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Winter finally came.

Wherever I looked, the entire world seemed to be covered in snow and ice. The snowmelt river froze over, the evergreen tree showed off white on green dresses, all non-evergreen trees showed their bare branches, and most of the animals remained quiet in their hibernation or have already left the Alps for greener pastures to the south.

Humans in this day and age in Europe didn\'t do a nomadic lifestyle, unfortunately. This meant that we were stuck in our homes, come rain, snow, or sunshine.

Honestly, winter in the Alps sucked and I hated it. This wasn\'t the modernity where I can just turn on a heater that drew energy from a hydrodam or a coal plant. No, heat came from fires within flammable houses that needed inefficient solid fuels and constant attention, and the best insulating attire was heavy fur. Snow got everywhere like sand but it turned to water and wet everything when the heat was turned up, and travel was difficult at best, fatal at worst.

I\'ve lived this medieval life for eighteen years, soon nineteen, and winter, for all of its innate romantic beauty …

"ORARARARARARARA!"

[Iron Head Flat Head Shovel]

Perfect for shoveling loose material, not so much for digging.

Grade: Moderate (+10%)

*+2 Damage

"ORARARARARARARA!"

Snow flew to my left and made a long mound behind me.

"ORARARARARARARA!"

My arms blurred as I put my speed, strength, and endurance… to clear a path.

"-RARARARARA-!"

It\'s kind of like clearing the parkway at a house for the car, so that the car could back out. Except, in my case today, I cleared a path because it made travel hard.

"-RARARARA-!"

I cared about people\'s travel quality because I wanted trade to pass through Fluela Pass, and if the pass was closed every winter, then that was a season of no trade. Trade worked best when it was a constant affair, don\'tcha know?!

"-RARARA!"

I roared as I finished the shoveling and slammed the shovel down to the ground. I whirled around and looked at the work I\'ve done and smiled.

At about three yards wide, it was a narrow-ish path in the snow, but it stretched the top of the Fluela Pass to the east gate of my little fort and then from the west gate of my fort to the Landwasser valley.

Of course, I didn\'t do all of this myself. I only did the east gate to the top of Fluela Pass, and I started from the top. Still, that was a passage a peddler could use to go back and forth the valley over to Landwasser without having to go all the way around.

Of course, I didn\'t clear a path from the top of the pass to the east, but that\'s because … because I didn\'t want to do everything. I wasn\'t here to make life better for everyone. I knew that I couldn\'t. No matter how strong, powerful, patient, or genius I became, I was a single man at the end of the day.

At the end of the day, I could not create and support a whole community just by myself. Hell, making Fluela Pass and the valley into some kind of trade route wasn\'t even in top five in my priorities.

But it made people feel better knowing that they had a connection to the outside world, no matter how awful the world outside had been for the last two seasons.

It was winter in the Alps, but that did not stop the numerous counts, dukes, and minor nobility from killing each other to claim even a parcel of land more for themselves.

Dad already left with his people, but he did so with a sack of coins I paid him for his work in escorting the villagers back and forth as they harvested their grains and vegetables. I prayed for his safe passage to home, but I knew that if he and the others ran into a belligerent army, then … they might die. Winter made this less likely, yeah, but chances existed.

There were good news, though!

First off, Kraft had been allegedly pushing Alvia to seduce me and has stopped since my return from Waldenberg. Alvia still learned from me and nothing has changed, mostly because she kind of ignored her dad and ended up becoming too enamored by gem faceting to care about sex and marriage.

Second, I got my first spell! My first magic spell! Sure, it wasn\'t a practical spell for most situations, but I had a spell! It confirmed for me that I was going to be able to use other kinds of magic, and that I didn\'t need to do anything special or dumb.

Like I had been planning.

I didn\'t ask for cows just because they were useful for farming and because my people needed them to help hurl our loot from Waldenberg to our home. Cows made for, uh, great sacrifices. But it had been only a passing thought before and after the Waldenberg battle, and I didn\'t care enough for it with now the revelation that I didn\'t need to do stupid shit.

Third, I got a few more skills related to healing. [Herbalism], [First Aid], and [Bandaging]. I am dearly hoping that once I leveled those skills enough, a spell for cleansing of some kind will pop up. Because the Black Death was due in forty years, and while forty years seemed like a lot of time, I wasn\'t focusing all of that time on just healing.

There, of course, were also bad news.

First, the Count of Toggenburg was winning his war against the Prince-Bishop of Chur.

Second, the death of Count of Sax-Misox had not stabilized the region by removing a hostile player; the count\'s death sparked a civil war between his three sons and their two relatives for succession while his war with the currently heirless and lordless Barony of Vaz. Yes, a lordless barony was not exactly fit to fight a war, but rumors told to me by two peddlers who came and went spoke of a peasant\'s rebellion in the middle of winter. See, the Count had done a very stupid thing and raped, looted, and pillaged his way through the Barony of Vaz and then into the Habsburg-aligned Planta Noble House of Waldenberg and Zernez.

Speaking of the Habsburgs, I highly suspected that once their war with the Bohemian King ended (if it hadn\'t already ended), they were going to come charging down to make the Sax-Misox rue the day they were born for attacking their regional ally, and these Habsburgs were not the feeble and insane incestuous byproducts whose mainline died off due to inbreeding but warriors and nobles of the Swabia fighting over kings and other dukes to be the ruler of the Holy Roman Empire.

AKA they are vicious as fuck right now, though they did prefer that sweet, sweet "fuck your way to the throne" diplomacy. It\'s why the Kyburgs, the northern neighbor of the Toggenburgs, were married to the Habsburg right now and the Toggenburg lands would go to the Habsburgs, because the current belligerent count was a heirless lord and allied to the Habsburgs.

It\'s why, despite my own preference, I sent out messengers, using the people of Travaos, to reach out to the neighbors to the north. I wanted to meet them, and if necessary, to form some kind of an alliance to resist the power hungry hands of the lords around us.

This was exactly how the League of Ten Jurisdictions, one of the three members of the Three Leagues, which would then become part of modern Swiss Confederacy after the Napoleonic Wars. I was repeating history, just a hundred years earlier.

In trying to leave the lands of the (Old) Swiss Confederacy, I had gone and done the exact thing I wanted to avoid: get involved.

I sighed as I entered through the east gate, nodding to the gate guard, and then walked towards my tower. I also did my best to ignore the looks of the single women currently directing their eyes towards me.

That was also a new thing. Before the Waldenberg/Zernez expedition, everyone was too scared and desperate for "finer" things in life, but now that peace had settled over my people and the granary looked full enough for us to last the winter as well as Kraft stopping his attempts, there have been … unwanted to advances.

It wasn\'t that I was asexual or gay. I liked women.

What I did not like, however, was the general state of the women around these parts.

The Old Swiss Confederacy didn\'t become famous for its mercenaries for no reason; they had no other means of survival because their lands were piss poor. Mercenaries lived on their reliability, so their mercenaries, their men and militia, literally died in foreign lands because their deaths fed their families. Nobody wants to hire mercenaries who fled for their lives at the first sign of trouble. This was why Switzerland in the future became the land of mercenaries: loyal unto death because that was the only way they were able to feed their families. That and their halberds were great at killing knights.

Worse, the area of future-to-be Switzerland where I settled was even poorer than the rest of Switzerland. Taking all of that together, you got a people who weren\'t well-fed, a little rough on the edges, and tough at best.

It didn\'t mean that there weren\'t sexy young woman ready to join me in bed. It\'s just that… I guessed I didn\'t want the responsibility right now. I still longed to be alone so that I could find excitement in just developing my skills. Yeah, I\'m sure sex was great and all, but I could have sex later!

I think that\'s one of the reasons why I liked Alvia so much; she was as enthusiastic about learning and improving herself as I was. We were kindred spirit, even if her spirit was gem-studded and glittering gold with her desire for those carats. I liked Arnold as a friend, too. He was relaxed, kept quiet about my more supernatural deeds, and shared that desire for improvement.

I picked up a stone from the ground. "Dodge," I said absentmindedly as I hurled it at Arnold, who was with some other men, training in the ways of the sword.

Arnold, whose senses had been trained to knife-edge sharpness, snapped towards me and saw the rock in the same instance, and stepped out of the way of the rock just in time to have to nearly graze his chest. The stone flew onward and cracked against the wooden and straw covered dummy.

The other training men gulped.

Arnold just glared at me adorably.

It\'s been months since I trained him by throwing stuff at him (he was lucky that wrenches weren\'t a thing yet). The first month had been very hard for him, and it was also how I trained my [First Aid] skill, which improved the immediate quality of health care I gave him and healed him just slightly so that, overall, he healed faster. However, healing faster from his ordeals just meant that he also got to experience the full experience far more often, and his screams of bloody murder was not only a feature of my fort but a near weekly occurrence.

"Shitty master!"

He also gained a potty mouth.

I picked up a few more stones and flicked the next one faster.

He nearly dodged it, but it clipped him on the shoulder, and he yelped from the pain.

It didn\'t matter that he was wearing padded shirt for training and warmth; my throws always hurt.

"Ah, Sir Hans…?"

I paused from tossing my third stone and glanced around until I saw one of my "pages."

I didn\'t know why these people really wanted to follow all of the bells and whistles of the knightly progress. It made them feel better, so I let it go and followed through with it.

"Yes, Harold?" I asked the boy of ten.

"T-The representatives Schlier and Klosters have arrived."

Ah.

It was time.

"Did they ask for a meeting as soon as possible or after another day?"

"They did not say, milord."

I glared at him. He knew that I didn\'t like being called milord, mostly because I hadn\'t earned such a title and because I had specifically stated before that "sir" was as far as I was willing to accept.

"Then go and ask. Come find me if they want a meeting today."

The other representatives had arrived days ago, and they were eager to talk about a mutual defense pact. Maienfeld and Castels\' representatives wanted an alliance right here and now because their towns and lands were the closest to the Chur-Toggenburg war and felt extremely threatened. St. Peter and Langweis were wary as they were technically under the rule of the Prince-Bishop of Chur, but since the prince was losing one battle after another with no other lord capable or willing to take them in, they felt like they had to join.

I didn\'t bother calling for Belford and Churwalden; both had been sacked and burned by the Count of Sax-Misox and his army.

This left Kloster, the one furthest from all of this mess, to decide our fate, because they stood between Travaos and the others. If they refused to join the alliance, then there would be no legal passage between Travaos and the next closest town, Castels. It would break the alliance even before it began and gathering all of the representatives would have been for nought.

….

I could conquer them.

I really could.

But that was not my Plan B or even C or D. It was the very last option for the sake of my and others\' safety.

But I could.

Harold came back no more than five minutes later.

He bowed hastily. "They want to meet with you as quickly as possible."

I threw the last stone at Arnold, who deftly dodged it, and walked away as I gave a wave at my apprentice/student.

My first political talk stood ahead of me.

… I\'m nervous.