Apinsig
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Chapter 181 Homesteading in a fantasy world
🕑 Added 2023-03-09 19:29:07 +0000 UTCFor tonight I didn’t go into the village but tracked down my wolves. I wanted them to have another challenge, but I wasn’t willing to risk any of them getting killed so I will have to show up for this fight.
The location was quite far into the grasslands, but the monster was too high tier for the surrounding animals, and it was eating everything around it. But before I got too far into the grasslands, I visited the horses.
In all honesty, they just used the stables as a place to go if there was bad weather. Most of them didn't even sleep there but stayed in the fields where they roamed quite far away but they always seem to come back. I had promised them more freedom and that’s what they will get but some like their previous life a bit more so we will most likely get the horses needed to start bringing everything back from the town.
My run to catch up with the wolves took a few hours and I still didn’t know if I liked that we had so much land out here. Hopefully, we will get plenty of refugees so we would actually have enough people to do all the jobs needed.
David also brought up a problem of resource gathering. The main problem was for example, I want an iron mine to belong to someone with a homesteader class, but this might be a bit difficult to pull off and how would it work with the economy is another question.
Another important thing to know about our nation is if you needed the homesteader class to receive your own clan or would simply owning land be enough. Honestly, I might be a bit biased, but I hope that you need the homesteader class for that because anyone with it will have the true nature connection which would mean that they wouldn’t do anything to harm the land. Otherwise, people would just own the land and start going down the path of nobility if they get enough of it.
My thoughts were a mix of the current conflict the problems with our economy and the future of both those problems. When I finally reached the wolves, they were already waiting and ready for a fight. I didn’t hold them back and with Goose looking from up high they launched their attack. As expected, it was a tough battle as the wolf they were up against had control over the earth element. It knew how to use it a lot better than the boar before.
The fight was vicious and in the first half the monster dominated but Lucky’s healing and a few critical hits started to wear the monster down. There were three moments when I almost intervened, but Goose was able to help them by launching his own sort of attack using the wind that he controlled.
He was even able to blind one of the monster's eyes and that was the final moment before the fight turned. It ended quickly after that and since the monster was normal-sized none of its parts remained except for the monster core.
I again ripped out all the energy and split it between the wolves and Goose. They were happy about the fight but they were dead tired, so they used the same stone outcropping the monster did to stay the rest of the night.
Goose flew back with me. Unfortunately for me to give the next target he needed to be close enough so we could see each other but thanks to his continued study of the wind he was getting quite fast at flying. He could now keep up with me even if I pushed myself fully with my movement ability.
I made it back a few hours before daylight, so I went to my designated room to sleep in which I haven’t used even once. The few hours of sleep were good enough for another few days and in the morning I started to arrange the military.
While technically we almost had 200 soldiers, I couldn’t use all of them for the battle lines. The strongest fighters needed to be kept in a different unit that will most likely have to fight their strongest units.
That left me with 162 people who barely knew how to fight at least by my standards. I had multiple people helping me as I looked over all the information I had on these people. I was going to have to work small, so I was going to make them into 40-soldier battle units.
We were going to have strict schedules for all four of those units. I was only going to train one of them openly. Two units will need to go hunting and for that reason, every battle unit had a few hunters with them so they can teach the rest.
The final unit was going to maintain, repair and make items needed for the war. Most of them didn’t even have any combat class but I could feel from my clan military trait that anyone who was a part of the military wouldn’t have the penalty associated with fighting in a unit.
One thing that the system didn't hinder was for people to defend themselves and that also came with the possibility of attacking others, but fighting in strict battle units and lines did but now that was not a problem. You could mess up making a simple wooden structure nine times out of ten but could always stick someone with a knife if you know what to do. This system had weird limitations.
I hadn’t thought about the system’s limitations for a long time because almost immediately I had found a way to overcome them, but I can also see why it was so relevant now as many people were in big trouble because they didn't have the required class to live the new life everyone was forced into. I’ve heard that because of the new situation many new classes have been discovered and not all of them for the better.
The ages of my soldiers were not promising. I wasn’t willing to lower it any more than 16 except for individuals who showed a lot of promise but there wasn’t anyone who qualified except for me, I guess. The upper range technically didn’t exist. If you had the correct stats you could live a lot longer but if you look at physical fitness the limit was when your body reached 60. One person I did allow to join looked a bit older than that but he had the driver to protect his new home for his grandson the only family he had left.
He had been a farmer for all his life, but he had a few skills that he had gotten from fighting with smaller monsters and the occasional bandit. He looked like a tough son of a bitch so even with the protest of the others I still accepted him. Organizing everything took most of the day so I didn’t go out training today with the first unit but stayed here and helped the fourth unit with their crafting.
Now crafting would be a bit of an overstatement as most of them just helped bring materials and prepare them for people who had the skills to use them. It still made the work go by a lot faster and the few examples I had for what they needed to make made everything go smoothly.
The first things they did weren’t things that we could use for battling they were training shields and spears. At first, they laugh a bit thinking that I was joking but they soon understood that talking back to me was not the best idea when the life of everyone here depended on how well I can train them.
The night I spent making weapons that we were actually going to use in battle. I started with the spears as they were the only and best solution we had. Making swords was too much work and they required even more training. Axes were a possibility but they didn’t have the reach and if you made them two-handed you couldn't use a shield which was necessary. The shield itself will be in the Roman style but it would be made out of wood with metal reinforcement.
The morning came quickly, and it was time for my first day as a drill sergeant. The first thing I did was to start getting everyone into shape. It will still take at least one or two days to get all the shields and spears ready for 40 people so they could train but they all needed some exercise anyway.
I slowly started to break them down and build them back up. They did better than I expected probably because most of them lived a life of constant work on their farms, but they still looked like a bunch of wet noodles when I was done with them.
One of them actually wanted to just sleep in the field in the same spot where I dismissed them for the night. I had to teach him some manners by making him do another 20 pushups. Apparently, he like to sleep in the field, so he didn't have to go back into the house to get yelled at by his wife. It was a funny story he tried to tell me while doing push-ups. It made me chuckle a bit, so I stopped him at 15 and let him get back to a proper bed.
The next day we didn't have all the shields and spears but we had most so we could get started. “In your hand is a shield that you will get to know better turn your left foot. While this is a training shield the dimensions of the battle shields you will get will be the same. The function of the shield is to be a part of a wall made from shields wielded by your fellow legionnaires.”
“You might not be used to the size as it’s not common in these parts of the world, but that shield will save your life. As you can see when you hold up the shield it comes just under your knees and up to your chin covering all your vital parts. As stated, before this shield will form a wall to hold back the enemy. In your right hand is a spear that you will use to kill your enemy.” I could see some hesitation on people's faces but it was the minority as most had killed to survive.
“You will not put your spear through the shield wall but over it. You will hold it like an axe or a hoe, but you raise it up so that the shaft will sit on your palm. Like this, you will hold the shield and attack the enemy over your shield keeping yourself protected while attacking your enemy. We will spend a lot of time training so you would not lower your shield and keep trusting even when you can barely stand and your ability to think as long left you.”
“We will train like this so when you are in battle you will not have to think only act which will give you an advantage even if it's just a split moment. The other thing we will learn is to manoeuvre while engaged in battle. This will be very important but we only have a little time so we will only learn one movement. We will learn how to turn slightly to the left or right.” There were a few chuckles, but they quieted down quite quickly when everyone figured out that I was dead serious.
“You might think that this is something easy, but I assure you it is not. You will have to put in a lot of work, and we will have a proper training fight when two units engage each other at the same time using our training equipment to learn this. That will have to be learned at a later date as currently, you don't even know how to hold your equipment.” I yield the last part as most of them had lowered their shields or even rested them on the ground.
I was what you would call ruthless, but I never pushed anyone over their limit, but I did purposely try to get them as close as possible. After two days of full training, it was time to switch to another unit and I could already see the panic in their eyes because everyone could see what I was doing with the last unit. I didn’t mind it as they all needed to learn.
