Homesteading in a fantasy world

During the end of the fall and the beginning of the winter, I focused on three things. My main focus was making the armour. The first thing I did was start making steel ingots.

I started by making the armour mix ingots and then the weapon ones until I ran out of leaves and acorns. The days went by quickly while I did this. Finally, there was only the regular iron ore left which took another few days to finish making into Crucible steel.

With this, I was able to get my metal casting tiered up getting me another choice of abilities.

Skill increases basic metal casting level 10 is upgraded to metal casting level 1

Choose one of the following abilities

heat resistant hands

carbon controlled pour

heat tolerance

Some interesting choices but I will go with heat tolerance. With my energy, it might be super good and hopefully, help save my life someday.

My second focus was on training the wolves. We started out by doing simple follow commands, but they were quick learners and we were soon able to start focusing on the combat aspect of their training. While I did my own training Freya also taught them how wolves are supposed to hunt. It was quite magical looking at this and extremely helpful for my own training plans with the wolves.

Blue seems to be the natural leader that everyone followed. Comet was really good at sneaking and staying hidden. I would not be surprised if he will get some evolutions or skills in the future to help him get even better.

Lucky still seem to be unlucky as she seems to be constantly hurting herself out of nowhere. That being said the injuries didn't seem to be lingering as long as they normally would, or they just look worse than they actually are.

I got two skill levels in animal training but I’m guessing I will be getting more when we actually go and start hunting for rabbits. They are now big enough for that although I suspect they will not have any success for a while.

Freya seemed quite proud of her children, and she looked a lot happier now that I was there to help deal with the troublemakers. Although they have been a lot calmer thanks to the training and them getting to do the things that they want to do.

My third focus was on my own training and more precisely my physical fitness. For me to get any benefit I really need to focus on energy control and slowing down the movement inside my body, otherwise, even with heavy training, it was hard to get any benefit.

It was still slow going to increase my skill levels although with my overall focus on my body and helping it get better, I can feel I’m close to level 24 in my body skill.

My apprentices had finally finished making the watchtower. I was quite proud of their accomplishment as were they. To my surprise, it was Emma’s birthday when they finished it.

So, we had a small celebration and I did my best to make something sweet. I did succeed a little bit with some carrot pies. They were all delighted with it, and I had to promise myself to make some more.

This also got me a level in baking which was a pleasant surprise. I still didn’t understand why those skill levels were so slow, but I hoped when they finally tiered up there would be some nice abilities.

The next day my apprentices restarted our arrow-making effort. They had still not gotten any of the relevant skill levels high enough to get any abilities. Even now we had quite a lot of arrows done, about 900.

I decided to start turning my grandparent’s room which was currently empty into an armoury, at least for the time being. It was finally time to start making my armour and for that, I needed a lot of fabric, so with the string that had been made I started to use it to make fabric.

During the third day of fabric making, the goblins finally arrived and brought everything except for the ore, which they told me will most likely come after winter. There were a lot of horns and leather as well and I got a lot more pouches of seeds and of course there was all I got from the war.

The goblins themselves just left everything at the edge of the bridge and started to make their way back. It took us the entire day to bring everything inside. We used the weapons from the goblins to hide the chests full of gold inside the now fuller armoury.

After that everything progressed as normal and after another week, I finally had enough fabric to start making my gambeson. For this, we all started to make it under the guidance of Emma as we all needed to sew together a lot of layers from multiple places.

This one was going to be a full gambeson with pants, a headpiece and a jacket. Doing everything to finish all of this I got my weaving skill up 2 levels tiering it up and 2 more levels on top of that. My armourer levelled up to 4 as well as my animal training and fitness which both levelled up once. Tailoring I got up to basic 8.

For my weaving ability pick, I had to take energy weaving. It added another aspect to my energy creations making them stronger. I am truly hopeful that they will become game-changing later on.

With the gambeson done it was time to start with the next layer, the chainmail. For this, I will also have multiple pieces so absolutely everything will be covered. Most likely the headpiece, feet and hands will be the most difficult and will require some trial and error on my part to get right. The rest should be a lot easier, and in the end, will literally cover everything.

It was time to get back into the smithy. Pulling the wire from armour steel ingots was time-consuming but still a lot quicker than if I didn’t have the strength and abilities to help me with it.

I didn’t want to do exact calculations so I just ballparked it in my head on how much I would need and just add 10% to that. Still, it was a lot to do and to my surprise, almost half of my time was just spent on getting the wire into a ring shape and then cutting out the individual rings.

I also did another test to see if I would want to temper them and with the tempering, they did seem to be even more resilient, so I had to do that as well. I always knew that making chainmail is time-consuming, but holy shit I had already spent half a month and I haven’t even started to assemble any of the pieces. I got 4 more levels in basic armourer and two in smithing.

By now most of the time midday was below freezing and even though it was technically still fall I would categorise the weather outside as winter. When I finally finished the chainmail headpiece a proper snowfall started that will leave behind snow for the next day.

And so, our days continued sometimes we work in silence as I was working on my chainmail and my apprentices were making either string or fabric and other days, we were constantly chatting sometimes on funny topics sometimes serious ones.

With the wolves, we started to go out for hunts. They still had yet to catch anything on their own, but they were already able to help Freya catch rabbits and they did the same for me. My levels gains are now really starting to slow down, especially the combat ones. The war pushed everything forward a lot and now everything felt really slow.

The biggest problem I faced was with the chainmail that will cover my hands and feet. I didn’t want to hold on to my weapon where the chainmail was in between it and my hand, so the solution came with gloves.

They turned out like mittens that only covered the top part of the gloves and the same with the feet where the chainmail covered the top of the leather boots. All the armour pieces I have made so far, I’ve made with the intention that I will be growing multiple inches next year so currently everything felt a little bit too loose.

Completing the chainmail tiered me up in armourer and I was quite happy to see that increase. I also got merging joints to level up. The choice was easy. How could I not pick elemental armour tolerance? It sounded like a true fantasy ability.

After all this time I finally got the body to level 24, only one more level until I can finally level up my adventuring class.

Next, it was time to make a similar armour for my feet and legs as I had before. The only thing I needed to change was to make them a bit bigger as I had more armour underneath them and also I made them a bit thicker because I know my body could handle the extra weight.

I took a bit more time with the helmet and made a Viking-style one that seemed to be quite commonly used in this part of the world. This one is also thicker than the last one.

For my final armour piece, it was time to make an improved brigandine. This time in the front chest area I will have two big plates to protect my heart and lungs better. This will also be the thickest part almost 10 millimetres. There was never in history a brigandine that was so thick, but I know that I might need this even with the armour enhancement ability that made it a lot stronger.

Speaking of the ability. From the little testing that I have done with it, it does seem to work better with stronger armour. So, everything I am wearing helps make the ability stronger.

Like last time I will also use leather. And for what is the best choice for that has turned out to be the woolly rhino one. It was a little bit thicker than I would have liked but I believed it will add another layer of protection.

Finishing it got me another 4 levels in armourer, 2 in smithing and 1 in leatherworking and tailoring. I had finally finished making my new and improved armour.

For finishing touches we all dyed as much as possible dark green as this was the colour that I liked the most. It all looked so impressive in the end with that dark green gambeson peeking through underneath the chainmail. The dull grey of the chainmail contrasted against the dark green brigandine and the dark green plate armour pieces for my legs and arms.

During the last stretch, I didn’t really do anything else but concentrate on making armour. While I was doing that my apprentices were also preparing something that they thought I was going to like.

The rabbits had long ago changed their fur into winter white to match the landscape full of snow although it was not that thick yet. The temperature has also steadily gone down, now even at midday it was never warmer than -10°C. I believe Goose will soon be able to handle the cold weather and I have already seen him flapping his wings. His feathers have started to thicken up.

I was almost pleasantly surprised when I remembered that we had a proper thermometer that allowed me to monitor the temperature. It was a nice discovery, and I wouldn’t have expected it to feel so great that I was able to do something that I did in the winter every day on earth.

That evening we celebrated with another sauna visit. The next morning while I was preparing everything for my trip to the village to finally clear it out my apprentices finally presented me with what they had worked on.

It was not really a secret, but I had not seen what the end item looked like. It was a full rabbit fur cloak with a hood that was entirely white. With this on even if the temperature were a lot colder, I would be protected, and I could also be completely hidden in the snowy landscape.

This will be an excellent item later on during the winter but currently, I left it back at the farm because I simply didn’t need it for this mission. I rechecked everything and made my goodbyes with everyone and started to walk down the road towards the village.