Chương 101: 100: Moving On

The next two weeks involved a ton of cleanup. The men and I tore down the remaining sections of the barn and bunkhouse. We also began drawing up plans for a defensive wall for the homestead. Rupert volunteered to make a hardened earthen berm for the majority of it. The rest would be built of wood. That would've seemed absurd to me before the attack last fall, but if I wanted to build a little community that could withstand a small goblin raid, I was going to do what I needed to do.

The biggest challenge was how we'd build it to maximize interior space, while having it be practical to defend with a small population. My tractor and all our dwellings needed to be included, and it would be best to build it large enough to enclose land for future growth too, even if that meant even more wall space that would need to be defended. We left the western river side without a wall. I would just mine the heck out of it with proximity runes.

The runes we bought were designed to ignore humans, as well as small game. Goblins, trolls, and wargs would trigger them. Domesticated animals wouldn't, except for dogs. Wargs weren't magically made; they were just a specially bred wolf after all. In furtherance of that task, I used my Wizard class every day. I only needed the Homesteader class to get the bonuses for planting. Once that was done, anyone could actually take care of them without class bonuses.

I got myself to level 5 with the Wizard class and took: Runecrafting - This ability will allow you to create Tier 1 Runes for 1, 000 mana each (900 with bonuses). Tier 1 Runes include: Composting, Water Barrier, Soil Stability, Sense Movement. I also upgraded my Earth Mana Potency skill so that it increased the radius of my earth mana spells by 20%. That even worked on old runes that had been tripped as long as I refilled them even though it wasn't explicitly stated in the description.

That meant I could refill five runes per day. The quests I got when I got Runecrafting were decent too: Create Runes - 25xp per rune crafted Refill Rune - 10XP per rune refilled I needed 245 XP to get to level 6. That meant it took me less than a week to level up again. I had a total of forty-eight runes to fill. That got me to level 6, and two-thirds of the way to level 7. Creating runes was another one of those very game-like aspects of the world, and they actually used my alchemy table.

The ingredients were pretty simple. I needed clay, an enchanted stylus that I borrowed from Rupert, pure silver, and fluorite for each rune, then usually one different ingredient for each after that. There were plenty of other runes I'd be able to craft in the future, but they weren't available to me at tier 1. Apparently, I could make magical land mines if I took at least the second level Runecrafting skill and then chose the right capstone skill at level 20.

My current rune choices were: Composting Rune: A composting rune helps break down waste into compost. This rune works on human, animal, or food waste. [Ingredients needed]: Clay, Enchanted Stylus, Pure Silver, Fluorite, Bone Meal (Note: bones should include marrow and be uncooked) Water Barrier Rune: This rune will create a watertight barrier that can be placed on a solid object, whether that be dirt, wood, etc. It cannot create a barrier out of thin air..

[Ingredients needed]: Clay, Enchanted Stylus, Pure Silver, Fluorite, Beeswax Soil Stability Rune: This rune will combat soil erosion in a small area. (Note: At tier 1, this rune cannot be targeted at anything other than soil that is at least 75% dirt, or a similar organic compound. Higher-tier Soil Stability Runes can target a wider range of soil types.) [Ingredients needed]: Clay, Enchanted Stylus, Pure Silver, Fluorite, Coal Ash Sense Movement Rune: This rune senses the movement of people or animals above a certain size. It can be attuned to only trigger based on certain races or animals. (Note: A warg is a non-magical canine creature, so a rune attuned to wargs will also trigger with domesticated dogs.) [Ingredients needed]: Clay, Enchanted Stylus, Pure Silver, Fluorite, Iron Filings (for humanoids), Canine Hair (Note: For canines, for other species, provide the appropriate hair type) The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings. Rupert's plan for fortifications was to build two twelve-foot tall vertical packed-earth walls that were six feet thick on the north and south sides of our barnyard area.

There would be spots for gates along the north side where the pasture L-shape went out, and on the south side where the tractor could get in and out. Those were weak points, but this was more of a deterrence defense at the moment, not a true fortress. Twelve feet didn't seem like a lot, but a warg couldn't jump the wall at that height. It also allowed Rupert to build a walkway along the inside that would allow defenders to stab out or shoot from relative safety.

The eastern side would also have a wall, with a large gate for wagons to come in and out. Just like in Weston, we didn't have nearly enough people to man the walls, but I mostly hoped that just having them would make us look like too much trouble for any small goblin bands. Seamus was out of bed within two days and was back to a full workload within a week. With plenty of food and rest, healing was a true miracle in this world.

I really found it difficult to believe that the crown wouldn't want more healers helping everyone out. I was certain the wealthy had access to all the healers they needed. Laeth took the same amount of time to physically heal, but it was clear his injuries had caused some emotional scarring that was taking longer to fix. He was dealing with nightmares, and he didn't like to be alone.

He was the only one who wasn't sleeping in his own cabin, so we brought him into the farm manor and gave him Colin's old room for now. When the new Craftsman showed up, we'd build him a cabin, but I'd let him stay in the manor until he was ready to move out. He still worked hard every day, even though I told him that if he needed more time off, I'd understand. He told me he was fine physically, and the work helped him keep his mind off what had happened. There was certainly plenty of work.

We needed to hoe weeds, as well as salvage all the lumber we could from the barn and bunkhouse. The bunkhouse was made from logs, and we salvaged enough wood from it for an entire cabin. The barn was two-thirds destroyed, so we used its remaining lumber to help build some more fences. I also showed all the men how I irrigated a field. We had unseasonably warm weather for this time of year. So I decided to irrigate the potatoes, barley, and wheat a bit earlier than planned.

The wheat and barley needed to have the corrugates dug out for the first fifteen or so feet. Typically, you corrugate down one way, then back up another, then you'd turn around and go back and corrugate the part you couldn't do when turned around. That would mean you only needed to shovel out a small spot where you stopped the second time.

I hadn't bothered to do that because my tractor was so darned big it just crushed a lot of the other rows, and since I wasn't using individual siphon tubes, I'd need to dig things out, anyway. All of my men had plenty of levels to give them extra strength, and they had enchanted shovels, so the job was fairly easy. It still took the four of us several days to dig out all the rows and test out all of my water boxes in between other chores.

We found four boxes that hadn't stood up to the winter, so I set Zack to building more with his class. I put checking all the water boxes on his list of at least weekly chores. I found that while I couldn't do the same level of job of reinforcing the ditch that Rupert could, I could keep his sections full of mana so they were every bit as good as the concrete ditches we used back home. As for the animals. Gerald and I came to an understanding, and he became obnoxious in a different way than before.

Now, he liked to follow me around everywhere I went, standing guard. If I didn't give him some sort of treat every day, he'd bleat at me in a truly pitiful manner. The darned goat was eating us out of carrots! We only had five of the forty piglets, and three sows left. Our boar, Pumba, wasn't any more vigilant than he had been previously, but he was still friendly enough. The horses had all been mostly okay, and Lorcan had dealt with the ones that had injuries.

The chickens and ducks had lower laying numbers for a few days, but they went back to normal after that. Buck and Spot took their kits and made a burrow for themselves right under the front porch of the farm manor. Normal rabbit kits only stayed in their dens for a few weeks, but Dwarven Rabbit kits stayed in their dens for up to twelve weeks. Emily fed Buck and Spot extra meat every day, and the two rabbits took turns patrolling the homestead while the other stayed in the den.

It appeared that they were both nursing all four kits. I was told that this was absolutely not normal behavior. Most of the time Dwarven Rabbits only nursed their own kits. Only when there were multiple Herd Leaders would this behavior emerge. Pretty much everyone on the homestead decided that even if they didn't have an official title, they were clearly some sort of special rabbits. I was happy that everyone else finally saw what I'd seen from the very beginning. The Newton's cows had more issues.

He'd lost several to the attack, and several more cows had miscarriages. That meant no milk from those cows this year either. Despite his protests, Brendan accepted my offer of compensation after I broke down and told him my plan for helping Aiden out with procuring his own homestead if Brendan would help with starting him with a herd. As long as that money was going to Aiden's future, Brendan would take it.

I was definitely feeling some extra pressure to make sure I performed this year since I'd prematurely told everyone about my future plans after the attack. Militia duty was canceled again for this round since everyone had plenty of time in the field already this year. The last thing of note was that we got a message that our new people would meet us in Weston on Bhealtaine. I decided the entire homestead would make its way to town for the festival. It seemed like just the thing to improve our spirits.

The squad said they'd stay to keep an eye on the animals. At first, Colin wanted to stay back with them, but Emily and I put a firm foot down on that front, so he came along. I was looking forward to some fun and meeting our new arrivals.