Homesteading in a fantasy world

Goose and I were having a break on top of a tree. Currently, the snow was lightly falling. We were both enjoying the daylight and took the most we could. There were only a few hours of daylight. But soon the day will start to get longer and the night shorter. Winter solstice will happen soon, and a new year will come.

In this world, the new year starts at the winter solstice. There will be a huge celebration but there is nothing like Christmas where you give gifts to someone. This was a disappointing discovery. But at least they have something like the new year celebration which I guess is good enough as I have always liked that more anyways.

I re-entered my owners land ability so I could keep tracking the herd of silver elk that was on my land. They shouldn’t be here as they liked a higher energy area. There are quite a few gold ranks among them but most of them are silver. The younger are still bronze rank. I had no plan on attacking them but we were currently moving closer to them so I could at least see them.

They were supposed to be incredibly beautiful creatures as their antlers were supposed to look like silver. They were bigger than elk which is saying something as elk were already quite a big animal. I watched Goose as he started to fly higher, and I started to follow him jumping from tree to tree. I could have travelled from the ground, but I did enjoy travelling like this as well and it was quite good training.

It took us four hours of travelling in the forest until we reached close enough to the herd so I could observe them. Even with me being so far away from them a couple of them raised their heads from eating and looked towards me. They were the gold ranks but when I didn’t show that I was aggressive after a while they didn't observe me so aggressively.

By this time there was very little light from the sun, but I could still marvel at the shimmering antlers that the creatures proudly displayed. On some silver elk, the antlers were magnificently big.

Some were bigger than me and that's just one side of the antlers. I honestly had no idea how their necks were able to support that much weight but you cannot argue with the results as they had the most females around them.

They were pushing the snow aside and eating anything that still had a hint of green on it. I wanted to know why they were here as they weren’t supposed to be, but it took quite a while until I noticed that a lot of them had wounds on them caused by claws. This means that something is chasing them. We were on the edge of my land, so I wasn’t registering anything with my owner’s land. This meant their coming here actually helped them at least for a while.

The problem is the herd's size of nearly 1000. If they are pushed from their original lands that could support them, it is bad for my forest and any other vegetation nearby as there will not be enough of it to feed them all. This would be really bad. The grasslands might be able to feed them but that would mean the death of many rabbits.

I kept observing them to find out all I could, and I could see the long-healed scars that some of the males had. It seems like have fought this enemy for a long time. They probably were prey animals for some kind of a predator, but something has gone wrong. Either a new type of predator has emerged, or the current ones have gotten a lot stronger and are now overhunting their prey.

This will require further investigation and I started to look for a tree that's close by and seemed to be good enough to sleep in. If the predators follow the herd the situation can get a lot worse. Goose and I eventually settled in for the night.

The night went by without any incident. It took almost the entire next day until owners land informed me of a new predator on the land. At the same time, I could hear new noises coming from the herd and I could see them tightening up preparing for something. The young and the females got into the middle of the herd while the males stayed outside. It didn’t take long until I could hear the predator's noises.

It took me a while to understand what I was sensing but I just couldn't believe it to be true. When I finally saw the first one I had to accept reality. The predators resembled velociraptors. They were a lot different from the movie ones.

They had quite a lot of feathers but not as many as birds do. I suspect it’s to keep warm instead of helping them with flying. They were smaller than the elk by more than half. The problem was their numbers there were about a hundred of them.

They had the foot claw that velociraptors are famous for but what surprised me was how colourful they are especially their feathers. There was every colour of the rainbow represented and honestly, it looked quite intimidating.

It didn't take long for me to understand what the problem was. The velociraptor pack was able to get big enough because they had two gold-rank leaders. Those were probably able to feed and control the others so well that their numbers started to grow out of hand.

On the side of the silver elks, there were a few stragglers that were too far away to get back to the herd. They didn't last long and were quickly killed before they could reach the safety of their number. Now the silver elks tighten up as velociraptors started to circle them and when that was happening the others velociraptor started eating their fallen herd members.

Silver elks didn’t seem to be defenceless as one of the younger velociraptors got close. One of the silver elk’s antlers lit up. It then charged so fast that no one could react and impaled the young velociraptor killing it instantly.

The silver elk was able to get back to safety and seemed to ready for the next attack. This incident brought the pace of the situation down but it didn’t last long as the velociraptor start to systematically test the herd's defences to find the weak silver elk so they could exploit them and hopefully kill a few more of them.

I didn’t not like this situation. I could probably kill a lot of the young velociraptors and escape quite easily but that wouldn't solve the actual problem of there being the two gold ranks that were in charge of the pack.

I’m quite sure if those two weren’t around the pack would split up into smaller ones meaning they would not be that big of a problem anymore. Lucky for me they were just low gold ranks and didn't seem to have access to the same tier of energy as the sabre tooth had.

The problem was they had so many others to help them that were high silver tier. If they had some sort of an ability that allowed them to catch up before I killed the two gold I would be quite fucked. I needed to wait for an opportunity, but I needed to spend this time doing nothing. Lowering the population of the velociraptor by a bit would not be a bad thing as well. So, I got my bow out and strung it.

Nothing wrong with a bit of stealth fighting and hopefully I will get enough experience to tier up stealth to get it into advanced tier giving me hopefully another powerful ability. I didn’t just start to shoot as much as possible but tried to hit a target that was close to the herd and not be noticed by the two gold-rank velociraptors.

I had just killed my seventh velociraptor when I noticed one of the gold ranks starting to move differently from before. They were both prowling closest to the gold-rank silver elk, and it seems one of the velociraptors got impatient and started his hunt.

The creature was incredibly fast and by the time I was halfway towards the location I wanted to use to attack the other gold-rank velociraptor, it had already dragged out one of the silver elk and was feasting on it.

By the time I got to my attack location, it had killed another two silver rank silver elks and the herd was starting to panic. I could see a few of the gold-rank silver elks wanting to move towards the other velociraptor and I’m guessing that if they split up the other velociraptor would also start hunting. So I had no time to waste. Using my bow might get the job done but seeing how fast velociraptors were I didn’t want to mess up this opportunity.

I didn’t have my two-handed sword, so I pulled out the one-handed sword that I made a few days ago. I still didn't like the yellowish colour it had but I was confident that it could get the job done. The velociraptor pack was so focused on the silver elk herd that I didn’t have to be a stealth expert to get close. Even then I was almost too late. The gold-rank silver elks were splitting up and the velociraptor I was approaching started to get ready to rush towards the herd.

I used my movement ability and got as close as possible. When I made it to the velociraptor it had already turned around to figure out what was making the noise. A flying slash powered with core energy flew almost taking off one of its legs. Even then the velociraptor was able to jump towards me and I could see the famous claw slashing in the air as it flew towards me.

I dodged the claw and used my other hand to grab hold of its tail as it flew past me. I shifted my weight up as much as possible causing me to drop to the ground and burying myself almost waist-deep into the snow. But I was able to achieve what I wanted. The creature's movement was halted, and I was able to cut off its head while its back was towards me.

I got an alert from Goose and started to run without looking back as the other gold rank and a few more silver velociraptors started to chase me. But most of the velociraptors were still focused on the herd.

The silvers were no problem as I kept killing them with flying slashes. I didn’t even have to put core energy into the attack. Eventually, I had run quite far away from the herd and now only the other gold-rank velociraptor was left.

It was so fast that even with my movement ability I was barely able to keep ahead of him. So, I chose not to. I could feel the anger rolling off him, but I didn’t let that stop me from engaging. What the anger did do was make me able to land devastating hits on it.

Core-powered flying slashes caused wounds to open until the monster finally started to slow down. Even then I didn’t want to get too close as I didn’t have the reach with my single-handed sword.

It was able to surprise me once when its claws that were attached to its small arms suddenly projected a lot further away as it used one of its abilities. If I wasn’t keeping my eyes on the monster, I would have missed the change in its energy flows and it might have landed quite a devastating attack on me.

But I was able to block the attack with my sword and launch a counterattack that caused a fight-ending wound that bled quite a lot. It seems I finally hit a major artery and the fight was basically over at that point.

I rushed back to the herd and observed what was happening. The velociraptors got a few more kills but it seems like their cohesion started to break down. It didn't take long until the silver elks started to beat back the velociraptor and eventually, they all dispersed running in all directions.

The clean-up took a few days. I butchered the velociraptors as best I could, but I was unfamiliar with their biology. Still, I got things that I thought might be valuable. As I suspected the remaining velociraptors formed smaller packs.

I had to kill two packs that started to head deeper into my lands. The rest headed back to where they came from and soon the herd seemed to be heading back as well but they weren’t in as much of a hurry as the velociraptors were.

When I got back home everyone was worried, but I explained what had happened and promised that I will send Goose to inform them if I will stay for so long out of contact. The next day will be the winter solstice so it was time for a party in the village.