Homesteading in a fantasy world

I’m pretty sure that I fell asleep after that because now when I woke up, I was feeling a bit better, and the sounds of the party had ended. Looking around I notice my sword and armour. I could see that the sword had held up quite well, but it still had quite a lot of nicks in it that I needed to fix.

Seeing my armour made me sad. The armour was completely wrecked, and it would take a long time to make a new one, especially the chainmail, but I guess it will need to be done because I still needed to clear out the village.

I was not alone and one of the healers was there. I remember her being there at the end of the fight, saving me from certain death. So, I thanked her but doing so also frightened her because she thought that I was still unconscious.

She filled me in about how the fight went and how they won the battle of the waterfall and how they were able to chase and kill off most of the enemy. The rest scattered and run away as far as they were able to.

I knew that it was now time to start moving otherwise my body would become too stiff and the wounds might start to cause me trouble later.

As I walked outside it turns out I was still at the waterfall campsite but to my surprise, it didn't seem to be the temporary one that I was used to. Looking around the tents seemed more permanent, and it seemed that rudimentary work on a wall following the shape of the river has started.

I asked the healer about it, and it turns out that the goblins decided to keep the dam and make it and this place into permanent fortifications. This way they could better protect themselves if something like this ever happened again.

An excellent plan in my opinion. As I walked around, I focused on healing my body. With my new trait, my energy was no longer just in my energy body but also in my physical one. It needed some guidance so it could help me recover faster.

I went and met some of the commanders, but most were either back at the encampment or at the dam camp. The Chief was back at the encampment which I could understand. Needing to be in the centre of command is important and they have a lot of recovering to do.

They still lost a lot of fighters who mostly were hunters that were important for feeding the tribe. While I was heading back to my tent, I noticed one of the goblins. He had something and it made me stop in my tracks.

“You there where did you get that fruit from?”

At first, the goblin was startled by my commanding voice and quickly got up and stood at attention but when his brain finally understood what I asked he relaxed and started to explain.

Apparently, they had chased one of the fleeing groups and went past a tree that was full of this fruit, but they were all too sour and tasted really bad. But when they kept chasing, they found a small area where there were a lot of those trees that were old but the fruits from them tasted really good.

I quickly let him explain to me where he found the area with a lot of apple trees. I was still a bit too weak to make the trip now, but I was certainly going to visit this place. There hopefully I can get some cuttings to bring back so I could start my own apple orchard.

This was an extremely good find and made this war even more worth it. The level gains I have gotten especially in my classes was better, but I was a bit disappointed about that level 10 milestone. Hopefully, the 20 one will be a lot better and not just free points.

I got some food and then started to pack up. There was no way I was going to put the broken armour back on. Could it even fit anymore when it was so misshapen? I was given a cart that I could use to bring everything back to the encampment.

I was offered all the help that I would ever want. Some of them even stated that if I wanted to, they would carry me back, but I waved off all the offers. There was no real hurry and that way I could go slowly and work on healing myself.

The healing was nothing special just helping my body do it faster. I was quite happy that I didn’t have any deep wounds, those take a lot longer to heal. It took me three days to get to the encampment but in the end, I could already walk quite well.

I was not the only one moving on this road that had formed. There was quite a lot of traffic. I think that they are taking the fortification of that waterfall location quite seriously.

When I made it back, I was greeted with quite the celebration and another party was thrown. I got to know a lot more of the crafters and not just the soldiers that I was most acquainted with.

The next day I was following a goblin that promised to show me some berry bushes that can give multiple harvests during a season. I was quite intrigued and the berries tasted nice.

It wasn’t completely sweet, and they were not completely round more oval shaped and were black and reddish in colour. They weren’t any berries that I was familiar with and most likely unique to this planet.

We exchanged some ideas about how to grow them and in return, I got quite a lot of cuttings that I was extremely glad about. Planting some berry bushes was quite a good idea that I might want to look into even deeper in the future.

The berry bushes might also be quite a good starting point to start using my plant-based abilities so I could change them from their wild forms into something better suited for cultivation. That might also help with my future tree-growing plans.

I told the Chief about my plans to visit the apple orchard but that I will come back here to get all my stuff and then move on. He told me that they would push back the loot distribution until then.

I spent another week here as the days got colder and I even saw some snow starting to fall. The goblins said that it usually didn't happen so soon, but it was also not unheard of. I was now quite well with moving and used my movement skill to get to the location faster. It was still hard to use it in the forest and because of that, it did work a lot slower. But I was still able to cover a lot of land thanks to it.

I had to do some backtracking and overall scouring of the area before I found the first wild apple tree. At this apple tree were some slow-moving bees that were still not hibernating.

I will need to return here when spring starts so I could perhaps catch some queens. I didn’t want to move them right now just before winter and I honestly didn’t have any good plan on how I wanted to do it as well.

With the first tree found it was a lot easier to follow the instructions I was given, and I finally made it to the apple orchard. The trees were really old and could barely give any fruits. They were cleaned out by the goblins.

I looked around a bit more to understand why this was here and I found some building foundations, but they seemed to be old and only the footprints still remained of the buildings.

This was probably some hermit’s home that he built himself in the forest away from the world or perhaps long ago this might have been a farmhouse, but the apple trees weren’t that old that an entire forest could have grown around here.

There used to be a lot more trees but only seven trees remained and from them, I was able to get 14 cuttings that seemed viable and still felt like they wanted to grow into a great apple tree.

I was quite happy with the amount that I got. Using the small leather pouches that I made I put some wet soil into them and stuck the cuttings in so they could survive until we made it to the farm.

I was quite a lot further south now and as I went back towards the north and the encampment, I also noticed that the energy got thicker and there were a lot more of the black particles that I now know were mana floating around.

From the adventurers, I know there were more energy and mana-rich areas that produced a lot more beasts and monsters and that sometimes those areas grew and even moved. I hope that this level of energy has always been like this and that I didn’t have to worry about an area like that expanding towards my homestead.

When I made it back to the encampment I was greeted by the Chief and all the important goblins. We went to the underground hill where the breeders used to be. Currently, it was being used as a warehouse where a lot of food was stored and the spoils of war. It seems that they are honouring the deal and giving me the first loot right. I get to choose whatever I want from the items gathered.

I instantly discarded all the weapons that were not made from metal. Unfortunately, there were quite a lot of them, and they were in a huge pile. Next to it was a smaller pile of iron weapons and for that, I explained that I want half but for the metal itself and not the weapons.

I told them that they could take out the better weapons and leave me the broken and unusable ones. They were quite happy to hear that even though I could still see some grumbling about me taking so much of them.

There really wasn’t anything special about the armours and even the few metal ones I wasn’t interested in. I left them all to the goblins. It was interesting how many coins the goblins were carrying around there were chests full of them and a lot of them were gold. There were a lot of other items like candle sticks and stuff like that that were silver and gold as well. I asked them if they wanted it, and they did so this was split in middle as well.

There was a lot more grumbling about that, but it was mostly just grumbling anyone would do if they were hoping to get something. Then came the more specialized things mostly from the shamans. I only took one of the staffs so I could examine it later. As it seemed to be a special creation. But what I was most interested in were the ball-like objects that were clearly filled with mana.

There were three of them and the Chief was generous enough to explain them. Those apparently were mana orbs that over time produced mana and were used to make new shamans. If a child holds onto it long enough and starts to get sick it means that he could never be a shaman but if he doesn’t get sick, they were given the mana orb that they must hold on to it always, and eventually, it would help them become a shaman.

As I picked it up it was quite unpleasant as the mana tried to eat away at my energy, but I also saw it trying to burrow into my energy body in an interesting manner, but I had to stop and drop it because of the pain.

Apparently, if you were an adult and holding it you will experience excruciating pain and they were quite surprised that I was able to hold on to it for that long. I suspect that children can hold on to it longer because they have a lot less energy in their bodies and if they have the same mana network as the shaman and Meredith, it will probably help it develop better.

I believe that they are currently useless to me but I still took two of them and left one for them so they will also have two as I came to learn that they already had one that the previous shaman of theirs used.

I was in no way going to be able to bring everything back right now, but the goblins promised me that they will have everything brought over before the winter gets too bad and then when the spring begins and the winter snows melt, they will bring everything else that we have bargained for. They will start mining at the latest in spring but are still hopeful that they can get the mines up and running before winter truly sets in.

I was happy enough with that, but I still packed the mana orbs and some of the smaller things including my broken armour and all my weapons that I brought here that still survived. From my 5 javelins, only two survived so there will be a need to make some more. There was one last party this evening and in the morning I finalized everything and started to walk back towards my farm.