Homesteading in a fantasy world

---

Skill corrections

basic leatherworking level 1 --> 6

basic animal product harvesting level 2 --> 6

basic cooking level 4 --> 6

basic baking level 1 --> 3

basic identification level 3 --> 4

---

The morning was beautiful, and I did let them sleep in while I cooked some food. Now with all the different ingredients eating was a pleasure. I would still like some more seasonings then it would be all perfect.

They woke up one by one to the smell of good food. I eased their worries a bit about the statement I made last night. They had pushed hard for over a month, and I made sure to tell them that we will be taking it easier, but I would still be teaching them a lot.

I gave them the morning free while I worked on making compost boxes near the vegetable and potato fields. With the leftover straw, I decided to mix it with the manure which I had been collecting from the pasture.

Layering them so they would be more useful for the future. Even then I had a lot of straw left over but I just left them in big piles on the sides of the fields.

Then I went and checked on the iron oak saplings. Over the past weeks, a curious thing has been happening. They have slowly turned from the iron grey back to regular oak similar to the saplings I took from the normal oak.

Now it looked like I only had 14 regular oak saplings growing. Over the weeks I have been getting more information thanks to the iron that has been dissipating and today finally I was able to get a better understanding of what the tree is capable of.

I can now confirm that plants can evolve because I believe this started out as just a regular oak but now, I could feel multiple evolutions or mutations present in the sapling.

Some mutations seem to not be beneficial as it seemed that the tree can no longer reproduce with acorns even if it was not absorbing iron. Absorbing was the correct word. This tree had the capability of absorbing metals and strengthening itself through them.

This revelation stopped my meditation with the tree sapling. There must be an iron vein beneath the iron oak tree in the forest. My concentration was broken again when I noticed my 3 apprentices watching me. I looked at the sky and realised I have been sitting here for a few hours now to get all that information from the sapling.

I wish that identification would work more intuitively, but if there isn't a defined name in the system that’s already widely used, you don’t get any info from the skill, making it quite useless. It is most useful with manufactured goods with intention behind the creation.

“Sorry about that we are a bit late but we should now go and start harrowing the fields, I will let you all take a turn in doing it so you can learn.”

For the next two days, we focused on finishing up all the farming tasks needed like harrowing the land and clearing some of the roots in the vegetable fields. When that was done it was time to start teaching them different crafting skills. It was nice to get a basic mentoring skill just before we started.

I started with arrow making but not the full arrow, just the shafts themselves. Thanks to the amount of feathers I have we had plenty of material so we needed a lot of arrow shafts. I did the longbow ones and I let them make the short bow ones.

At the start, I had to reject quite a lot of them. I suggested they slow down their crafting speed to focus on quality shafts. The next day I let them continue making shafts while I started to prepare the steel.

I broke down the ingot that I have into chunks and then made them into bars so making arrowheads would be fast and easy.

For my 3 apprentices, it meant that they will be able to practice forging a lot easier than if they have to use tongs for everything from the start. On the third day, I would say that they were quite passable arrow shaft makers. Now able to make one at a reasonable speed and good enough quality. Still would not let them try longbow arrows. This got me a level in fletching and mentoring.

When we were getting towards the evening, owners land notified me of an intrusion. As I got more information it turned out to be two humans on horseback riding on my road towards my farm.

They look to be quite well equipped and felt powerful and while they were stopped just inside my land, I was quite certain that they would be proceeding forward.

“Quickly gather up everything and hide in the barn we have some company, and they seem to be heading our way. Quickly go and bring the cows in just in case.”

I quickly went and got all the weapons and armour I need and started to head toward them. I didn’t have time to set up a proper ambush and for some reason, I felt that that would be the wrong choice.

I think confronting them on the road would be the best choice, but I don’t think I could win this fight, at least not against the two of them, but most likely not even one-on-one.

No matter what, if they treat me with respect, I will treat them with respect. And if it comes down to it I will at least hurt them before I die.

POV adventurers

“Meredith, why have we stopped? The farm should just be down this road, is there something wrong?”

“Richard, I cannot explain it exactly, but I feel like someone is watching. I will do a spell so just wait a bit.”

Now that she mentioned it I did have a feeling of something like that, but it was extremely faint and not like the feeling I know of someone who has his eyes on me, it’s a lot more subtle than that.

I looked around, everything was still quite green even though fall will be coming soon, and everything seemed so vibrant compared to the other places we have been. Although the grass sea always looked green. I saw the spell in her hands finally fired off and expand forwards, what I haven’t seen before was the strain on her face.

“Meredith what is wrong, is there something bad out there?”

I quickly got my knives out and prepared to jump off the horse, preparing myself to fight whatever horror might be ahead of us.

Meredith, “No worries calm down. I wasn’t expecting my spell to use that much mana and for it not to extend for the length I wanted it to go. There is something weird going on but there is a man heading toward us. I believe he is ready for a fight.”

Richard, “Is he strong, do we need to be worried?”

Meredith, “No it should be fine he’s at best a high bronze. But I think we should teach him that you should not try to intimidate adventures, especially our rank.”

Richard, “We are here to gather information not to intimidate. I understand that basically, every group of humans we have come across have been rude and disrespectful, especially towards you, but this interaction here is a mission so let's try to be civil at least at the start.”

I didn’t get a word back but at least she nodded her head. We started to move forward and soon I could see someone walking towards us. A man in full battle gear with a bow out and nocked.

He was wearing a gambeson and some sort of armour over it. He had a sword on his hip and over his shoulder. He didn’t have a proper helmet but still had something to cover his head.

What pulled me the most was his eyes. They seem to be looking through me and I could swear I could see them shift even from this distance, but I guess that could be just the light hitting them.

The next thing I noticed was how he was holding himself, he was definitely a warrior who had seen battle and lots of it. Even if he had only high bronze strength, I believe he could leverage it extremely well.

“Meredith, don’t underestimate him and get ready! This might not be as easy a fight you expected, if it comes to that.”

I could see her giving me a nod. I think she senses the same thing because she was now totally serious. We got a lot closer than I suspect that he would allow us but as I saw him watching Meredith with a lot more wariness than me, I realized why.

He had somehow figured out that she was a mage, and that long distance would be more of a disadvantage for him than mid range. God fucking damn it. How did he notice that while she was wearing archer gear? No one has yet to figure it out on the road.

Rich, “Whoa, that’s close enough. What is your business here?”

Meredith, “We are here by the order of the adventurer’s guild to investigate whoever owns this land and how they were able to accomplish it?”

There was a lot of silence, but the man didn’t seem to be reading himself for a fight instead he was thinking.

Rich, “Well that’s good to hear. The last bunch of humans that came here just wanted to raid and pillage. It’s good to see humans that have some decency left in them.

"Come, let’s go, you probably took a long time to get here and on hard roads. I will make you some dinner and then you can ask some questions. Come, come follow me.”

What the fuck just happened. As I looked at Meredith, but she didn’t understand as well. Just a moment ago he was ready to fight to the death and like a switch in just a few words he was now inviting us to eat with him, why.

Rich, “Come follow me and tell me what has been happening beyond my land.”

Did he just trade his safety to gain more information? Either he's stupid or it was a calculated move to gain the most out of this situation. If it’s the latter then he is truly scary, and not just due to his battle presence.

After a bit, he just casually walked beside our horses talking to Meredith about small things as if they were old friends. He is not normal, I wonder how old he is. It would be kind of rude to ask so why not use one of my abilities to find out?

It took me years to be able to gain enough fine control to be able to use my ability like this but even then, I had to recheck it three times to make sure.

This man was only 12 years old, but he holds himself like a veteran of war and was able to socialize with Meredith. No one at the age of 12 should be able to do that.

We might have a transmigration on our hands, yet he didn’t have a red tag or any other mark on him that signified a broken system. And no other obvious mark that would make him a danger to the world.

I’m sure Meredith has picked up on it as well and she’s running her own tests to see if there is a need to put him down for the safety of the world.

As we get closer, I could see the fields that have been harvested and readied for the next year and it seemed in a quite a large area. When I asked him that he explain that at first, he wanted to make enough food so he could live and give some to the village.

That led to the discussion about the village, and I learned that he was the one that trapped the undead inside and put up the spiked head warning.

Quite an ingenious plan actually and further showed that he didn't have some broken ability that would allow him to quickly gain strength.

It seemed that he was under the same rules as anyone else in this world and that was good news because he seemed like a good fellow. He also had some weird fields that I have not seen before, further evidence that he was not from this world.

He showed us inside his house and brought out some fresh vegetables for us to eat while he went to inform some people that were living with him that they were not going to die because of some raiders. How he was able to put that sentence and not offend us and even make us chuckle a bit I have no clue.

“Richard he is most likely not from here but there isn’t any indication of him being wrong or any other indication that suggests he must be put to death. We should try to stay here for tonight at least so we can gather some more information.”

I agreed and quickly informed her of my findings. She didn’t know about the 12 years. Her findings showed that his body and soul were from our world which removes 99% of the problems with transmigrators and the problems they bring. So, we might actually have on our hands someone very useful.

We met the other three people living here and enjoyed a good meal together. After the meal he sent them off to ready something and offered to let us to stay the night without us even having to ask for it, giving us one of the rooms so we could sleep there and not in our tents.

He was quite good company. He was able to mesh with me quite well as we talked about different stuff. He was also able to talk quite well with Meredith although his vocabulary was a bit lacking to truly talk in the noble manner that Meredith enjoyed.

He was quite fascinated to hear about the world. I suspected he knew that we know he was not normal, but he never outright said it or confirmed anything about being a transmigrator. But he also didn’t directly hide some of the clues he was leaving. It puzzled me, usually, no transmigrator would be this open.

Eventually, we were able to get to the topic of land ownership. The situation with his inheritance we could luckily verify, the same with his class frontier farmer being able to own land. In exchange, we gave the information we had about humans in the area and the concentrations of undead and where they were.

He was quite saddened to hear that the county capital had been mostly abandoned because they didn't have enough food for the winter. Most pressed forward towards the duchy capital or further on to adventurer guild controlled land. He was able to get a lot more information out of us than both of us wanted.

The exchange of information got even worse for us when he revealed his surprise. A different version of the sauna. I didn’t recall the last time I was so relaxed. I’ve never liked the saunas in big cities, too overcrowded but this was quite different and remarkable.

He even showed us the construction and it was surprisingly easy to make. You just need a room that can be heated up quite a lot, it needed heated stones then you just threw water on them.

I hadn’t had this enjoyable of an evening for quite some time, and he was able to get a lot more stories out of me than I expected. Yet he did reciprocate and gave some stories of his own. The most interesting one being the one where he got his lightning scar.

Turns out he had been able to kill a goblin shaman which was quite remarkable. A really clever and brave man he turned out to be. It was weird to know that he was just a child because he didn’t look like one or act like one.

The next day we were sent off with plenty of fresh vegetables and roots making our trip back filled with a lot better food than just rations.

Meredith and Rich talked about the possibility of him selling some of his stored food to the adventurer’s guild in exchange for gold.

Which was a weird choice, but he didn’t want any trinkets or even favours. I hope that the adventurer guild will not mark him as a threat to the world because he seemed like a genuinely good person. The weirdest part was his eyes that I could swear I saw change a few times, but I couldn’t be entirely certain.

To my surprise, Meredith was now in quite a good mood and hopefully, our way back will be a lot more pleasant. I suspect the trade mission would not happen at least until spring if it happened at all. The real question is who I can rope in to help build and fund a private sauna.