Homesteading in a fantasy world

I was in my office in the capital, and I had just given all the gear to my company members. There was an obvious problem: my office was way too small to have this many people all trying to test out their new equipment.

Taking a new piece of parchment, I quickly wrote down that I needed a plot in the capital where I could build a modest-sized building for my company. I should have thought about this a while ago, but everyone makes mistakes.

That's why it's important to have people by your side; one person can miss important details easily, but with more people, the chance of something being overlooked drops drastically.

“The gear is excellent, and I can’t wait to test it out, but the enchanters and rune carvers will have a lot of work to do,” one of my guild members commented out loud without specifically addressing anyone.

Everyone seemed incredibly pleased about the new equipment, but these were still not battle-tested. “There is a bit of a change in plan; I would need to observe how these items are enhanced, and afterwards, I would need them back to improve them even more.”

After my words, there was a moment of silence before a cultured voice spoke up. “You got another overpowered ability, didn’t you? There's no way that your luck is just at two. That lucky rabbit's foot you have can’t be normal.”

The assassin looked towards my hidden hydra pendant, to which I had long ago added the first loot drop I ever got from this world. Honestly, I’m amazed that it simply worked like that, but it gives such a small boost that seems to work no matter what necklace I decide to wear.

“I’ve given you the rabbit's foot to examine, and besides that, what if it is special? I still wouldn’t give it to you.” His face was unchanging, but I’m pretty sure he was quite annoyed, not because of my comment but because others chuckled a bit at our back and forth.

The enchanters and the rune smiths had their own large workshop, specially built for them. All of the people working here were refugees from large cities all over the world. We were slowly but steadily expanding into the largest cities, making our compounds, and with the blessing of the cities, taking some of the refugees off their hands.

These weren’t the best of the best because the people who were the best were already recruited by the local powers. That didn't mean that these people weren't good at what they did. Most of the time, the reason why they weren't the best was that they didn't have the resources to level themselves up enough to compete with others.

Here, they had the resources, at least the lower rank ones, and in quite a good quantity to make them incredibly happy. That being said, none of them currently looked happy because of the pile of gear in the middle of the workshop that all needed to be enhanced in some ways and fast.

It truly was an impressive amount of equipment because now there were also all of my tools that I was going to bring with me. All of them were going to get basic enchantments to make them more durable and actually be able to handle more energy throughput.

It came to me as a surprise that such an enchantment was actually quite common. Turns out that enchanters and rune smiths could burn through tools as fast as I could if I didn’t have such good control over my energy and didn't hold myself back so much.

There were about 20 people working in the workshop at the same time from morning to evening, and I continued to observe them for the eight days it took for them to finish all the items we brought.

Now, I understood why my item set ability needed materials so the ritual would work properly. It seems that, whether it's enchanting or rune smithing, they needed what they called catalyst materials. Those helped bind the enchantments and runes into the items and power their effects.

They also kind of act like batteries, and in some cases, they actually worked like batteries. It all depended on the rune or enchantment that was added. But no matter what, the runes needed to be charged by adding one of the three power sources. Each one required different base materials as catalysts and even required different techniques.

It had been a while since I had felt so overwhelmed with information. There was so much to absorb, yet I loved every moment of it. From the two different approaches, I think I liked rune smithing more.

There was a need in me to learn more about this craft, but currently, I already had too much on my plate. The important thing was that it did matter what catalysts were used if I wanted the item's set ability to work to its fullest.

Not only would the ritual catalysts need to be compatible with the enchantment and rune catalysts, but the item set idea or theme needed to synergize with the type of runes and enchantments that were added.

Currently, we simply didn’t have enough of the same type of catalyst to make item sets truly powerful, but even a little bit of added power would be better than no added power. So, when everyone was in their battle gear, wearing their new and old equipment, I made all of the items into sets. The entire process took about 10 hours.

Technically, they could now go and be a lot safer in the outer ring, but I still had to make my own equipment, and it would be a good idea for them to practice with their new items.

When I was finally back at home, I enjoyed a relaxing evening, and then in the morning, it was time to set up. It was a cold day, and the snow was coming in quite heavy, but I was clearing a patch of ground because there was no way I was going to melt this metal mixture inside the smithy.

I was using the fire clay, but now I added three different types of rock powder into it and larger pieces of a very specific rock that would hopefully make all of this able to handle the tremendous amount of heat I was going to need.

When the structure was built, it kind of looked like an old iron bloom. The big difference was that the inside was not going to process iron ore. Instead, it was going to hold a large crucible, but I was going to add different materials to hopefully make a bar of rank three metal that would have good properties for armor making.

The crucible was made from fire clay and the three-rock powder mixture. It had been drying in the forge for three days now while the fire was maintained by my apprentices. Before I took it off the fire, I prepared all of the materials that were going to go into the crucible.

Five bars of my eight remaining rank two metals I bought from Breach went into the waiting pile. Then, I started to take out unique materials I bought from the United Freeholds.

Using my abilities, I pulled out the required parts from every material and added them to the waiting pile. My current process was less of a science and more about doing things how I felt they should be done.

Many of the unique materials I purchased, I completely disregarded as they simply didn’t seem to fit what I was after. After pulling out specific parts of an energy-enhanced piece of old water-damaged log, I heard a whisper and also felt that it was time to add the current pile into the crucible.

After doing so and letting the mixture start to melt a little bit, I pulled out a light red crystal. It was the only unique material I purchased from the Breach and only because I felt a strange connection to it.

It also seemed like I needed to pulverize it, but doing so was a lot more difficult than I expected. When I added this powder to the crucible, the mixture felt almost right, but the heat of the normal forge was too low as most of the materials hadn't even started to melt.

With the help of my apprentice and some long bars of metal, we transported the red-hot crucible to the bloom. Before I added the lid to the crucible, I needed to add the last ingredient to this metal mixture.

From my tattoo storage, I pulled out the last large Mythryl coin I had and half of my remaining supply of small and medium Mythryl coins. All of them were added into the crucible, and then I placed the lid on top and hammered it in, making sure I wasn’t burned in the process.

It was a bit of a struggle to get the crucible into the bloom, but when we got it there, my apprentices went and brought a lot of coal from the forge and added it on top and around the crucible. Then I brought out the special coals I purchased and started to add them into the bloom. They hadn't even started to catch fire when I had filled the bloom and closed it with more of the clay mixture.

Then I started to pump in air using a regular bellows. No automation for this job, unfortunately. It didn’t take long after I started to work the bellows for the coal to catch, then start to radiate intense heat.

Almost immediately, my apprentices needed to back off quite a bit; otherwise, they would have been burnt. I, on the other hand, would need to endure this heat for the next four days because I would need to constantly keep this mixture at the right heat and add more coal.

I sincerely hoped that I wouldn’t run out, but I needed to do what my abilities and instincts were telling me, and they were telling me that this mixture needed to be at 12,300° for four days and then after that, seven days for about 1200 to 1600°. After that, it would need to cool for quite a while.