Homesteading in a fantasy world

The start of the dam project was the hardest. The mages needed to do a lot of ground hardening, and a lot of large wooden stakes needed to be driven into the flowing water so we could pump out one side of the river.

That would give us a section of the river free of water so we could reinforce the bottom and start placing stones. Placing the stones was made a lot easier thanks to the mages and a few people with an ability to lower the weight of other objects.

The design of the dam was a lot different than I imagined it at the start. What we were building was basically two half-dams. The first will be built on the southern side of the river to its full height.

About 90% of the total construction on this side will not be in the river but outside of it, so we could reach the ground elevation that would allow the river to collect a stupendous amount of water, making a large lake of the surrounding lands.

It will be tall enough and wide enough that we could use it to transport stones to the other side of the river, where we would build basically a copy of what we already built, except it will be almost 50% shorter as the ground rose up quite sharply on that side.

What will be left will be about an 8-metre opening at the centre of the river when both sides of the dam are built. To close up the river properly so we could start collecting a large amount of water, we will be lowering huge stones, 12 metres in length, that will, one stone at a time, finish this dam.

There are huge triangle-shaped supports that will help hold the dam and the huge amount of water. Destroying them will lead to catastrophic failure and release all the water that has been stored up, causing quite a lot of devastation to whatever is downstream.

This will also, however, destroy one town and three villages, but that was unfortunately unavoidable if our enemy's army really does try to use this path to reach us. Hopefully, it will not come to this, and if we win this war, the central stones could also be lifted out to slowly release the water, so in the future, if something goes wrong, it wouldn’t cause such devastation.

Time went by fast, but it didn't take long for a small village to pop up as everyone needed good enough accommodations to keep the cold off them during the night. It also didn't take long for a decent command centre to appear as I also needed to monitor how the war preparations were going. I usually did this work during the night, and during the day, I spent my time fusing stones together or helping place them.

In about a month, the winter was truly upon us, and we were working harder and harder. I was incredibly proud of the men and women who worked here; they continued to push themselves to their very limits to get this job done as fast as possible.

Of course, everyone else was working hard as well, but we weren’t the only ones who were preparing for war. From the reports I have received of the overall situation of the world, the next year was going to be quite bloody.

Omar had already warned that the World Council simply didn’t have the resources to monitor every war, and from the rumours, quite a few were going to try to use this opportunity to use their higher-ranked people to do a lot of damage.

This made me want to rank up myself, but every time I started to think about doing that, I felt my trouble sense kicking in. It was a passive ability that constantly consumed my energy, but it had saved me multiple times.

When I hadn't listened to it, I usually took quite a lot of damage during the dungeon fights. Unfortunately, sometimes I did need to take damage so others wouldn't die, but this also helped me learn more about this ability of mine.

It was obvious that ranking up did something more than just limit how much I could engage with the enemy. My current theory is that it would be similar to one nation getting a nuke and the other nation needing to have the same for balance.

I didn’t want this war to become, for lack of a better word, nuclear. What was even more frustrating, however, was that there had been no scouts from the enemy nation here, yet. From the few flybys Goose has done, the enemy seemed to be shifting their focus from this path towards the southern ones.

It could be that I didn’t detect the scout, but I have been keeping my eyes open for any disturbances, and there were quite a few of our own stealth experts around keeping watch. Another possibility was that they might have someone similar to Goose.

However, he has also been keeping watch constantly, although the sky was a large place and we aren’t that stealthy about our activity. With this and all the other information, something just felt off, yet I couldn’t put my finger on it, and it was driving me a little bit mad.

I tried a longer meditation session; it did help as I felt like the answer was just beyond my grasp. Yet, no matter what I did, I couldn’t make the final reach to understand. We continued to work while I tried to figure everything out, but on that front, there wasn't any progress.

We finished the first section ahead of time, but we didn't take a break and continued to push. On the winter solstice, we finished the second half, but there was no celebration, as even with all the magic and abilities at our disposal, placing the final block to start sealing up the centre was nearing the limits of our capabilities.

Before we started, I did call for a few days of rest so everyone could be at the top of their game. During this time, I sat on the edge of the dam looking downriver. The war was coming closer and closer, but the preparations were going as well as they could.

I would need to stay here for about a month more, after which I could finally leave, knowing that even if they destroy this dam, the path here would not be an easy one with all the broken trees littering the way.

Now, they would still be able to use this route if they wanted to, but if they did, it would take them too long, and instead of waiting for the enemy armies, we would march into their land and engage their other two armies if they still split them up.

Like that, we can cut off the resources to the one surviving army, and while the time scale will be tight, I believe we would manage to stop them before they reach the capital. I always hate it when there are so many possibilities; my mind never stops working on them, but with so many different ways things could go, I could not focus on one thing to make sure that everything would go perfectly.

What I had in this world that I didn’t have on earth was the ability to actually meditate and my mind palace, where I felt at peace, and my mind wasn't constantly overworking, trying to find solutions to every problem.

I had started to visit this place more, and my mind companion Alan had done excellent work on this place. What used to be a castle with a wall now looked like a citadel ready for a 100-year siege. There were so many stone golem warriors that Alan had made to keep this place safe. I’m pretty sure that whoever tried to invade my mind next would not like the outcome.