Homesteading in a fantasy world

Goose was truly fast when he didn't have to carry extra weight. He couldn’t keep up this speed for long, but currently, I was supplying him with energy so we could keep going longer.

He was enjoying every moment of it, and so was I. I did not know how fast we were going, but Goose wasn’t using his wings any longer and was only using wind manipulation to keep himself going at this ludicrous speed.

Eventually, we did slow down as we could not risk Goose's energy pathways getting damaged from overuse. It was still nice flying peacefully over the land, but we still kept an eye out for anything unusual down below.

We didn’t notice anything wrong as we continued to fly north. Of course, we couldn't cover every inch of the forest, and I could see even less than Goose, but after a few hours of flying, we were certain that there weren't any goblin threats left in the north.

When we reached the tip of the continent, we simply turned left towards the west, and then continued to fly a bit before going south once again. Like this, we continued to fly up and down until we had looked over the entirety of the northern part of the continent that was above UF.

The further west we got, the less of the deep forest we saw. To my surprise, there also seemed to be orc tribes living near the west coast. The settlements we saw were crudely made and they seemed little better than the goblins. The difference was that the orcs seemed to be a lot stronger individually. They were, however, a lot less of a problem because they couldn’t breed as fast.

I do not think that they would have the capability of raising a large enough army and then marching it towards UF lands. Smaller warbands perhaps, but even to our current military, that should not pose a threat.

Further south, we saw a mountain range and afterwards, a really large lake. We then went towards the east and searched the lands between the western coast and the mountain range that separated the grasslands from the western part of the continent.

That mountain range ended, and from there, a hilly countryside connected the grasslands to the western part of the continent. It wasn't a large gap before another mountain range started there, but it was still significant.

From the maps I’ve seen of the green continent, this is the only viable way you could march a large army from the western part of the northern continent to the east, and of course, the other way around.

We flew over this new mountain range, and it was interesting to see that most of it was covered in some kind of grass. We even momentarily landed on these mountains to find an interesting type of grass that seemed to be able to live on bare rock face.

Because of this, the mountain seemed to have a lot more life. It made sense, and I wondered if this entire mountain range was dominated by this plant.

We once again flew towards the west. I knew there was a huge river around which a large kingdom was supposed to stand. However, no one had heard of this kingdom since the plague got really bad. Now I was certain that people in the World Council knew what had happened but for some reason didn’t want to advertise it.

The first thing we saw when we got closer were large undead birds flying around. There wasn’t a large number of them, and I now knew why my gut was telling me not to come here before. They would have certainly noticed Goose without his new camouflaging capabilities. I had expected them to be flying around looking for food, but it sort of looked like they were patrolling.

Things got even weirder when we reached the proper lands of the kingdom. We didn't see anyone alive, but the undead were not aimlessly walking around looking for food. The land itself had also changed; it was now touched by the undead, and barely anything living was still down below. The fact that a lot of the undead were farming threw me off quite a bit.

At first, I thought that perhaps there were some necromancers who controlled everything and were forcing their undead to grow food for them, but that is obviously not true as no normal plant could survive here. I saw a lot of ruined villages and towns, but once again utter weirdness, the undead were rebuilding.

Nothing made sense, and it made even less sense when I saw really powerful undead doing the same jobs as the less powerful ones, like skeletons and zombies. Just in case, we did a singular flight through the Kingdom, but it seemed like absolutely everyone had turned undead, and they were all acting really out of character.

When we reached the end of the Kingdom and the start of the Lakelands that lay further south, we turned around and flew over that mountain range towards the grassland, after which we would be heading back home. This trip had already taken a few days, and Goose was starting to get truly tired.

There was really no point in going further south. The Lakelands, as the name suggests, were a huge area of land with lots of lakes and rivers. It should have been a perfect place to colonize, yet every attempt has failed because of the numerous amount of strong beasts that live in those lands.

The land is fertile, and a Kingdom could probably just survive from fishing alone down there, but you would need a proper effort from a large nation to start to colonize that place.

My mind went back to the undead Kingdom. A person, or even a group of people strong enough to control so many undead, would be people who were power-hungry enough that they should have long ago marched to conquer new lands.

They should easily be able to get through the Lakelands and go further south where larger kingdoms used to be and are now filled with petty kingdoms with a decent enough population.

Perhaps they are building up their forces, but what I also saw didn’t make any sense. Why would they be building buildings they shouldn’t need, and farming—that was even weirder.

Were they remembering their past lives and simply doing the same acts they would do when they were alive, perhaps? There are simply too many questions, and of course, there was no denying the danger they represented.

What was his name? Right it was Khris, our resident necromancer. He has been doing a good job gathering up the remnants of the undead and allowing our legionaries to level up and practice group combat on them.

Perhaps it's time to send him on a proper mission. He should be able to figure out if the undead are controlled or not controlled by anyone. If not, it could possibly be even more dangerous for him to go and scout than a regular human, but he is still the only one with any expertise in this area.

I will need to think about all of this while we're flying back home. I could also see why the World Council was trying to keep this a secret. The amount of undead and the strength of them would mean there would need to be a proper call for war, and given how things are currently in this world, I suspect no one would truly want to deal with it until they need to.

Everyone was simply too focused on their own worries to deal with something that wasn’t currently a problem. It will probably be a huge problem in the future. One thing was, however, certain: we could not deal with this problem. A part of me wished that we had never taken this flight, but it’s better to know than not know.