Homesteading in a fantasy world

Morning came quickly. As I went to get some food, a weird pulling feeling pulled me towards my grandfather’s room. As I walked into it, I could feel the property map wanting to connect to me.

I walked to it and touched it as soon as I did it. The black and white map with almost no details starts to colour in. But it didn’t colour in fully just the places I have visited and it had a lot more details on it.

I’m guessing it happened because I reached level 10 in my frontier farmer class. It was amazing to see such a magical thing happen, and I wondered how I could use this to my advantage.

Most likely I will need to get a skill or ability to help make more use out of this map. I tried to examine it more, even watched it with my energy vision, but other than it being extremely colourful and complicated, I didn’t say anything useful for me currently.

I went back to my regular schedule activities. This morning a second cow stopped producing milk. That meant that there was no need to make cheese anymore.

One cow's amount of milk can be easily drunk in a day. Today I also started to train more of my abilities. Energy sight was useful, but I will need a lot of training to understand it’s better and take advantage of it.

Currently, my day was already filled with other training. During archery training starting tomorrow, I will train the silent arrow ability from now on.

I haven’t used it much before because it uses up a lot of energy and it wouldn’t return quick enough to do my other energy training.

But with my new trait, it seemed that it replenished faster and there seemed to be more of it besides the stat gains I had.

It was a bit weird to get used to my new body strength and during weight training, I really had to try to slow down my energy movement, otherwise the current weights would be practically useless.

I continue to train and catch rabbits when needed. I was now able to at least shoot at the rabbits, but I haven’t actually been able to hunt and kill one yet. They were slippery creatures.

And before I know it, 7 days passed, and I got a lot of levels to show for my work. It’s the one thing that I absolutely love about this system. It’s how easily you can see your progress.

skill increases basic tracking level 5

basic energy manipulation level 7

basic butchering level 3

archery level 4

basic running level 8

basic stealth level 4

basic camouflage level 2

Skill increases basic fitness enhancement level 10 is upgraded to fitness enhancement level 1

Choose one of the following abilities

quick boost

heavy training

quick step

All the options sound good. Two are most likely for combat and the middle one for training. I love to boost my combat ability but training is more important during the long term, so I picked that hoping it will help me.

Next day, after my chores and archery training, it was finally time for weight training and hopefully the new ability will help.

The ability did exactly that. It made the equipment heavier without me needing to slow energy movement or make equipment that is that heavy. It fixed my problem instantly.

I was wondering about other uses for this ability when I heard a small crack. I couldn’t figure out what it was, but a moment later a huge crashing sound ranged through.

That was the bridge alarm system. I quickly got my short bow and sword and started running towards the bridge.

With all my stats and run training, I got there quickly. One of the traps had activated, but I couldn’t see why because I was running straight at the bridge, so my vision was blocked.

I started running sideways and saw a goblin held up by multiple spikes running through him and two more goblins on the other side of the river, frozen in what looked like bewilderment.

I slowed down and started do slowly move into place. I tried to get a bit closer so my shots will be true. When I was ready, they started to argue with each other, so I had a moment to prepare myself for what I was about to do.

I shot 1 arrow high and then another one straight at the left one. They got hit at the same time one goblin was shot in the head, dying instantly.

The other one got hit in the belly and after a moment of freezing, it started to run away. I already had another arrow flying towards it, now hitting it in the back. It didn't kill him instantly, but the heavy blood flow from the wound confirm to me that it was about to die.

I stayed there for a few more moments looking for any more goblins, but I didn’t see any. Quickly running and climbing the tower, I spent a while looking at the tree line to see if there were any other goblins.

There didn’t seem to be any. I didn’t think about how to deal with anything that got caught by the spikes. Really, more than anything, I honestly hoped that it would just push them off the bridge.

Now I had to figure out how to get him off. Best solution turned out to be to just take my spears back end and push it through the spike trap and push him into the river.

I then lowered the bridge for the first time in a long time. Examining the two other goblins, they seem to be in poor health and extremely poor compared to the other ones.

They didn’t have a scrap of metal on them, only a stone axe for one and a stone knife for the other. I threw them into the river as well.

It might be a bad idea to keep doing that and I guess it is a long time coming for me to head down the river to see the lake.

Today I didn’t go hunt training instead after I pulled up the bridge again and reset the traps. I quickly put together my expedition equipment and started heading down the river.

I wanted to get this done today because most likely I will have to stay on the farm for a few days to look out for any more attacks.

I continue to move beside the river. After a while, the grassy lands started to turn into a forest. The forest never got too thick, and I started to see the lake through it.

The ground it seemed to be very sandy here, most likely the reason there were so few trees. Another river joined the bridge river. It was a larger one, making the combined one a lot larger.

I had to go a little further, but as I got closer to the lake, the river turned into a delta. The delta was overgrown with strange looking trees. They were at most an arm thickness and were tangled together in different ways.

It was almost impossible to travel through that. They also extended a little bit onto the beaches on both sides, but they didn't go any further than that.

The beach was beautiful here the sand was golden. The lake looked big. I could see the other river, the hill one flowing in, but there was no delta like this one.

This looked like a place that would be filled with people when summer was coming, and the weather started to get warmer.

I was smart enough to not go into the lake. Who knows what can live here, and I was not going to put my life at risk for a quick swim.

The lake had a beach all around it, with a thick forest surrounding that. The lake looked alive with activity. I saw birds catching bugs and fish and on the other side I think I saw some animals drinking. Throwing goblins down river will do nothing more than feed the wildlife, luckily.

I could see the rivers coming in, but didn’t see any going out. This was an interesting mystery because the rivers brought in a lot of water.

After my immediate curiosity was sated. I started to move back, but this time I didn’t pay attention to the farm side of the river but the other side.

The forest seemed similar to the one close to the farm. I didn’t expect it to be anything different, but I did look for a narrow place in the river that can make a crossing easier.

If there was, I might want to trap that place. But my bridge was in the narrowest part. Most likely, I am safe from goblins flanking me.

When I got back, no traps were activated or anything like that. I did another watch on the tower but ended it when evening came.

I quickly run upriver, but even there it was a bit wider than around my farm. It did move slower, indicating it was shallower. When I got back and was in bed starting to go to sleep, I wonder what the next days will hold for me.

***

How the current map looks like. The red border is how large the property is. Grey is unexplored land.