I was running at my top speed towards the town. I ended up picking an outfit that made me look like a regular ranger. I had my bow sling over my shoulder on my belt was my quiver, my knife and dagger belt and my sword belt.

I was feeling a bit naked as I’ve got around quite used to my armour, but I should have known before this that I might need lighter armour for things like this. But this will also work as I would just look like another ranger.

I looked at my notifications and this made me turn my thoughts from the upcoming confrontation to my achievement page. I had gotten a new skill called animal communication and I’m really proud of this one as even David hadn’t heard of this one. I got two levels in organization, one level in intimidation and I’m pretty sure I’m quite close to a tier up on that one and I even got my command skill a level up.

I have gotten some skill and ability level-ups between now and when I got back from the raid, but I hadn’t gotten a new skill in quite a while. Even during raiding I was more advancing thanks to getting level-ups with my classes than actually levelling up my skills and abilities.

The most explosive growth until now I’ve seen was when I was farming and while I was getting iron ore. The two things most in common with this were when I was absolutely focused on doing these tasks or I liked doing them a lot.

I had thought that my slow down of skills and abilities was because I was at the next tier and perhaps that’s true to a certain extent but obviously, I just haven’t been taking my other things seriously enough. Then again I haven’t had much time to focus on other things. Now for making myself powerful I should be always fully committed to everything I do but I also feel that this could burn me out quite quickly.

So, I’m a bit conflicted. While my skill levels are good for the amount of time I’ve had them they are certainly not good for the class levels I have reached. The other problem I think I have is just my mentality with the skills that I get. For example, making stuff with wood can have a lot more skills than just wood carving and wood crafting like joint making or barrel construction. It can be a lot more specific as I have been told, but I don’t know for me it just makes sense that it should just be under wood crafting.

Sometimes I hate that I’m old. I noticed it back on earth, but you get set in your ways. I know that people like to joke about that, but it has a lot of truth in it. There are of course exceptions but those only occur when you really wanted to learn something new but as I got older, I just liked to do things the way I used to do even if the new way was a bit better or even a lot better. I would somehow need to get out of this mindset or do I go with the way that feels more like me?

You are supposed to get stronger abilities if your skill is more encompassing but on the flip side if your skill is extremely targeted then the ability should be extremely good at doing that one thing. If you think of it this way, then the skills argument will turn into the master of one versus jack of all trades. In gaming master of one is in 95% of the case better but this world is not a game. While this world does have game elements it's mostly similar to real life where you would need to be a jack of a lot of trades to survive but not all of them.

My class homesteader has more in common with a jack of all trades, but I also feel that in this world it’s necessary to master something. That is of course if you want to be at the top. I continued to think about this but eventually, I made it close enough to the town that I had to slow down and get off the road. There wasn't much forest around here but there was still enough of it left that I could get quite close to the town while still staying completely hidden.

It was sad to see all the farmland overgrown and after this year there wouldn't be anything left. You would have to start from the beginning if you wanted to plant something. I was glad that the night was dark as it was quite cloudy which gave me incredible advantages. Not only would my stealth abilities work a lot better, but I could see everything perfectly thanks to my eyes. I could see from pretty far away and I remembered the exact location where the scouts intruded.

I hadn’t had to use this part of my visual abilities, but I could see traces of footprints they left behind. One of them was a lot fainter than the other probably using stronger abilities to hide. I could see the trail of footprints coming from the southern direction and I could see how they return from the border and headed towards a small thicket of trees. They seem to have spent some time there. I looked around some more and after some searching, I found that one of the scouts had returned towards the south while one most likely stayed in the town.

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There was one person on top of the gatehouse looking out, but he was quite vigilant. The problem for him was that I was too far away for him to see anything even if I didn’t use my stealth skills. I made my way towards the small thicket of trees where they seem to have done something. I noticed some freshly dug-up dirt which they had quite expertly disguised.

After I dug it up, I saw some armour pieces and some weapons meant for one person, but the hole was big enough to fit a lot more. They probably had to disguise themselves to get into the town which was some good news meaning that the town itself didn't belong to the same faction. I know that the town hadn’t come to scout our land simply because they would have done it earlier. The footprints came from the south, which was the reason I was quite certain that we were up against a bigger foe.

Getting into the town was stupidly easy. I just had to use one of the other walls which weren't guarded. Climbing it was simple enough with my abilities even without them it would have been simple. The wall was quite damaged, and it had quite a lot of convenient handholds to pull myself up. Otherwise, the wall was quite impressive being 5 meters tall and almost two meters wide. The town was a decent size and probably housed close to 2000 people but now there weren’t many left.

I moved quickly through the streets towards the only active location that I could spot. I was cautious but I still had a lot of land to cover before I started to hear noises of people. It was funny that the only active location was a tavern, but I guess the time being around midnight was the main culprit.

I searched around for people's energy and noticed that most people were living with two people per house or only one. I could only see one house with three people and that made me a bit sad meaning there were a lot of families left here.

I had to do some slow sneaking to get close enough to the tavern, but I was still completely safe as I could hide one house away and still listen although I had to concentrate a lot. “I don’t like that we let one of them go. What if he’s a part of a raider group and not refugee,” said a deep voice. He was almost immediately answered by another voice. “The leadership has the same concerns as you do but all we can do is hope.”

There wasn't much more useful information but one thing I did learn was that they did have enough food that without growing anything they could survive the next winter, but I did notice that they had planted quite a lot which is a bit sad as all of it must be destroyed. It seems that I got here a bit too late as it seems that only a few people are still awake and they were quite drunk. Looks like they had quite a lot of alcohol left here as well.

Finding the location of the scout took me a bit of time but I was able to find him thanks to the lookouts posted around the house that he was using. I was glad to see that only two sides of the house were covered and the scout inside was clever enough to know which sides were being looked at and had set himself up so he couldn’t be overseen. A rookie mistake as now he would be vulnerable to a third party aka me.

To stay hidden I used my sound isolation, but I tried to keep it as low as possible as I didn’t want my energy to be noticed because of that I also strictly controlled my other abilities usage. I started to climb to the second story so I could get in from one of the windows. It had a basic latch, but I was able to circumvent it with my knife. I was glad of my sound isolate ability otherwise I would have needed oil because the hinges were stupidly loud.

I just had to make it across a single room, and I was looking at the sleeping form of my enemy. He truly was a rookie as he had set up his stuff on the table quite far away from himself. He should have kept them near him so there would have been a better chance of him waking up if anyone was getting closer. Now I was able to go through this stuff without too much worry but unfortunately, there wasn't anything useful. There were some papers, but they were all empty.

Now the question came, what I should do with him. I looked at him and how he slept and noticed how young he was. He must have been new to this, and rookies sometimes run away especially if things started to get serious like a territory, they needed to scout that knew immediately when they crossed the border. Quickly an idea formed in my head and I started to act.

I packed everything he owned up into his backpack and put it on. I then sneaked as quietly as possible towards him. He was at least a bit competent as when I was just two steps away his eyes opened up. He was able to get one help yell out and sit up almost halfway before I quickly closed in and punched him in his face strong enough to knock him out but hopefully not enough to kill him.

I picked him up and put him aside so I could gather up his sleeping things and pack them up. I then threw him over my shoulder and quietly moved towards the window. Getting down was a lot more difficult and I slipped falling almost one floor. I waited for almost a minute before I was certain that I hadn’t been noticed and I started to move towards the wall to get over it with my hostage.

Climbing up was annoying but getting down was a lot easier as I used the rope to lower him down, his own rope which was morbidly funny. When I got myself down I headed towards our land, it was time to know what we were up against.