Homesteading in a fantasy world

After taking the morning quite easy I put together the best combat gear I could and started to head quickly towards the village. The cold was really doing its job now as the grass started to turn yellow, but I did notice that my land was a bit greener for some reason. I moved quickly and came to the village without any problems.

The problems began when I noticed the gate. Two of the hinges were broken leaving only one hinge barely holding the gate in place. It didn’t look like the zombies had caused the damage. Most likely it was due to the huge storm that passed through before I went to assist the goblins.

Looking at its half-listing state, I was quite certain that snow will put so much weight on it that it will break, and the undead will get out. I must hope that the cold comes first and not the snow. Even if the snow came first, it would still hamper their movements, so I don’t think they will cause any problems to my farm. Unless we get another big storm, or the undead get smarter. Even then I do not think they will cause us any real problems.

Just in case I didn’t get any closer and quickly started to retreat. Getting back was even faster as I was pushing my movement ability to its limits netting me another level in it. I had felt it was close and I was glad that it only took so little effort to push it to the next level.

I made it back just in time to start preparing everything for winter. Last night it was already below freezing, and I don’t think it will ever get any warmer than that during the night for a long time.

The first thing we all did was close up the large barn doors and start to insulate them. We formed an outside layer using the boards that we had in storage. As we were putting them on, I noticed that some of them were already quite old, so I made a note to make some new ones after this winter. The inside layer was filled with straw that was held up by a thick cloth which also served to fill any gaps.

The only way to get inside now was a small door on one of the big barn doors, where we all had to squat down quite a lot to get through it. The rest of the walls were quite thick and meant to help survive winter but when the snow came, we also needed to start shovelling it against the walls. This would protect against the colder weather later on.

Most likely we have to do the same with the main house to help us keep warm when it gets really cold. But we will have quite a lot of time before that happens. At least a couple of months before the temperatures really start to go that low.

At night we enjoyed a nice sauna, but this time only Arthur and I jumped into the river. It was quite cold by now and when I told them all about jumping into the snow during wintertime, they looked at me like I was crazy. I didn’t let that bother me and we had quite a nice evening just talking about nothing in particular.

During that time, I did get a few stories out of them about the winter and what their experience has been with it. The craziest thing was the Gerdrocs. Huge birds that were related to the fantasy bird the roc. Luckily, they were never that big. The problem was that they liked grain, wheat in particular, and often searched for it during winter. My memories of why a granary was a bad idea now made a lot more sense.

The next day I took it upon myself to finally fix as much of my weapons and armour as I was able to. The two-handed sword had quite a lot of nicks that needed to be fixed. I was able to get most of them out. Only a few small ones remained. It will not win any prizes but it will still do its job.

The bigger problem that I found was an almost spiderweb-like marks that you could only feel with your fingers. It didn't take me long to figure out that it was because of my energy usage. If I kept using it and pumping so much energy through it eventually those marks will get deep enough that the sword will shatter.

I am guessing that the metal is just not strong enough to keep up with my power level. I might need to start controlling myself a lot more so I wouldn’t find myself losing my main weapon halfway through a fight. The armour however was a lost cause. It was only good for scrap metal, so I just decided to re-melt it. The goblin commander had done way too much damage for me to use any of it.

This brought up an interesting point because the iron oak metal that I have gotten was not the same for every smelted bar. For that, I needed to get some more so I could test what might have caused this effect.

For the following week, I brought over all the leaves, a few smaller branches and the acorns. That only took three days. The next four days after that I used to gather and bring iron ore getting myself 3 levels in mining, levelling it to basic 5.

It was quite dangerous to get everything around the iron oak because the acorns and leaves were occasionally falling from the tree and unlike a regular tree, they fell with quite a lot of speed and would hurt quite a lot when hit. Every time I see the tree I am mesmerized. It's truly a nature's miracle and I wondered how long it might be here and keep growing.

A nice surprise was also getting my foraging up by two levels allowing me to pick an ability. I was quite sad that the perfect time for foraging was spent waging war but hopefully next year I can get some good mushroom soups going. There was an ability for better seeing valuable plants, but I skipped that. There was one for better knowledge on how to harvest different plants, but my true nature connection took care of that.

The last one was called plant path and I hoped it would work well with plant manipulation to help me guide plant growth and changes in the correct way. But this will need to be put for later investigation. I simply do not have time for it currently.

Testing all the different metals was quite fun and I learned quite a lot. The regular iron ore was just regular iron. I use my abilities to figure out how much carbon I needed in the crucible so the correct amount of charcoal was added into the mix to create steel. I think it’s a good idea to just skip the Iron Age and go straight into steel and with my abilities, I could make the mix perfect.

The iron oak iron was a different animal altogether. The different attributes of the tree passed on. So, the acorn iron was extremely hard, but it wasn’t as brittle as its hardness would make you believe.

The leaves produced an extremely bendable iron that was not easily broken. It was like an instant spring. With the branches, I was only able to make one small bar and make a rod out of it. It produced an excellent metal for making weapons out of. It was flexible yet hard. I’m guessing a weapon out of this will not chip as easily as my sword did.

But an even better metal for weapons was an almost 50/50 split between leaves and acorns. But for armour, a different ratio turned out better.

After some testing with metal plates and small pieces of chainmail, I figured out that a 20/75 split and an extra 5% of normal steel was the perfect mix for armour.

I was happy to find that making chainmail will be easier because I didn’t have to rivet them but could use my merging joints ability to make a connection that was as strong as the metal it was supporting.

Although I did have to make a shape for the joint better than just flat against flat, my shaping edge helped a lot. I only needed to make a simple cutting tool to use with my abilities to make making chainmail easier.

Another week went by fast, and I got another two skill levels in smithing and 4 in basic metal casting thanks to all my experimenting. The most interesting thing I found out is that my energy core which was making better-quality energy could supply my material modification.

For brief moments I could actually use it normally and extend the period thanks to my huge energy pool. Thanks to that I was able to figure out all the precise percentages for the different types of steel. I am also quite certain that it will help me make a lot better items in the future as well.

While I was messing around in the smithy my apprentices were busy building a new watchtower between the house and barn and just a bit towards the river. This was a lot bigger and stronger than the one at the bridge. Eventually, I will make a bigger ballista to mount up there so all the buildings and animals will be protected. They still had some work to do but the main skeleton was done.