I am woken up by several knocks on the door.

"Joey! Are you naked?! Get up!"

For a second, I don't know where I am.

Is it already time to go to work? That's what my brain processes as I move my hand to get the phone from under the pillow. Didn't I tell my mother not to shout in the middle of the night?

But then, I feel the roughness of the sheets, and not finding the phone makes me realize where I really am.

"Coming!" I say.

That had been Clodia's voice, not my mother's.

Right.

I'm not on Earth anymore; I'm on... a fantasy planet whose name still remains a mystery to me.

I know, I know. I should have probably asked. But my memory is terrible.

"Joey!" I find a shouting Clodia as I get up and open the door.

"Here I am,” I yawn, “I do usually sleep naked, but today I fell asleep in my work clothes. I kind of need someone to help me fetch some clean clothes, by the way."

Clodia stares hard at me before relenting.

"You are—I'll help you out. We'll get you an apartment in the morning if you still have a job by the end of the shift."

The threat of unemployment reminds me of my father threatening to kick me out of the house if I didn't finish my homework by dinner time. It feels familiar and very comforting.

"Did you get the class?" Clodia asks, curious.

"Oh, right. I should have, shouldn't I? Hum, I don't think I did."

"Well, you will, certainly, after tonight's work. We have a lot of orders to fulfill. So don't be a burden on anyone. If you complain even once..."

"Not going to complain," I shoot a wink at her and look at the strong biceps on her arms. This is the kind of woman that could easily make a headlock look sexy.

"Follow me, then," Clodia says.

I follow her, and once we are in the baking lab, I see the place buzzing. If when I first came it looked like an average, almost calm workplace, now people are running around the place. And when I say running, I do mean running.

Everything buzzes with activity.

The big ovens lining the walls are all blazing, and I see a man standing by them. That's the only man. When Clodia notices who I'm looking at, she explains.

"Bakers have oven-related skills in some cases. I can heat up almost anything in this kitchen and control its temperature, but it's hard to find someone with all the skills needed to keep the ovens running at the right temperatures non-stop. That's why we sometimes hire people with a [Blacksmith] class to help. Their job is to keep the oven at a stable temperature and ensure there are no troubles with it. It pays well for relatively easy work. It's all in the skills. You'll get some yourself soon enough. Hopefully, useful ones."

"Are they both blacksmiths?" I point at the girl beside the man. Six ovens are currently fired up, and each one has both the traditional ‘pizza’ oven hole with a column attached to the side where a bunch of baking trays is being laid down.

"That's Melina—she's an [Oven Master]. Her class is a specialized variant of [Baker] or [Cook]. She has [Temperature Intuition], [Oven: Temperature Control], and several other skills that control and manage ovens. Without her, we are bottlenecked, and we can only make two-thirds of what we usually make. That's how important skills are."

I get the feeling that Clodia is giving me some kind of indoctrination because she thinks I'm one of those nuts who don't have a class and that maybe I belong to a cult or something. I'd really like to explain to her that Earth didn't have any of this, but I'd rather not reveal where I come from for now. I don't want to end up like a guinea pig on an operating table or something.

"So, what do I—"

This book's true home is on another platform. Check it out there for the real experience.

Before I can finish the sentence, a smoking-hot purple-haired woman comes shouting.

"Hello! I'm Flaminia! You are working with me today!" Everyone makes way for this woman, and I notice she's wearing a black outfit with pink stripes and a big rolling-pin logo of Happy Bakery stitched on the back, similar to Goku’s fighting garbs.

"She's—" Clodia tries to explain, but Flaminia cuts her off.

"The best [Baker] here, bar none. I heard that you are a very capable Human— that’s pretty rare around here. Come, you'll have to keep up with me."

Now, let me just explain something to you.

I worked through high school. And even though I graduated quite a few years earlier than my peers, I didn't attend school. Instead, I traveled around and attended various culinary schools and kitchens.

Someone who has never been in a high-level kitchen might have never thought of the extreme competition and hazing that goes on there. Because in a typical restaurant, you are just trying to get by, do your job, and get home as fast as possible.

But in a high-level place, you want to be the first one in and the last one out. So it's all about being taught by the best chef who manages the kitchen and getting their recognition. But also, you are being tested at every step.

Personally, I'm not a competitive guy. Even while working in Europe and learning, I never really gave it much thought. However, I know a test when I see one.

This woman is the highest leveled person in the whole bakery, right? And considering that even Raissa had some very cool skills, like [Nimble Hands], can you imagine what this one could do?

She brings me a bowl to wash my hands, which I find incredibly sanitary, given the times this world is living in, and then we move to a table.

"We need to shape the bread and put it on trays as fast and as precisely as possible," Flaminia explains. And as soon as she finishes talking, she gets to work. Her hands zoom at incredible speed over a huge blob of risen dough, and she starts decimating it to shape it into smaller loaves.

"I bet you wish you had [Swift Hands] and [Unsticky Hands]," she smiles provocatively.

I look around and fetch myself a bottle of oil, smear it over my hands, and, smiling at her, I start matching up to her speed. It's hard not to make mistakes, but even doctors told me I have excellent hand-eye coordination. My spatial awareness, in fact, could have made me quite the athlete.

Flaminia is clearly unhappy about my speed almost matching hers, and as we go through more trays, she speeds up, placing loaves on the trays at breakneck speed. Unfortunately, she's so fast that the people responsible for bringing new dough and taking away the baking trays are having problems keeping up.

I don't speed up. I just wait.

Wait for what? Oh, you'll see.

"Flaminia, you rotting idiot! Slow down! You are jamming the whole bakery!" Clodia smacks the purple-haired woman on the head with her huge wooden spoon.

"Ouch!" Flaminia suddenly stops, staring daggers at Clodia. "I was—"

"I don't care!" Clodia shouts in her face. "Slow down! Show off in another way that doesn't create problems!"

She starts a conversation as we both slow down to a more normal pace.

"People usually wait for the skill instead of putting oil on their hands."

"Having a skill that does the same job as some oil doesn't sound that useful," I snort.

Gotta play a little hardball, you know.

"Well, having skills is needed to make the bread, though," Flaminia says with a head shake, looking at the dough in the massive wooden container.

"Huh? What do you mean?"

"Well, how do you think the dough rises? It's a skill. [Dough: Rise]. It's the staple of bakers, rotting roots. We would be out of our jobs without it. Every other [Cook] would try to moonlight as a [Baker]."

Wow. Ok.

They don't know what yeast is.

Holy.

They don’t use yeast.

WE ARE BECOMING RICH, BABY!

They are probably just accelerating the natural yeast in the bread with the skill... but that is... stupid? Well, inefficient, at best, really. Weird how no one really discovered it by chance, but I guess that's what happens when you take everything for granted because of skills.

"Let’s say I could make the bread rise without any skills," I smile sneakily at Flaminia, "how much would that be worth?"

She stops working the bread and looks around to see if anyone heard what I just said.

...

"Say it again," Clodia looks at me with wide eyes.

"You can get bread to rise on its own without skills. The skill accelerates the natural 'stuff' that makes the bread rise. You can get the same effect by experimenting with the gooey stuff you'll find at the bottom of beer barrels or skimming the top. You'll need quite a bit of experimentation, though. Yeast is the name of the thing you want. And the kind of yeast you use for beer produces a lot of alcohol. The one you need produces... air? Yeah, let's call it air. So, once you find a sloppy brewery, you are good. Or, you can just make a base of that and let it grow."

As I think about it, I remember something more 'hip' most Italian bakers do, including my old bakery back on Earth.

"You could also skip the brewing process, to be honest. Every bit of flour has some yeast. It would take a couple of weeks, but you could just mix water and flour together. However, it's not practical for a bakery that needs a bunch of yeast on a daily basis, and you can also experiment more with beer yeast. Once you have the right kind, you can select different specimens, feed them, and create premade yeast to add to the bread. It would also give a slightly different flavor to the bread—something that many people enjoy."

Flaminia is smiling like the Cheshire Cat while Clodia looks at a green truth-stone and looks like she's about to get an aneurysm.

"What?" I say. "If I work for you, I might as well contribute, right?"

"What do you want in exchange for this?" Clodia says, putting away her truth-stone. "I don't want to disseminate this information before the right time. Flaminia, you will be the one doing the experiments with Joey. You two are going to every [Brewer] in town and getting samples. But yes, Joey, what do you want in exchange? Money? I can give you a hefty sum for this..."

"Well," I look the muscular woman up and down, "if one of you is single, I mean, you know..."

Clodia takes out the big wooden spoon in reply.

"Oh, yes," she says, tapping the massive thing on her hand, "I know very well. Do you?"