Homesteading in a fantasy world

It was time to get back to grinding, but I needed the skill to grind. I didn’t have much free time currently, as I was busy training my own body, dealing with my responsibilities, and teaching my apprentices to the best of my ability.

After looking through my achievement page, I found a skill that I hadn’t used for quite a long time: basic alchemy. From the knowledge I have gained, I know that I could actually gain experience for this skill by brewing or distilling alcohol. Fortunately, I had Val, who had quite a large setup by now.

He was more than happy to allow me to use some of his equipment. The process itself was familiar to me, as I had made different kinds of alcohols before. Unfortunately, it wasn't the best season for beer or cider, but I did start to make mead and distill vodka out of potatoes.

It didn't take me long to gain a skill level, but unfortunately, the nation as a whole went into higher alert when Goose came back and reported a huge flock of giant birds flying towards us from the West, and unfortunately coming quite close before heading towards the South to find food.

They were the birds why food stores were underground because if they smelled or saw anything that they could eat, they would swarm down and consume anything they got ahold of. We all had orders to stay inside and not even light any fireplaces, as the smoke might draw them in as well.

I was keeping an eye out through my connection to the land, and I was actually quite terrified when I could finally see the flock on our land because it seemed never-ending, and while not all the birds were gigantic, none of them were smaller than Goose.

The smaller ones often swooped down and dived into the snow, and while not always, most of the time started to ascend with their beaks bloodied from the rabbits they were able to get. Apparently, some of these birds had abilities that allowed them to locate prey even under the thick snow.

That meant that our plan to hide the animals, mainly horses, in the capital underneath quickly built shelters, would not work because we didn't build them like the houses, which seemed to be able to disrupt whatever ability they seemed to have.

As soon as I saw the birds that had already successfully caught rabbits turn and head straight toward the capital, with a lot of other birds following them, I knew it was serious.

Unfortunately, I will not be defending the capital on my own, although I should be able to if I weren’t hurt. It would also be good for everyone else to start fighting without me, but I could at least help a little bit.

I was one of the many who were under the watchtowers, and many were waiting inside houses that had roof access and a ballista that was placed on the roof. On top of me was also a ballista, a lot stronger than the standard ones built for the legion.

Others that had ranged abilities were also strategically placed, waiting for their opportunity. We had, of course, hoped that we didn't have to engage, but we weren’t stupid enough to bet on that and had made quite a lot of preparations during the four days of early warning we had, thanks to a goose who had been purposely patrolling to find this flock of birds.

The birds flew straight towards the herd animals, but when they were close to getting in range, the defenders of the capital rushed out and manned the ballistas. This caused many of the birds to find new targets, but many didn't survive for long.

There wasn’t an order for everyone to fire their ballistas at the same time. Because of that, there wasn't a deafening sound of ballista fire, but a constant one. The birds were quite tough, but most of them weren’t even first rank.

The cries of the birds who were hit and started to fall unfortunately notified the larger flock that hadn't turned towards us. Fortunately, not all of them turned to head towards here, especially the big ones; they just continued to head towards the South. But we still had approximately a thousand giant birds heading towards us, and we had only killed eleven.

My ballista was a big one, but unlike the others, I wasn’t using the crank to pull back the string; I was just using my pure strength and not using much energy to enhance it. Beside me, there were four helpers that supplied me with the bolts, and one who used one of his abilities to make the bolt fly faster. My aim wasn’t perfect, but it was good enough, and even a wing hit that grounded the bird was good enough for now.

Unfortunately, we didn't have enough firepower to keep the birds from getting close, but we did have defenders with defensive abilities and some with attack abilities to keep the birds from attacking us directly.

The birds, at least some of them, had long-range attacks. Whenever one was revealed to have this type of capability, the more powerful ranged fighters would engage them. Goose was one of the best we had in this regard, and he was using his ability to control the wind to the utmost and would most likely kill the most birds.

Soon, the other birds realized one of their kind was attacking them, and soon a few of the stronger birds started to chase Goose. But he was fast and strong and was still able to do his job of engaging the birds who could fight at long range.

The battle scene was still quite chaotic as the birds were swarming from every direction, and we were slowly losing people. A choice was made, and some of the animals were released and used as bait.

This helped keep down the casualties as the birds often went for the easier targets. Many of the watchtowers were broken because of the larger birds who had been wounded fatally crashing into their last target.

Many of the birds had defensive abilities, making regular arrow fire useless against them, and even ability-enhanced ones barely made it through the feathers. The arrows that impacted slowed them down, making them easier targets for ballista bolts to finish them off.

The fighting was brutal, and after three hours, the 200 remaining birds abandoned their target and flew back towards the flock to catch up with the rest. We were left with many buildings damaged, multiple watchtowers broken, 40 defenders killed, and over 150 wounded. We also lost over 100 of our animals and had a lot of dead birds we needed to butcher.

We were all exhausted, and after thinking about it a little bit, I realized I could have probably helped keep some of the damage down. But even if I could use everything I had, I think the birds would have still caused quite a lot of damage.

What was good was that the birds froze quite quickly, especially because the days had been getting colder, but fortunately, the snowstorms had stopped happening. It was difficult to process the frozen corpses, but at least they would not go bad.

My alchemy grinding was put on hold as I helped everyone else butcher the birds. It took about a month to get everything done, but when we finally finished, we had multiple warehouses full of bird bones, feathers, claws, and leather.

Most of the meat would be processed by smoking and drying it, but currently, there were huge piles of meat just frozen next to the walls of the town. For the future, we were planning on fitting a lot more sturdier watchtowers, and not just at the edge of the wall, but all over the town.

A lot more ballistas will be built in the future. We had survived another disaster, which could have been a lot worse if the main flock had actually come here. There were multiple rank 3 giant birds and even one rank 4, which meant that even if I was fully healed, I would have most likely not survived.

This was a reminder of how dangerous this world could actually be, and the only way to be safe was to be stronger than anything else around. The houses were now fixed, but you could see quite clearly where the damage had been.

We also had another large funeral but burning in the winter was a lot more difficult because of the snow and the frozen ground, but thanks to abilities, we managed. The entire last month was thoroughly exhausting, and I was glad to finally be back home and sleep in my own bed.