Homesteading in a fantasy world

Running as fast as I could I tried to look for the path that they might be using. Luckily it seems that some goblins are protecting it and thanks to my animal sight I was able to pick them out, otherwise, I might have missed the entrance.

After a few quick shots with my short bow, the small group of goblins are dead, while I never stopped moving as fast as possible as I slipped into the path. It was well-sized. I still had room to use my two-handed sword but it was narrow enough that my reach would not allow any goblins to get past me.

As I kept running, I was quite pleased that they weren’t that close yet. I was a bit more unsatisfied when the path started to widen but luckily after a bit, it started to narrow again to be better suited for protecting myself. Soon I picked up the hurried movements of the enemy as they were running on this mountain path.

At this point, I stopped running and started to move back a bit so I would have a relatively long straight path so I could use my bow for the start of the fight. Having nocked an arrow I waited and gathered as much extra energy as possible. Unfortunately, my breathing technique was not the best.

As soon as they came around the bend, I charged up splitting arrow and let it fly. I wish I had the longbow here for stronger shots but rapid fire with the short bow will be good enough. Every shot took out an entire row of enemies sometimes even more. With every shot, they got closer, but they were being slowed down a bit. When my quiver finally ran out, they were closer than I liked.

If I still had arrows, I might have considered pulling back to keep firing, but it was time for me to get into close combat. Unsheathing my two-hander I prepared myself for the fight by moving energy into my sword, to activate weapon enhancement to make sure that this weapon would be able to endure the amount of abuse I was going to put it through.

My energy control throughout the war has gotten a lot better and currently, I was doing my best to keep my expenditure as low as possible but still cut through them with every single swing, taking out four or five goblins with every move of my sword.

I was no expert in swordsmanship, but I also didn’t have to be. It was not difficult to do what I did. It was like trying to clear a forest of small branches just moving my sword back and forth. There was no real skill involved.

I was able to slow down their advantage enough that I finally saw that the ones further down were now almost stopped, and I was glad for it. I did slow down my killing at that point trying to keep myself from killing too quickly so the elites would not be able to get to me as quickly. When they will finally arrive I will have to start to try and my current job will be made 100 times more difficult.

Eventually, my easy job did come to an end and elite goblins started to reach me. At this point, I needed to start using my energy more and having to do some controlled sword fighting and not just swinging from left to right.

Even then it was still quite easy though my energy consumption was now a lot larger. I was able to hold on to my position for a little bit longer but as more and more of the elites started to show up, they started to push me back.

Thanks to the narrow space I was still able to kill them quickly, but they also started to land hits on me. My armour was holding up right now, but it will not last for very long as their abilities already started to destroy my armour hit by hit.

They were pushing me back quicker and quicker and when I noticed that they might soon push me into the wider area I couldn’t wait any longer and had to activate my heroic stand. This time I was smarter and know how to use heroic stand better.

I needed to push my energy through heroics stand and then use that energy in my abilities. The last time I changed energy into everything making my overall effectiveness a lot less than it could have been. Thanks to me knowing this fact I was able to conserve a lot more energy even though my damage output increased a lot more.

The real problem came when the shaman and the enemy commander reached me. The commander used a two-dagger fighting style while the shaman was quite fond of fire-based magic. During the first exchange, I quickly learned that magic is really good against energy. I had to use all my willpower to harden my energy against magic otherwise the mana wanted to eat away at my energy.

Then came the annoyingly fast commander that started to dismantle my armour and deliver real cuts that quickly start to slow me down. Thanks to the dungeon I was a lot more familiar with this kind of close combat fighting and I learned a lot more about goblins in this war. Now I know how easily they fell into traps especially when they think they held an upper hand.

Thanks to this I was able to trick the shaman into thinking that his fire whip had restricted one of my arms but instead I used it to pull him close enough so I could use my sword with only one hand so it can reach and cut off his head. The surprise in his eyes didn't leave even though his head was now rolling on the ground.

After that the fight with the commander was harder, he was now a lot more careful and used the goblins he had to his advantage. Because of that, I had to fight him and the horde of goblins. I was however able to outlast him with my energy storage. His horde now became a fatal disadvantage, thanks to them closing him in and finally giving me a chance to kill him.

But they had done a lot of damage and I could feel my body starting to weaken. Even the goblins could smell it. I could see in their eyes the sparkle of joy, that finally, I was weak.

Still, I kept killing but I was starting to truly slow down now. I saw myself falling but for some reason, I was in a trench, and I was holding an opening. I looked around hoping there still were some grenades to throw. Finding a box with two grenades I hope it will delay them enough so that the reinforcements would get here. I waited for the right moment. Wait that is wrong. I am dreaming.

I could suddenly feel the sun on my face and as I tried to open my eyes they were blinded, and I could feel pain. After a moment I figured out that I was having a dream about what had happened and in the end, the other war mixed in. My eyes adjusted and I figured out I was laying down inside a tent with healing paste all over my body that the goblins use to treat wounds.

I tried to move but I was still hurting too much, and I knew it would be better to just keep laying down. From the sounds outside there was a party going on and I let out an exhausted sigh. It seems that we won and for some reason, I still survived. I wonder if I’m truly cursed to never die in battle, I’m guessing in this world I can find it out once and for all.

I took a few deep breaths because I needed to get over my aversion to the achievement page. For some reason, it felt so wrong to use but I think it might be because if I had it before on earth, I could have saved so many more of my friends. But I need to accept that the past is the past and you can never change it, so while you do need to learn from it you do not need to cling to it.

This time there aren’t any new skills which is honestly quite good news. I have already gotten so much that working on them will probably take an unreasonable amount of time.

Now skill levels were a different thing, but this also has slowed down quite a lot but that’s mostly because of the tier differences and I believe the next tier will make them even slower. Although I have noticed that some skills improve extremely slowly compared to others and I guess even skills have different tiers to them or rarity levels or whatever you want to call it.

spear level 3 --> 6

sword level 5 --> 10

archery level 16 --> 20 upgraded to advanced archery

advanced archery level 1 --> 2

combat strategy level 12 --> 18

stealth level 11 --> 16

camouflage level 2 --> 5

throwing level 9 --> 12

battle presence level 3 --> 8

basic armour 7 --> 10 upgraded to armour

armour level 1 --> 2

intimidation level 3 --> 5

awareness level 2 --> 6

command level 4 --> 11

basic war tactics level 2 --> 5

mentoring level 4 --> 6

energy emissions level 1 --> 9

Basic armor upgrade choice was simple it had to be armor enhancement. The weapon version of it was so good for both attack and defence. With it, my armour can defend against abilities. Now the archery one is a difficult choice. Do I go with energy arrow and lean even more into energy-based abilities or do I choose to take the fire burst shot and expand into elemental damage types?

You have gained a new ability energy arrow level 1

And of course, the ability levels as well. It is quite interesting to level up them and I believe that they also have different amounts of XP needed even at the same level. One example is the sight skills they are so much slower to level even though I’m using them the most.

penetrating slash level 7 --> 9

silent shot level 2 --> 3

plant sight level 5 --> 7

energy sight level 8 --> 10

animal sight level 5 --> 8

material sight level 4 --> 6

heroic stand level 2 --> 4

shaped edge level 6 --> 9

piercing thrust level 8 --> 11

battle aura level 2 --> 6

booming voice level 4 --> 6

razor-sharp blade level 3 --> 6

extreme energy precision level 8 --> 13

heavy blow level 14 --> 16

tactical advantage level 16 --> 19

charged throw level 5 --> 6

splitting arrow level 6 --> 18

weapon enhancement level 10 --> 18

intimidating aura level 3 --> 5

troop defense boost level 3 --> 13

Then of course there are my level-ups. I have already unfortunately used my free points from reaching the first milestone at 10. Although I was quite disappointed that I didn’t get any traits or abilities from it, just free points. Still, 25 free points for that level and 4x stat points why not.

homesteader level 9 --> 15

true archer level 7 --> 13

heroic soldier level 7 --> 13

Stats:

strength +126

dexterity +108

vitality +99

endurance +18

empathy +18

intelligence +18

energy storage +75

perception +36

constitution +36

presence +18

So many kills during the siege and in the path brought huge gains. And of course, a lot of traits although they were absorbed by giant amongst men.

strength reaches 320 new trait gained: energy-saturated body

empathy reaches 40 new trait gained: eyes of beauty

intelligence reaches 40 new trait gained: extreme sensory analysis

energy storage reaches 40 new trait gained: dense energy

energy storage reaches 80 new trait gained: energy core

presence reaches 20 new trait gained: strong presence

The specific traits were still shining through giant amongst men, especially during the last battle. I am really beginning to feel like a superhuman. I’m quite certain that I did not just carve through goblins but also a lot of the path wall will have my sword marks on it. I’m quite certain that the rock did not even slow some of my strikes down even a bit with all the abilities I was using.

I still needed there check out my adventuring class, it was still at level 1 because it needed attention but I had now gotten my beginner body past 15 which was the target. For the skill, you really need a lot of knowledge that modern society was able to give me.

I needed to help all the functions of the body to raise that skill, but it was also so much more than that. It encompassed all of the body and you constantly need to work on yourself and improve yourself for it to keep levelling.

But before I went into the adventuring class to level it up, I needed to be certain if I wanted 15 to be to the max or to wait until I reach 25. Then I could choose one more ability for my level up. Of course for anyone wanting to follow me in this path it would be a nightmare having to get it to 25 in a skill before they could actually level up adventuring class to level 2.

But since I have 18 currently and my body is quite messed up so if I focus on my recovery, I might actually be able to make it there. So why not, why would I need to care about someone else if I could make it there?