POV Falyr Hrasnel

Today was the day when officially the temperature got above freezing this year. Another thing that signifies the coming spring is the mountain of paperwork at my table. It will be the last month before everything starts moving again. I tried to rub my temples, but I can already feel the future headaches. But I didn’t think that Rich would be one of those headaches.

He is hiding something and planning something. The most worrying part is that he is not hiding it and that worries me even more. He clearly has started to gather a following but apparently, they are only planning on setting up a life here.

But I don’t understand how gold and silver-rank knights and even two Wizards want to start farming. There must be more to it but whatever it is I don’t think without better assets here I would be able to find out.

I kind of wished I’d pushed Rich a bit more to get a better idea of his background. Absolutely everyone is certain that he has a military background of some sort, but I never questioned what kind of military background he has.

His ability to deal with politics is kind of frightening. He seemingly doesn’t care about it but is willing to play the game whenever anyone wants. Yet finding out about his plans seemed easy. It almost looks like he wants us to know what he is doing.

I hoped that I would be able to get him to talk more but he hasn't shown up at the village ever since the winter solstice. Some of our scouts think that he fought a gold-rank beast and that's why he was out of commission before the winter solstice, but no one can figure out why he hasn't returned.

Perhaps he was in another fight but the information we have been getting from his apprentices doesn't seem to support that. I have most likely lost the opportunity to learn more about him.

I looked at the paperwork again that all needed to be filled and looked over so we could take back most of the people here into the capital. I did request that we leave a stronger force to represent us here, but it was not approved.

They want everyone out of here that's willing to go so we could secure our power base in a more populous area. And while I disagree and I’m glad that we’re leaving at least some contact here. I still think that Rich and his people are up to something and when we are gone, they will be able to take the village over and become its leader quite easily.

At first, we thought we achieved so much. Getting a village with a huge amount of food supply that we turned into a huge advantage, and I guess we did get a lot but I suspect Rich got an even better deal. Not only will he get a fully repaired village he also gets quite a few huge favours from us and the better we do in the outside world the better those favours will benefit him.

But I can’t see it. In the interactions that I had with him, there is simply no way he planned this from the start. I refuse to believe that. But I just wish that we could meet before we go because I need to confirm this otherwise, I would need to reevaluate everything about myself and my ability to read other people. And that part is really crucial for my next assignment.

I just wish that Bert was still here so I could talk with him, but I already know that he will answer the same as I think. Perhaps it wasn’t a concrete plan and just, it would be nice if that happened. That kind of seems more like him. Whatever the case might be hopefully I can put this behind me and go forward without worry.

My next job however will not be even close to as easy as this one was. And while this was still a headache dealing with all the teenagers the next one will be even worse, I need to deal with nobles and self-proclaimed rulers.

We need to secure safe routes for our traders to move. This requires quite a lot from the company. It will be my job to make sure our caravans look strong so no ruler would think that they could seize our goods without any retaliation.

I will just be one part of the team. Of course, there is a need to deal with trading and making money. Another difficulty will be dealing with bureaucratic and diplomatic dealings. The last difficulty was to make sure everyone will honour those deals. Looking over the number of new recruits and veterans that we have been able to get on our side I was feeling quite confident.

With the number of combatants, we should be able to deal with everything at least for a while. But it will still be quite difficult as there are many dangers on the road. One of the newer ones is the huge number of undead. Luckily, we have been able to hire some experts to deal with and guide us with this kind of problem. The only problem is that I'm not too fond of their attitude.

This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

Holy power has always been an unpopular choice. But now with the amount of undead they have finally found a niche that they are better than anyone else. Their power structure is quite weird as I didn’t expect them to start something new. They apparently have organized themselves into something they are calling churches and starting to spread some sort of belief system that they are calling religion.

They are still a minor organization, and they seem to hate each other even more than companies and guilds hate each other. The reports I’m getting are quite weird as they seem to have different outlooks on life and what everything means but they also seem to disagree on at least one part or most of them, but no matter how similar they are they usually don't get along.

I guess time will tell what will happen with them, but I do have to prepare a bit more since one of their priests requested to come here to seek out the possible necromancer that might be here.

One thing I have learned is that no matter how much they hate each other or others most of all they hate anything to do with the undead. I can see that holy power seemed to work the best on the undead, but I haven't really understood why they have this deep-seated hatred. Hopefully, they will not become a problem in the future.

POV Arthur

Glenn was again trying the same tactic to get past my guard, but he should have known better. I just pressed closer to him and pined his arms with my cross guard. Now it was easy with the help of my other hand to push my sword into his shoulder to get me the winning point. I love the voice of the instructor and she called me the third point and gave me the final win.

I was now officially the best swordsman in our age group. I need to thank Rich some more and beg him to give me some more energy circulation lessons. That man is truly brilliant at least in that aspect. But thinking about him I wish that he was around some more. I don’t understand how he could tolerate the cold so well but even now that it’s gotten warm again, we barely see him. He's always doing something away from the farm.

I was basking in the win but whenever I think that I can take on the world I just have to picture how Rich looked after his fight with the big cat. That's like a bucket of cold water down my back. It's just another way how he has saved my life. And I will probably never be able to repay him, but I will do my best and what’s even better is that I get to do the things I like and those things will help him.

I honestly still don’t understand what his plan is. I mean yes he explained it a couple of times but it’s all too complicated for me. I find life is simplest when there is a blade in my hand and an enemy ahead of me.

But Rich has also taught me that there is a lot more to life than just that. I still can’t believe it’s just been a year looking back at my life before that I truly must agree with everyone's assessment that I was stupid.

If I would have gone into the adventurers guild the only reason I might still be alive is that I got lucky and while that is important for every battle overall you do not want to bet your life on luck.

Looking up at George with his girlfriend I honestly don’t know what to think. Making a family was never in the picture for me but I’m not so against it now. But hopefully, whenever I find someone like that it would have taken a long time. I still have things to accomplish and monsters to slay.

Tomorrow will be a big day. I was able to get permission from Rich to take a few of my friends into the dungeon. Over the winter I have gotten to know a few villagers that came with the convoy that think similarly to myself. They all wanted to be adventurers like me so at the inn we find some common talking topics that eventually morphed into a proper friendship. I was able to convince them to not go with the company back into the capital but stay here.

Hopefully, we will be able to train and become strong enough to not die from the first real battle we will fight. We have been taught that death is a part of our future but it was as hard to get it through their heads as it was to get that idea into mine.

But Rich has his ways of convincing people and so do the instructors here. Honestly, I still don’t really understand everything, but Rich said that I wouldn’t truly understand before it happened. He just told me to try to push that back as much as possible.

It was one of the most serious conversations I’ve had with him. It was kind of a shock to see a usually happy person that radiated pleasant energy become so deadly serious, but I guess that helped with teaching me. All I can do is train as much as possible and get the experience and delving into the dungeon will be good for that. But I’m not looking forward to spring as I’m guessing we will once again have to do farm work.

Why Rich bothers with that I do not know as he would earn so much more money just hunting down monsters or even crafting. But I will suck it up as even if I was able to become an adventurer I would still need to do shit jobs. So doing some farm work for the amount of training, knowledge and experience I have gotten is a small price to pay.

When we were walking back to the farm, I could see the snow starting to melt faster and faster. It won't be too long before spring comes. Honestly, I’m so sick of the white. I have never liked winter. It's just annoying as you must stay in most of the time.

I can’t wait to tier up my class up so I can get more stat points so the weather wouldn’t affect me as much. Perhaps then I would love winter if I could fight and tolerate it as Rich can.