Homesteading in a fantasy world

When I was ready, I started walking down the road. I decided not to use my homesteaders mile to help get there faster. I didn’t want to miss anything, and I kept using my sights as best as I could to see if I notice anything.

It didn’t take long for me to notice something extremely odd and quite worrying. There was huge radiation of energy that was coming from a few structures at the edge of my land.

I had never gone out this far before down the road and I believe that this was the place that was marked with the little watchtower mark on my map.

As I got closer, I found what seemed to be a watchtower, a small and poorly made one. There also seemed to be a small bunk house with facilities to make some food and a cave-like entrance that seemed to be going into the ground.

It looked out of place and as I got closer, I could sense a weird feeling. I went closer to see what the sign said.

Dungeon of the grass sea.

“Well, fuck me!”

There’s a dungeon at the edge of my land. How didn't I know about this? I tried to comb through my memories and yes, this was something I knew.

As I tried to get more information from my memories, I threw a blank. I simply didn’t know anything more important than that they were dangerous places that adventurers visited.

God damn farmer's knowledge. Was I too young to be told this information? I couldn’t believe that there wasn’t more that my father or grandfather knew.

Oh, I so hope that there will be people that I could ask about this because I was not going to go in without any knowledge.

Dungeons could be just a place that would help and challenge you or they could be murder machines with the sole purpose of killing you in the most imaginative ways possible. I was in no way going to take that risk without knowing where the dungeons fall on that scale in this world.

This brought up another memory. The goblins said that they go on an iron trial. Were they speaking about a dungeon that drops metal armour and weapons?

I must ask about that the next time we meet. I checked out the place a bit more, but it was cleaned out of anything useful, so I started to walk down the road again.

There weren’t any farms on the road near here, if I remember correctly, it was because of the dungeon, and we were actually the closest farm to it.

As I walked down the road, the grassland started to retreat away from their road and normal land took over. Then I finally started to see the land that was once cultivated, now just left and overgrown with weeds.

The first farmhouse was just a simple house with only two extra buildings. I checked inside one of those buildings and found a little bit of firewood and in the other, there seemed to be nothing. I am guessing that this place once held tools.

Behind one of those buildings was a small chicken coop, so perhaps the chickens I currently have came from here. The main house is cleaned out. There was some furniture that was left but even that was broken.

That would seem to be done by the looters, but it seemed that the family had left because there was no painting or anything else. Everything seemed to be taken away from here. The cellar was also completely empty.

Farms here were a lot smaller than the land I owned. They only had enough to plant 5 to 8 acres of crops, and that was it. All the houses seemed to be the same as they were all cleaned out by the inhabitants that live there, but some did have evidence of fighting.

The next farm that I visited brought a huge surprise. There was a human outside walking towards the house. I jogged a bit closer and yelled at him.

“Hello farmer, have you any news about the village?”

I didn’t get a return answer, but he did turn around and my mood plummeted. The man started to shuffle slowly towards me.

It was covered in dirt, and I could see the dead eyes of this creature. Using my sight and my senses, I quickly figured out it was a zombie, a seemingly slow one, so as I got closer and used identification on him.

New slow zombie

My true nature connection helps me identify his signature as being similar to the one that I felt in the evening. So, something made it raise from the dead because I could see the grave that this one crawled out of.

This did give me an opportunity to practice my throwing. The first went into the chest but as I expected, it only staggered it backwards but didn’t affect him more than that. I had to get a bit closer so my throw would actually hit its head. That did kill it.

From my memories, I know that zombies can only affect you when they bite you. Scratches can lead to an infection that can turn you into a zombie, but it was not a certainty.

At least my parents taught me something useful about monsters. I wish I had a bit better knowledge about the monsters of this world.

As I kept searching the houses, I understood one thing: they have all been cleaned out and as I got closer to the village, there were more graves. Meaning more zombies were able to crawl out but seemingly not every grave, some remained undisturbed.

I didn’t want to get too close to their village yet, so I started to circle around searching through the farmhouses, hoping to find anything useful or the supposed loot stash that was somewhere.

I finally found a richer farmhouse. They seem to have a lot more buildings and there were pastures for animals. Unfortunately, there didn’t seem to be any domesticated animals close to here that I could see.

It seemed to be a farmhouse that was founded a long time ago because they actually had a big graveyard with multiple generations buried similar to the one I have, but mine is smaller.

This was not a good thing because while most of the graves were undisturbed, there was still a lot that crawled out. Multiple zombies were walking around, but there were also older-looking zombies that moved a lot faster.

As I was thinking about how to deal with them, I had a worrying thought. What if the same thing was happening back at my farm and the dead were rising from their graves?

That was an extremely worrying notion, but I decided to kill off these zombies first and then make my way back as it was starting to get late, and I didn’t want to stay out here.

The fight started well, but I underestimated the speed at which some of them can move. I had to do some running and throwing. Fortunately, I was a lot faster, but I didn’t have that many javelins to kill all the fast ones.

I had to take out my bow and shot them with arrows. That made killing them a lot easier, and I quickly finished off the whole pack. Cardio is truly the best weapon against zombies. This gave me level-ups.

Combat results

homesteader level 2 --> homesteader level 3

true archer level 2 --> true archer level 3

heroic soldier level 2 --> heroic soldier level 3

running level 1 --> running level 2

basic throwing level 1 --> basic throwing level 3

stats gained

strength +14

dexterity +12

vitality +11

endurance +2

empathy +2

intelligence +2

perception +4

constitution +4

presence +2

New traits gained

intelligence reaches 20 new trait gained faster processing

perception reaches 10 new trait gained better sense interpreting

constitution reaches 10 new trait gained denser organs

That’s some good gains. I can feel being able to think faster and understand my enhanced senses better. They gave more specific information that I can understand better. I tested my skin, and it looks like the constitution trait made it tougher as well. I guess the skin is also an organ.

Next, I checked the buildings, and I did find some more rope here and some small metal items that can be used to make something useful. All I found went into my backpack, but it was still light.

I didn’t find any loot piles here, so it's most likely in the village. Starting to head back, I didn’t take the same route but went more towards the grassland and away from the village to check the farms that way as well.

Those were empty, and I had to kill a few more zombies, but the most interesting thing that I found was a herd of horses. They are not indigenous here and I could see one still has some reins on its head.

They seem to be doing quite well, and the grasslands gave them a lot of food. I tried to get a bit closer, but they seem to not like that, so I didn’t push it.

I didn’t have the time to deal with them anyway and started to make my way towards the road and then to my farm. This time I did use the homesteaders mile, and it did make going down the road faster.

As I crossed back into my lands, I could feel the land greeting me and giving me energy. My tiredness disappeared some, and I felt a lot better.

As I made it to the graveyard, it seems that nothing had happened, and I tried to figure out why. I concluded it was because of me. I was keeping that energy that brought the dead back to life at bay and away from my land.

I was now really happy that the goblins burned all the dead from the big battle because I don’t know if I could have kept that amount of dead from rising. From my limited knowledge, I knew that if there were more dead, it was more likely for them to rise and to be stronger.

I cleaned up all my equipment and loaded everything up for tomorrow as I was still going to go to explore all I could. I have already visited most of the outer farms and tomorrow I could finish all the outer farms and move towards the inner area closer to the village and get a better understanding of what was happening there.

There were no surprises from the outer farms. Only another big farm caused a problem because of their graveyard, but with my javelins and the bow, the killing was easy enough with some running to help.

The problem became closer to the village. There seemed to be bigger bunches of zombies. If I wanted to engage them, the other packs might hear, and I might have a horde coming towards me soon enough.

Zombies in low numbers are always easy but have too many of them and you are going to become one of them or get eaten. I was still able to pick off a few, but as I explored one of the farms, a scream rang out and then another. It seemed to be coming from the village.

To my horror, it seemed that all the zombies start to move toward the village following the noise. While the zombies did grunt, they didn't seem to be able to communicate with that, but whatever that noise was, it called them to the village, meaning there is some intelligent undead there.

This was extremely bad news and as I followed them, I could see zombies trying to get into the village. It has a wood palisade around it and the zombies were walking into it as they tried to get in. Eventually, they made it to the open gate and walked further in.

It was a simple village. It still had quite a lot of houses. This village was known for rabbit belts and meat. If my memory was correct, there was a glassmaker here as well that mainly made windows for export.

I could hear the sound again and closer it was worse for my hearing and sanity, and it did level up my basic mental fortitude, so it had some effect on the living as well.

As I watched them shuffle into the palisade, I had a crazy idea and kept watching from one of the closest farmhouses to the village. I was now quite certain that the loot pile was inside the village because to the side of the gate opening was painted a symbol that the men that attacked had on them.

It took four more calls before most of the zombies made it inside. Only the really slow ones were still out making their way towards the gate. I left most of my stuff in the farmhouse because I needed to be quick.

I made my way as quietly as possible to the gate and I was able to get there without being noticed. Inside, I could see quite a lot of undead, not just zombies, but some skeletons as well. I didn’t see the screamer, and I hoped that I won't, at least not yet.

I snuck in and located the barring bar and prepared myself because I needed to move as quickly as possible. After a few breaths, I moved as explosively as I could and started to push the gate closed.

Of course, the hinges were not silent, and I could hear them all them turning towards me and starting to move. There wasn’t much distance between me and the closest zombies, but I was able to close the gate and put the bar in to lock it shut. Trapping myself inside the village palisade that was full of undead.

I quickly run towards the watchtower and had to dodge a few times. Thankfully, the scratches I got were stopped by my armour and I was able to start the climb.

As I was halfway up, I was hit by the sound again and almost lost my grip, but I was able to keep climbing after a moment, and once on top, I took a running start and leapt over the palisade and into safety.

I started to make noise and led them away from the gate so they would try to break down the palisade and not the gate. It seemed to have worked as they seem to be following my noise.

On the other side, I stopped making noise and started to circle my way back and see what happened to the gate. I could hear a few more cries and see some more zombies were approaching, but they were still ways off.

It seemed that the gate held, and they were now trapped inside where I could take care of them at a later date.