Homesteading in a fantasy world

Next morning came with bad news. There were clouds again in the sky that promised heavy rain. I did my morning chores quickly, giving Freya some of the fresh bird meat and putting the last of the hatched chicks where they belong.

I’m quite sure that a different chicken was now on top of the big egg. From my taming skill I got some basic knowledge that gently giving some of my energy to it helps me form a better bond so from now on every morning as I come here I will do that with the egg.

Next, I quickly started to weed the fields so hopefully I can finish before the rain started. I had a regular hoe for this job and for the potato fields it wasn’t the greatest of tools, so it took more time than it should, and it already started to dribble before I finished.

I went to the barn where the cows were already inside with Francis, and I greeted them again. I used animal sight and energy sight to see how the pregnancy was going.

And it looked like one had two concentrations of energy inside her so possibly twins. I had never delivered a calf before, and I hope I can help if there is any need.

I notice the intelligent eyes of the bull as I looked closer. I don’t remember them being so intelligent, so just in case I use animal inspection and, to my surprise, I found a new evolution of intelligence for Francis.

“Hey big man, so you understand me better now?”

I get amuu in return, but the next thing he does surprises me. He starts to mimic the way something heavy is pulled by doing the motion sort of like a mimic and I think I understand what he wants.

“Do you want stronger training, pulling heavier things, big man?”

That got me an amuu in return. This made me scratch my head a bit. Perhaps he has a skill for pulling that he wants to train up now that he can understand everything better.

I nod to him. I would need to bring over some rocks anyway for all the building and other needs. Loading the cart up more will hopefully not be a problem.

After I watched the puppies for a while, the rain really started to come down and lightning started to strike. To my surprise, all the lightning strikes seem to be in the same spot in the hill forest quite deep in.

I concentrated on my owner’s land to see the location using the ability and it was a strange location of the forest and really close to the river there. It was close to the spooky place that made me retreat the first time. Just in case I remembered the location, if I wanted to check it out.

Since it was raining so much, I decided to work on the arrows that came from the battlefield. Making new rock heads, fixed up all I could and sharpened the steel again. I wished I had wax so I could protect the metal a bit better and also help them penetrate deeper.

When the rain let up, I worked on my fitness, and I was now completely recovered from my injuries. Less than a month to recover, extremely fast and I’m quite happy about that.

The next thing I discovered about myself was that being in the rain and wet didn’t make me cold, so I could still work in the rain on stuff that wasn't rain sensitive. It was still an unpleasant feeling until I discovered I could just take off most of my clothes and still be completely fine in rainy weather.

I didn’t get a skill up in fitness today, but I did on the next day that was eerily similar to the last and it continued constantly raining the whole next week, and the lightning kept striking. But never over my farm. Something was pulling the lightning over to the same spot in the hill forest.

The most I could notice with owners land was how the area was in the forest. There was a sole large tree and was surrounded by grassland until the forest started again. There seemed to be stumps around it, but that was the only special thing I noticed.

To train Francis, I loaded up the sled cart and had him pull it up and down the road from my farm and the bridge to firm it up more, but other than helping Francis, it didn’t do that much.

To solve that problem, I went to the woods where a really old, big and fallen down tree was. I cut out a piece the length of the width I wanted my roads to be. It ended up being 2 and a half meters long and was almost as tall as me.

I didn’t start to bring it back, didn’t even know if I can. What I did was start making it round. Pushing it out of the forest and onto my farm took forever, but I was quite happy with the result.

Next, using my abilities, I carved a hole in the middle where a shaft can be inserted, quite a thick one. Then I started to cut out and carve the outside, turning the smooth roller into an impact roller so when pulled it will rotate and drop packing down the dirt.

Making the harness system and so it will stay behind Francis in a straight line took some testing and more wood. It was still an extremely hard pull now that it was an impact roller. It didn’t work perfectly sometimes it will just drag and not rotate but Francis seemed to love the extra challenge.

At the start, I had him only doing the route between the farm and the bridge, but he soon took it to himself to start doing the walk between the forest and the bridge as well.

I had pushed back the testing of my movement skill too much. I found it was not a teleportation skill, and it was a movement skill. Using it still made me walk all the steps. I just did them extremely fast and if I concentrate, I could even move in stealth if I want to.

This skill will have a limited effect if you can't see where you are going, because you might run into something that you can't see and that would not be a good thing.

So not a good way to get around in the forest but if you go down the road, it will help you move extremely fast, same with the fields and that makes sense from the abilities name.

I hope that I could use this as something like haste from RPG, but it did not work as I hoped. As I tried to mimic a strike with the weapon using the skill, the skill immediately ended before I could hit. And it wouldn’t let me use the ability again if I planned on striking again. So only a movement skill it was, yet it could be still used in combat as a way to get near an enemy quickly.

I kept using it as my energy would allow it, especially if I didn’t have a use for my stored-up energy for something else. No point in letting excess energy go to waste.

It kind of feels like one of those mobile games that gives you actual points and you don't want it to be full and not give you more. So, you’re always needing to do something in the game to keep your action points lower than the cap.

My next project has multiple steps and the first one was to make barrels so I could keep tar in them and for that, I needed to figure out how to make barrels.

I had no need for them to hold water for drinking or anything else edible, so I will use tar itself to help seal it better and use my ability merging joint to help me achieve that and so there will be no need for metal support rings.

Those barrels will not be intended for transport so I will not need to make them so durable and hopefully I can get by with this half measure. If I apply enough pressure, I could still pull them apart quite easily and transporting it would not work well.

Using the merging joint’s ability helps me alleviate some of the problems, but it still took some trial and error before I was able to finish one after one full day.

When testing it out with water, it seemed to hold up quite well, but transporting it was more awkward as I had to treat it like an overfilled shopping bag and carefully move it when it's full.

It will get the job done, and that’s all that is needed currently. Now that I had the design ready, it didn’t take too long to make more and by the end of the day; I had four more, hopefully enough to start out.

As I brought the final barrel to the tar maker and looked at the pile of wood waiting to be burned and made into tar, I will need to make a lot more barrels or just let them sit in the pile until I needed to make more.

I started to make tar, but this time I also collected ash from the wood that I used to heat up the tar wood. I need to make soap, as I was now completely out.

During that time, I still did some weight training but a more normal amount. The rest of the time I spent doing odd jobs around the farm or training my energy control.

I was able to get a bit more than a barrel a day thanks to the better choice in tar wood. The first barrel I used to coat the bridge making it a lot more resilient to the weather and hopefully making it last a lot longer.

During the second day, I was starting to get bored even with my other trainings, so I decided to set up the forge close to the tar maker.

This way I could work on making tar, leveling up smithing and even doing some energy training at the same time.

For my smithing skill, I just practiced forging blades and like that, a week passed and I even had to make more barrels and now I had eight, seven fully filled up ones. I was finally able to get my smithing to tier up.

Skill increases basic smithing level 10 is upgraded to smithing level 1

Choose one of the following abilities

heavy blow

heated strike

testing strike

A difficult choice here. Nothing called to me immediately. I can see the positives and negatives to them all and I suspect all can have usage in battle as well. In the end, I think I feel the best option is heavy blow, nothing wrong with the basics.

You have gained a new ability heavy blow level 1