Homesteading in a fantasy world

Just before Rich started his speech to hopefully terrify the enemy leader, he needed to do one more thing with his achievement page. Up till now, his adventurer class was sitting at level 80, there waiting to be ranked up after he chose a skill or an ability from the enormous list available at every milestone.

To survive what was coming, he picked an ability called Trinity Resonance. It was a famous ability, and something he truly contemplated picking earlier, but now he had no option but to pick it.

This ability would allow Rich to use his energy control on either mana or holy power, although at a lower degree than he's capable of doing with energy. It was like changing a sharp and well-made sword for a willow stick, but you would still have some control.

Thanks to the other abilities he had, Rich hoped that it could pull off the miracle he needed. And while the words that he was saying were somewhat made-up, there was a part of Rich that truly hoped he would finally be able to rest.

Thousands of attacks were approaching, but he only needed to worry about a fraction of them. While he wasn't wearing armor anymore, his skin was tough enough, especially with his subdermal armor, that all of his armor-boosting abilities worked on him.

Fortunately, the attacks that were coming were meant to kill large groups of people, so they weren't too concentrated, yet a direct strike would still prove to be devastating. That was why he needed that little bit of control.

He waited until the last moment, when explosions were already all around him, to truly activate his energy control and then use the new ability. Instantly, he lost a little bit of control of his energy, but he was good enough that it didn't mess up any of his other abilities. But now he could feel holy power a lot better, and thankfully, he could control energy outside of his body, so that meant he could do the same with holy power.

It only took small nudges to divert projectiles coming towards him, but there were so many that it was a different kind of difficulty. When he diverted the final projectiles, he didn’t know if he was disappointed or not.

Whatever the case, he knew his target, and when the dust cleared and he could see him, only for a moment he waited to give commands to the army and then started to rush. His sword was out soon enough, but his target wasn’t facing him; he was escaping.

That didn't stop Rich; he started to cut through the soldiers who were between him and the soon-to-be-dead man. Rich was finally stopped when the god's chosen last surviving followers finally broke out of their stupor of seeing their north star, their leader, panicking and trying to get away from Rich.

They were still confident, but they shouldn't have been. Without their leader, they had a lot less firepower, and they were fighting Rich, who was in a lot better state than he was during their last battle.

They were still able to hold him back, but every minute, two of them died. Rich was already a quarter of the way inside the enemy lines when he finally killed the last follower. It was also at this moment the lines of the two armies met.

Immediately, the Aetherhold soldiers felt the pressure as their mages were having a tough time protecting against the Triple Alliance mages. The regular soldiers fared better, but not for long, because an overwhelming amount of elites and assassins started to target their command structure.

Then, of course, there was Rich, who was carving a bloody path towards the enemy leader. It didn't take long for him to catch up, but when he did, he was already fully covered in blood, making the enemy leader panic even more.

"You must spare me; this realm needs my protection. No, don't get closer. Would you really doom this world out of anger and revenge? It wouldn't solve anything," he continued to try to beg as Rich walked closer, having to kill a few soldiers who were still brave enough to rush him.

When Rich loomed above him, the enemy leader finally attacked. He used a similar ability, only a quicker and smaller version, to the large beam spell. It was aimed directly at Rich's heart and it did do some real damage, but that didn't stop Rich's movement.

The two-handed blade was pointed downwards, but before Rich plunged it down, he spoke, "I have never understood why people like you try to convince everyone that revenge isn't worth it. It is." And with that, his blade, dove downwards, pushing through every protection and thoroughly destroying that pathetic man.

A small crater was now where the enemy leader used to be. Rich looked around and, like a wave, the soldiers surrounding him started to break and try to run away. This caused a chain reaction, and soon more and more of the soldiers of Aetherhold started to run.

It was at this moment that the cavalry of the Triple Alliance swept in from the right side, pushing deep into the lines, which caused a complete rout of the Aetherhold army only 8 minutes after the battle began.

"Kill them all," was heard by every soldier of the Triple Alliance. They hardened their hearts, the ones who hadn't seen too much battle, but others already expected it and didn't even waver when they started to chase and kill all who ran.

Rich stood amongst enemy soldiers who were running away; he was like a stone in a river, the flow of people running around him. He was glad that the leader was dead and that the army would soon follow, but he didn't know if he was ready for the next part of the war. The part where they needed to conquer and occupy Aetherhold and then deal with the religious zealots there. He was not certain he could commit genocide once again.

The battle, or perhaps a better word, the hunt, lasted for a week before they were certain that 99% of the enemy was dead. The cleanup was happening at the same time, and through all of this, Rich finally found out how bad his injuries actually were.

He had continued to push way past his limits, and while his body was extraordinary and was able to keep up, the healers said to him that he would need at least one or two years to fully recover.

That, however, wasn’t something Rich was overly worried about. There were much more crucial things to worry about. The thing that occupied his mind the most was what was about to follow when they finished here. Soon, they should be getting a better report of what’s happening inside Aetherhold so they could finally start to prepare.

Over the course of the week, he had been coming to sit and think on a large stone next to the river, just watching the flow of water go past. This day was no different. He tried not to think about problems outside of his body and mostly focused on understanding and controlling rank three energy.

It was a lot more potent, and that meant his fine control needed a bit more work before he was satisfied to start crafting, for example. There was also the small problem that he needed to join or make a rank 3 and above organization, or otherwise, the world government would come knocking.

Rich opened up his achievement page and looked over all that had changed. This war brought him only two levels in first homesteader and renowned true archer, but it brought 12 levels in heroic commander.

The stats had grown quite a lot, but one thing that was sad was that he didn’t have any free points now. A lot of them were used to boost his energy storage and to get him to Rank 3. Before he could continue, he noticed one of the generals approaching him, and it seemed that he was in quite a rush.

"High General, we figured it out. We finally know what the black threads were about." Rich braced himself as he had a theory. He was quite certain that all of the black threads were connected to the citizens of Aetherhold, and their so-called leader was consuming their life to fuel his spells. Was the country empty of life, or did they represent something else?

The general continued, "Each of them was connected to every citizen of Aetherhold, and it seems whenever he pulled on the threads, he consumed their current and future potential to generate holy power for their God. He was basically consuming their belief, and in doing so, every single citizen understood the reality that they were nothing more than an energy source for a person who had just gotten incredibly strong."

"So, is there no need to fight them?" Rich asked. "No, they have surrendered. Most of them are having a hard time reconciling the bad things they have done in the name of their false God," the general replied.

Rich took a moment to absorb this but finally said, "Well, that's convenient, but I’ll take it as I actually don’t think I can imagine a better outcome." With that, the general left, leaving behind Rich who started to let himself relax, knowing that the war was over.