Homesteading in a fantasy world

POV ????

The first scheduled to arrive was the queen, but I could see that Rich was already being escorted here. He certainly knew how to play the game, but I’m quite convinced that he doesn’t like to play it, which oddly makes him better at it.

It was truly a weird combination, and now I knew that amongst the seven, some were also interested in him. I saw a few of them smile ever so slightly when Rich was taken out of his chambers before he was scheduled to be brought here. What was it about him that made you root for him?

It didn't take long for him to be announced, and for the first time, I was able to lay my eyes on him. For a human, he truly was an imposing figure. He was still wearing his armour, which even had battle damage on it.

That choice was definitely the wrong one, as it showed that he didn’t want to be a part of the affluent lifestyle everyone here was after. This also showed that he wasn't going to compromise his values to be more appealing to the people here. That was probably an even worse thing, but not for everyone here.

His way with the guards was downright scary. But I guess that makes sense for a military man. Still, the way those four acted, it was like they were his employees. Then he stopped his descent down the stairs and started to converse with someone he apparently knew.

The name rang out, and I quickly figured out it was one of the queen's servants, and there was something more. Yes, right, she was the one who made the first report to the Adventurers Guild about Rich. I would have expected unpleasant words, but Rich seemed genuinely happy to see her, continuing the one-sided conversation, seemingly genuinely worried about her condition.

I had seen that condition many times before on ambitious mages. Most of the time, no matter how much you warned them, they would just continue to push themselves and quite quickly die in the process.

It was always hard to determine if this was some sort of a move or not, or perhaps it was both. But it was hard to continue to analyse his behaviour when I was so annoyed that he hadn’t even once looked at us, or that stupid camouflage that he was constantly maintaining that made it hard to see anything specific about his energy.

That all changed when he sat down and then fully concentrated on all seven of us. It was still hard to tell what he was doing with his energy, but he was obviously channelling it into some sort of sight ability.

It was at this moment that I got a good look at his eyes and had to control my desire to move away. He must have multiple sight abilities, and some of them must be quite rare. It almost looked like he could pierce the darkness around us, but that shouldn't be possible. His eyes changed more into something unnatural, and he seemingly looked at things even I couldn’t see.

For the first time, I turned my head to properly see the others' reactions, and they were doing the same. What was he seeing? Perhaps a better question was: should he be killed? With only three class slots, he would struggle to reach rank 5, but it might be possible. So, do we let him climb and see what he could do, or kill him now and possibly stop a future enemy?

I probably wasn’t the only one thinking the same thing, but I wondered if the other six had already come to a decision. Most likely not, as he was just rank two; we had plenty of time to monitor and decide. But he also seemed to be a good fighter, and we would need good fighters to keep the monster kings at bay.

I was shocked when the Queen's arrival was announced, as I hadn’t paid enough attention to see her coming. Focus, you idiot. When the Queen and the other two with her reached the table, the speaker stood up and started the proceedings.

The first 10 minutes were just introductions, and then the speaker produced a piece of paper that was the accuser's report to the world council. Everyone knew what was written there, but the speaker still read everything out loud.

"A grave report to the world council: Our scouts came across a goblin village that seemed to be different from what they were used to. They decided to stick around a bit longer to observe and found that those goblins were in constant contact with the nation of United Freeholds. The goblins looked weird and not like the scouts were used to. We believe that United Freeholds, and specifically Rich Dirt, an outsider to our world, is responsible for trying to evolve goblins to be more like the enlightened races."

The report continued; it was more technical after that. This sort of clarification, in my opinion, was a waste of time, especially because we had other cases today as well. When the speaker was done, he gave the floor to the accuser and the accused, and both had three hours to make everyone here see their point of view as the right one. The blue-headed woman began; what was her name? It was a long one: Isabella Charlotte Amelia Elise Windsor. And of course, she started by making everyone listen to her name.

The Queen's camp started by defaming Rich and questioning his character as he's not from our world. He just continued to let them talk, but whenever Isabella started to push her ideas too far, he spoke up.

"Objection! She is making up baseless claims. I will repeat that I have gone through testing. So, her assertions that I’m a raving madman are illogical." Rich didn’t use the same words every time Isabella pushed too far, but the meaning was the same: Stop bullshitting.

Isabella, of course, didn't stop, but I could see as the time went on how she grew more frustrated. Honestly, Rich wasn’t the best at this, but he had his own way of doing things, and I guess we will see if it will work out in the end.

Isabella soon gave up on trying to make Rich look even worse and moved on to the main point of this case: that Rich and the United Freeholds were trying to force goblins to evolve into a more enlightened race. A lot of the people here, of course, didn't like that, and Rich was going to lose if things didn't change.

However, Rich continued to speak minimally and only objected to facts that were wrong. Even then, the picture wasn't good, as it seems that they really had been helping them, perhaps not directly evolve, which would be a shut case, but help them indirectly. About two hours into the three hours the Queen had, Rich spoke up without objecting to something Isabella said.

"The relationship with the goblins is not something we forced onto them, as Isabella is claiming happened. They came to me looking for a way to change their current society and offered knowledge and resources in exchange. Since I was in need of those resources and knowledge, I answered their question. That was how it got started, not by me killing their leadership and then taking control over the remaining goblins."

The words that Rich spoke silenced the room for a while and made Isabella start to flip through her papers. Obviously, she had quite a lot of material prepared to colorfully describe how Rich forced the goblins to change.

It didn’t take her long to find a new thing to bring up, and the similar dynamic to before continued as Rich didn't let her get too wild with her accusations. When Isabella was starting to wind down, she only had about 20 minutes left, but I believed that she was soon going to call for a vote that wasn't going to go in favor of Rich.

It was at this moment that Rich once again spoke up, "I would like to get a clarification from Isabella. She often uses the word 'monster' to describe the goblins. I would like to know what she means by that?" There was a moment of pause before Isabella, for the first time, lost her cool. "What are you talking about? 'Monster' means monster; what else could it mean?" Rich let out a slow sigh.

"'Monster doesn’t always mean a monster. I’m quite certain that most people here have at some point been called a monster. That doesn't make them a monster in the eyes of the law. So, are you calling the goblins a monster because you personally don't like them, or is it that you believe that they are proper monsters?" Isabella answered immediately, "Of course goblins are proper monsters; that's why we're here."

"From what I have learned, technically, goblins are a fallen race and not a proper monster," Rich answered, which silenced the entire place. So he did know that they were a fallen race and used the confusing terminology to wait until Isabella was almost out of time.

This way, she couldn't change her story and have enough time to make everyone believe another angle she might come up with. That could work, but it would depend on if anyone backs him up. Since he didn’t want to play along with the other camp, I wondered if they would help him or not.

Silence continued, and the speaker looked around to see if anyone had anything to add to this development. If not, he was going to need to make a decision on whether to continue discussing if the goblins are a monster race or a fallen race.

"Although this isn’t common knowledge, from what I know, Rich Dirt does speak the truth. The goblins are a fallen race, and if that's the case, everything discussed here wouldn't go against any law that I know."

Everyone looked towards the one who spoke, but to my surprise, it wasn't from the other camp. Instead, it was someone from a completely different camp and shouldn't have anything to do with this case.

I quickly ran through my memories and figured out who this person was. Why would he help? But then I remembered his son was Adam, one of the party members Rich had when he delved into the dungeon. It seems that Adam’s father appreciated that Rich helped his son complete the dungeon.

What followed was quite the heated discussion, which ended with the speaker asking us to clarify the situation. Every one of us confirmed that the goblins are a fallen race. The absolute panic in the queen's eyes was a great pleasure to see. Unfortunately, Isabella was able to hold herself together a lot better, although I could still see the struggle she was going through. I was quite certain she knew that they had lost.

Within the next minute, the speaker announced that the accused had won and was cleared of all charges. "Speaker, before you end this officially, could I please bring up another point?" Rich spoke, and after a bit of thinking, the speaker agreed.

What was Rich thinking? Fortunately, I didn’t have to wait long. "While I am pleased that this case is now over, because of this false accusation, I have been forced to be away from my nation for a seventh day now. I am the high general of United Freeholds and one of its strongest fighters. This long of an absence has affected my soldiers negatively as they continue to clear broken dungeons that threaten our nation. I request compensation from my accusers."

The queen went pale from those words, and her bodyguard was having a hard time not attacking Rich. While I'm impressed that Rich was trying something like this, I suspect that it won’t work; being away for a week isn’t that big of a deal. "And what sort of compensation are you looking for?" the speaker asked, but I’m pretty sure everyone could tell his voice was a little bit colder than before.

"A guarantee that the Queen's nation and her allies can't declare war or start hostile actions against United Freeholds for 20 years, and 80 million gold coins to be paid over the course of 20 years, so 4 million a year to keep the numbers nice and neat."

I found myself nodding along to keeping the numbers nice and neat, the way they should be, but I stopped as soon as I noticed that I was doing it. Was that last remark a trap? Because I could see many others nodding along, and I’m quite sure they were not nodding in agreement to what he said, but to the fact that numbers should be nice and neat.

I wasn’t the only one to notice this, and I could see many stop their nodding awkwardly. But the speaker noticed the nodding, and what Rich was asking for wasn't actually that big of a deal. With the current political environment, more peace was desirable.

"The amount of gold coins to be paid is changed to 40 million, so 2 million a year, but the peace agreement will stay as stated." With those words, the speaker ended this case, and Rich was finally free to leave.