She waved me over to the next map.
This one was more detailed and mostly showed Oregon and the crater area. It also had a series of hexagons overlaying everything that kind of reminded me of Settlers of Catan, D&D, and a few older video games I'd played. She pointed to a small village surrounded by forest in the northeastern section again. A small path seemed to cut through the forest and ring of hills to the village.
"That's us. I know it looks like we are close to those hedonistic elves on the other map, but we're actually quite far away. Now, if you look over here, you will see a map of the village." She led me to the next map. This one showed the village dead centre in the middle of a hexagon. There were houses, barns, every last little detail. "This is what we used to look like before the attack. For decades this map hung in the main room, being updated as Blackwood changed, but it depresses me to look at now."
Looking at the map, I could see what the village had been like. Salem and I had apparently walked east when we'd gone outside the village. There had been over a hundred farms there. Now there was only a few dozen against the wall. The same was true for the north and south of the village. The only place that looked similar to how it was now was the western side, and a quarter of that was a small woods.
"I can tell you about the village's history over dinner if you are interested," Gretel offered.
Salem pulled at my trouser leg with his mouth.
I glanced down and then back at the innkeeper. "Maybe in a few days, once I'm washed and settled."
She smiled and tapped her forehead theatrically. "Right, the washing. Follow me."
She turned and headed for the door at the end of the hallway. It connected to the back of the inn, where there was a large open area next to the stable. She found me a new bar of harsh-smelling soap and a wash bucket, and showed me the washing line and where to get water, and then she left me to it.
Over my lacklustre gaming career, I'd stayed at my fair share of discount motels, places where the washing machines and fridges didn't work, so cleaning my clothes with a bar of soap in a bathroom sink wasn't exactly a new experience for me. I quickly began working the smell and stains out of the first of the two changes of clothes stored in my pack.
As I finished the first set, a prompt appeared, and a halo of light surrounded me, making me glow like a Christmas tree.
Well done, you have successfully cleaned a set of clothing to a fine standard with a wash bucket and gained a new tool proficiency. You can now boast that you can use a wash bucket as well as any Novice.
Salem scowled at me, looked around, saw nobody, and then scowled at me some more.
For a second, I almost told him that I didn't know that the whole tool proficiency thing was going to happen simply by cleaning clothes, but then I realised that my ignorance was precisely why he wanted to talk to me alone in the first place, and I'd be supporting his argument. So I wisely said, "Sorry," and then shut up.
***
"So, basically, don't accept any prompt that will make things too easy for me. If it seems too good to be true, then it probably is," I said quietly as I soaked away weeks' worth of grime. The tub was surprisingly big and the small bar of soap Gretel had sold me held a pleasant aroma, compared to the one I'd used on my clothes.
Salem sighed. "If you need to dumb it down, then yes: if it seems too good to be true then it probably is. There are exceptions, of course, but it will take time for me to teach you the nuances of how everything works."
"How much time?"
"Three days should be enough that you don't accidentally kill yourself or others, but it will take weeks for a proper understanding of the basics."
I nodded my head. "So, in three days, I can go out and start training to reach level 100. Do you have any pointers?"
"Don't bother. Varla didn't directly lie to you, but she didn't give you the whole truth. The only farmers that ever reach 100 have old family money or are somehow useful to a nobleman or merchant. No one makes it on their own. To gather that much experience by yourself would take two lifetimes, and the cost of purchasing the experience is more than a farmer can earn in ten."
"Wait, you can buy experience?"
"Of course that's the only part you heard. And to answer your question, yes you can buy experience. I'll explain why when we get to my lecture on leveling. And before you ask, you don't have nearly enough money to purchase the experience required to get you to 100. At the bare minimum, it will cost you 2,500 gold crowns, and no one sells experience for the bare minimum."
"What about that fact that I'm an incarnate? You said we sometimes bring information from our world that is quite valuable in yours. Maybe I can make money that way?"
"That is a possibility. What did you do for employment in your world?"
"Well, for the last six months, I've been studying economics and accounting, but before that, I was a semi-pro gamer for nine years."
"What is a semi-pro gamer?"
"It means I was paid to play games."
"And you think that will help you make money in our world?"
"Well, your laws kind of sound like what we would call 'mechanics' in some of the games I used to play. It was sort of my job to understand those mechanics and learn how to take advantage of them, finding weaknesses that could be used to my team's advantage."
"Ah, in our world, the scholar class fills this function. They study each class, finding each method for gaining experience more easily, and sell that information to the class they specialise in."
"We have a thing called walkthroughs that people read to do the same thing. But what I'm talking about is more specialised. It was my job to find ways no one had ever thought of doing something, adding weird quirks together to create unexpected results."
"Oh, you were an exploitationist. That can be quite profitable if you are successful."
"How profitable?"
"Very in some cases; exploitationists receive a 25% experience bonus when anyone uses their method to gain experience. Of course, that will only apply to your class, as you cannot receive experience from another class."
"That's what I will do then."
"You will fail. Scholars and exploitationists have devoted centuries to discovering new ways of gaining experience. New methods for exploitation are now all small discoveries, and rare."
"Alright, maybe I won't do that. So we'll hang out in our room for a few days while you teach me the basics and then we can go buy a few weapons and start leveling."
Salem sighed again. "Why do you need weapons?"
"To kill monsters."
"And why are you planning to kill monsters?"
"So I can level."
"Of course, it is so obvious. Except you are neither a hunter, a warrior, or an adventurer, so killing monsters will gain you nothing but the loot they drop."
I stared at Salem over the edge of the tub. "What…are you saying I can't level by killing monsters?"
"What part of the class farmer indicates to you that you should be slaying monsters?"
The uneasy feeling was returning. I could sense the curveball. "No, no, no…you get experience from killing monsters. It's the rules."
"Perhaps in your world, but here, in our world, farmers gain experience by farming. This includes the planting of crops and the raising of livestock, but not the slaying of monsters."
I scowled at Salem. "Bullshit. You've got three days to teach me the basics and then we are going monster hunting."