By the time Jessica returned to the hamlet around sunset she was dripping with sweat and fighting a caffeine migraine. Unfortunately, the chances of either coffee or ibuprofen seemed slim.

  Her host family was boiling water over the hearth when she arrived. Jessica shut the thatch door and kicked off her muddy boots.

  “Got some water boilin’ for ya,” Rosemary said. “No micro-demons in this house, no ma’am! Now, how was the level grinding?”

  Sheer exhaustion kept her from breaking down in tears. All she could manage was to slump into a chair and moan in despair.

  “Bad? Didja not find anythin’?” Rosemary asked.

  “Not much experience points ‘round here,” John said. “I’ve heard adventurers say so.”

  Jessica shook her head. “I— I don’t have a job anymore. Or any skills at all. I went to the woods and— and there was a morkal…”

  Her hosts shivered at the mention.

  “Does the morkal bother you all down here?” she asked.

  “S’pose not since I didn’t know we had one,” Rosemary said.

  “Half an hour away! How did you not know!?”

  Rosemary shrugged. “Why would I go up to the woods? What am I gonna do there, traipse around until I get caught for trespassing? ‘Course if I’d’a known there was a morkal I woulda told ya to stay away. Now what’d she do to ya? Nothin’… er… unnatural?”

  Jessica wasn’t sure where the boundaries of ‘natural’ lay. There was nothing natural about a gaming progression system that allowed her to violate the conservation of mass. On the other hand, provided Jessica wasn’t hallucinating the amines and methanol, the morkal was doing reductive amination. If that was the case the potion she was force-fed probably had more basis in empirical science than her cartoon acid.

  “I don’t know,” Jessica said. “But she took away my system. My adventuring powers. I can’t level or anything now. I’m just…”

  “Boring?” John said.

  Jessica blushed. “I didn’t mean—”

  “Nah, it’s a bit boring being a serf. Whole lotta farming, not a lotta questing,” he said.

  “You haven’t the brain for adventuring anyhow. You’d get yourself killed, you would!” Rosemary said.

  “Would not! I pay attention when adventurers are passing through and learn all kinds of things, like how ya gotta check for traps when you loot a chest or it’ll turn into a monster!”

  Rosemary turned to Jessica and shook her head. “Load of nonsense, that. Chests turning into monsters? Closest our chest comes is when Charlie chucks his socks in!”

  “I’ve stopped doing that,” Charles said, scratching his butt.

  “Oh for a week now, but I’ll open it up next week and what’ll I find? More socks!”

  “Not mine! Those are Johnny’s!” he replied in a tongue-in-cheek tone.

  “Mine don’t stink half as bad, dad, don’t you try!” John said.

  This ‘argument’ descended into a wrestling match between father and son which spilled out across the sleeping pallets.

  Rosemary gave her a wink and a smirk. “Boys! What’ll you do?”

  Jessica gave a faint smile as she watched Charles put his son in a headlock. Her worries settled some after that. Her own family was hardly physical, but her father and her younger brother had had the same competitive streak when it came to video games. It reminded her of finishing her homework out in the living room while the two played fighting games.

  If you spot this story on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

  The whistle of the tea kettle drew the two wrestlers out of their bout. Jessica accepted a cup of the boiled water and brought it to her lips. There was an herbal, minty flavor this time.

  “I figured if we’re boiling water we oughta steep some flavor in too,” Rosemary said proudly. “Mint, nettles, and rose petals. Sounds like a poem, don’t it? Mint, nettles and rose petals, out the demons go! In a kettle of wood and metal, brewed nice and slow.”

  “Is there really wood in the kettle?” Jessica asked.

  “No, I couldn’t think of anything else to make the rhyme work.”

  Jessica’s exhaustion cracked and broke as laughter. Objectively, it wasn’t that funny, but the silliness was such a welcome relief she couldn’t help herself. The Serfs chuckled politely, though they had no idea what she found so funny. Jessica’s giggling fit lasted a minute or two before Rosemary served up barley bread, butter, and pea soup.

  While they ate, the Serf family grilled Jessica for details about her life on Earth. She told them about her family and her job as a teaching assistant. They understood her to be a cross between a court wizard, a natural philosopher, and an alchemist adventurer specializing in transmutation. The role of ‘faculty advisor’ was harder to explain, but they got the gist when she explained Yoneda was her guild master and she was a journeyman.

  “So you’re an artisan, not a serf,” Charles said, stroking his chin.

  “In a manner of speaking,” Jessica replied.

  “Well then that knight got it all wrong even if you weren’t reincarnated!” John said.

  Jessica snorted. “Good luck telling him that. He seemed like he knew and was being willfully oblivious.”

  “Maybe if you produced something of your art you might convince him?” Rosemary said.

  “Soap’s about all I can make with what’s lying around. I need some equipment and supplies to make more.”

  Rosemary grasped her hand and patted it. “You’ll figure it out, sweetie. You’re restless, but you’re not a fool. I can tell that much.”

  By an hour past sundown everyone was ready to sleep. Unlike last night, Jessica dreamed. The dream was full of atoms being stripped apart and re-formed in long chains. She awoke feeling like she’d learned something important. Turning the molecular bonds over in her mind, she decided the dream was telling her to focus on being a peasant, since trying not to be wasn’t going well.

  “Can you show me around the area once we’ve finished reaping today?” she asked John as they carried water down the hill.

  “Sure! Just looking to get your bearings?”

  Jessica nodded. “If I’m gonna be here awhile it seems like a good idea. Plus it’ll tell me if there’s anything I can use for chemical reactions.”

  Her first thought was that rust and a bit of metallic powder—maybe zinc?—would be easy to find and exotic thermites were always a crowd pleaser, if not as useful as regular thermite. If Sir Hayek ever came back around that might convince him she was from another world even if she couldn’t make glowing green vials appear out of thin air.

  In addition to the guided tour, Jessica also had John show her how he harvested the barley.

  “You’re grabbing too much. The sickles gotta go through in one go or you’ll end up tuggin’,” John said as he watched her reap. He gathered up a smaller amount to demonstrate and cut in one smooth pull. “‘Bout that much.”

  Jessica gnawed at her lips as she tried to emulate him. Despite grabbing less, she still ended up yanking the stalks back and forth to get the scythe all the way through.

  “You also gotta let the scythe do the work. Right now yer wigglin’ both, so the scythe can’t get a clean cut. Just hold up the stalks and pull through like you’re tuggin’ a rope.”

  She tried this a few times before pulling cleanly. Having a better technique had the knock-on effect of not tiring her out so she could also help tie the bundles. By the time they were packing up for the day she’d harvested almost as much as John.

  After the day’s work John showed her around the hamlet.

  In total there were 92 peasants living there—now 93—spread out across 22 families, most of whom were named Serf and were in some way related to John’s family. Jessica tried not to think too hard about that. There were also a handful of freeholder families on the other side of the western bend of the hills.

  The cluster of buildings on the main road constituted a hub of sorts. There was a well and a hitching post in the center surrounded by a couple houses, a chapel, bread oven, granary, and a cleared dirt plot with some stumps for bartering. On a hill overlooking the hamlet a windmill stood motionless.

  “Who’s worshipped in the chapel?” she asked.

  “Oftampa, mostly. But there’s little statues for all the gods and you usually end up bringing in some sacrifice for all a’ them at one time or another. Especially Tochi. He’s the god of harvest and soil.”

  She blinked. “You worship the Emperor as a god?”

  “He’s kinda like a demi-god, really, but yeah. He got sent here by the goddess Anoria to defeat the demon king so he’s divinely chosen. We pray for his health and well-being and in turn he keeps peace and harmony.”

  Jessica found the idea of worshipping anyone or anything from Florida hilarious. Even if this emperor didn’t know of a way to escape, she wanted to see what kind of a freak he was.

  John then took her on a loop of the fields he and the other serfs were required to work for Earl Heinrich and his douche son. Aside from the main barley fields there were vegetable patches growing root vegetables, a small dairy farm with three cows, and some common land for grazing sheep. Jessica was starting to lose interest until John mentioned something else.

  “There’s a flower garden too, but it’s on the Earl’s private land, so we can’t get up close.”

  For the sake of completion she followed him to check it out. She was glad she did, because sitting in nice, orderly rows beside a pond and a small cottage were a field of pink flowers on tall stems, half bloomed out of their bulbous capsules. Jessica recognized these flowers on sight: Papaver somniferum. Opium poppies.