Stealth Field

I awoke in the middle of the night to a deep thud. Suddenly a system notification pops up.

"Congratulations, your homestead is the first citizen claimed land on Earth to have constructed a cloaking field; as such, your homestead has received two things. The first is a stealth field, the upgraded version of a cloaking field.

There is no technology more advanced than a stealth field. A stealth field creates a self-contained space and puts your homestead in it. Effectively taking your location entirely off the map, making it inaccessible to anyone not welcome.

There are ways to counter a stealth field if it is known to be there, but an unknown stealth field can not be found. The second is the ability to change the location of your homestead once per year to any site. Moving the homestead is not free, and the cost will be determined by distance. Exact coordinates must be known or a beacon must be placed in order to teleport to an exact location."

That's pretty amazing. I hope I never actually need to move the homestead because if I do, unless I am doing it an offensive manner, which is unlikely, then shit has hit the fan hard.

I look at my watch and see that it is 5:34 am and go back to sleep.

As I am about to fall asleep, there is an urgent knock on my door, and I hear Alfred say, "M'lord, you are needed for urgent matters."

"Come in. What's the problem?" I ask.

Speaking as he comes in and helps me out of bed and dressed, Alfred says. "M'lord, you need to configure the stealth field, at the moment we are vulnerable, and people will be able to detect us and the fact that we have a stealth field. If anyone notices us, we will have to use our movement immediately. If we are spotted and do not, we could lose our homestead. Stealth fields are so rare that this is likely the only one in this galaxy. You are truly a fortunate man M'lord. I look forward to the excitement this life will bring."

We leave the mansion and walk straight from the back door about five hundred yards through a mixture of woods and fields. As we get closer, I start to see a massive rectangle silver structure with what looks like a crescent moon on top. The crescent moon appears to have a moving part that might spin around, starting in line with it.

We reach the building and find a door, inside it's like a sci-fi movie space ship. The walls are metal panels, a grate on the floor and ceiling, small and large access ports to get into the wires and circuit boards all over the place. The lights seemed to be rather basic LED lights but somehow a little less harsh on the eyes.

As we walked deeper into the building, I started to notice seats with seatbelts and compartmentalization doors. I look over at Alfred and ask, "Is this building a space ship?" Alfred looks over at me and smiles "Indeed it is M'lord, I'm surprised you were able to notice so quickly. That is how we are able to move the homestead once a year. The stealth field has a setting that allows it to travel through wormholes taking everything within its field with it. When moving, everyone has to be inside the ship. The ship will then condense everything inside its space and appear in the real world, before opening a portal and suddenly appearing in a new location."

"That's pretty amazing, how much does it cost to use the movement feature? The popup I got said it would vary by distance." I ask

Still moving further into the ship, Alfred replies, "Moving across the planet would be relatively cheap, roughly one gold per mile. If someone is tracking us, though, we would need to move off-planet, and that gets a little more expensive. The universe is split into sectors, each sector has roughly one hundred billion galaxies in it, each galaxy has roughly twenty to thirty billion inhabited planets. In some of the newer galaxies, such as this one, fewer planets have been colonized, and we could easily move to another inhabitable planet within the galaxy, with the most expensive move costing around one hundred thousand gold."

Pondering for a moment, we finally come to a room that has large doors that look like they could withstand a lot of punishment. Alfred opens the door and gestures me through, "After you, M'lord."

I walk through, and I'm thoroughly floored, inside this room are hundreds of panels with information and statics. I look at Alfred and ask, "How am I supposed to set this up with all of those panels?"

He smiles and replies, "Easy, M'lord, just think 'Stealth field info' and everything in those panels will pop up. This structure is usually operated by NPC factions. It is rather rare for a player to own one, so it comes with all of the seats required for the NPCs to use it. Because you are a player, all of the little things those NPCs must do will be managed by the system itself."

Instead of replying, I pull up the stealth field info panel. A small info panel pops up.

Congratulations on your new stealth field. Getting this structure is extremely difficult, and yet you got one after such a short time. You are destined for great things. Use the bonuses we have given you to turn the universe on its back citizen. Prove that we were right.

"Ok, Alfred, that's a little creepy." I say, telling him about the message that popped up, "prove who was right about what? If it wasn't the system giving me the bonuses, who was it? And why me?"

By this point, the stealth field menu had popped up, but I was ignoring it.

Stealth Field Management

Activate

Deactivate

Move Settlement

Deep Space Operations

"I believe there is a faction that controls a part of the system. I have never heard about them giving out bonuses, like what you have received. From what I understood, the system gives bonuses to the first people to do something, and those bonuses are always very nice, but I have never heard of the council making those bonuses even better. It's possible they have some sort of plan for you. It is also possible they sent you a message to make you feel indebted to them when they did nothing, but it's hard to tell. It is probably best if we are careful about what we do and who we provoke for a while, M'lord."

I nod, processing the information and agreeing with his assessment. I open up the management tab of the stealth field menu.

Stealth field management

Manual

Selecting this will set the stealth field management to manual. In this mode, all daily operations must be manually monitored via the panels on the bridge. This requires 150 highly trained NPCs or players. Using manual mode can save gold in the daily upkeep of the stealth field.

Automatic

Selecting this will set the stealth field management to automatic. In automatic mode, everything is managed by the system but increases the upkeep of the stealth field by 50%.

Upkeep

Stealth field upkeep is calculated based on how many NPCs are living in your settlement. The base upkeep of the stealth field is 10 gold pieces per NPC per week. This can be reduced with administrators.

I select automatic, I want to get it running as soon as I can.

You have selected automatic operations. Please deposit 165 gold coins in order to begin operations.

I look over at Alfred and say, "I need a hundred and sixty-five gold coins in order to begin the operations, do we have any coins?" Alfred pulls some coins out of what appears to be a wallet attached to his belt. "Indeed we do M'lord, after paying this we will have one thousand five hundred and thirty-three gold coins. Here are a hundred and sixty-five to start the stealth field. "I accept the gold coins and deposit them in the system while I ask Alfred, "How do we have so many coins? I don't think I personally have any."

The system pops up: Congratulations, your stealth field has been activated. All workers will be temporarily moved into the stealth field structure while the field is activated.

"You do have money M'lord just think 'wallet,' and it will pop up your current funds, the funds I mentioned before were homestead funds. But nevermind that, M'lord, congratulations are in order. In all of my days, I have never seen a stealth field. They are exceedingly rare, and you have one after such a short time in this world. It will take the stealth field about two hours to set up. In the meantime, let's go talk to Janna and Maximus."

As he is still talking, I attempt to check my wallet. As I think the word, a small menu pops up, showing my current gold.

Wallet Gold 33,150

"What the fuck, how do I have so much gold?!" Alfred looks at me with an indifferent look on his face, and I tell him, "I have over thirty-three thousand gold." He raises an eyebrow and asks, "Did you kill anything on your way here, M'lord?" I tell him about everything I killed on my way here, and he squints his eyes and looks at me funny, as if trying to figure out if I'm telling the truth, and says, "Wow, M'lord, you have an absurdly powerful stealth skill. If you wanted to, you could probably even avoid me. There are not a lot of people that could accomplish such a feat so soon after arriving here."

I look at him surprised that what I had done was impressive, and say, "Other than the child zombies, nothing I fought was really that difficult, I just snuck up behind them. Zombies are easy to kill, as long as you damage the brain they drop dead instantly."

Alfred nods in agreement, "This is true, but people new to this universe, as you are, generally have trouble with even them. It is very impressive that you were able to avoid that ant and kill the ogre right after you spawned, normally those ants are impossible for fresh players to avoid. It should have found and killed you, and sneaking up on an ogre is equally as hard."

At this point, we enter into a small meeting room. As we enter, I see Janna and Maximus already seated inside. When they notice me, they both stand and bow and remain standing until I have sat down at the head of the table. "So, what is the best course of action for today?" I ask the two of them.

They look at each other, my guess is, attempting to decide who will talk first. Maximus waves his hand toward Janna, letting her know that she can go first. She looks at me and asks, "M'lord, how much money do you have? The homestead currently has one thousand five hundred and thirty-three gold. This is a good start, but it isn't enough to really get where we need to be. If my estimates are correct, we will need roughly five thousand gold coins to get running self sufficiently and allow me to study towards reaching master rank."

I ask Janna how to transfer funds from my personal wallet into the homestead wallet. She explains that there is a transfer button on the wallet menu, but as I am about to do it, Alfred suddenly speaks up, saying, " M'lord, I would recommend against transferring personal gold into the homestead gold at this time."

I give him a weird look and ask, "what is wrong with transferring money over to be used for the homestead?"

Alfred gives me a relieved look, apparently glad I'm choosing to listen to his advice and says, "homestead funds are accessible to everyone within a position of power in the homestead. Meaning that these two 'pointing at Janna and Maximus' could use any money you put into the homestead for whatever they felt fit. They wouldn't be able to fully misuse the money, but they could spend more money on their own training than you meant for them to have. In the meantime, until we know exactly how you want things ran, it would be much better if you just pay for things out of your personal funds. We can also have all profits sent straight into your personal wallet."

I think about it for a moment and transfer ten thousand coins into the homestead. "I just transferred ten thousand coins into the homestead, you can use that as a starting fund for your training. I have another twenty thousand coins that we can use to upgrade the homestead and start recruiting more workers and warriors." I look at Janna, "How many, and what kind of workers, would you recommend we hire to start out with?"

She closes her eyes attempting to hide her shock, while Maximus gives a broad smile, a few moments later she looks at me and says, "M'lord, I would recommend we hire five good workers and ten average workers. That will cost us a total of six thousand gold. Equipping them with above-average equipment for their jobs will cost around thirteen hundred gold. Having the additional fifteen workers will give us enough workers that, with me focusing on my training, we can still profit around three thousand gold per week. Five thousand gold will give me roughly five weeks' worth of training." She finishes and motions for Maximus to take over.

"My lord, I would recommend we recruit three good spearmen, one good swordsman, one good hunter, two average hunters and swordsmen, and six average spearmen. This will cost roughly six thousand gold. Equipping the army in above-average equipment, which I will not go less than, will cost roughly two thousand gold, for a total of eight thousand gold. It will give us a good army composition and will allow me to train them more effectively. Once I have someone trained well enough to train the army, the five thousand gold will last me roughly six weeks of training."

I look at them and can't think of any reason not to follow their recommendations. "Sounds good, let's get it done." I pull up the menu and recruit the workers and soldiers, paying the fifteen thousand three hundred gold, leaving me with seven thousand eight hundred and fifty. After putting in the recruitment order, a system message pops up.

Congratulations on your first recruitment order. As a bonus, you have been awarded, one good Gladiator, and one good priestess. Your bonus recruits will arrive with the rest at eight am.

I look over at everyone and tell them what the system told me. Immediately all three of them looked extremely shocked, Alfred was the first one to break out of it, and he told me, "My lord, once again, the system smiles upon you. Gladiators and Priestesses are among the best of the best in either field. A gladiator wears little armor and wields two swords. They are generally accepted to be one of the most powerful units in terms of attack damage. A priestess is even better because she will provide a morale bonus and productivity bonuses for everyone on the homestead. Soldiers will train faster, craftsmen will learn faster, and earn more income. She improves the healing rate of everyone in the homestead by ten percent, just by being here. And on top of all of that, she knows healing magic, which is the rarest form of magic."

I open my eyes wide in shock, "Wait, are you telling me I just got extremely lucky for a third time?"

All three of them look at me and nod their heads. I sit back in my chair for a second and get a sinking feeling in my gut. "Something bad is going to happen. We need to prepare our defenses and train everyone as fast as we can. My luck is never this good. If this much good is happening, something bad is coming."

All three of them look somewhat surprised. "My lord, it will be done. Training and preparations will be expedited. I can have our soldiers ready for fighting, and our defenses bolstered within three days."

"M'lord, I can have our new recruits working self-sufficient in the same amount of time. I will also train them in basic self-defense so that if something happens, they might help in some small way." Maximus and Janna reassure me.

Shortly after, Alfred stands up and, bowing slightly, speaks. "My lord, please allow me to train you in combat, I fear your feelings are accurate, and you will need the training."

I look at Alfred and say, "That would be great, I need the training. It should work out well since we both use stealth-based combat styles. Is there anything else we need to discuss at the moment?" I ask, looking at everyone else. Maximus and Janna both had nothing else, so we ended the meeting. Alfred told me to meet him in an hour on the bridge to finalize the stealth field activation sequence.

As everyone disperses, I remain seated. Once everyone is gone, I go into stealth and leave the room, following Alfred. I want to see if I can remain undetected around him. He is moving quickly, but I keep my pace steady, making almost no noise and remaining crouched. Alfred moves into what appears to be a galley, tables all over, and machines that basically print food for you.

The door into the galley is a large ten foot tall fifteen-foot wide door that opens with two pieces, one moving up and the other moving down. The door remains open, which makes me think Alfred has noticed me and just hasn't said anything, but I remain in stealth. I wait for him to get his food and sit down. As he is sitting down, I sneak up behind him and say in a rather loud voice, "Hey Alfred, watcha got there?" and the craziest thing happened.

Alfred flipped the fuck out. He instantly turned around and had a knife in his hand. It went right for my throat, and I could tell the moment he realized he had fucked up because of the look on his face. It was a look of utter fear because he feared he had just killed me. His swing was too far in motion for him to change directions or stop it. Luckily I had my knife on my belt, and as soon as I noticed the knife in his hand, I grabbed it, bringing it up. Holding the knife with the flat end towards Alfreds' blade and bracing it with my other wrist and widening my stance to take the blow better. Our blades hit, and I go flying across the room, slamming into tables along the way and finally ending up on the wall, leaving a small dent and sliding down like a cartoon.

Instantly, faster that I thought anyone could move, Alfred is by my side, checking my pulse. I hear a relieved sigh when he realizes I'm alive, and he says, "Holy shit, how the fuck did you survive that? You really are incredible. I thought our run was over the moment I swung my blade on you. And yet, here you are, somehow alive, hurt, but alive. I can't say that I could have blocked that attack any better myself, Be glad you did because that is The only reason you are alive."

By this time, Janna and Maximus come into the room together, after hearing the ruckus, they see the destruction and me laying on the ground with Alfred over me, and assume the worst. They come rushing at Alfred screaming and yelling at him, saying things like, "How could you do this?" and "I'm going to kill you."

I don't know what came over me, but suddenly all I could do was laugh, and it hurt to laugh, but I couldn't stop. My laughter gave Alfred a chance to explain to them what happened, and all three came over and asked what I was laughing at. It took me a while to stop so that I could reply, and I said, "I was trying to see if I could sneak up on Alfred, and apparently I can," and I burst out in hysteria again.

Alfred lets out a chuckle and says, "I'm going to buy a health potion to get you fixed up, it's going to cost roughly three hundred gold." I don't have an issue with it, so I don't say anything, still attempting to calm down from laughing so hard when I look over and see the look on Janna and Maximus' faces. Both of them are standing there, looking at me literally with their mouths and eyes as wide open as they can get. And then I burst out laughing again. The sudden rekindling of my laughter brings them out of their stupor, and they start asking how I snuck up on him.

A few moments later, I just tell them I crouched and snuck roughly twenty feet behind him and waited for him to have his food and be seated before approaching him. They are even more surprised to learn that I blocked his strike. Most of the damage that I received was from the speed that I flew into the tables and wall. I didn't have the strength to remain in place, but somehow stopped the blade from slitting my throat. After we finish discussing what happened, Alfred finally had the health potion and poured it into my mouth. The vial that cost us three hundred gold was only the size of a mouthful and tasted like cherry cough syrup.

I down it in one gulp and instantly start to feel better. I slowly sit up and say, "Thanks, Alfred. Hopefully, this will give you an idea of how to train me."

He looks at me and chuckles, "Oh yeah, I know exactly how to train you. It's going to be fun, M'lord." I smile and close my eyes for a moment to let the healing potion do its work. When it's done, Alfred helps me up, and all four of us go grab something to eat.