Homesteading in a fantasy world

When Goose and Rich were about halfway back to the United Freeholds army, he took a moment to just appreciate that he was currently flying high in the sky on top of a giant eagle. It was a surreal moment for him.

It was something he wished he could continue to experience without the backdrop of a war. Yet, whenever he looked around, his eyes didn’t miss the large fields of mana-enhanced bubbles where all of the armies were located.

Those were the standard spells any army needed to use, from alerts of any enemy movements to blocking out teleportation. He hadn't dived too deep into the ability that changed his eyes, but his experimentations with holy power lent itself to other aspects.

He could better recognize mana and energy peculiarities. Abilities and spells were supposed to be the same when used by different people, but the more Rich learned, the more he came to understand that the person affected those things a lot more.

Rich was quite certain that if he studied a person enough, he could identify whenever they used a spell or an ability, but even more importantly, especially with spells, there were always vulnerabilities that could be taken advantage of.

For now, unfortunately, only energy-based abilities and spells could be taken advantage of, but Rich was certain that in time, he would be able to gain abilities to deal with the other two types of power.

He was also reminded of the elemental seeds slowly growing inside of him. Rich had been a bit too lax about collecting more, and unfortunately, he had fallen into the illusion that something 20 years down the line didn’t matter as much.

It might be even more important, as the current decisions you make affect the future even more. That was also one of the reasons for not going all out on the Eastern army, as he still needed to be seen as heroic and not like a complete monster.

After a bit of time of just letting his mind be empty, Rich tackled the notification he got. He had gained one level in Heroic Commander, but that was the important change, the bit of skill levels and ability level, only had small effects.

The reason was quite obvious: the people he murdered were simply too low level; only the Eastern army general was rank one, and even one rank below only gave a fraction of the experience. Anything below that should be considered near zero and pointless for class-level grinding.

In Rich's opinion, it was a brilliant design choice; otherwise, higher-ranked people would just kill lower ones to continue to gain more levels, and eventually, only a few strong creatures or people would be left on this planet.

That idea made him look towards the West and the mountains there that indicated the border of the United Freeholds. Beyond that, they only knew a little bit, but he would have loved to take Goose and fly towards there. Unfortunately, he was reminded a few moments later why he couldn't.

A flash of light that only Rich could see momentarily blinded him. After he blinked the spots from his vision, he could see towards the northwest a new sun that was quickly fading. Only a few moments later, this time, a burst of mana covered a huge area of land. It was not concentrated, but its structure and its effects eluded Rich. The only thing he knew was that it was something similar to the anti-army spells that prevented teleportation.

The sun that was fading was now barely there, and finally, Rich could understand what had happened. Since the levels of power were now low enough, he knew that it was holy power that had burnt so brightly, and the reason for it was quite obvious.

Somehow, the western army, led by the leader of Aetherhold, that so-called holy man, had teleported their entire army close enough that they were now only a week away from the United Freeholds' army.

Rich was frozen for a few moments. He had never envisioned something like this, but what was even more puzzling was why they didn't teleport closer. Obviously, there was much he didn't know about holy power, and he had hoped that it would continue to have its weaknesses.

While this was unfortunate, it shouldn't be too bad, that was, of course, if that was the only thing that had happened, and that they didn’t have any further plans. He also couldn't rule out that they could do that again, but Rich honestly doubted it.

It didn't take long, however, for him to figure out the effect of the mana bubble, at least a part of its effect. It was harder and harder to keep Goose on a straight path back to the United Freeholds' army, and the closer they got to that bubble, it became obvious that that was the cause. What helped a little bit was Rich taking over Goose's senses through their bond and guiding him like that, but eventually, even that didn't work.

That was really bad. Goose could put him down on the road, but it would take him at least two days to make it to the army, which meant those bastards had other ideas and weren’t going to spend the week on a march without doing anything.

He felt multiple emergency sticks break inside his armor, alerting him that the United Freehold army needed him back immediately. "Fly up, Goose," Rich said, and immediately Goose started to ascend. Goose understood that they could go over the bubble, but it didn't take long for him to understand that that wouldn't help them unless Rich was going to jump.

Rich laughed out loud when Goose started to complain about this plan, but Goose didn't stop, and eventually, they made it over the bubble that was at least two kilometers above the surface. It was a struggle for Goose, but he continued until he felt Rich start to move.

He protested with a loud squawk. "Don't worry, just head to Aldermarch and rest there," and after that, Rich jumped. He didn’t free fall for long; using his energy after extending his legs and arms, he created with energy manipulation something similar to what flying squirrels had. That slowed his descent and allowed him to observe what was happening down below with his excellent eyesight.

From this high up, he could see the enemy army, and while it was hard to tell, he was pretty sure that they were marching normally, or at least not extremely fast. Even with his eyesight, it took him a little while to see a smaller group of elites quickly approaching the United Freehold's army camp.

It would still take them a few hours to reach, which made Rich smile. Hopefully, the leader didn't see this future, and they would be able to surprise them and kill a few high-level fighters thanks to him being there.

Rich’s happiness didn’t last for long; only about halfway through his descent, he could see the advance force stop and then quite a few of them looking upwards, but unfortunately, two of them were actually able to locate him.

He smiled in the hope that they would see, but he wasn't certain if they could. It was a bit unfortunate when he saw that they were turning back. It would have been a great boon if they had been able to kill some of those strong fighters.

The landing for Rich wasn’t the best, as he really wasn't an expert in these sorts of things, but for that reason, he had landed a little bit away from the army camp so no one would have seen how he tumbled multiple times before finally stopping.

Using his energy to clean himself up as much as possible, Rich was straight-backed when he walked into the army camp and started to give orders for everyone to pack up and be ready to move towards Aldermarch.

At this time, he headed straight to the command tent as he needed to actually give a detailed report and to discuss their current situation. The meeting itself started off awkwardly; the generals had not enjoyed the stunt he had pulled, especially because they didn't know about the future-seeing ability. Unfortunately, this wasn't the time, so Rich didn't disclose that fact and just let the disapproval wash off him.

He did notice during the meeting that the ambient holy power was constantly rising. It was hard for Rich to keep himself composed because he could literally do nothing to combat this and just had to wait and see what was going to happen.

It took about an hour when a frantic commander crashed into the command tent. "Generals, we can’t move," he said, barely composed, as he had pushed himself hard to make it here as fast as possible.

Confusion took hold of everyone, yet no one spoke out, but they all did look towards Rich to see his response. "Explain?" was all he said, but everyone could feel the boiling fury underneath those words. Some commanders would have paled after sensing that, but they were all instructed by Rich, so they knew only to be afraid when they were at fault.

"One of the long-range scout units was about to leave to make sure that nothing on the road towards Aldermarch had changed, but they could only take one step on that assignment before, no matter what they did, they couldn’t take another step to continue their mission."

Instantly, everyone in the command went into an even higher alert, but now there was also true worry. An hour later, they were certain that some sort of unknown spell was over them that prevented them from moving further away from the approaching Western army.

Back in the command tent, everyone was worried, including Rich, but he was the one to speak up. "This is something I don’t know how to fight against, so we must accept its effect. We cannot retreat and prolong the fight that we know we're going to have to engage in. So instead of trying to find ways of breaking the spell, we should start planning for the battle ahead."