Homestead Managment

I feel someone touch my shoulder in my sleep.

"My Lord, please wake up, it is time to start the day, and we need your instructions."

I open my eyes and see a man. He appears to be in his fifties or sixties. He is around six feet tall, hair is grey, and he is wearing classic head butler clothing.

"Who are you?" I ask eyes squinted, attempting to block the bright lamp he carried.

"I am Alfred. I am the head butler of this estate. I will be the one to organize the workers and production efforts based on your instructions. I am also proficient in combat and can organize defenses and train you and your guardsmen in basic combat." Alfred replied, standing straight up with his hands behind his back.

"Ok, that's awesome, the system didn't tell me about you. With your help, I might be able to figure this out faster." I said as I get up and start getting dressed.

"Indeed, the system didn't mention me because I am a special NPC that came with the estate. The reason you didn't see me before now is that I had yet to be created. The system delayed my creation until you claimed your bonus structure. It gave me bonus stats based on your choice, and I received higher intelligence, combat proficiency, and stealth skills because of your choice to get a cloaking field. That was a brilliant choice, by the way, my lord. I am roughly eight times stronger than any other choice would have made me." Alfred informs me, seeming ecstatic about the situation.

Taking a moment to process the information before I reply, "Ok, that's pretty awesome. I hope we can make this place a haven for people like me. Also, you don't need to call me, my lord."

"Ah, but I do, my lord. You are the lord of the estate, and all NPCs MUST address you as such." Alfred said, emphasizing the must as he spoke.

"Oh, that reminds me, what is an NPC?" I ask

"NPC stands for non-player character. We are system generated people, meant to provide a more dynamic economy and better interactions with the system itself. An NPC can comprehend any skill within a matter of moments due to the system. They, of course, still need to train and practice the skills to get better at them. Each normal NPC may only have three skills at any point in time."

"Oh, wait! Does that mean you are an NPC? You said the system created you, right?" I ask, surprised. I thought he was a real person.

"I am indeed an NPC, my lord," Alfred says with a hint of sadness in his voice.

"Why do you seem sad about that, Alfred?" I ask when I noticed the sadness in his voice.

Alfred grimaces and replies, "When you die, I get sent back to a pool full of unused souls. I don't know why I can talk about or even feel these emotions. Normally my memories are suppressed by the system until the end of each life I live."

"What are my chances of survival here, Alfred?" I ask. I don't think he would be so sad unless he didn't believe I would last long.

Alfred smiles and replies. "I think, with your choice of the cloaking field, you will go far in this world. That is why I am sad, I will spend a long time with you, my lord, and in the end, You will die, and I'll be left alone in the other world."

"That's happened to you before, hasn't it?" I ask quietly

"Indeed, it has, twice since I was brought into being by the system, my lord. Of my four times being summoned from the other world, this being the fourth, two were several thousands of years long, the other was only one hundred and fifteen years." Alfred says, closing his eyes and bowing his head slightly with his arms still behind his back.

"I'm sorry Alfred, in a way I hope not to do that to you, but I also hope that we do spend a long time together," I say. As an afterthought, I ask, "how old is the system?"

"No one knows how old the system is, my lord. I have existed for over fifty thousand years." Alfred answers.

By this point, I am dressed and ready to go, so I ask. "Is there a room here in the manor that gives access to the menus that can be seen by more than just me? For meetings and such."

"Indeed, there is my lord; we can go to the war room now, that will make going over everything a little easier. Also, you can pull up a menu visible to all authorized people in the room by simply thinking the menu name and thinking about it being visible to the others."

The room I slept in was the first room I found on the third floor with a bed. It was very comfortable, and the temperature was nice and cool, perfect for sleeping. We leave my room, and I ask,

"Is that a system enforced requirement or something you will be enforcing onto the others? Calling me, my lord, that is."

Chuckling as we walk towards the stairs, Alfred replies, "It is something I will be enforcing, my lord, every NPC has free will. All of us are extremely loyal, and your NPC subjects can't betray you, though An extremely dissatisfied NPC may choose to end his or her employment with you, though."

"Ok, sounds good. Where is the meeting room? I asked

"It is in a room off the throne room, my lord," Alfred said as he led me into the throne room.

We walked past the control panel and went into a door on the right. The room was an oval room with a long square table. Most of the chairs are beautiful hardwood chairs, but one chair at the end of the table is very fancy. It has gold trim around the whole chair and an elegant design on the head of the chair. Alfred walks me up to the chair

"This is your chair, m'lord."

"Thank you, Alfred, shall we get started?"

"Yes, m'lord. The first thing I need is the direction of our homestead. What do you want us to be?"

"I want us to be able to protect ourselves. I want us to be self-sufficient enough that we don't need to rely on others. I want to protect the weak, those that can not protect themselves. And I want to get revenge on whenever brought me here."

Alfred smiled and said, "It sounds like we have a lot of work ahead of us, my lord. What do you want to focus on first?"

"Well, the cloaking field will be done tonight, and once that is done, from what I understood, it's going to be very difficult to find us. So I think we should focus on becoming self-sufficient for now. Are any of the combat NPC's we got good enough to train the others?"

"Yes, m'lord, we got lucky, and one of the good spearmen you got is a good supreme spearman. This means that he is one of the best spearmen you could find anywhere on this planet. He knows enough that he won't have any problem training the rest of the soldiers in combat and formations. He could even train soldiers of a higher tier if they weren't up to his standard as a supreme soldier. I could bring him in so that you could meet him if you would like m'lord." Alfred said, showing me a chart of my soldiers and the skill levels of my men. The good soldiers I received from my bonus were well trained, and the average swordsman that came with the homestead was basically trained.

As Alfred finishes, a soldier comes in wearing armor that was a mix of leather, chainmail, and plate armor, a square shield with a notch for holding the spear in formation on his back, and a plain but sturdy and extremely sharp looking spear in his right hand. As he comes in, he claps his feet together, stands straight as a log, slaps his fist to his chest, slams the but of his spear into the ground and says "Good morning my Lord, my name is Maximus, it is a pleasure to be working for you, I have a good feeling about you."

"I'm glad you think so, I hope to bring good things, not just to here but to everywhere that I can. It's going to take a lot of time and effort, but I think we can do it. If anything I do dissatisfies you or you know a better way of doing it, feel free to question my actions or correct me. Would you mind giving me a little bit more information on the soldier ranks?" I say, smiling at how amazingly lucky I got to get a soldier like him.

He will serve as an excellent strategic planning guide. He agreed to train me, and we spent the next hour going over the soldiers' requirements and how he could teach the solders almost to the point he was at. He said that he would continue his research and training but that it would take him five to ten more years to reach the rank of master soldier.

There was another set of skill levels beyond the basic set of standards. It was the amount of training the soldier had received. The smarter a soldier was, the faster they would retain the knowledge and rank up. The class of the soldier didn't matter when it came to this type of training; a highly ranked soldier could train anyone up to his or her level of knowledge.

The different levels of training are

subpar trainee,

basically trained,

well trained,

advanced soldier,

basic phalanx soldier,

advanced phalanx soldier,

supreme soldier, and master soldier.

Once a soldier hits the advanced soldier rank, they start learning phalanx formation, and once they fully master both, they become a master soldier.

The difference in each training level was pretty drastic. An average soldier who was at the advanced soldier training stage could defeat a good soldier that was in the well-trained soldier stage. It would be a difficult fight for both soldiers, but seven out of ten times, the advanced average soldier would win.

This is good news for me because I have a soldier at the supreme stage, and he can train anyone up to his level of knowledge. That will be a significant boost to my army as it grows. After Maximus was done giving me the necessary information on the soldiers' training levels, he took his leave to start training the rest of the soldiers. Alfred and I stay because we still have a few things to discuss.

"M'lord, It's time I introduce you to our current head of production." He looks over at the door, and a woman walks through the door. She is roughly six feet tall and has a muscular but feminine figure with dark brown shoulder-length hair. She is wearing a leather apron, a leather strip worn like a hat with a pair of goggles that look kind of like goggles you might find on a pilot in world war two, sitting on her head, and a pair of jeans and a jean jacket. She smiles and waves and says, "hello, m'lord. Tis a pleasure to meetcha. My name is Janna. I am a good supreme craftsman."

"Wait, you're a good supreme craftsman? Are the craftsman training levels similar to the soldier ones?" I ask, surprised. How could I get so lucky to get two supreme ranked NPCs.

"Indeed I am, you are a truly fortunate lord to get two supreme NPCs." And so my training with Janna started. She told me that most kingdoms would be lucky to have one or two supremes. Even looking at an empire, you wouldn't see more than five or six supreme with a minimal chance of them having a master. At one point, she said, "That barbarian maximum and myself have the potential to become masters in the next five years or so. But I will warn you m'lord it is going to cost a lot to fund our research and development."

I asked if we could generate enough funds to afford their training, and she said, "indeed we do m'lord. Not only that but to make money, we don't have to interact with anyone. You got even luckier, and this estate has a system shop. We can sell the things we produce for much more than we could elsewhere." And we continued our training.

The economy in the outside world is based around the people with shops buying products at a lower price and selling them to the shop. The things that we will need to purchase will still be moderately cheap and won't cut into our profit margins as much as otherwise. Overall In comparison to what we would make without the shop, we will make about 1/3 higher profits, including our expenses. And on top of all of that, we do not have to reveal our presence to anyone.

Owning a shop is extremely rare, and if I had not chosen the cloaking field, I would likely be unable to hold it. The kingdoms and empires around us would be rushing here with armies to take over as soon as they found out where we are and that we had a shop.

With the cloaking field, we will be able to remain hidden as long as I do not bring anyone that can't be trusted into the homestead. After discussing our options and learning that for the moment we would need one engineer to keep things running, and one farmer to produce the food we would need, I had Janna assign the workers as needed. She was going to do the farming to provide enough food to sell for gold.

She told me that with her as the farmer, we could produce upwards of 200 gold per day as well as having enough food to feed everyone. It will slow her training by a few days, but it will be worth it until the homestead is a little more self-sufficient.

Maximus is going to spend most of his time training the other soldiers until he gets one to advanced phalanx soldier, and he can focus more on his training. As we make money, we will start by recruiting more workers. Average workers and warriors are one hundred gold. Good workers and warriors are one thousand gold.

Janna said we should recruit one average worker and one average warrior of any type per day until we have enough people and income to support the Supremes doing their own thing and only doing training for the others once or twice a week. Our goal is to slowly work our way up, recruiting better and better members for our homestead. Once we have enough members, we will begin to make ourselves known for trade and diplomacy.

After a whole day of organizing the various aspects of the homestead, I say good night to Alfred, Janna, and maximus and have Alfred show me to the master bedroom. It is much larger and fancier than the room I stayed in last night. I collapsed on the bed and fell asleep within moments.