Homesteading in a fantasy world

We made it back to the capital. I still didn’t need sleep, but Goose desperately did, so he headed to his roost that was built specifically for him.

My mind was still mostly occupied by the new discoveries I made. It seems that my trouble sensing ability really helped us here. Thanks to it we were able to figure out about the Undead Kingdom without them finding out about us.

When I reached near my office, the secretary who was currently working stood up. Before she could say anything, I started to speak.

"Is there anything important I need to know? If not, I need to call for a meeting." I expected there not to be anything, but she spoke up, "Yes, you have one priority letter; it's on your desk." Damn it, I wasn’t expecting that. "Follow me."

I walked into my office while leaving the door open. She followed me in, but when I saw who the letter was from, I rushed a little faster to open it. It was from Arabella.

She was expressing concern about the mind reading. She expects them to make a move soon. She was able to get one of the message sticks to a team leader, and they were to break it if they sensed any trouble out in the wilderness.

That meant that I needed to be close enough that I could reach them and help them whenever they broke the stick. Apparently, they will be leaving. When I saw the date, I almost cursed.

They left this morning from the Fort. I knew that our flight had gone a little bit too long. Goose was also really tired, and my plan for him to take the team members away before the fight might not be as valid as before.

I’ve also never liked that plan as it was too predictable, and when you're dealing with a schemer you should expect them to know what you plan to do, especially in this world where they could have, and actually do have, mind-reading powers. Well, maybe there is another option, perhaps even a better one.

First, I need to deal with this. “So like I said, I need a meeting tomorrow at 10 AM. Let’s say it's mandatory for upper military, upper government, and Khris—shit, I don’t know his last name—the one who has his own team and is a leader of a special unit in the military.”

“That should be enough for you to get ahold of them. This meeting should be classified, so no one else should attend. It’s also a priority one meeting.”

As soon as I finished speaking, I could feel her mood change. We have only had three priority one meetings, and none of them meant anything good. She, however, was a professional and didn’t let that affect her work. “Yes sir, right away,” she said as she went to inform and set everything up.

Now to work on the most immediate problem. I don’t use my connection to the land and map ability often unless it's to look at new hostile creatures or people. There are also so many new citizens that it sometimes overwhelms me a bit.

Because of this, it took me a few minutes to find my target. Fortunately, he was heading towards the portal research station and wasn't conducting some field experiments.

From one of the reports I received a while back, the current head of the portal research Kodgrid, the person who made it possible for us to have energy-based portal stations, is capable of teleporting with a few people even into the outer circle.

Unfortunately, the report also said that while our energy-based portal stations were a little bit better than mana-based in being able to connect safely to more energy-dense areas, it was not significant enough to make portal connections to the forts feasible.

Today, however, I didn’t need to use a portal station to get to the fort; I, in fact, needed simply to get there.

The portal research building was one of the more impressive buildings in terms of how it was built. It wasn’t massive, but it was still big; the impressive part was how it was made. The thickness of the walls was already impressive at almost three meters, but all this stone was also enhanced by my hands and a few others to make it even stronger.

It was also one of the bunkers for the surrounding citizens in case the capital was ever under attack. When I entered the building, all work immediately ceased. They also looked like children who had just been caught stealing cookies. My eyes narrowed, but I quickly shook my head as I didn’t have time for that. " Kodgrid, come here; we need to talk."

Fortunately, there didn’t seem to be guilt in her eyes, which actually made me even more curious about what others were up to. As soon as he was close enough, I started to speak.

"Would it be possible for you to teleport us close to Breach and then teleport you and five other people to Connection?" He stopped moving closer to me as he started to think.

"It's possible. I can take you to the Breach, and I could teleport up to seven people, but that would be close to my limit teleporting so far and so quickly. Will there be time to rest in between teleports?" I immediately shook my head. "I still think I can do it. Do you need me to do it now, and exactly where should I go?"

That was a damn good question: how would he know the exact location of the party? If it was Goose and me, it would be easy enough to locate them from the air.

"It could be today, but also not, but I still think it’s highly likely that it will be sooner rather than later. They will be notifying me with a message stick. As to how to find them, I don’t actually know. I might have to go with Goose so I could find them. This is a big oversight overall; we need to find a way to locate our members more reliably, but that won’t help us now."

I continued to think about it, but soon Kodgrid interrupted me. "Wait, you said they would be notifying you with a message stick. I might be able to use the connection to trace back to the location. That way, I could teleport us straight to the location of the other stick. I've never done that before; give it here and let's go to my office."

I immediately did so and followed him to his office. After which, I watched him gather some components and cast some spells on the stick itself. After about half an hour later, he finally said that he was done.

"That was a little bit more tricky than I expected, and this spell will only hold for about 8 hours. After that, however, I won’t be able to cast the same spell again on this stick without breaking it."

"We just have to hope that they call for help sooner than that, but by that time, Goose should also be ready to go." We continued to wait and, while doing so, we talked about portal stuff and even ate breakfast.

It was three hours later when the snapping of the stick silenced us both. "Take my hand now," Kodgrid said, and I immediately did, after which I felt power gathering inside of him. The next moment, we were surrounded by forest at a small campsite, startling five members of my company with our sudden arrival.