Homesteading in a fantasy world

"You know, there is no reason why we have to make larger villages. It could be more efficient to have even smaller ones, but more of them. It would be especially good for forestry, as this way we wouldn't harvest too much in a single location," one of those who was in charge of resource management for the nation said.

That sounded interesting, and perhaps the same thing could be done with the mines. I started to look more at the singular metal veins found which were good enough and a lot closer to the capital.

"While I would agree with you, the problem would be processing that lumber. If we made the villages smaller, there would be no way the sawmills that we would need to make in every village would be worth it. Most of the time, they simply wouldn't have enough lumber to work even half a day," David said, after which a small silence followed.

"There is also another problem. After our survey, we found that the entire length of the river to the forest, which was about 5 to 40 kilometres depending on the location, just doesn't have that much wind.

The sawing mechanics or even milling mechanics would need to be operated manually, or we would need to build water-based mechanical power converters, but to be honest, the river isn’t that fast-moving," the only dwarf in this meeting explained, who was also one of the head engineers of our nation.

"Now that's certainly a problem. This would disrupt the smaller villages' plan as we would have wanted them to be more spread out. This would cause quite a lot of logistics problems, and of course, guarding all these places would be troublesome," David added, and they continued to discuss.

For mining, that wouldn't be too much of a problem, and while a larger foundry would be more efficient, with the abilities people have, processing the metals, even if it's a small operation, shouldn't be any problem.

Mines like these are also a lot more defendable; they’re basically small fortresses if we make them similarly to the one iron mine we already have. A brief silence emerged as everyone was thinking, and the dwarf was the first to speak.

"You know, we don't actually need that much processed lumber. Most of the buildings for the villages would use the entire log, as making them into planks and building a framed house would actually make the building a lot weaker, and it would need repairs more often. Our main use for the processed lumber is for some of the town-level buildings and for the furniture makers. What if we made a larger settlement specifically for this, and I have a perfect location for it."

The dwarf pointed his finger directly towards the dam we had built. He explained his plan a little bit more. I liked the idea of using the dam to power larger facilities that could handle the workload of 10 smaller ones.

Like this, we should also be able to improve them to perhaps even process higher-ranked lumber. Whatever the case, that place was also a good location for a settlement as it was a midway point between the regional capital and the actual capital.

Eventually, the time came when we started to discuss metal resources. I explained to them my idea of not using the best location right now but smaller ones closer by that would be easier to defend.

Their location would also be quite hard for an enemy to reach without us being able to get there first, as they were quite deep inside our borders. And while there was a chance some monsters could come over the mountain, it was something we couldn't do anything against except for regular patrols. This world was just too dangerous to guarantee complete safety.

By the end of the discussion, we finished the next year's expansion plan. We would be adding 24 villages or outposts, with a total population of all of those totaling up to about 3000. That would include their workers and their families.

For this project, we would also be leveraging the legion, as it meant a lot of building. The legion would also be helping with the roadmaking, but even with our best estimates, it would take a year or two after this year before we’re finished. While most of our workers were superhuman, it was still a lot of road to be made.

The next few days went by quite fast, and while we had made the expansion plan, it would take a lot more work to actually start executing it and prepare the needed resources and manpower.

While walking towards my office from a tavern that had especially good fish dishes, I noticed quite a lot of children huddled around a bench, discussing animatedly about something.

I was quite curious, so I tried to see what was going on, but as soon as one of them noticed me, he started to poke another child until he got annoyed enough to look away from whatever they were discussing. But when he saw me, his eyes went wide as well, and he started to do the same thing that was done to him.

It was such a strange scene that I actually stopped talking and continued to observe. It didn't take long for all of them to be looking at me, and I was actually starting to get kinda creeped out.

I decided it was time to leave, but before I could take a complete step, one of the children burst out of the center of their group and ran towards me at full speed. "Rich, would you please sign this?" the young child said while holding what seemed to look like a playing card.

His eyes looked so excited, and after my brain recovered from the shock, I took the card while trying to think how I could sign it. The back of the card had an interesting design, but my brain short-circuited when I saw the other side of it.

It looked like a trading card, like from the popular card games back on Earth, but the image was eerily similar to me. It was like someone had drawn a picture of me from behind while I was in my full armor, and even the two-handed weapon seemed to look like the one that I have.

‘A Defiant Stand of a Broken Veteran.’ That was the name of the card, but the description was eerie: ‘There is nothing more dangerous or inspiring than a truly seasoned veteran who has chosen to stand against unbeatable odds. While most finally find their salvation and get to die on the battlefield, Rich Dirt will defy those odds.’

‘Activating this card gives a morale debuff and a damage debuff to all enemies with the sentient classification. It also gives a morale boost to all soldier-type cards on your side of the field.’

What the hell was this, and why was my name here? "This is my first rare card. I got it just before we left Verdia. My mother was quite angry that they used the last of my allowance, but when I told her how much this card was worth, she at least gave me a little bit of dinner.”

“Still, it was so worth it. I can’t believe that I actually got a rare card. Best of all, it turned out that the newest release also features you. It's said that whenever someone gets a card made of them, it means that they are worth watching."

The child was so excited that he just continued to talk and talk, sometimes in a completely random direction, but I let him speak as I needed to understand what was happening. "I am so glad I found these cards; they’re so interesting, but playing the game is actually super hard.”

“You know that they have been around for more than 50 years; some people are really too good at it, and they have such good cards." Well, that was an interesting piece of information. On the bottom right, there was a symbol which was probably the company that made them.

"Where do you want me to sign it? Can you still use it if I do?" That made the child stop speaking, and a frown came to his otherwise happy face. "Hmm, maybe the backside... no, then I can’t play with it. Over the description? No, then the other players could say that he can’t read the description properly, but that shouldn't matter. No, I can’t risk it. Do it over the picture, but don't make the lines too thick. I like the picture."

I involuntarily chuckled a bit. I then pulled out my special pencil that David gave me. The ink wouldn't come off so easily; not even water would be able to get rid of whatever you write with this. My signature wasn’t long or complicated, something I was glad I decided on, as there were sometimes a lot of things that I needed to sign.

Of course, forging my signature would not be that easy, as I made a specific signature with my energy when I wrote. My signature allows others to confirm that it was me and making forging it a lot more difficult.

When I gave the card back, I wanted to ask a few questions, but the child almost immediately ran off. At least I was able to get his name, so I could later find him and ask more about this company that made the cards.

I was quite certain that the image was taken from this war, and I was quite curious about how someone was able to get their hands on it. But with so many abilities in this world, who knows what possibilities there were. I was almost certain that whoever made it, wasn’t from this world, but this wasn't a priority, and I should have time later on to explore this new discovery.