Homesteading in a fantasy world

Pov Rich Dirt

Goose and I enjoyed watching how the Fort was built. Unfortunately, we couldn't stay here for long as I needed to go to an important meeting. Fortunately, our destination wasn't far, but with Goose, I guess nowhere was truly far. That reminded me of a conversation long ago about us going on a flight to see all the continents. We should do this as fast as possible.

After talking to Goose a little bit, he agreed, but that was for after the meeting. It was not just for curiosity or fun; it would be a good idea to know the land as maps can never truly convey reality.

It was still fun to see Goose struggle to take off without trying to cause a mess down below. He really didn’t belong in areas that were filled with creatures that were too weak.

Our flight took us directly north, and unfortunately, I had annoyed Goose enough that I simply had to jump off him about a kilometer off the ground as he refused to take me down. I was practiced enough in falling nowadays that I didn’t even leave footprints on the ground as I landed. No matter how many times I did it, it still felt amazing.

I looked at the tall walls, and while this was a city, it was the most fortified city UF possessed. Here, a lot of high-ranked people could live openly, and deal with the higher-rank market. This was a city-like Connection, at least in its function. It was here to support our outer ring Fort. Jumping on top of the walls revealed the huge town that was quite bustling with activity.

Just a few years ago, there were only a few hundred people here, but one thing that UF has learned to do is to build. We had many fortresses that were headquarters for the Legionnaires and one for the Vikings.

Most of their time was focused on training and making sure that no monster threatens our citizens. Of course, there are exceptions as a few of the legions are now quite good at normal warfare.

I did not head to the administrative center of this city; instead, I went to my company's compound. It was a large one, occupying a significant portion of the city. It was our largest compound and currently our headquarters.

I had no problem getting in; the guards recognized me instantly, but I was still glad that every time they asked me for identification. You can never be too careful with all of the abilities that are in the system.

"You are late," Arabella immediately said when I entered the meeting room. I had to recheck my internal clock. "No, I'm not. There’s at least 30 seconds left until the start of the meeting."

She did not look happy at that reply. She most likely would have wanted to debrief me before the start of this meeting, but I needed to be careful about how much I pushed myself, as burning out meant a lot of trouble in the future.

I sat down and greeted everyone else in the room. That annoyed Arabella even more, but it had been a while since I’d seen some of the members here. Eventually, she started.

"You are all the most important members of our company, all of you leading branch officers. Our diligent work has brought us to this point. While it's not officially announced yet, I got advanced notice. We are now the number 10th strongest company in the world."

Those words stunned everyone, including me. I had not expected us to be so highly ranked. In the grand scheme, it meant little as it was truly hard to accurately gauge the strength of a whole company as large as ours.

"I had not expected us to reach this for quite a while. While we are the most numerous company, most of our members are active in the outer ring, so I didn’t expect us to be so highly ranked," our representative from the elven continent said.

"Rich has often said quantity is a quality of its own. I'd also like to add to that saying. Quantity can turn into quality surprisingly fast if supplied with enough resources."

Her words made everyone think for a moment. I liked the way she thought. And of course, she was completely right, and I wondered how much she truly understood of my plans.

There was a reason why I was so focused on the outer ring. There were a lot more people to recruit; that was definitely one of the reasons, but the more people you get on your side, the higher the chance that you can get lucky and someone can truly shine.

As I thought of that, I looked towards the person who could most likely kill all of us here. Well, not perhaps Arabella and me, but the others for certain. Our first rank five member.

He looked like an unassuming young adult, and in fact, he was one. He still had the sparkle in his eyes, and I hoped he could keep it as long as possible. Both of us have also spoken quite a lot about how the world seems to want higher rank people to, for lack of a better word, ascend.

I feel it a little bit, but it took him a few months of being in rank five to finally be able to sleep well enough to start resting. It seems that the world tolerated rank four individuals, but once you got to rank five, it really wanted you to just go away.

It was a curious function of the system that no one actually truly understood, and more importantly, no one actually knew what would happen afterwards.

There are some that thought that the system simply consumes you whole to empower itself, but I didn’t believe that. I had come from another world, so my best guess was that you go to another world after this one.

He sounded a little bit excited about that, but I wasn’t interested. I would be content enough to simply farm my land and be buried there.

The meeting continued, but this part was regular business. We were informed about how well our different branches were doing and our future expansion plans, but then the mood shifted.

"We have also finally reached the crossroads; both sides are putting more pressure on us, especially because they know whichever one we choose, UF will follow. And with it, a guarantee that their armies will be supplied with food."

“We all knew that this time would come. We have all made preparations as secretly as possible to make sure that we didn't tip anyone off.” “It is unfortunate that we do not get more time. It has taken more and more resources to keep us out of the conflict, and with our spies, we knew which side we would support.” “It is truly unfortunate that we must pick the underdog. Why couldn't things just be easy?”

"Because where would the fun be in that?" everyone said at the same time while looking at me. "You know, guys, I’m really not appreciating my words being used against me so often," I said to everyone, which broke the somber mood a bit.

The mood was still serious. No matter how lightly we might take this, a lot of our members were going to die in the coming war. I knew a little bit more than they did, but they were correct that we unfortunately needed to choose the underdog.

The other choice was to support a dictatorship that wanted to control too much. I didn’t have many principles, but giving people the ability to choose was one of them, and unfortunately, that man believed otherwise.

“So, we are all agreed, that however was the easy part. Now we need to think of a way to minimize the fallout of the other side. They will start to suppress us and most likely actively start fighting us even if they do not declare official hostilities.” Arabella was right, our easy days are over.