Chương 92: 91: Marwth & World News

Mawrth After we plowed, we disced, then set the corrugator for the wheat. I had to re-explain why we were corrugating and digging ditches once again. As one might imagine, none of my Farmhands was excited when I handed them their brand-new enchanted shovels and told them to start digging a line of ditches on my two new plots to connect my original ditch to the new plots. I told them they were lucky they had new shovels, and that there were four of them. I'd dug most of my original ditch all by myself.

After a morning of solid work on the part of my farmhands, Rupert actually showed up and showed some mercy. His entire class was based on moving earth, and he was fully capable of the fine work necessary to build a beautiful ditch. He even hardened it for me afterwards. He told me once I hit level 5 in my Wizard class, I should build the runes to make the ditch waterproof. It would basically be every bit as good as the cement ditches we used at home.

Since they were saved from digging, I made all four men build the boxes I wanted for regulating water flow. The other big activity at the beginning of the month was enlarging Emily's garden. We rebuilt the fence, this time with a proper Craftsman built gate. It didn't have any cool bonuses or anything, but it opened and closed so smoothly there was nary a squeak. All the cool-weather garden vegetables were now in the ground.

We also planted all the various berry bushes the women had penciled in around the homestead. Then, we built little fences around them to keep the goats and pigs out of them. They got cool little Craftsman built gates too. The amount of money we spent on things Cara felt were unnecessary truly appalled the woman. I could understand it was an unnecessary extra expense, but the gates were pretty cool. There was no sag, and no one had to worry about pulling the barbed wire taught to get the gate to latch.

Colin finally found some deer again. He and the soldiers shot several of them out in the foothills on the other side of the river. There was no need for me to make my way out with the tractor, though I would have happily done so. The deer were much smaller than the elk we'd shot the previous year, and all five of the soldiers were well into their second evolution. Packing the deer carcases back barely inconvenienced them. We also didn't need to salt the meat this time around.

We had nearly twenty mouths to feed on the homestead, and we had a fancy cold storage shed. I was really stoked about the utility of the cold storage. The salted elk steaks had been an important source of sustenance last summer and fall, but they were so darned salty, I only enjoyed them in stew. The soldiers took one deer and butchered it to make a large quantity of jerky. They got the first use out of the new smokehouse. Tieg still made me nervous even after a couple months; he was always so serious looking.

I had begun to make inroads with Lorcan, their Druid. He wasn't a very talkative man, but he and Rupert got along well. Rupert acted as a sort of unofficial intermediary by inviting Lorcan upstairs to meet and talk about things over blackberry cordial and a sweet treat after dinner on several occasions. Like Rupert, Lorcan and the rest of the soldiers were commoners. There wasn't any of that highbrow attitude with them that existed in the noble-born Wizards. Lorcan was also a natural Wizard just like Rupert.

The highborn Wizards acted as if that was beneath them, but the soldiers certainly respected Rupert more because he'd come by his class without schooling. I found out from Lorcan that he, Mick, and Rick were in their fifties, and did a lot of their earlier leveling fighting skirmishes on the continent. Tieg was approaching eighty, and Cathan was in his thirties. Cathan had been born in the territories. I didn't ask about Cathan's mother, and the information wasn't proffered.

I was really excited to finally find out some information about Europe. There wasn't a full-blown war over there with the elves and dwarves anymore. That had ended centuries ago, but there was definitely a cold war type situation where border skirmishes were common. The squad had been based out of the city of Tolosa for a couple of years so they'd experienced it firsthand. I was enraptured as Lorcan told me about the fortress city that basically acted as if it were semi-independent.

Tolosa was situated a lot farther north than I thought it was. It was actually in the plains of what I would call France. It was situated on the Gorumna River, and flowed to the only other human settlement in the southern part of the continent north of Hispania. That city was called Burdigala, and it was in the same place modern day Bourdeux was situated. The descendants of the Orange Devils ran everything.

The governor was the great-grandson of the original commander of the mercenary company, and none of the noble families had any real influence in the city. There were over a hundred thousand people, and Lorcan said the culture was very different from most of the rest of the empire, thanks to the Orange Devils.

Most of the original members had survived their original attack on the empire when they were portaled in, and they got to keep their guns and cannons in exchange for giving the empire the technology to make their own guns. The important thing there was the plural cannons, not cannon. That story had been fabricated after secret negotiations with the Orange Devils. The Orange Devils were given control of Tolosa, and the emperor got gunpowder technology.

When they were sent to Tolosa, it was a struggling city in the mountains southeast of where it was currently situated. The author's narrative has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon. The Devils were allowed to re-supply and refit, then they made their way to the site where the new city was built. They recruited a fair number of non-noble Wizards in return for promises of leadership positions in the new city.

The new city was in Elven territory, but they survived several attacks while they were putting up the walls. Once the city was too entrenched to be taken without a major assault, the elves were pretty much forced to accept the new borders.

It didn't take long for the city to become the main trade hub between the Empire and the other three major races in the Mare Nostrum (Mediterranean Sea) thanks to river access to both coasts via the Gorumna River which was navigable all the way from the Mediterranean to the Atlantic Ocean in this world. The noble houses hated the power the city had, but they didn't have any choice in the matter.

The city's leadership was entrenched, and the city's fortifications were so strong that any attempt to attack it would be futile. Lorcan also told me that, secretly, the city's leadership were all members of the Order of Merlotus. The whole thing fascinated me, and I was more than happy to part with some cake and alcohol to learn all about the politics of the continent. Relations with the gnomes were better, but still not warm. The gnomes had airships and guns of their own.

They were the only other race who possessed them. The Empire knew better than to mess with them. I was confused about why the gnomes never went on the offensive on their own, but it seemed they still had a relatively small population. Their capital city, which sounded to me like it was where Egypt would be on Earth, only had a hundred thousand people. The total population of the gnomes was probably under a million. Londinium had more than a million itself. There were around ten million humans in the empire.

The elves and dwarves both had large cities as well. I found out that the elves weren't immortal like in Lord of the Rings, but they did regularly live to be six or seven hundred years old even without levels. Dwarves weren't as long-lived as the Elves, but they could live to four hundred without levels. Neither race used guns, but the dwarves were master machinists and had repeating crossbows and ballistas that were more devastating than anything short of a modern rifle.

They also altered the terrain leading up to their mountain cities so that it was just about impossible to get cannons anywhere near close enough to assault their walls. The elves lived much like humans. They liked nature, but they weren't building treehouse cities or anything. Elves were more magically attuned than humans by nature, but they were also more hierarchical. They made the humans look downright egalitarian.

According to Lorcan, the only way for an elf to move up to the ruling class was to be born with the ability to be a natural Wizard. They had several kingdoms; their most powerful one was centered on what would be eastern France and Germany on Earth. The dwarves had city-states that were all independent on the continent, but the empire in South America was all ruled as one entity. Dwarves had very few Wizards, and they were almost all Earth attuned.

In addition to being a wellspring of knowledge about the larger world, his group had also fought in the southeast of what I knew as North America. The entire region was a vast swamp, except for the foothills around the Barrier Mountains. He said that it was full of mosquitos, malaria, and big 'ol alligators. That and there were still goblins and big cats down there. There weren't any large settlements, but there were villages. He didn't think the goblins we fought came from there.

Their patrols showed signs that the army we'd faced had come from over the mountains. He said the squad had attempted to cross once before, but were met with stiff resistance from trolls and goblins. He'd never seen an orc before either. He said he didn't know if they were on the other side of the mountains or not, but he didn't think it was worth trying to find out. The other news that he gave out was that there were a few islands on which the Emperor had settlements in the Caribbean Sea.

They called the sea Muir Anar, or the Sun Sea. I also asked Lorcan how he and the others had all evolved, and why they hadn't managed to evolve to Tier 3. He said that his class had an achievement for a certain total amount of healing that got him his tier 2 evolution, but if he could evolve to Tier 3 that way, it had to be a truly staggering amount. He'd been level 40 for eight years now. The other men had all done so through combat and exploration.

I mentioned how Hari and Glenn still hadn't evolved, despite plenty of combat. Lorcan said he'd talked with the two men about his theory already. He believed Hari and Glenn needed to be more adventurous. They'd never gone into the mountains, or been off so far away that they were truly operating on their own. Even their combat experience had mostly been as part of a larger group. With the way the restrictions the nobility had put in place worked, you had to do something extraordinary to evolve for most classes.

Lorcan believed the System could "cheat" still, but only when someone was clearly above and beyond average. Hari and Glenn were good Scouts, but they hadn't done anything to allow the System to push them over. That was why they'd gone on this most recent scouting mission.

Finally, I broke down and gave in to Emily's insistence that we breed Buck and Spot. I don't know why it felt like such a betrayal of my two bestest murder bunnies, but it did. We brought in a prize buck from a breeder in town. The same one who sold us Buck and Spot. Within five minutes of releasing the buck in the barnyard area, the rabbits were going at it like, well, rabbits.

For the next several days, the buck, who was named Hopper, a name I pointed to as proof I wasn't any worse than average when it came to naming animals, had to have bred Buck and Spot a dozen times apiece just when I was around. I found out that the gestation period for Dwarven rabbits was forty days. That was a week longer than average. Dwarven rabbits had a typical litter of one to three kits with their first baby.

Our plan was to keep two females, assuming we had two, and then sell the rest of them back to the breeder, who would sell them to other people.

The Orange Devils did not succumb to sabotage as is described in the history books. Their leader, Giovanni Carboni, received and accepted the System prompt to join the Order of Merlotus by Emperor Arthur VII when he saw how effective their firearms were. He knew that the noble families would never allow the Orange Devils to keep a major city in the Home Isles.

So, after months of secret negotiations, he was able to come to an agreement with Carboni to surrender the city, join the Order of Merlotus, and relocate to Tolosa. Tolosa was chosen for two reasons. First, because Order Geomancers found sulfur and saltpeter in sufficient quantities close to the site. This was essential for a mercenary group centered around gunpowder weapons. But second, because it was a military outpost settlement that was already run by military men with minimal ties to the nobility.

The Home Isles are the stronghold of the noble families, but the colonial territories are growing ever closer to fulfilling the wishes of Archwizard Cynan. There is still the matter of either overthrowing the ruling elite who control the Prime Stone, or finding a way to create breakaway stones with the ability to change class and evolution requirements. There must be a way to achieve this second goal. It is known that the other races were given their own Prime Stones.

Even the orcs had access to their own stone, although it is not known what happened to it after they abandoned this part of the continent. Goblins have classes that are unique to their race, so they must have a Prime Stone of their own as well. Entry in the secret Order of Merlotus tab. Recorded by Archbishop Alaric Smythe, Emperor Arthur VII's personal System priest.