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Soon after the rest of the tournament events were over, and the whole tournament itself was done, the atmosphere at the academy changed because, in just a few months, the end-of-year exams were upon us.

Just like everyone else, I hit the books during this period, but it was mainly the Elven Language books that I was hitting as I still needed to work on my grammar, other than that, I felt I was good on my other fronts.

Before I knew it, the finals were over and done with. Naturally, this low level of education was a piece of cake for me, so I had no problems acing it.

So now, the time has finally come for me to go home for a visit, but we will be making some stops along the way.

Dave, Sam, Elise, and I were sitting in the waiting lounge as carriage after carriage came to pick up the other students to go home for the end-of-year break.

Eventually, the fast carriage I booked months in advance came up and my name was called, we loaded up on the private carriage and joined the heavy traffic of carriages leaving the capital.

The moment our carriage got out of the main gate, our fast carriage that four horses were pulling, zoomed down the road towards the Dunmire village, Dave and Sam’s home.

While Dave, Sam, and I were excited and in high spirits because we were reuniting with our families, Elise was much more nervous.

When I made my offer to take her on as my family’s retainer and asked her to think about it, she came back to me a week later with her parents and told me they accepted my offer. As for why she was so nervous, it was mainly because it was her first time going this far away from her family in the capital and meeting a whole noble family.

The only thing I could do was assure Elise that my folks were nice people.

The ride to Dunmire village was uneventful. I expected that we would make camp for the night for at least a day or two, but the coachman was a professional at his job; he had calculated and planned the whole journey and knew which town or village to skip so we could make the best time and end up at an inn by the end of the day, and every inn or tavern we turned up at to rest for the night knew who he was and even got us discounts.

I ended up asking the coachman for his contact information in case I was ever in need of his services again.

It took a week before we arrived at Dunmire village. We were about to be stopped at the gate by the village guards, but Dave and Sam stuck their heads out of the carriage windows to wave at the guards.

“Boys! You are back!” one of the guards happily exclaimed.

“Yeah, we are on our end-of-year break, how have things been in the village?” Sam asked.

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“Oh, you know, besides from both of your parents’ farms expanding, same old, same old. But don't let us keep you, say hi to your parents for us.” the other guard said as they waved our carriage through.

As we rolled through the village, Dave and Sam kept their heads out as they greeted their fellow villagers. Dave then guided the coachman to a fork in the road that took them further away from the main village and deeper into the farmland.

After a few minutes of travel, our carriage reached the end of the road that had two houses, one on each side of the road with huge farmland behind them, and those houses seemed to have been renovated and extended.

We alighted from the carriage and the two boys dashed off to their respective homes while shouting “I’m Home!”

The coachman unloaded our luggage, and I tipped him and told him to come get us in a week to continue the journey to my place. Just as the carriage was going back to the main village to get some logging for himself, the doors to Dave and Sam’s houses opened, and they led who I could only assume were their mothers while their younger siblings ran deeper into the farmlands announcing their brothers’ return.

Their mothers came up to me and bowed, “Thank you for gracing us with your presence Milord, and-”

I raised my hand and interrupted who I assumed to be Sam’s mother, “Now, now, none of that, I am not one for formalities and your sons are friends of mine, and any family of my friends are also friends of mine.”

Their mothers looked up at me, then at the smiling faces of their sons, “In that case, welcome to our humble farms… Lord Ironcrest.” Dave’s mother said.

I just nodded and said, “Just call me Luke, or Lord Luke if it makes you feel more comfortable.”

I then introduced Elise, and we gathered Dave’s home, Sam’s home was still undergoing more renovations in order to accommodate their shift to livestock farming.

Soon, both families were gathered, and there were many hugs for the boys and handshakes for me and Elise. When all the greetings were done, both farming families brought out their harvested produce, and the girls of the family started putting together a feast while the boys entertained us and brought us around both farms for a tour.

For me, this was my first time seeing the inner workings of a farm for myself, the only other times I had seen a farm was on TV back in my old world, and in this world when I followed my dad around doing monster suppression, we would sometimes stop by farms to ask them if there any sightings for the monsters we were looking for.

But now, I had the farmers themselves explaining how the whole system works to me, the only reason I was able to keep up with their explanation was due to my surface knowledge from watching TV and internet videos back in my old world.

After touring both farms, I realized that there was a reason Sam’s family turned to livestock farming while Dave’s doubled down on normal farming. It turns out that with both farms working together, they formed somewhat of a closed-loop system.

Normal farmers would usually compost the inedible plant matter to use as fertilizer, while this was a good source of nutrients for their crops, it was not the best. But with a livestock farm nearby, that was a never-ending supply of manure that could be used as fertilizer, making their crops grow healthy and their yields plentiful.

As for the inedible plant matter, it was only inedible to humans, but farm animals were more than happy to eat them, thus completing the closed loop, two farms feeding each other what they needed to grow.

But that was not the end of the perks that a livestock farm brought, Sam’s farm also had a small army of ducks and chickens that were unleashed daily into the fields of crops to eat any pests that predated on the crops.

The last advantage was that both families had daily access to more milk and eggs than they knew what to do with, so their mothers took up baking a lot of cakes and selling the rest to the nearby village.

When the tour ended, we were called back into the house for a hearty feast.