Homesteading in a fantasy world

Today the goblins were coming, and I hoped that everything will go well. It will still be awhile before they are here, so after the chores, I used the time to go and trap some rabbits.

I wasn’t there for long, but I still got five rabbits. After butchering them, I didn't smoke them, but left some in the cellar and with the rest made some rabbit stew. A good and big portion that will last awhile.

I was still cooking when they arrived at the bridge, but I didn't go immediately to welcome them. They were going to be using my time, so I was going to drag it out as long as possible.

It took a few hours before the stew was done. During that time, I checked on my fields and everything seemed to be growing excellently.

After eating a belly full of stew, I started to go towards the bridge where an anxious-looking Freya was waiting. She got confused as she noticed me being relaxed while goblins were so close.

“Hey there Freya, yeah these goblins are not enemies, so let’s go greet them and not attack. Let’s have a good meeting.”

As I lower the bridge, I had to hold her back and keep telling that they were not enemies until she finally calmed down completely when the leader and I shook hands.

It was a small greeting that we had, and he was off quickly, leaving me with three goblins, two quite young looking and one older. They know a lot less common than the leader, but enough to start learning.

We had a small introduction between ourselves and I asked them to wait while I went and got ready for my lumbering. They were a bit confused. The older one quickly explained that they thought they were going to sit around a campfire and start learning languages.

They didn’t seem bothered when I explained that I wanted to work cutting down trees while we teach each other. When we were in the forest, I started the proper introductions.

The old one was named Til Tuck and one of the younger ones was named Tul Tuck. Turned out that they were grand father and grandson to each other.

The third one was named Chulgt. I asked why he only had one name and apparently, he was born from the breeders while the other two were conceived by female couplings the normal way. He needed to earn his last name.

My work was a lot slower, but I didn’t mind it that much. I was able to work so much faster with the system than a person with a chainsaw and going at full speed will get me too much wood.

While teaching them common was hard, teaching me goblin was simple. It wasn’t because I am brilliant in languages, quite the opposite it was because the language itself was brilliant. Evidently, it’s called Goubdar.

With all the languages on earth and common here, Goubdar is the simplest in the best ways possible. I was thinking before about how goblins that are stupid could learn a language and speak it so fluently.

As I learned more, I was convinced that the goblins that I have seen and interacted could never have come up with a language so simple yet complex enough to get complex ideas across.

There was another problem, time. It was not going to take too long for me to learn Goubdar to the same level as my common. Fortunately, it will take them a lot longer to get the hang of common.

As I ended my work in the forest, the goblins decided with some urging to use the campsite beyond the bridge halfway to the forest and luckily, they had enough food to keep themselves fed.

Francis didn’t seem to mind them at all and did the work with enjoyment. During the evening, I worked on stacking the lumber and making boards to make the outer shells as well as to separate the lumber.

After dealing with the wood and while I was checking on the cows, I actually got some good news as my animal inspection confirmed two of them were pregnant, great development.

Next evening, instead of sawing the logs into proper length for firewood, I actually wanted to use up all the excess energy, so I started to use piercing cut.

I had to concentrate quite hard and for a lot longer, but I tried to cut through the log with one strike. It took a lot of energy, but I also had a lot to spare thanks to me putting so many stat points into energy storage.

All in all, I think it was a bit faster than sawing them, but I did make another crucial discovery. You could overexert yourself using energy if you use a lot too fast and too quickly.

I think this just needs to be trained out by using more energy, but if I didn’t know about this during battle, sudden weakness would have been unexpected and it might have been fatal.

Since I was learning goblin so much faster, I tried to get as much information as possible and urged them to tell me their folklore and stories. This serves two purposes. One, it actually made the days go by faster and I was entertained. Two, it helped me put the pieces together on how to hopefully help him gain a class that he so desires.

But as the days passed, I started to learn even more importantly about the system. It works on intent. That’s the most important thing about the system. If you do not strive forward for something, you will not get anything from the system or if you do it is subpar at best.

The goblins are a monster race that has limited access to the system, most notably they miss the class features. They still see their stats and they have the evolutions unblocked as every other thinking being that does not have a class.

When they got skills, it was because they were trying to get better at something. Turns out there are goblins that have skills with woodworking, but the system only provides the basic techniques and in rare cases, only basic blueprints for something.

As I got to know the goblins, I learned why they didn’t have goblins that are capable of making bridges. It’s because they didn’t have the time to get to that point.

All goblins either hunted, waged war or gathered food. That was their life, constantly feeding the breeders so there could be more goblins so they could do all three things more and endless cycle. As I try to dig deeper into that dynamic, there didn't seem to be any logical answer to why it was like that.

On the seventh day, the leader showed back up for a day of learning common. I could hold a decent conversation in Goubdar and while I spent that day mostly teaching common, I did ask where he got the idea to get the class.

Apparently, there was an ancient folktale about goblins with classes that rule the forests. He thought it might be possible to get a class, but more importantly, he wanted to protect himself against others with classes.

Totally understandable goal, a class is sort of like a gun. If you don't have one, you’re basically fucked if another one has it and is willing to use it against you.

Their lifespan seems to be about 20 years if they didn’t get any evolutions. If they did, they could live longer depending on what they got. I learn more about evolutions thanks to those conversations.

Apparently, sometimes they even have a choice in what kind of evolution they want. To them, there were 4 sacred ones. Evolutions that made the breeders.

Evolutions that made shamans. Evolutions that made goblins more human like and the final one that seemed to make goblins a bit different to their current form, this granted longer lifespan and a better quality of life.

It came to me as a complete surprise that the older goblin was in his 40s and still quite spry. It was thanks to him taking the evolution that give more life span and he had a few skills quite high up and apparently his leatherworking should break the threshold soon getting him an ability.

By the end of the second week, I was starting to put together an actual plan to help them. I could see some history that I could piece together but even if I wasn’t correct, it will still help them move forward and hopefully become quite good trading partner in the future and help keep the forest beyond my lands clear of too many monsters and evolved beasts.

During that time, Freya was coming with us into the forest less often and I needed to hunt for her. I think she will go into labour soon.

By the third week I was just teaching common, I didn’t have much more to learn about the Goubdar language and they have run dry of stories to tell unless I wanted to hear the 100 story of how some goblin commander was able to get 100 breeders and make a horde big enough to challenge the class wielding civilizations.

They all know common well enough now to carry on a conversation with anyone and I asked them to go and get their leader because I was ready to give my explanation on how I think they will be able to get a class and to get them out of my way.