Homesteading in a fantasy world

I needed to take a break from harvesting, as I was needed for an experiment. The portal engineer working on energy-type portals had finally finished a small, one-person version that he had just finished building between our capital and the regional capital of the new land we conquered.

The town designated as a regional capital was at the mouth of a large river and against the sea. Currently, the portal was built in a warehouse, but this was just a temporary measure. Eventually, we would have a full-sized one that could transport more than just one person per trip next to the mana-type portal.

When I walked in, there were a lot of people working, but many stopped and looked at me, including the portal engineer. "Rich, you made it. Good afternoon, and we're ready to start in just a few minutes. Come over here so I can explain a few things," he said while motioning me to get closer to the portal.

I'll be honest, the design didn't inspire much confidence that this thing could actually work. There were bands of metal with runes on them that were exposed, and there were sparks of energy flying off acting sort of like electricity.

"You see this black square box that's away from the portal a little bit? You see, it's connected to it, and from this, you channel energy into the whole structure. Currently, it needs a lot of energy to work, and it can only be from a singular source, although the druids have some interesting techniques which I am learning from.”

“This is the main reason I found why the research in energy portals hasn't gone further; they're just too expensive to run. But I’m confident I can get that number down by a lot. I just need to gather data, and I know that you could power this all by yourself."

He continued to talk, but it became a lot more technical after that. He honestly acted and sounded exactly like a mad scientist. This brought a smile to my face, but I did have to hold up my hand so he would stop.

"Everything you're saying sounds interesting, but I will be honest, most of this went over my head. Let's perhaps get started?" He immediately nodded too fast and too many times, "Of course, of course, sorry, I get sidetracked. Just place your hand on this and start channeling energy into it, slowly to start with," he finished, with a hint of panic in his words.

Good thing he told me because I think I was just about to break this thing. Starting slowly was not just beneficial to the device but to me as well, as expending a lot of energy still hurt like hell.

It was fascinating to watch the runes light up with my energy sight and see how they transformed and changed energy as it passed through, creating complex patterns, and when over half of my energy pool was channeled into it, the portal opened up, connecting the two towns.

Fortunately, I didn’t need to go through this, but a volunteer did. As soon as he stepped through, only a second later, the portal closed and a few runic bands melted. Immediately, everyone seemed to rush towards a section of the warehouse where communication items were held.

"He's here, safe and sound," came from one of these items, and everyone cheered. Originally, they wanted me to power the portal multiple times, but since it needed fixing, I didn’t need to do that.

When I told them how much energy it actually took, they were all quite surprised. It did at least explain to them why some of the runic bands melted, as they weren't meant to handle so much energy.

Expanding energy was extremely exhausting and quite painful. Fortunately, I didn’t need to use much energy while harvesting. There was still a lot to harvest. Things started to move faster as more and more soldiers made it back here.

We would have wanted them to rest, but getting the food from the fields to the storehouse was a higher priority, especially because even I could now smell the rain that was coming towards us. We finished with four days to spare before the true rain started, and after meditating a little bit, thanks to my true nature connection, I knew the next two months were going to be extremely wet.

A week after the harvest, we started the burials. We did them whenever the rain was not so bad, but most of the time, it was still raining. I stood beside every grave as the people who knew them said goodbye to their loved ones or friends.

It made me sad and angry whenever we only buried a stone square with the soldier's name on it and a little bit more information about what they had achieved or a message from their loved ones.

It was always sad, but I was surprised how little anger there was towards me. It was something I wasn’t used to but found it comforting. To my surprise, the saddest funerals weren’t the ones with grieving families; they were the ones where no one showed up.

It was just me and usually only four other people who dug the grave and placed the body or the stone inside the grave. Usually, grave markers for these graves also only had the name of the soldier and sometimes only the date of their death, as not even their date of birth was known.

It was a failing on our part, and something we were already working on fixing. Never again will a grave marker have so little on it. Because of the rain and because we needed to bury so many, the road to the Forest of Remembrance had gotten quite muddy.

So, with currently no other pressing job, me and a few others started to make a paved path to the Forest of Remembrance. I worked the most, as now I could be up for two days straight without having to sleep. During the day, I still mostly stood beside a grave where a fallen soldier was being buried.

This took quite a while. During this time, in the center of the forest in the large clearing where there was already a huge stone with many names on it for our previously fallen, two new large stones had been brought here, and unfortunately, all three were quite full of the names of the fallen.

The final ceremony in this clearing was hard, as standing and listening to all the names was one of the hardest things I have done, but I stood strong and held back my tears. It was the last thing that I could offer, a promise that I will remember and never release them from my heart.

When everything was finally over, winter was a month away. Instead of focusing on myself or my skills, I decided to dedicate the winter to my apprentices. I would get to know them better and continue to give advice that would hopefully help them in the future.

As the days and months went by, not only did I feel like I was giving my apprentices a proper amount of my time, but I was also getting slowly better. The world, however, didn't stop on my account, and we did have to fight against a few weaker monster hordes from broken dungeons.

The world at large was in a state of disarray because the wars during the summer were quite devastating, but I didn’t think that they would stop. Fortunately, there were only the southern kingdoms to worry about, and more than half of them couldn't even declare war on us because of the treaty with the queen.

The other half could declare war in the future, and if any of our nations stood alone, I would guess they would declare war, but all three of us were actually quite fearsome.

We were all a little bit afraid of what was to come because next year the largest project was to connect the two parts of our nation. The new people there wanted all of us dead not long ago. We weren't certain how the regular populations would mix if they came into contact, but we hoped it wouldn't be too bad.

One thing that was good was that our nation was already made up of so many different peoples that there was a good chance that it would not be so bad, and over time, I think it will get better. Thanks to the influx of gold we got from the queen, we were able to finally get similar locations opened up as we do in Verdia.

Because of so many wars, we were going to start bringing in a lot of refugees next year. We would need a lot of people to fill our nation, even if we weren’t planning on having huge population centers and a lot more smaller communities. Still, the piece of land we owned was large and mostly uninhabited.