Homesteading in a fantasy world

Pov Rich Dirt

The sun was just rising. It was an auspicious day for my birthday. Looking over the surroundings from a large stone pile meant for the future fort made me feel amazing.

It has been a long journey to get here, but finally, we will be building our own fort. It will be a massive one, as the stone pile I was on, meant for this build, is already taller than five stories, and we have multiple ones.

From this far up, I could see the fully built foundation. A few thousand people were already working this early to start the rest of the build. Many more were still gathering more stone and metals so we could finish this monstrosity in just a few years.

All of this started when I found that card almost 20 years ago. From that point on, I haven’t really had any time to simply appreciate what we have accomplished.

My senses spread over the land so I would miss nothing. While I had succeeded in every one of my goals, doing so also made a lot of enemies, and no one was going to mess up this crucial stage of the build.

It was still a bit unfamiliar for me to get back so much information when I wasn’t on my own land, but a lot of things changed when I finally reached rank four about a month ago.

It was a bit of a touch-and-go, but fortunately, I was able to make it to rank four before the year 20 deadline. Today has officially marked 20 years of me being in this world, and the achievement of getting to rank four in 20 years gave me a nice boost of 2000 free points.

I could have reached rank four a lot earlier, but getting the amount of free points I currently have was not easy, but at least it was now guaranteed that I wouldn’t be stuck at rank four. I opened up my achievement page and looked at my classes and stats.

Name: Rich Dirt

stats:

Species: Human

strength: 4942->10,121* +(5500)

Gender: male

dexterity: 4337->8,091* +(2200)

Age: 37

vitality: 4259->8,013* +(2200)

class:

endurance: 892->1,696* +(1800)

First elder homesteader level 62

empathy: 873->1,677*

Prestigious true archer level 52

intelligence: 875->1,679*

Legendary field marshal level 52

energy storage: 3603->5907*

Bonded Animals/Items:

perception: 1329>2,583* +(800)

Goose

constitution: 1473->2,727* +(2000)

Alan

presence: 739->1,651*

wisdom: 760->2,100* +(500)

Free points: 13100

(luck: 2)

13,100 free points—it was honestly an amazing amount of points. I was keeping them just in case. Who knows what achievements I might get that would possibly allow me to put points in a few other stats. Gaining all of the class levels has also been a difficult journey but something I think I truly have enjoyed.

I couldn’t have done all this in such a short amount of time if I hadn’t been pushing myself so hard. The only reason I can still keep going is that I know there will be an end, a sweet end no matter what. My adventurer class was also nearing its end. I had reached level 151, reminding me that I only had nine more levels before I maxed out that class.

That was still 432 stat points for my energy storage stat. However, it won’t allow me to reach another milestone to gain another trait.

I've still gotten a new trait for every single stat, and all of them have enhanced or changed me in some ways. Every once in a while, I think about checking out the rest of my achievement page, but honestly, it's a mess and I no longer really care about the numbers or how many skills and abilities I have.

It’s a weird way to think about them as they are a part of me, but they're also simply a text displayed by the system, only loosely tied to what you really are and what you know. Still, they were my power in this world but no longer the only power I held. While I was no longer actively participating, at least as far as the rest of the world knew, in the politics of UF, I was still important to my nation.

As I looked towards our plans, I recalled how much we had actually expanded. In the land area, we were currently the ninth biggest nation, and, as I planned, we were the largest producer of food in the world.

It was not an easy journey, but we achieved that milestone 11 years ago. It brought a smile to my face to know that right now, if we really wanted to, we could produce more than half of the entire world's food production.

That being said, that was food for anyone rank one and below. I now know why I had such a big appetite when I first ranked up. It was because I needed food with more sustenance. It was also a nice way to make ourselves seem weaker. Not producing anything for a higher rank means that while a lot of eyes have landed on UF, they do not yet feel threatened.

If they only knew what I was planning, but perhaps just saying that only I was planning it was a falsehood. Technically, I was no longer needed; I was the last person, but finally, they had enough competent people to even take my position and fill it if I were to ever die. The only time they would currently need me would be if things went truly wrong.

I heard the familiar call from behind me. Goose was coming back from the middle ring. He had been hungry and needed some proper food. He achieved rank four way before me and now was so big that a normal person would need a rope ladder to get to the saddle even if he was lying down.

However, everything wasn’t perfect. The population, while now nearing 20 million, was still quite low and a lot of that population was from occupied nations. It causes a lot of civil strife, but no one wanted to start anything big because of the legions placed in those regions. We were now quite close to the Queen's nation, having conquered a lot of the petty kingdoms on our way south.

I looked towards there but even now I still needed to look quite a lot towards the north from my current location, the approximate border we had on our eastern coastline. When this fort is finished, our lands will stretch here, covering a huge portion of the grasslands. We have also taken all of the north and some of the west as well.

There has been a huge block in our expansion towards the west, and that’s the undead kingdom. Fortunately, they are now weak enough that I was confident we could win in a war. Perhaps a more proper way to say it would be that we had caught up to them in strength and passed them during the last few years.

The world council has, multiple times, demanded that we organize and eliminate the undead threat, but it's nice now to have enough power to simply say no, you aren't paying us enough. It was one of the brighter highlights of my life here. The main reason why we can be so bold is thanks to my company now having an actual rank five member.

His rise truly reminds me of those old books I've read about cultivators. The speed of his advancement has been amazing, and fortunately, the company is now strong enough to actually support someone like that. He's a nice kid, although he's still not a threat to the true monsters of this world, and I'm not talking about actual monsters.

Speaking of those monsters that are in human shape, or at least close to human shape, they have been playing that disgusting game of theirs. We are getting ever closer to the lines being drawn in the sand. Fortunately, both sides are still trying to steal pieces from each other and gain new ones.

Our company and UF is one of the last large pieces that are still up for grabs. In reality, it's just to keep us as free as possible for as long as possible, as we have already decided on which side to choose. There would have been a possibility of us remaining neutral, but because of that card, I don't think it's possible.

Looking up, I saw Goose slowly descending. Seeing him struggle to land brought a smile to my face. That's what he gets for not practicing enough. "Having a bit of trouble?" I yelled to him, only to get a face full of cold air.

"Refreshing," I said with a big smile on my face. Normally he wouldn't have any trouble, but with so many weaker people around, he actually needed to control the way he landed so he wouldn't kill them with the wind he generates.