Homesteading in a fantasy world

Before we all heard Mirhit’s report, I took some time to rest, drinking water and eating something. Finally, I had time to open my notifications as things were no longer urgent. What greeted me was something I had hoped for, but I had only seen a similar message once before. It was incredibly satisfying to see it; however, the overall situation did dampen my happiness.

Special action performed

Ability gained: Holy power sight

Activating the ability allowed me to finally see holy power clearly. There's still quite a lot in this room from my messing with the coin. I had to admit that holy power was a lot more vibrant in the different colours it had.

Energy and mana both had different colours, but energy was like looking through a filter that made colour seem extremely detailed, yet they didn't emit much light. For mana, the colours were much brighter, yet they all had blue as a base, and it showed through quite well.

Compared to energy and mana, holy power was the easiest to see, and it coloured everything around it. It was interesting to see that the free-floating mana was consumed by holy power. Yet, I could constantly see energy consume the holy power in this room. Well, perhaps ‘consume’ was the wrong word. None of the different substances ate each other; they cancelled each other out, with there being a clear winner in those conflicts.

It seems I had watched the interplay of the three different substances for too long, as a reminder cough brought me back from my musings. I'll have time to experiment with this new ability later, but this was one of those abilities that I needed to learn all I could as quickly as possible. Most likely, I was going to need it if I wanted to effectively fight against people who use holy power. I gave a nod to Mirhit, and he began.

"Let’s start with the population. Now, this is a rough estimation, but 80,000 to 120,000 is my current guess. The people are quite spread out, but there’s a large concentration in the duchy capita of that region, which is now the capital of their country. While it's not exactly one big city, they have concentrated quite a lot of their population onto a small area of land."

"They have done that to have more control over the population, especially because of religion. Religion is the number one topic everyone is talking about, and it's quite hard to comprehend because I barely know anything about religion. But I do recognize a lot of new buildings that are similar to the churches you told me about. I will need to keep listening to get a better picture about the religion."

I gave a nod to Mirhit, and he was unfortunately correct. I didn’t have a lot of time to give him more information about religion, which would have made this entire thing a lot easier. I’m sure he will figure it out.

After this meeting, we should find some time to properly go over all our information. However, this will be good enough to start a proper conversation with everyone else, especially the two other countries that will also be facing war.

"The second biggest talking point I heard about was the coming war and how they will kill the infidels and rescue all who are willing to listen." We all winced at that, but it was kind of something I was expecting after seeing how extensive their war preparation areas were.

Then Mirhit looked at me, and I just knew that there was going to be good news. "The third most talked about topic was how they will need to kill the unholy creature to the west, who, if left living, will end them all.”

“I was quite puzzled about this until I finally heard someone mention the name 'Rich Dirt' while talking about the unholy creature. The man who spoke your name was killed in quite a brutal manner, and this is a direct quote: 'When you speak its name, you give it power.'

I rested my back against the chair to think a bit more about that. This was something I didn't expect and honestly found quite weird. Obviously, through their religion, I was portrayed as extremely bad, but why would they need to do that? Something was wrong; I was missing something. I indicated for Mirhit to continue.

"There are three separate training camps that are all rapidly training soldiers who are extremely eager to go to war. Honestly, their discipline and sheer commitment were scary to see. The people who taught often needed to drag the soldiers from the training fields; otherwise, they would push themselves so hard that they could die."

I interrupted Mirhit, "The word you’re looking for is 'zealot.' They would do anything in the name of their religion."

"Thank you, Rich. There were quite a lot of zealots. I would say most of the army was like that, and I think that was the main reason they were selected to join the army. Not everyone seemed to have the physical capabilities to join an army, but they were still there. Not all of the soldiers were at the training camp, but I was able to go through some left-open papers, and from the estimates, I would have to say that their current army is about 25,000 strong."

That number was big, but not disastrous. However, it might become disastrous because I don’t think they will stop recruiting. They will most likely start marching as soon as the spring earth firms up after the winter melt. I continued to listen as Mirhit gave us all the information he could. This made me even more certain about my prediction of potential trouble, yet I still didn't know why they would hate me so much.

The meeting lasted for three more hours before I called an end to it. During the last three hours, we learned a lot more about their economic situation, which was something that many people in this room at first rejoiced over.

The country was in a bad situation, but that was mainly because they were putting so many resources into their army. It wasn’t pleasant explaining to them that the populace wasn’t going to rebel, but would face the suffering that was coming towards them with grim determination.

My work, however, wasn’t finished. I needed to start drafting letters to send with our diplomats into the other two countries to inform them about the situation. We must also start war preparations, which will slow down our growth once again, but it was necessary.

No one else was coming to save us. However, we should also keep this quiet; otherwise, the further countries to the south might use this opportunity to also attack us, and if that happened, we would be in quite a predicament.

There would be no rest for me, so I began drawing the map, I was just doing the rough outline. More qualified people will be filling in everything else with my input. On my abilities map, I already had a detailed enough image to start seeing possible paths armies could take and identify important strategic locations. I did not like what I was seeing, and I liked the situation even less when I acted as if I were the enemy country trying to conquer the three nations it bordered.

Taking into account their need to kill me for some reason I didn't know which was driving me a bit crazy, I would maintain the three-army format they currently have. I'd send about 50% to come after the United Freeholds and divide the remaining 50% between the two other nations in our alliance. They will probably not engage with the smaller armies but instead keep the allied armies locked up, then engage and overwhelm United Freeholds with superior numbers.

It would be a solid plan that would eliminate many problems, and it would be quite flexible to deal with unforeseen situations. I would need to confront them in the open field because if they reached the capital, it would be over. We aren’t ready for a siege.

I would need to find a way for us to combine all the armies without relying on luck, ensuring they would have no other moves. Because if our armies combined, the boosts I could provide would give us a fighting chance. Was this possible? I was not yet certain.