Homesteading in a fantasy world

The building I entered inside the Fort was a bit run-down but a lot better than the one I got in town. There was even furniture, and it seemed that the whole building was heated by some sort of heating system that worked on ambient energy.

It would have never worked if we weren't in such a high-density area. What made me even more curious was that this was the outer ring. By how much would the density rise closer to the inner ring? It was hard to imagine what madness might be living there.

The building was one of the tall ones that reached all the way up to the edge of the wall and might have been one of those I walked on when I first landed with Goose. There were many floors, but the space on a single floor wasn’t too big, around the same size as my home.

There was no exit except for the ground floor; there wasn't even a basement, but the quartermaster gave me information that there was also a solid floor that was as thick as the outer wall underneath the whole Fort. That way, nothing could come into the Fort from below the ground.

I sat down in one of the more comfortable chairs and thought back on the conversation with the fort leader. He was quite strong and seemed quite wary of me. Fortunately, it seemed that he wasn’t going to try to mess with me just yet. I do think that someone might be following me, but I haven’t been able to catch a glimpse of them.

It seems that I’m not completely at the bottom of the ladder, but I'm definitely not at the top. This meant that I needed to be a bit more careful about how I acted because if one of those strong people decided to kill me, I think they could succeed.

On the other hand, it meant there was an opportunity here to learn from people who are stronger and have lived a lot longer than me. A perfect example is the leader. If I didn’t know his age of 187 from the paperwork I got, I would have guessed he was in his 40s.

There are more people like that. It was hard to understand what I was seeing at first, but seeing the leader helped me figure it out. It was possible for me to see if a person was older than they seemed.

I would never know their exact age, but I think if I practiced a little more, I could at least tell at a glance if someone was a lot older than me. In fact, I think I should take some time and try to hone that skill, as it might save my life one day.

First business, however, was to make a sign. The second floor had some crafting materials leftover from whoever was here before me. There wasn't anything special here, but there were some paints and a piece of wood that was big enough.

I carved the company name into it and then painted it. After that, I went to the ground floor where I saw Goose sleeping. He was quite tired from all the flying, and it was nice and warm here.

The ground floor was a bit bigger than the rest of the floors. It also had three large doors and what looked to be a smithing corner, but all the equipment had been taken out, and only the shadows remained of what once was.

There were also many small windows covered with wooden shutters. They were meant to be fired out of whenever the fort had been breached. I didn’t see any battle damage on the outside of the building, however, there were some inside. I guess long ago there might have been a drunk brawl here.

I hung the sign above the front entrance, mimicking how the other buildings had their signs placed. Now everyone should know that this building was no longer empty. The moment I did that, I could also feel the connection to the land the building was deepened a little bit, but it was still quite muddled as I wasn’t the true owner of this place.

This was a bit annoying, and I wondered if I would ever want to take over this fort. I laughed at my own joke; it would be way too much work.

This fort, like the town, also didn't seem to sleep at night. So what I did was go exploring. It turned out it was difficult to explore because there were a lot of shops, and each one was connected to a workshop where a master was working.

It was hard not to simply watch what they did and try to learn from people who were obviously better than me at dealing with high-rank materials. Getting enough coin to be able to pay them to teach me just jumped up in priority.

For that reason, I dragged myself to the quest hall. Even before I got close to the building, I could hear constant yelling, and the number of people here was a bit insane compared to the other places I’ve seen in this fort.

When I walked in, I saw that almost half of the room was packed tight with people yelling over one another. The scene reminded me of stock market traders before the 21st century. However, these people weren’t trading stocks; they were buying and selling all kinds of quests, from material acquisition to monster extermination.

There were also a few people on stage, apparently announcing new quests. I observed all of this for quite a while. It seems that buying new quests could be done with contribution points, or you would need to wait for one to be assigned to you. Apparently, there was a list, and you could even sell your spot on that list. I was going to be able to get my first quest in 3 days, and then I could sell or trade it if I couldn’t complete that quest or just didn't want to do it.

All of this seemed like madness to me, but there was a positive side to it. The quests themselves were worth quite a lot. It would have taken dozens of quests to make the same amount of coins in the town.

I was also curious about who was funding all of this. The answer was simple and complicated at the same time. The Fort kind of paid for the quests.

It seems that it got a chunk of money every month from the world council, but it also seems that they were making coin from every quest as well because even with monster extermination quests, you needed to bring back proof of certain monster parts, which were quite expensive, and those you needed to give to the Fort.

Fortunately for me, there was also, on the other side of the room where there weren’t many people, a large board. On there were quests that anyone could pick up. But of course, there was a catch. All of those quests were the ones that no one was willing to do. It seems that if they were on there for too long, a guild or a company would be forced to do it.

There seemed to be a few reasons why they might be here. The biggest seemed to be distance. A lot of the quests on the board were to the very edge of this fort’s territory, and some of those would take a week or more to reach if you were hurrying.

Outside this fort, basically the entire area was a war zone, and from my experience, the longer you are in a war zone, the more likely you are to run into something you can't handle.

It now made quite a lot of sense why such quests were so often on this board. Fortunately for me, I had Goose. The question now was what 5 quests should I pick so I could get this month's quota done and go back home.