looking at me. Eventually, he found his voice once again. "I can see the problem. Can I see the old catalogue for a moment, please?" I handed it to him, and he quickly leafed through it and winced when he made it to the end.

"This is a bit unfortunate, but I truly think that there’s nothing we can offer you that would satisfy your particular needs. We are sorry to have wasted your time."

"No, no, it's no problem. Perhaps we should get multiple wagons and lash them together, but we don't have the capital for that, or the people who could make use of so many wagons. It is I who is sorry for wasting your time."

I kind of hoped that he would point me in the right direction, but it didn’t seem that I would get lucky. Most likely, the company that made my wagon was bought out by this one, but apparently, they didn’t get all the designs.

When we reached the staircase, I expected him to stay on the second floor, but to my surprise, he followed me down and then started to speak in a low voice. "7th warehouse on 5th St," and as soon as he finished saying that, he turned around and went back up.

Well, I guess I was wrong; it did work out. When I reached 5th St, the city had turned a lot more unkempt. The 7th warehouse was not a large building, but there still seemed to be some life inside.

Knocking on the small door beside the large one didn’t seem to have any results. Controlling my strength carefully, I knocked a bit harder. Soon after the door cracked open slightly.

"We will get you the coin, wait, you aren’t Slay. Who are you?" said a girl who must have been 10 years old at the most. And what kind of a name is Slay? "I am someone who wants to commission a wagon. I was led to believe that this particular location would be able to make the kind of wagon I need."

Her eyes immediately started to shine. She swung the door open and quickly beckoned me in. I followed her into a quite cozy but also messy workshop that was dominated by quite a large wagon.

"Father’s currently working inside, but he's not good with the business side anyway, so if you would follow me into the office, I could write down what you need and tell you if daddy could make it or not."

This so-called office was nothing more than a clear corner with a table and two chairs. The girl sat across from me and took out a large book that was obviously missing three-fourths of its pages, and from the looks of it, they had been ripped out.

Before she could open the book, I pulled out a drawing of my wagon and showed it to her. The drawing also had the features of the wagon listed on the side. "I’m looking for something like this."

Immediately her eyes got wide, and a large smile appeared on her face. "That's the model 5e. My great-grandfather worked on those. He, unfortunately, was only able to build five of them. Look, they look almost identical," she said while quickly opening the book exactly to the right page to show almost a replica of my wagon.

On the page next to the design of the model 5e, there was also a list of materials and an approximate cost. It looked like 10 medium mithril coins was a steal, as just the cost of the material seemed to be around 43 medium mithril coins.

"Oops, I wasn’t supposed to show that page to the customer," her smiling face immediately changed into a sad one. "It happens to the best of us.”

“Now, how about we chat for a while and wait for your father to get done with his current work? I would be interested to know why your company isn’t the same as the one who made this wagon," I said while pointing at the company symbol that was scratched off the book’s cover.