Homesteading in a fantasy world

The first place I was led to wasn’t actually the City Hall; instead, it was the Beast Hall. There, I could register Goose and leave him, so he would be taken care of and safe. The registration was quite standard overall, but it took a bit of time, which allowed me to observe my surroundings.

There weren’t as many beasts as I expected, but compared to other places, it was a zoo. The most common ones I saw were medium-sized felines, but there were also a lot of bird-type beasts, usually perched on someone's shoulder.

The people here were quite different from other places. Everyone looked like they were adventurers, and perhaps they were, but even so, people were doing normal jobs like sweeping while fully armored.

I guess you just couldn't let your guard down here. What was even more curious was what these people were wearing. The most common type of armor I saw was leather, but many were also wearing some metal armor pieces.

Every weapon and tool that I saw seemed to be made out of either metal or creature parts like horn. The metals themselves were different. The only metals that I recognized were iron alloys. These seemed to be incredibly strong alloys, yet from what it looked like, they were the most undesired of all the materials I saw.

Only a few had weapons or tools from this type of material, and the persons who wielded them weren’t the best off. Most had armor that was barely holding together or looked to be incredibly young people who were just getting started on their journey.

There was another curious fact: there were no children anywhere. Perhaps there was a place in the city where there were children, but I didn’t think so. The reason I was quite certain of this was that there was no one under rank one. It seems that the rule that anyone under rank one couldn’t be here was actually being enforced. I need to stop doubting the information I receive, even if it seems unrealistic.

It cost me 100 cores to keep Goose here, and if things were truly this expensive for everything, I couldn’t even imagine how much materials would cost to build entire structures. The City Hall wasn’t far from the Beast Hall. But going there I did get a chance to better observe the buildings.

Everything seemed to be made out of rank-one materials. Mostly, things were made out of wood, but there were some buildings made out of stones. The City Hall was like that, and it seems that the foundation was made from rank two stones. That was impressive.

When we walked inside, I was momentarily taken aback. Quite a lot of people were moving in and out, but when I saw what was inside, I was incredibly confused. The building was almost split into three equal parts, but one was smaller than the other two. The décor for each part was different, and it seemed that even how they operated was different. “I don’t tire of seeing that face,” the guard that was guiding me said.

After saying that, he started to approach one of the sections that looked more tribal, if I had to put a word to it. I followed, but fortunately, I didn’t need to ask as the guard continued to explain.

“Breach isn’t the only fort that has this city as a supplier. You can probably see why this city got the name Connection. There used to be more, but two forts were overrun about 10 years back. Terrible business that was.”

We made it to the receptionist tables, but my guide pointed me to a door. “You go through there. You will be able to get everything sorted out. Just one last piece of advice: the preferred currency here is Mythryl coins. They come in small, medium, and large sizes. So, if you’re going to buy any equipment, if you try to pay in cores, you would be overpaying by quite a lot.” I thanked him and then watched as he left.

I wanted to let out a tired sigh, but bureaucracy was unfortunately a necessity. Two hours later, when it was already dark - fortunately, that didn't stop me - I was standing in front of a large lot with a decent-sized building that had seen better days.

The people in City Hall were incredibly happy that I had already made it here, although they were less happy when I told them I was alone. Nevertheless, I received a small stipend of 100,000 monster cores and five small mithril coins.

With all of this, I was never going to be able to build or afford anything here. At least I wasn’t going to be starving, but the prices were quite expensive. Because of that I was just eating my rations while I looked upon my land.

I could feel a weak connection to it; it wasn’t properly mine, but it still somewhat was, which was at least a positive. The money I did get would have allowed me to at least get started on getting a group of people settled in this building and perhaps start doing some jobs around the city.

This wasn't going to work for me. Now, I did want to slowly build up my company, but I didn’t want to do it at a snail’s pace. I stepped onto my company land, and the connection deepened a little bit. At least I was going to know if someone who wasn't from my company would step on this land.

The building from inside was even worse, but it would keep the cold out; other than that, it was completely empty. There was a decent-sized underground basement complex which was in better shape, but that was it.

I'm pretty sure that the other companies and guilds were already established before they applied to become high-rank ones. I was starting from the beginning; however, I did have access to United Freeholds' workforce, even if I had to pay them myself.

One thing that seemed good about this city was that it didn’t seem to sleep during the night. Some places were closed, but it seems that some also closed during the day and only opened at night.

Just in case, I checked all the building material vendors, and while there were places where I could get cheaper materials, I still couldn’t afford anything. Now, that wasn’t completely correct; I could build a shack for the amount of money I had.

It took me a little bit of digging to figure out that almost everyone who needed to do a lot of building went out and acquired their own materials. It turns out that most of the materials sold weren't meant for this city’s construction but to be sold to other forts or cities that didn't have these types of resources.

The portal network also seemed quite extensive, and the portal structures themselves were the largest I’ve seen. That made sense because I could see huge trees being transported through to some other place. Trade seemed to be constant, and I guess it made sense. From what I saw on the large map that the dwarf showed us, not every city and fort would have access to trees, for example.

The huge market, where the portal network was in the middle of, was also split into multiple sections, and the three largest were owned by the forts that were close to this city. Even then, they only took about half of the area of the market. The rest of the space seemed to be split quite confusingly, and it seems that many large companies had their own space where they sold and bought a lot of things.

My five small Mythryl coins weren’t that useful. It seems that the five of them were roughly worth about 500,000 monster cores. The same value as one medium-sized mithril coin. A large mithril coin was worth 1,000,000 monster cores.

It was quite common to see rank three weapons costing 50 or even 100 large mithril coins. I don’t think I’ve ever felt so poor. Fortunately, on the quest board, the tasks that were given were worth quite a lot of coins, but it will still take a while to get a proper weapon.

I did overhear a conversation between a party of adventurers complaining that the quests here gave too little coin compared to the ones at the Fort. That at least seemed promising. Perhaps a better idea would be to go and visit the Fort.

I still explored this place for a few more hours before I returned to Goose. He didn’t much like the city and was quite glad when I told him that we were leaving. Only about 10 minutes later, we were flying out of the city and towards the Fort.

This gave me some time to examine the Mythryl coins. At first, I expected this metal to be an evolved version of iron. It most definitely wasn’t, even if it had some similarities. The structure was incredibly strong, yet I felt it was malleable, similar to iron, and I was quite certain you could temper it like you could iron.

I felt I was still missing quite a lot of information, and I think I would need to hire someone to explain everything to me. However, for that, I would need some funds.

Halfway through our journey, I received a notification. It seems like I was able to get a new skill: animal riding. It started off at the beginner rank, which was to be expected as I had never done any animal riding before in my life. While it was dark, I could still see the land below quite well, but more importantly, I could understand how different the land below was from what I was used to.

Not long away from the city, the plants, trees, and even the ground seemed to become stronger. It took me a little bit to understand, but basically, everything down below was rank one, and as we started to get closer and closer to the Fort, I could see more and more areas that were also rank two.

It was incredibly jarring to my vision to see a patch of ground that was rank two. What did that even mean? I wasn’t completely certain, but I was debating on landing to find out. Yet, I could also see the creatures living down below. They were mimicking the rest of the land’s power ranking. Another puzzle piece fell into place, explaining why all of this was necessary.