Colin was definitely confused. “Sir, what do you mean? What’s so special about Militiaman?”

  I ughed. “First off, stop calling me sir. Feels unnecessary. But no, Militiaman isn’t going to solve my biggest problem.”

  “What is the biggest problem then, uh, John?” Colin avoided saying sir. I was mildly impressed.

  Emily smiled slightly as she heard him trying not to say “sir.”

  I told them, “I have that fancy tractor over there. But, it isn’t a steam engine. It takes a very special fuel. Wait, do you guys have any oil wells?”

  Emily pursed her lips and looked away with a slight frown as she thought about my words. After a few seconds of silence, she spoke. “Yes, I do think I have heard about them. I believe the gnomes have them in their homends. But they live across the Middle Ocean and I have never heard of any oil wells in the human nds yet.”

  First dwarves, now gnomes! I wondered how many races there were? Hopefully, the almanac would tell me.

  I nodded. “Alright. So my tractor isn’t a steam engine. It needs a product made using oil. We are pretty unlikely to get it here. But, I can make another fuel from corn, or soybeans, if you have them. But, I can’t make one good enough that it won’t ruin my tractor without purifying it. Alchemy seems like it would do that. If I could get to Level 5 I could take the other skill that’ll make the other thing I needed.”

  While looking at the tractor, Emily said, “Can it truly get the pnting done in just a few days?”

  I nodded, and my grin once again split my face in two. “With my implements, it can plow 150 acres a day. Same with pnting those potatoes, or the corn or wheat we will get. We’re not pnting anything by hand. Except maybe the extra potatoes. It looks like I can only pnt 20 acres. I have enough for an extra two and a half acres for the garden.”

  “Colin already expined the situation with potatoes. I have a type that will grow here. He told me your potatoes only produce like 10-20 bushels per acre normally?”

  Emily shrugged. “I have eaten them only once, at my wedding dinner. They are very expensive. They sell for 12 gold per bushel. If everything goes well then it’s great. But I am told they are prone to problems with heat.”

  I nodded along, still grinning. “Alright. Well, I have a potato that has been bred to grow here, or at least in these ftter areas where it can get hot. And if I use all of my bonuses they’re going to produce 200 bushels per acre, easily.”

  Emily and Colin just stared at me silently for an uncomfortably long time. Colin’s mouth hung comically wide. Emily's lips were not pursed. She really did have very nice lips when they weren’t pressed so tightly together.

  Finally, I asked, “Well? Are we about to be rich? Or are we about to do something that will end up with me being burned at the stake?”

  Slowly, and with a couple of aborted attempts at speaking, Emily finally got her thoughts together. She took a deep breath and said, “You are most certainly going to cause a great stir. We can make this work. But, I am going to need you and me to talk, privately. Tonight?”

  I felt the bundle of nerves in the pit of my stomach clench up. I hadn’t thought this conversation was going to happen so quickly. But if she thought we could make this work, then we needed to address any issues between us. I would py things slow and let her lead the conversation. Unless she outright accused me of being from another world, I would not admit that yet.

  “Okay,” I said, nodding. “But, assuming we do figure it out, are we going to be rich, or are the authorities not going to pay us out for that much?”

  “Even without fertilizer, this ground is so fertile I should be able to get 3,500ish bushels total. Then there’s my bonuses. I have 20% for row crops, and another 25% with a skill I took, so close to 5,000. We should be able to sell a bunch of our garden to the neighbors, cheaper of course, so they can grow them themselves.”

  Emily actually gave me a small smile after those words. “I am gd you are thinking of the neighbors already.”

  She continued speaking, “We need to buy the rest of the seed, and some animals. On the Shop Interface, there should be a tab to see how much they are willing to pay per bushel for different amounts. But this will change the world. I think they will pay the full price for everything you will sell. Then in a couple of years, or shortly after, they will be as cheap as corn.”

  She looked me in the eye. “You truly said you are level 20?”

  “Correct,” I said.

  She had a faraway look, as if she were envisioning how wonderful this could be as she said, “This will probably let you evolve past Level 20. No one thing guarantees you can ever evolve past 20. That is one reason so few people manage to do it. But one thing that often helps is making a difference in the world thanks to your profession. This HAS to count.” There was a hint of emotion in Emily’s voice when she was done speaking.

  “That’s great, but the dwarves aren’t going to want to kill me?” I said. I still wasn’t sure about leveling past 20, and why it was so hard. But I did know that there were technologies that people or companies were perfectly happy to kill to keep quiet in my world.

  Emily gave a sharp, quick ugh, before she said, “Ha! I doubt it. They are a continent away to the south. There are no dwarves on this continent as far as I know. The Mountain Cn Kingdom and the Albion Empire are not exactly enemies, but they are not allies either.”

  “The dwarves are supposed to be on the continent to the south of us as well?” I said. I wanted to know the answers! Hopefully, there would be information about all of this in the almanac.

  “I believe that is where they were initially portaled into this world. Do you know more about it?” Emily said, looking towards the south as if she could see that far. “We are not completely sure what is down there. Kind of like this continent, on the other side of the Barrier Mountains. When we dealt with them it was on the Continent.”

  “Wait, you said there were orcs here, right?” I asked with a little confusion.

  Colin immediately cut in. “This is where humans were supposed to come from too! Every kid at home knows this story. When the System first came to Tamh humans were basically sves to the Orc cns on this continent. Our first Great Champion Arturos, and the first human Wizard Marlotus united the human tribes and killed a bunch of orcs to free the people. We weren’t strong enough to beat all the orcs so we had to leave. Arturos and Merlotus said they knew of another pce we could go, so everyone who could, built ships, and we went to the Albion Isles.”

  The excitement in his voice was palpable as he continued speaking. “A hundred years ago, right at the beginning of his reign, Emperor Harold the Second got a Grand Quest during his coronation ceremony. So he sent an expedition back to this continent to see if we could finally take it back after fifteen hundred years. They didn’t find any orcs at all on this side of the Great Divide Mountains, and no one has made it over them yet, and come back. There were only lots of goblins, trolls, and a bunch of other magical creatures here. It still took a hundred years to make things safe enough for settlers.”

  I was speechless. I was in a bona fide fantasy world! It didn’t feel like it because there were only humans around me. But with the System in pce, if they were messing with me, then they had me good.

  Emily seemed to decide she was ready to talk about things already. “Colin, I want you to start cutting branches off these trees. John and I are going to go for a walk.”

  It was clear he wasn’t happy with this turn of events, but he seemed to be a good kid, so he simply kicked the dirt, as he was wont to do, and sulkily said, “Yes, Ma.” With that, he grabbed the new handsaw and got to work.

  Emily gave Colin a loving smile and then said to me, “Why don’t you grab that fishing pole?”

  “Sure thing,” I said.

  It had warmed up to right around 74 degrees, so our short walk to the river was extremely pleasant.

  When we got to the river, I asked her if she wanted to fish, or if I should. She told me I should. I found a rock near the shore that looked big enough to have some bugs underneath it and found an earthworm that was nearly a foot long. That certainly boded well for the nd.

  I threaded part of it onto my hook and threw the line into the river, near a stretch of willows that hung over the riverbank.

  The sun was shining down. It was just strong enough at this time of year that it warmed the shirt on my back, but it wasn’t unpleasant. Down here I could smell the willows, and the mineral smell of the rocks and sand on the beach.

  I wished I had my hat and sungsses; the sun gre from the water was harsh. After this talk, I was going to grab them.

  “Well,” I said after about ten minutes of silence, where Emily simply watched me fish.

  “Well,” she said, her posture slightly defensive. She crossed her arms over her chest, and of course, she pursed her lips.

  I couldn’t help but chuckle internally. In the stories I read, it seemed like the woman that the protagonist encountered was a buxom woman who was “chestily” walking about with cleavage showing. Emily was far too thin to be buxom, even if her dress hadn’t come to her colrbones.

  I wouldn’t say she was gring at me, but she had a serious look before she finally said, “How do you want to go about this? Do I need to pull answers out of you, or is our retionship going to keep going down a positive path? We have had a surprisingly good start.”

  “I realize we only met each other yesterday. We are strangers. But, you could have kicked us off this nd. Or even worse, kept us and basically made us your servants. I am sure you are not ignorant of the power you wield over us. So far though, every decision you have made has included the word ‘we’ and I really want to believe that you mean it.”

  I started to speak, but she held up her hand and said, “I am not done talking.”

  I nodded and shut up.

  “Thank you,” she said, then continued. “It is clear something strange happened that brought you here. You and your tractor just showed up. I cannot remember the short period of time before Colin asked me to come outside. Neither can he. I have asked him. He just remembers being a short distance from the house with his gun in his hand. He saw you about to open the door and reacted.”

  “There were no tracks. Your things were just here. You clearly had no idea how you got here either. Magic can expin things, to a point. But you showing up here like this would require some powerful magic. What do you say to that?”

  “Well,” I began, “that’s a good guess. But I don’t know either. I believe the System itself brought me here. Aside from that, I simply cannot say any more, other than that I believe this is where I am meant to be, and that I have the best interests of all three of us at heart. I know those aren’t the words you want to hear. You want concrete answers, but I simply can’t do that right now. I’m sorry.”

  She was quiet for a moment. Her posture had not changed, not a good sign, but it hadn’t become more hostile either, so not the worst outcome.

  Once she had collected her thoughts, she sighed and said, “I am going to let this go for now. It is unfortunate, but I get that I am no one of importance. I am simply a widow, and a mother, who wants the best for her child. I am slightly disappointed in you, but I do understand why you are not telling me more. It is my hope that sometime soon we can speak about the situation more candidly.”

  She looked me in the eye for a moment, then said, “I will tell Colin that you have a powerful backer who you cannot name.”

  I nodded, but didn’t say anything.

  I hated that I hadn’t made any real headway with Emily with this talk, but it was what it was. Even if it made me a coward, I wasn’t ready to have the big reveal talk. She knew what the situation was, but it appeared she was willing to py along for now.

  Right at that moment I got a bite, and it was a doozy. I had a heck of a time reeling it in. It took me a full twenty minutes to bring it successfully to shore. At that point, the conversation felt dead, so we didn’t resume it.