Apinsig
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Chapter 55 Homesteading in a fantasy world
🕑 Added 2022-09-11 09:37:14 +0000 UTCUnfortunately, animal sight didn’t work on the undead, so I had to use my energy sight and try to filter out all but the zombies and the other undead to see what they were up to.
I was finally able to notice the one that called the others. I was quite happy to figure out that it was not that intelligent. It spent time sniff and walking around the palisade and the other buildings and walked on all fours or on 2 feet.
It wasn’t an animal, but something in between a human and an animal. My energy sight also helped me identify the most likely place where the loot was, as I could see symbols on a basement wall that presumably protect the place.
I didn’t just use that time to understand the village insights better and what the undead were doing, but also to train my throwing skill by killing zombies that were still outside.
Do help me get better. I started to throw javelins from further and further away and that helped train me faster and my skill to level up faster. With all my training and killing of zombies around the village and the farms, I got it up to level 8. I was really starting to like it.
The screamer still called out for more undead to come. I figured that it was actually a good thing because that might help me level up my mental skill as I got another level in that.
As I was leaving to go back to my farm, I hope that they will not be able to breakdown the gate. More specifically, they could break it down, but I hope they wouldn’t be smart enough to actually figure that out.
When I made it back to the village the next day, I was quite pleasantly surprised that there didn’t seem to be any breach in the palisade or the gate. The dead inside the village seemed to be just milling around quite harmlessly.
Today, there were fewer zombies that showed up. Thanks to that I was able to practise my throwing a lot, getting me to level 9 in it. Towards the evening, less and less often did zombies show up. I was lucky if one came an hour.
So, with little to do, my thoughts turned on how to deal with the inside of the village. I wanted to do some testing on the zombies. Fire was my first solution, so I needed to do some fire testing.
The few zombies that showed up I didn’t actually kill anymore because I wanted them for tomorrow’s testing. Back at the farm, I prepare a few things so I could test out if fire was good. If it is, I had the capability of easily taking care of the village.
When I made it back to the village, I had a bucket of tar and some other things with me. First, I tried flaming javelins. They did nothing impressive and were a lot less accurate because of the cloth wrapped behind the tip. Lucky I didn’t mess up any javelins with this stunt.
The torches did nothing special. For the tar, just in case I lured them away from the palisade a lot more than with my other tests.
This also did almost nothing. They were still flesh, and that didn’t burn. So even if I was good with sacrificing all the buildings and the village itself, it still wouldn’t help me kill the zombies, just set them free.
If the fire was hot enough, they would turn to ash, but they were still moving creatures. I couldn’t just ask them to stand in the fire. Unfortunately, fire turned out to be a bad choice.
Second thing I wanted to try, I would not be able to because it wasn’t cold. I expected that cold weather would slow them down to a crawl or even froze them stiff. I hope that’s the case because then I would be able to clear out the village with very little problem, but winter is still far away.
But for those purposes, I chose not to kill the last five zombies and use rope to catch them and tie them inside one of the farmhouses for later testing.
Perhaps if I found some other way to kill them quickly and without having to fight, a herd of more than 100 zombies and some other undead sounded like bad odds.
I felt that I was close to class level up’s, and I so wanted to just build a platform on this side of the palisade to stand on it and just start firing arrows into the zombies.
But I know that it was a bad idea because I’m pretty sure that the zombies can break the palisade itself making all my efforts this far quite useless and that's not to speak of that other undead because I have no idea what their capabilities are.
So, what’s a man to do in this situation? The answer was quite simple: turn around and go back to my farm and continue building the sauna.
Hope that all will work out and come to the village every so often to kill off some zombies if more arrived and hopefully the winter will prove a better way to get rid of and clear out the undead infestation from this village.
As I was back on my farm, I was quite disappointed that I didn’t get my throwing skill to tier up, but then I had a horrible idea, truly the most awful one.
That is to try to hunt rabbits while using the javelins. But that brought up another question: what do I do with the caught rabbits I have? At first, when I decided to catch and possibly breed them, it was to make myself a sustainable food source.
I already have the biggest rabbit farm ever, just a 20-minute walk away. Now it’s a lot harder to catch them than just taking one out of a cage, but it’s also not hard.
So, as I was traveling to hunt rabbits, I was dreading my up coming training. I also brought along my caught rabbits to release them and give them a chance at life. I could have killed them, but honestly, I felt a bit better doing it this way.
I suspected javelin hunting rabbits will be even more soul crushing than just trying to sneak close to them, but I was wrong. It was way worse, more like soul grinding into fine powder bad.
I was about to end my hunt in the evening when I chanced on a big group of them. I closed in slowly. It was the largest group I had seen, and it looks like they were eating some grass that they seem to like better than the rest.
Because they were so occupied, I was able to get the bit closer than usual but even then, when I threw the javelin at them, they all started to run away.
Because there were so many, they actually bumped into each other, which slowed them down and I was able to hit one, getting me a tier up that I wanted.
Skill increases basic throwing level 10 is upgraded to throwing level 1
Choose one of the following abilities
silent throw
charged throw
powerful throw
Silent throw looks similar to the silent arrow. Throwing never seemed that sneaky to me, but I guess ninjas can do it quite well, so perhaps scratch that thought.
But I’m not a ninja and while it might be useful in certain circumstances, I would rather pick the other two. Powerful throw is most likely similar to heavy blow. Charged throw however, what do you charge it with and what effect will it give?
I was quite intrigued, even though I couldn’t figure out what the ability will actually do. I went back and forth between the two choices, but in the end, I took a gamble and picked the charged throw.
You have gained a new ability charged throw level 1
And it turned out to be the best choice. What it did was that you can charge energy into your javelin for example, and then it will make the throwing off the javelin better.
You can throw it faster, stronger, but it will also penetrate more. I’m pretty sure it’s the same ability that the big goblin had, and I was quite excited about it.
This was a deadly ability that might save my life in the future. If I’m against things that are more monstrous and bigger, I will be able to do some damage.
The problem was the charging time to really get some power into the javelin. It took time. With my testing, I also found a problem with this ability. It did affect the weapon, degrading it if you push too much energy into it.
But I could also see why. The other abilities compared to this one were all quite tame, and pushing too much into them was not really possible without a lot of effort. But with this one, I suspect you could pour so much energy into it that the javelin would just break.
When I got back, I found quite an interesting scene. Freya was holding one of her puppies in her mouth and moving back towards the barn. Since I had a rabbit that I wanted to give her, I followed them in.
It turns out that Toto had managed to escape somehow. I tried to figure out how, but it didn’t take long to find out.
Lucky had somehow managed to get her paw stuck in one of the corners. It was my mistake. The boards had a cap there that got smaller further down, trapping her paw.
Toto then used her sister’s misfortune to use her as a stepping stool to get over and out of the stall. My eye started to twitch a bit because I could imagine how much trouble some of these puppies can cause.
At that moment Freya and I both looked at each other, and I’m quite certain we both know we’re quite fucked until they grow up a lot more. Even then, I couldn’t keep the smile off my face the entire time I did some evening training.
Comments
Silver Beard
Maybe the Goblins know something (besides cremation of newly dead); or he'll get some epiphany working on his Alchemy (didn't the system give him some new recipes? Wonder is gunpowder equivalent is possible.
Silver Beard
Too bad about fire solution; but leaving them contained really didn't answer the question of why it happened at all. Seems like a Goblin problem redux. Wait for the issue to get bad enough and then drop everything to sort it out. Mentioned tying up 5 in a farmhouse... but how'd he get those 5 over the wall? Sequence is confusing as written- was he testing fire outside the village?
Stephen Pearson
Thanks for the chapter! :-)
