“You’re saying you can procure this ‘cheese’ in bulk?” the drunk merchant asked, shoving another piece of cheesy bread into his mouth and taking a draw from his ale.

“Sure,” I said, enjoying the cheesy pub food that was picking up in popularity in Gurt. “It’s produced in Freehold, to the east. There’s a fresh version and a storage version that’s a bit better for travel, but it spoils in the heat.”

“Damn,” the merchant said with a burp. “Ain’t that a shame. It’s like fish from the west. What if you salt and smoke it?”

I paused, thinking. “I don’t think it’ll keep the same, not like fish. But smoked cheese would probably be delicious.” I should have thought of that. Note to self, try smoking some cheese when I get home. “Waxing it helps, but really, it needs to be kept as cool as possible. You could probably get it to Roko in the winter, but…”

“Then I’d have to drag my ass out east in the winter. Nooo thank you. I’d rather head to Haklan.”

“Fair,” I laughed. My cheese empire would have to wait until I was willing to try introducing refrigerated cargo to the Kingdom, which I would only do through Marshan, if ever.

Maybe if I spent months or years improving the road between Roko and Gurt to the same standard as the road between Roko and the Kingdom, there would be some merchants willing to test the eastern route in winter, but I could understand the decision otherwise. It was a tough journey, even in the summer, and the small settlements along the way failed to properly break up the trip, save for the small comforts at the settlement of Checkpoint in the middle.

Should I spend some time out there, or in one of the smaller villages? Personal taming had spread to Gurt and had extended a bit to the next-nearest settlement westward, and had done so fairly readily given that they were farming the plains around them. It was not enough to set up a proper branch of the Guild, given that the village was so poor, but maybe introducing a quadhorn herd would help improve the status of the village and pay dividends longer-term.

I did not learn much more after a night out on the town, but it broke up the monotony of my time in Gurt. Soon enough, Gulin made his way back on an exhausted tarand, having ridden the last length of road pretty hard, and the next day Forn and his family loaded up in a wagon with me and we headed back to Freehold.

Rena and I discussed the best options for Forn, and I got her to give the whole family their membership badges on the house and walk them through the ranks.

“Oh, and Hella’s back,” she said as I walked away. “She said she wanted to talk to you.”

I nodded, and made my way back to the wagon. I would find her after I made the trip back to the farm and unloaded my goods.

The farm seemed to be doing well. The apprentices were handling the animals without issue, and I made sure everything had gone as planned in my absence. One of the storage caverns cut into the mountain had become the main milk processing plant and cheese aging and storage area, and I had built a large holding tank for the milk that was naturally cooled by all the stone. I did have one apprentice learning the ropes when it came to cheesemaking, but we had a backlog of milk that needed processing now that so many quadhorns had given birth before winter and with only one set of hands to do the work, especially with their attention split across other farm chores.

The last skillfruit harvest was nearly ready, and I had entrusted Rena to keep them fertilized while I was in Gurt. She was the only one who was let in on that particular secret, and only insofar as she knew I had some extra talents with brewing. Plenty of people knew about the healing draughts, but no one else knew about the purple potion that was my skillfruit fertilizer.

Nearby, the mundane fruit trees were looking good. The purple potion had sped up their growth moderately, but they only received the fertilizer in their first year of growth. Once they were established, the cold-hardy ones were perennials that began putting fruit out yearly, such as the apple-pear fruit I used for the draughts. The less hardy ones died after a winter, which was frustrating, and led to the building of a moderate-sized greenhouse, where I kept a couple of the citrus trees alive and some other warmer crops that I liked having access to.

The “zoo” portion of the property had expanded over the years, with each different species that I opted to keep for long-term breeding and inventory having their own areas, at least for the predators. Some of the herbivores cohabitated without issue, for example, the small group of oxalire I had decided to keep on hand to make use of common plow tools—which remained simpler than trying to adapt that side of things to tarand use—who were able to live among both the tarands and the quadhorns. At the moment, they were with the tarands, as the quadhorns were in milk, but during the spring/summer we switched them over so that the tarands could have the extra legroom.

The genuine version of this novel can be found on another site. Support the author by reading it there.

The Guild had taken in some mursin, and I put together a separate area for them. They were a bit flighty, especially when guarded by lubargs to prevent other, wild lubargs from breaking in to eat them, so they were a bit harder to keep. Evolving one into a unihorn mursin helped, but they did not blend nicely. Since mursin were so common to the area, I only kept a core trio, the unihorn and two does.

I also built an area for the blueflit flock, the native waterfowl I liked. They produced a small number of eggs, but only during the spring, and they liked to hide them in brush. They were certainly no chickens, but it probably was not that different from keeping ducks. I had a huge bounty posted for any egg-laying beast that produced larger or more numerous eggs, but had yet to find my preferred poultry. Blueflit babies were, predictably, adorable, and I let the population grow each year before culling to add a bunch of delectable meat to the winter larder.

Slaughtering animals for meat from the herds and the blueflit flock, as well as overstock beasts that were purchased by the guild, was an interesting solution to what would otherwise have been a problem. While killing tamed beasts provided less experience overall, guiding my apprentices through it and then getting them to practice their butchery skills helped to level them up a lot more quickly than otherwise, while producing meat for the exclusively carnivorous beasts. It also put food on the table for the villagers.

Quadhorn meat was significantly less popular, and I wondered if that was because the beasts just had less magic in them, though after years of breeding south of the mountains and being sired by the crowned quadhorn, the local population had gained some magic. That gave me hope that the Velgein people could one day gain magic, if we could ever manage to create peace.

If the villagers did not want to eat quadhorn, the carnivorous beasts could, and the villagers could happily enjoy the excess of mursin meat as well as whatever else we sold to the local butchers. The point was, culling the numbers helped keep the farm in check, provided experience to the youth, and was a valuable way to increase skills overall.

In some cases, we even set things up that our tamed beasts could do the deed, in order to help them level up. While I did not reveal that there were quantifiable, numbered levels, tamers now knew that beasts grew in strength until hitting a point where they could be transformed. While weaker beasts could jump the bulk of this growth by feeding on stronger beast meat, stronger beasts had a steadier grind, as rank C and stronger beasts were not as numerous. This beast slaughter was a service we could provide for aspiring hunters and guards who wanted to strengthen their rank E and stronger beasts without making an extra excursion into the wild.

Heading into my home, I unpacked some of my new purchases, then pulled a few things out of my inventory to decide what to do with everything. I laid out my weapons side by side, enjoying the look of the new longsword. It had a design similar to a spatha, or the Viking swords that followed. Next to it, my baselard looked a bit worse for wear; I needed to spend some time with it on the stone, then polish it up and oil it a bit. Chances were that I would not be using it much anymore, although I would keep it in my inventory since it was a habit of mine to pull it when I was in danger. The spatha-like blade, I would have to start wearing, like I did my bowie knife, which had once been what I considered my primary weapon.

I kept the small hunting knife that the butcher Bosh had bought for me in my childhood in my inventory, as well as a backup, but the cleaver stayed at my butchery station on the property. Similarly, my xiphos-like sword and my father’s simple arming sword were hanging in my house, since I never used them. I had a few other weapons and blades, some of which I had sold off over the years and others I had replaced with better versions, but I would always have a fondness for swords.

Other trophies of my time in this world surrounded me, decorating my walls and surfaces. I looked over some of them: a shieldback shell, my stingknight armor, a leaf-patterned golden brooch, several blueclam shells, my outgrown travel cloak, and the tanned shagloth fur thrown over my bed.

Treepo was curled up on the fur, snoring slightly. His nose twitched, and I noticed, not for the first time, the graying fur on his snout. He was thirteen years old, and while I did not know what the average lifespan was for a treehopper in the wild, nor what the lifespan was for the other treehoppers now in captivity, but I had little doubt that Treepo was already the longest lived treehopper in this world.

Casting heal, cure, and some buffs on him, I hoped I could keep him healthy and active for as long as possible, but even magic had limits. Time was the ultimate equalizer. Sighing, I turned back to my table of weaponry.

I put the blades away, and after puttering around, reminiscing and tidying up and procrastinating, I stepped back outside of my house and stretched. I was pretty tired, so I was considering just going to sleep and heading back into Freehold in the morning.

I heard the sound of a gallop coming from down the road and turned in time to see Hella’s mystic tarand leap my front gate and continue racing towards me. While I had not elected to evolve Horsey, Hella had no problem showing off by riding around on the handsome, transformed steed. I had laughed at her when she had needed to commission a new saddle after transforming the beast and being surprised that her previous one no longer fit her mount.

Hella jumped to the ground and stalked towards me.

“I told Rena to tell you I was looking for you!”

“She did,” I said. “I didn’t realize it was that urgent. I was just about to head back. And can you not jump my gate?”

“Pilus,” she said, grabbing me by my shoulders and looking me dead in the eye. “Shut up. I found one. I found a draconic beast.”