Homesteading in a fantasy world

The next morning, I walked for quite a while before I reached the place where I planted my new tree. The planting timing wasn't the best, as it was winter, but for a tree that was close to second-rank strength and seemed not to mind the cold, it was not really a problem. It was already soaking in the nutrients in the rich soil and absorbing the ambient energy and mana.

It needed quite a lot, but that was a good thing. Because of my high rank, my land wants to follow my example, and over time the dungeon has proven not enough to absorb all of the excess. Because of this, over time, my land has had higher than the surrounding average of all three power sources.

I had hoped that the sapling I got from the dungeon would fix this, but it’s growing a lot slower than I expected, only having a few leaves last summer.

I was quite pleased that the number of unique trees in my land was now three. Well, technically speaking, there were quite a few iron oak saplings as well, but those I will need to plant somewhere else.

There were places I could plant them in the hilly forest to the west. That way, I could keep them on my land, but the metal content of those spots isn’t even a quarter of that where the current iron oak is growing.

There was actually a perfect place if we wanted more iron oak-type trees. I often forget that this tree could actually absorb any kind of metal. Wait. I moved so fast that I actually needed to catch myself before I fell.

Would the tree be able to absorb higher-ranking metals like Mythryl? The problem was that whenever a deposit of high-rank metals was found, it was basically mined out as fast as possible.

That will be a problem for the future, as currently, we didn’t even have land anywhere near a place where high-rank metals were found. The idea of using different metals for the trees was interesting, even with regular ones, but I think iron would be the best choice most of the time.

Fortunately, there is a large area in the grass fields near the western mountains where the iron content of the soil is extremely high.

It was found by one of the survey teams but just marked in the report in the ‘interesting but not useful’ section. I was quite glad that I helped design the report sheet surveyors needed to fill in; otherwise, we might have never found out about this treasure.

My map ability and connection to the land are overpowered, to say the least, but even with the combination of abilities and traits working together, it would be hard to figure out every curiosity our land hides. At least I am able to point people in the right direction to find the truly valuable resources and areas.

The true problem is keeping this secret. There isn’t really a place to hide anything in the grassland that’s bigger than a rabbit. We can, of course, detect any spies in our land. But I am starting to understand the capabilities of high-ranked people, and I wouldn’t be surprised if someone could simply look at our land from half a continent away. Whatever the case might be, we will not be able to keep this secret for long.

The saplings are maturing quite fast, and soon the time to move them will come. The question is, who do I bring into this project? There are probably ways of hiding it; I can think of at least one right now. That being planting other trees as well, so we could hide or at least distract from the real prize of the future tree farms.

I had finally reached close enough to my home base to see apprentices moving around, doing their own things. I still had time to think about the tree problem, as there was still plenty of winter to live through.

I greeted my apprentices and observed how they did their current tasks. There wasn't any need for me to guide any of them currently, as they had an excellent handle on everything needed at the moment.

Teaching apprentices has slowly become routine, and with Tim also getting quite good at teaching the apprentices' training them within one year has become a lot simpler. It might be a different story if I wasn’t picking people who were excited to learn, but for the foreseeable future, I didn’t see a time when I would need to pick anyone who wasn't excited to learn.

It was also a time for me to continue learning about crafting. Before we returned to Breach and Connection, I needed to make tools, weapons, and armor not just for myself but for the members of my company as well. This time they would be joining me, and unlike me, would mostly be living there.

It was also time to use up the secret stash of dungeon-dropped items and materials I’ve collected. It had been a long time since I visited my secret vault, and everything was a little bit dusty inside. I had my new adventurer pack with me. Into it, I put all of the stuff that I could melt down or use in crafting, and when everything was inside the backpack, I went to the shelf to pick up a special item.

As soon as I touched it, I got a feeling from the item, wanting me to use it. It almost overwhelmed me. It was the tiny hammer that helped with crafting. Now, I wasn’t entirely sure how it would help me, but that was the feeling I got from it.

Fortunately, I didn’t actually need to use this hammer to craft; I just needed to have it on my person. Before I left the vault, I pulled the hammer into my tattoo storage for the meanwhile, so no one would question why I walked out of the root cellar with a tiny hammer.

There was a need to also make it its own belt. When I made it to the smithy, I found it to be empty. I set up my bag next to the large table and pulled out the rank three beaver-armadillo creature's hide.

Because of the scales of the creature, I would only be able to cut the belt into certain widths. My choices were to have one or two rows. One row would make the belt about 7 centimeters wide, while 2 rows would make it double that. I went with the one row.

Before I started to cut, I brought out the tiny hammer and tucked it into my belt. I already had a good connection with the hammer, but I also used the knowledge I had gotten from my basic equipment bond skill to connect even better.

It was almost like the hammer was speaking to me, but not quite. As soon as I looked at the leather and what I wanted to do with it, it was like it was whispering to me insights on how I should proceed. It was a weird experience, and I just absorbed it so I could get better used to it.

I was brought out of my contemplation by a notification. It seems that my basic equipment bond ranked up to the normal rank. The whispering stopped as I stopped concentrating on crafting, but I was now given three ability options I needed to choose from.

Immediately, one choice stood out to me, and honestly, it was so much better than the rest that I didn’t need to think much before I picked it.

You have gained a new ability: Item Set

There wasn’t much clarification about the ability, but I have learned that the more encompassing an ability is, usually the stronger it is. That's not to say that a really specific ability is less powerful; in fact, it actually goes both ways.

You either want a truly encompassing ability or a truly singular ability. Anything in between is usually weaker, but not always. I guess in the end, it truly matters if it fits you or not, and I felt that this fit me quite well.

I decided to take a small break from crafting and meditate on the new ability. Two hours later, I was amazed. This ability would allow me to make item sets. So if you wear multiple items of the same set, they will be in greater synergy with each other, improving each piece of the set to be better than they would be individually.

Unfortunately, I would not just be able to pick any items I want and then make a set out of them. No, the items already needed to have some sort of similarity or synergy between each other. For example, if I made armour from the same batch of metal, it would be incredibly easy to make it into a set.

There was, however, a large problem with this. This ability wasn’t the best at enhancing the base properties of materials; instead, it was more meant to improve enchantments or runes that were added to the equipment.

That was less useful. First, I really didn’t know anything about runes or enchantments, and second, they usually interfered with abilities, at least at the level of energy control I had with abilities.

This needed some experimentation, and fortunately, I was planning on making a lot of equipment for other people, and that equipment was going to be enhanced by other crafters who knew enchantments or runes.

This called for a change in approach. I first thought that I was just going to make the equipment, and give them to my company members who would then get those enhanced, but now I think it would be a good idea to observe how these enhancements are added and then afterwards make some of the items into sets. Nothing to it, to get started.