Homesteading in a fantasy world

I was sitting cross-legged in the watchtower that was close to the barn and the main house. It was currently snowing, as it always was. The rainy season technically didn’t end; it just transformed into a snowing season. Never in my long life have I seen so much snow before. If things kept going like this, every house would be completely buried.

Next to me was a ballista, not built by me but by a branch of our military. The most interesting thing about this weapon was that it was not just built by humans or dwarves, but also by two goblins who expressed interest in joining this division that built the siege weaponry. They were accepted after we consulted with the goblin council, and they gave their approval for this.

Our presence at the swamp dungeon reduced the goblins' defensive needs by a huge margin, and with the understanding we have with the rock creatures off the nearby mountain, things have gotten a lot safer around here.

Of course, now we only have to worry about a few monsters thanks to the snow, but we are always on watch for the flying monsters or beasts because so much snow means that they would be having a much harder time finding food. They were the main reason why such extensive underground storage solutions were developed around these parts.

My own root cellar also had those devices now, keeping the humidity and temperature at the perfect range and helping keep everything fresh for as long as possible. I kind of want to extend that place, as it seems that my collection of interesting mutated seeds keeps expanding.

Most of the time, I actually have no idea what those changes are, and while I could meditate and try to find out every single one, it would honestly take longer than just planting and seeing what comes of them.

Of course, if I didn’t have anything else to do, it would be faster, but I can have quite a busy schedule. Behind me, towards the smithy, was my latest building. My bow workshop, while finished, was currently almost empty of any equipment needed to actually help with the process of making bows and arrows.

I still couldn’t do anything too extraneous, especially in the energy department. Although I did want to test out my new ability I got for reaching advanced rank in masonry, thanks to the route I helped build into the forest of remembrance.

My body was actually healed now, although I still needed to continue exercising to get the kinks out of everything. The most troublesome, and something that still gave me phantom pains, was my left arm, but doing exercise is slowly fixing that.

The biggest problem still remaining was my energy overuse, and I really needed to be careful. Using energy for attacking and the other abilities I had used was easy, but if I didn’t stop and I wasn’t letting myself get back to normal, using energy for anything else would become crippling.

It was frustrating because everything I did, from heavy exercise to crafting, used a lot of the same abilities and a similar way of using it, so everything interesting currently was something I couldn’t do.

It was so limiting that I hadn’t even realized how much I was leaning on abilities and energy to do everything in my life. Slowly, I have come to appreciate, especially in the last week, how doing things without the boost of energy can be quite rewarding.

For example, exercising that I have now started to do. It's definitely not straining my muscles enough or even exhausting me completely, and while I do some general body exercises, I have started to do slower, more deliberate movements that strain me in a different way.

Because of this, I pulled up my achievement page and looked at my logging skill which had been at level 19 for quite a while. Now, I was pretty sure I knew why I hadn’t been able to break through to the next rank. How is it skillful to just chop down a tree with a single cut? The answer was, it wasn’t; it was brute forcing it.

That was the plan for the immediate future. Right now, however, I enjoyed how the sun was slowly rising from the horizon, especially because the snowfall had been getting weaker and weaker over time.

It was going to be a beautiful day that was going to have a different kind of difficulty. After another hour of sitting and watching, I got up, stretched a bit, and then prepared the gear that I would need. There would be no bringing the fallen trees back; that would need to be done after the winter.

My destination lay just over the small hills towards the Iron Oak and the forest that lay between that and my home. It was still my land, but currently, I wasn’t looking for the best trees or the largest; I was looking for old trees that were already half hollow and only still kept barely alive by their stubbornness.

There were also trees falling onto newer ones that were yet to fully find their resting place on the ground. All of these trees were going to be difficult to purposely fell in a way where they wouldn't hurt the surrounding trees, or at least as little as possible.

The first I found was a tall birch tree that was currently at about a 70° angle as it had fallen and was currently supported by its neighbor by a few strong branches. The first thing I needed to do was clean up the snow.

When that was done, I could examine the base of the tree better. It seemed that it was pushed over by a storm as half of its roots were out of the ground. I began chopping, making precise cuts with my axe so I would weaken one side of the tree and so it would start to roll when the rest of the tree started to break from the weakening.

I didn’t only need to use my strength but an exact amount of it, as even without using energy, my body was incredibly powerful. My attempt was partially successful; as the tree started to fall once again, it rolled but only a little bit before the base touched the ground once again.

It was supported by a particularly strong and unfortunately curved branch from the other tree. What followed was me climbing the other tree and chopping off that particular branch, which finally made the original tree fall to the ground.

My smile was quite wide, and after trimming the branches, I moved on to the next one. The next one was quite literally the largest and oldest pine tree I had ever seen. It was already completely hollow from the inside, and I didn’t even see any healthy branches.

It was already going to come down as the winds and the snow had already started to twist its body, and I could already hear the groans whenever the wind blew through this area.

I approached it and laid my hand on it, and I could barely feel life. It was only still standing because it didn't know anything else to do. It was so weak, yet it could still feel the pain of its body being twisted. "I will make it as fast as I can, but even then, it will take you a while before you finally die," I said.

My axe fell heavily and bit deep. I was yet again reminded of how loud trees could be. It only took one more strike before I needed to dodge a falling branch and then get further away as the tree started to twist and then fall.

The noise it made when it fell was loud, yet the silence felt louder after it fell. I don’t know how long this tree had been here, but it was certainly one of the older ones in this part of the forest.

I decided to look around a little bit more but only found a singular pine cone from the only branch that still had a little bit of color on it. "You're coming with me," I said, and after a little bit of just waiting, I moved on to the next tree.