Homesteading in a fantasy world

I was about to end my meditation and thinking session on top of the dam when my eyes caught a heightened level of holy power that permeated this entire location. While I still wasn’t that experienced with it, I was certain that the colour of holy power wasn't mainly luck but something else. So, instead of leaving, I continued to sit all through the night, concentrating on observing holy power.

Some of the holy power tried to touch me; it was a different kind that was in abundance and continually increasing. Yet, at about 9:00 AM, the entire place was suddenly filled with luck. “High General, there's an emergency.”

Usually, I would have left, but the longer I stayed, the more the different kinds of holy power tried to slip into me. “What’s the emergency?” I asked, which made the person who came to inform me confused. Usually, I always responded to an emergency right away, I never asked what it was about, so it took him a little bit to start speaking.

“There’s apparently a huge inventory mistake, and you were personally asked to look into it.” The more he spoke, the more confused he got, like what he was saying didn't make much sense. “Recheck if they really need my input.” He gave a salute and immediately left. It didn't take long until he came back and apologized. Turns out someone had misspelled my name. It was someone else who had quite a similar name to me who they needed.

More things happened, some that actually were emergencies, but I never left my spot. While this was inconvenient for some things, none of the outcomes were really that bad, and one even had a positive outcome; it turns out we had made more ration packs than expected and counted.

Then, towards the evening, I finally figured out why this was happening. In the distance, I saw two of the lookouts speak with each other and pointing towards the water. They had noticed quite a large fish swimming upstream, but since it was just a fish and not even rank one, they didn't do anything, but they were curious about the interesting species they didn't know about.

My eyes helped me see the large fish that was probably 8 meters in length but wasn't much thicker than an oil barrel, swimming lazily even though the river current was strong. I continued to observe it as something felt of.

There was a lot of luck surrounding this fish. Then I saw it. It was all thanks to my dynamic vision that now had ethereal sight as one of its abilities. The fish wasn’t actually a fish; instead, it was a person transformed into a fish. Every so often, I could see glimpses of his soul's outline.

I turned my head towards the work camp as yelling came from there. Only a few moments later, I could see flames from one of the buildings, yet when I switched my vision, I could see so much luck-colored holy power.

The other kind also tried to invade me once again, and this time it did succeed a little bit. Probably because I wanted to go and help even without its influence, but I now understood. From my tattoo storage, I pulled out a throwing knife and started to layer abilities and modify how energy interacted with this knife.

It took me about 30 seconds to finish, but it was something I hadn’t done before with energy, and this was quite crucial. I stood up and started to move towards the burning building. Yet, without even taking a full step, I threw the knife as strongly as I could towards the water.

The energy worked as intended, and the knife didn't shatter from the impact with the water or even change its trajectory; instead, it dove into it and hit its intended target, the head of the fish. It died, and I was actually glad it didn’t change back to a human.

The lookouts hadn’t rushed towards the burning building as it could be a distraction, so they were keeping their eyes moving while looking for any intruders. The two who had spotted the fish were, like all the others, alert. So, I yelled towards them.

"You two who saw the fish, next time kill anything you don't recognize that might be dangerous. We have workers here who aren’t that strong, and who knows what that fish would have been capable of." Both of them instantly looked towards me, and after my instruction, they both nodded.

After that I rushed towards the burning building, but it was hard to keep a grin off my face, yet I managed it. I needed to keep everything off my face as I didn’t want anyone to know that I figured it out. It was all thanks to me staying on the dam for so long.

They didn’t only have access to luck but also some kind of prediction or foresight ability that didn't work properly on me, which I think is because of my soul resistance. I am still a bit unclear how it exactly works but that can be found out with time.

It also explains so many other things. Every puzzle piece fits together. It seems that they did want to use this path, and whatever they tried to do today, I watched them trying to make it happen to the best of their abilities, but it seems that they failed.

It was going to be important that they didn’t know that I knew this. Yet, how can you hide something like this from someone who could possibly see the future? Although, whatever they’re doing, there seem to be limitations, and how strong your soul is seems to be a strong counter to whatever they have.

I mean, it could be something else, but I didn’t think so. What else could fit a religious power set better than fortune? Otherwise, it would have just been luck that would have affected things. I guess it would be better to stay undecided since I can’t be completely certain, so better not to make any definite decision.

Unless that was a definitive decision. Why the fuck to things need to be so complicated. So much was stacked against us, but that was no reason to give up, and this was a great victory, even though no one would know about it.

We only lost the one building to fire, and the only reason for that was terrible luck, as two of the mages who were decent with water magic just happened to be out on patrol. The start of the fire was also a complete accident, but I did let everyone do the investigation and reports, but I didn’t care; I knew the cause. From now on, only in my mind palace did I think about the revelations I got; otherwise, it was business as usual.

It was suggested to me that we postpone the finishing of the dam for another day, but I disagreed. It was time to start lowering the large pieces of stone. For that, we had to build quite a strong structure between the two sides of the dam.

The equipment that we used, mainly the ropes and the wooden structures, was quite expensive as they were made out of rank two materials. They were a huge investment, and if we broke them, I was going to have to make quite a lot of bows.

With everyone on high alert, nothing truly bad went wrong, except when we started to lower the stones, the volume of water was actually able to stop them from descending with just their weight.

So, I actually needed to jump onto them to make myself heavier and then hold on tight as the water wanted to wash me downriver as I was lowered with the stones. I was going to need to come down here anyway, as I needed to detach the ropes, so riding the stone was actually a good way to get to the bottom.

I did get a decent number of level-ups for my different skills, especially architecture, when we placed the final stone. I wasn’t the only one who got a lot of level-ups, as everyone who had worked on this project gained a lot of contribution experience.

It was a huge project, and a lot of people started to move back to the capital during the following week. Most of the fighters, however, stayed, as there was still time for the enemy to attack and destroy the dam before there was too much water collected.