Apinsig
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Chapter 34 Homesteading in a fantasy world
🕑 Added 2022-08-21 11:18:37 +0000 UTCA lot of new class levels and skills. I am guessing I got the new alchemy skill as a result of the tar and poison mixture counting towards it.
But I honestly didn’t have any clue how to develop that skill any further. As I tried to get more information from the skill, to my surprise, it actually worked this time. I could feel getting something.
I was getting some basic recipes for a body restorative and healing tincture and how to make them. Not quite the life in a bottle that is usually in fantasy.
I tried to do this again with other skills, getting a response in mental fortitude. I didn’t remember getting anything from it before.
But before it was beginner now, it's basic. Perhaps there is no help given at the beginner stage and you need someone to teach you there.
Now I was getting a better understanding on how to start training this skill to fortify my mind. Going from beginner to basic didn’t give any ability as well, I wonder why that is.
I was still extremely puzzled over why other skilled didn’t give anything. So, I decided to take wood crafting and really try my best to dig deep, but nothing happened.
I got nothing, so I decided to change tactics after a while. I figured that I had already learned the things the skill will show.
Perhaps that’s the reason I’m not getting any information. Decided to use the skill to check a simple technique used in wood crafting to see if it was correct. Then I got a response of basically, yup that is correct.
This is extremely interesting, but before I can think about that, I need to get on watch. I quickly put on my armor and ate a bit.
Also, bringing enough food and water so I could keep watch for an entire day without needing to get down.
When I was up there, I stood up and watched as they were preparing a similar strategy to yesterday, but I’m guessing that they did make some changes, otherwise why would they keep trying?
It took them quite a while to set everything up and start moving towards me, but they didn’t make it far before there was a commotion coming from the temporary camp.
After I started to look there myself, I noticed there were three more goblins there that looked like they just ran a marathon.
Quickly, some words were exchanged between the attacking force and the camp. The attacking force soon left the fortifications where they were and run back to the camp. They all started to pack up the essentials, and within an hour, they were all gone.
I am guessing their leader was calling every goblin back to plan out their next move. This is good news for me because it gives me a few more extra days to prepare myself.
During the night, the goblins had cleared out everything around the bridge so there were no corpses left behind and no new metal to get unfortunate. I still had one weapon left to make, or more accurately, ammo type for the ballista.
I needed some way to deal with the overwhelming numbers of goblins, and I didn’t have a machine gun to fix that disadvantage.
I needed to develop the grapeshot. I went through multiple designs in my head, but most of them had different problems that just weren’t going to work or were unreasonably complex to make.
I landed on making a wooden cup like sled where I will put a sack of stones. The sled will have a notch down the middle where I can attach a knot from the sack.
The sack will be weakened at the bottom, so when shoot, the rocks will launch forward, leaving the wooden cups and the sack behind.
The wooden cups holding hooks needed to be quite wide and strong, but I couldn’t make them too wide, otherwise it will interfere with the ballista rope bulling back.
It took me a bit of adjustment and a few design changes and a lot of climbs up the tower every time i needed to check my work.
Working underneath the cover was an awkward thing, but just in case there was someone watching, I didn’t want them to see exactly what I was doing. When that was done, I started to make the sacks and shaped the rocks into the correct size and shapes.
I made them about twice the size of marbles, and I could fit about 40 of them into the sack. They weren’t all the same size because I didn’t want that headache of trying to make them that way, and there was absolutely no need.
Luckily, only the stones will need to be changed because the wooden cup will remain as well as the then broken sack.
But just in case some go flying, I made extra wooden cups. I made 20 sacs but filling them up will be a more time-consuming job. For that I brought some stones onto the tower, so I can work on them while I was on watch.
Today passed quickly like that, but no goblins showed themselves. But I think I did feel someone briefly watching me. I guess it might have been a goblin scout that's a lot higher skilled than the ones I have been dealing with, or it could have been an animal of sorts.
I went to bed a bit earlier today just because I’ve been awake for two days now and I wanted to get some extra time sleeping. As soon as I hit the bed, I was asleep.
Morning came quicker than I wanted to, but it was time to get started with today. I was starting to run out of rabbit meat and my ability to eat surprise me.
I had forgotten how much a growing person can eat, but even then, it feels a bit excessive. After my chores for today, I went on another watch to see what was happening.
Apparently, a lot I could see a lot of movement, mostly animals, but I did get a glimpse of a couple of goblin groups a few times.
They didn’t seem that interested in me directly. I am guessing that they’re trying to find the culprit and that they haven’t figured out that it was me.
Towards the evening I got a huge surprise because the bull started to make noise and so did the cows. That were quickly running away from something.
I was afraid that maybe some of the goblins found a way across and quickly run towards the pasture. Quickly jumping the fence, I saw the bull jumping around, trying to fend off something I could not see. As I got closer, I saw there was an anaconda sized snake.
Acting fast, I shot a few arrows at it. I did miss one, but the other ones landed. “Get away from it” I yelled to the bull that listen to me thanks to me using my ability also to get my message across better
I had to shoot it 3 more times to see it die. As I got closer, I noticed that its open fangs had some poison on it.
I quickly grabbed one of the arrows I had left in the quiver and tried to get as much poison onto it as possible. When I felt that it was enough, I took another arrow out before the poison ran out. Getting me two arrows with hopefully good poison on them.
This snake did look poisonous, and I hoped it was and a quick check with my identify on the arrows confirmed that now I had two poison arrows.
Ability increases guiding thought level 2
Possibly an extremely important find. I congratulated the bull and checked his legs for any bite marks as well as the other cows, but luckily, there didn’t seem to be any.
I went and made leather pouches to put the arrow heads in so I wouldn’t get poison all over and then went back to get the body.
A large snake and the bloody tough one. I had to shoot so many arrows because even the steel heads didn’t penetrate too far in and if it was a bigger one, I might not be able to kill it with my short bow.
Butchering it was a learning experience and got me a level in butchering. The skin was extremely tough, and I hope that using the same technique will work on this hide as I it has on the other ones.
I’ve never eaten a snake, and I hoped it would be good smoked. I did the same and cut it into smaller pieces. While I was working with the hide and smoking the meat, I got some exercise in. It’s been quite a while since I was able to exercise.
But I guess today’s excitement wasn’t over because I heard a lot of commotion coming from the other side of the river.
As I quickly run towards it, I saw some goblins running after a wolf that was slightly limping its back leg. Even then he was a bit faster than the goblins.
But unluckily for it, it was about the be cornered because I saw more goblins coming from the other ways trying to box it in using the river. I didn’t mind them hunting the wolf, but I did mind them coming into my bow range.
Why would I leave that opportunity to get some free kills? Before I could pull back and aim, the wolf noticed me. And changed its direction a bit to come towards me.
This action puzzled me until it got a bit closer, and I recognized the pattern on its fur. It was the same wolf that watched me when I was butchering.
I notice some more things. Some of the goblins had claw marks on them, meaning the wolf but up a fight but it also got itself hurt. What I also noticed was it was quite fat.
That stopped my brain for a few moments before I figured out that she must be pregnant and that it is a she.
When the goblins noticed me, they stopped and chose to run away, and I missed a good opportunity to kill some of them. But I guessed that it wouldn’t be that big of a deal.
What I didn’t expect was the wolf to keep running. I pulled and aimed my bow, but I didn’t fire because the wolf didn’t seem angry or that it wanted to hunt me. What came as a surprise was its next move, jumping into the river and trying to swim across.
