Homesteading in a fantasy world

While training with the new bow in the morning, I made an unpleasant discovery. I simply wasn’t proficient enough to use it effectively at long range. If it was close, I could still be accurate, even though my firing rate would be lower than I wanted it to be.

So, unfortunately, I will not be taking the longbow out for this mission. I will need to practice with it more before I feel comfortable bringing it to life and death fight.

One thing I’ve learned about living in this world is that when you train something for a bit, you need to train a lot more things after that.

I am guessing that this would be a grinder's dream so it’s a good thing I have some of their blood in me, unfortunately, or luckily for myself, it's not too deep. So, the short bow must be the solution for this mission, but what other things to bring?

I want the one-handed sword definitely, and perhaps a dagger and a knife. My main question is, do I take the two-handed sword or the spear? I enjoyed the two-handed sword more than the spear, but the spear is useful for throwing.

Perhaps there is a solution there I can think of that’s fixed both problems, but I can’t quite yet put my finger on it.

It was time for stealth training. Hunting rabbits was actually now quite easy thanks to my owners land or my animal sight ability. Both make tracking and killing rabbits with a bow a simple affair, but I was here to train not to kill.

So, I didn’t use the owners land info. I do not want to get reliant on it for hunting. I will still use sights while trying to sneak as close as possible to them.

However, I’m always amazed at how vigilant the rabbits can be and while I was able to sneak into effective bow range with a little bit of effort, getting closer than that is hard. It’s like trying to not make a noise while unwrapping a candy in a silent room.

I did have to kill a few because if I didn’t, I would have rage quit. By the end of the day, I could feel that I was close to a level up, but not quite there.

Freya was quite happy about the fresh meat and so was I. I was able to test out the new powder for leather making and I was quite pleased. It worked perfectly.

Now I would just have to make more of it and store it up for the winter. This reminds me of how small my cellar was and if my latest attackers were correct that there’s barely anyone around anymore, then to whom will I give my excess food?

I wanted to plant everything so that I could support the village, but if there’s no one in the village alive anymore, then a lot of food will go to waste if I don’t have better food storage.

I wonder where they have their loot. I heard that they left it unguarded, but where is it, back at the village or some farmhouse and what have they collected?

Food, things who knows how important it could be, but in a few days, I will do my best to try to find it as well as to see what the truth is about how bad the situation actually is outside my lands.

The next day was really cloudy, but they were white clouds so no rain today. It took until the end of the day for me to tier up stealth.

I was quite happy I was finished with this training because I was only able to get about 10 paces closer before the bastards always found me out and ran away.

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

Choose one of the following abilities

distracting noise

light steps

surrounding darkness

Distracting noise. Really, that sounds like the most low-level ability I’ve ever heard of. If it is truly the ability that mimics you throwing a rock so someone would go investigate the noise, I’m honestly speechless.

After my brain stopped frying itself, I disregarded that option. The other two sounded a lot more promising. Light steps most likely make my steps make less noise or actually make me weigh less. Both sounded fine. Surrounding darkness most likely helped you hide yourself a lot better, but for my situation, less useful.

You have gained a new ability light steps level 1

Testing the skill out, I was surprised it was both options. It dampened the sound and lowered my weight, but that made it another energy hog. But just dampening the sound barely took anything.

During my time trying to get my stuff done, I also figured out what to do about my weapon situation for this mission. I will skip the spear as I’m currently focusing on swords and gaining more sword skill levels, so I do not want to split between the spear and the sword until I tier it up.

But I also want to level up my throwing skill. For that, I will make a bundle of javelins that I can bring with me.

I will make 5 javelin heads three from the daggers, leaving me with the best one I have gotten, and I will also split the short sword and get two heads from that as well.

But that will be left for tomorrow as well as all the needed leather work to bring all my gear. But as I was meditating in the evening, my trait of true nature connection actually informed me that tomorrow will be the solstice.

That meant I needed to change my plans a bit because I wanted to build something special for tomorrow.

When I woke in the morning, the day was still young, but the sun was already quite high, and I could feel the solstice. It was refreshing, so after all my chores, I start to prepare a bonfire for tonight and I was planning to make a tipi-style sauna.

It was just going to be a bit of work with the merging joints ability. I can make it, so I won’t need any coverings for it. For the top vent hole, I will also make a lid so I could close it when the fire inside has died down.

On the inside, I will make a fire and put a lot of rocks into it, so when it burns it will heat the rocks. When I closed the lid on top and throw water onto the rocks, I will have a sauna for the evening and can enjoy the summer solstice the way I always do.

If I didn’t have to fight the goblins, the sauna building would have been completed, but there’s no point in wishing to change the past. That is the one thing no one can do.

This build itself was extremely trivial but quite fun. It was still too early to light the fire inside, so I started to prepare for the mission because tomorrow I just wanted to enjoy the day. The day after the solstice was always the nicest, everything was so calm. I hoped it would be the same here as well.

When I started to smith the javelin heads, I decided to use the material sight ability, but as I did, it was the first time I can truly feel the power of multiple traits and abilities all working together for the same goal. I had the same feeling before when I used piercing cut and heavy blow but multiply that by 10.

That dagger that I wanted to make into the head of a javelin, all its secrets, were revealed to me. For a moment, I felt like God, then it became so overwhelming that I had to disconnect. I noticed that 3/4 of my energy was gone in only a moment.

“Well, shit.”

I need to be careful about that and I started to use my sight and abilities a lot more carefully. The main culprit was the material modification ability.

I accidentally in my haste poured everything I had into every ability and that one can soak up the energy and then in return give so much that it can overwhelm my current capabilities.

I couldn’t even rely on my memory. All I got from that moment was to help me in my craft, I simply couldn’t retain anything important. But what it did do was give me a glimpse of the future and what I could be capable of.

The javelin will use a heavy oak shaft 55 inches,140 cm long, a short but narrow tip with bladed edges so it can be used as a short spear as well.

It didn't take me long to finish and when I was finally done; I had five javelins that will hopefully help me if I needed to fight anything and gain some levels in throwing. I don’t know what ability the big goblin used, but it seemed awesome and deadly.

Next, I started to make a back sheath for the dagger that I can put onto the belt that holds up my sword. For the backpack, I added some straps to transport the javelins and added a strap for the two-handed sword sheath so I can carry it over one shoulder.

Towards the evening, there was another problem. Lucky the wolf puppy that I saved had somehow managed to get a splinter into her paw. Luckily, it was a small one, but even this little help gave me another level in first aid.

I checked all the surrounding boards, and it was all smooth as ice, so I have no idea how she could have found a splinter and managed to get it into her paw.

As I looked at them moving around, I could start to see the personalities they will have. It was an amazing feeling seeing them growing up.

After that, I went and finally started the fire inside the tipi sauna. It will take a while to heat the stones, so I needed to put in more wood over time. I didn’t want to make a too big fire, otherwise, I would be burning it all down and all my effort would go to waste.

The weather was extremely pleasant and while I was swimming; I saw some fish swim by and that gave me an idea of what to do for the rest of the evening. I made a quick fishing rod, and a hook, found some earthworms and used the strongest and thinnest string I could find.

I got a few small ones, but those I released back but the two big ones I was quite happy to get. Setting up a small fire to cook the fish near the bonfire, I cleaned them out and opened up the fish to make them flat and used a few sticks to put them near their fire.

When they were done, it was time to light the bonfire, and I used the coals from the fish cooking fire to light the bonfire. So, while it was starting to burn stronger, I enjoyed some good fish, making me quite certain I needed to make some fish traps because it was so good. The only thing that would make it even better would be some more seasoning.

Watching the bonfire burn fiersly helped me relax and then I walked into the tipi sauna and I threw my first cup of water onto the rocks.

I felt more relaxed and at ease than I ever have in this world. I had so missed this feeling of the heat seeping into your bones and everything relaxing and slowing down. The only thing missing now was a good cider and some good company.

Yet I didn’t need those things. It was still quite perfect. While I took a rests from the sauna, I sometimes went and jumped into the river to cool myself off. I kept the bonfire going throughout the night.

Unfortunately, the sauna would not last until the morning. So, I just sat outside on the bench that I made and watch the fire crackle until morning came and then watched until only embers remained before I went to sleep.

The next day, I woke up late. It was already past noon, and I didn’t care. As I hoped, everything seemed still. I just lived in the moment. When I did my chores, I did them slowly and without much effort so I could feel this feeling as long as possible.

It seems that all my animals were in the same state. Everyone was just enjoying the day, but like all things, it came to an end in the evening as I started feeling uncomfortable.

I couldn’t figure out why at first, but with my true nature connection helped me sense something wrong towards the village. The feeling got stronger towards the evening.

It was uncomfortable for me to fall asleep, but when I woke up, the feeling wasn’t pressing on me anymore. While I could still concentrate and find it towards the village, it wasn't bothering me the same way as before.

This was an extremely unpleasant development, like a cold bucket of water thrown onto my back as I started to prepare everything I needed for my first mission toward the village.