“There has been ****** concern about the danger of your matches recently.” said the Yad with a stern look on his face.

Ever since the town experienced mass arson three months ago, there had been concerns as to the safety of my product— matches. Which was in part, due to my actions in mass arson that was committed in the village. So, I was called to a meeting by the Yad alone to discuss this pertinent issue.

“It will pass.” I replied.

Over the last three months, I had also learned how to communicate with other people who weren’t Qaton. But unfortunately for me, I was still left with a foreign accent as well as being unable to understand some of what people said. In addition to that, I wasn’t able to express my thoughts as clearly as I would like, so I wasn’t about to deliver a speech any time soon.

“I could ***** you to stop selling matches, you know? I’m just ****** a warning as a courtesy.”

“How would I solve that?”

He shrugged and said “That’s for you to ****** out. ******** makes the townspeople happy.”

“Alright, I’ll think about it.”

After I said that, an sly idea seemed to have popped into his head. For he made an offer which was a trap in disguise.

“I think if you worked with me and made me more involved in your business, I could make this go away for you,” he said.

This was an obvious ploy to try to figure out what the matches were made of, if I accepted his offer then there was little stopping him from sharing that information with people that would want to compete against me in the match-making space. While monopolies were usually bad for innovation, they were the only reason why my business was as successful as it was. Thus, I had to make sure that the knowledge of how to create matches did not spread uncontrolled and stayed with me.

“Thank you, but I think it's better if I go at it alone.”

“If you insist, but the option is always open if you change your mind.” he said with an eerie grin.

Quickly feeling unnerved by his words, I wrapped up our conversation then greeted my goodbyes.

After we went our separate ways, I headed back to the compound that I had been living in for the last four months. It was a large building that contained the living quarters for around twenty people and housed a warehouse in which I resided. I went to my regular desk and found Piyan there, he was to update me on the status of the matchmaking business.

Piyan was someone I employed from the smuggling group to be the face of the enterprise, so I paid him a weekly wage to staff a store that had been rented for the venture.

He told me of the new visitors from foreign villages that had visited this town seeking matches. A few days after I had started matchsticks, I tasked Shur, my merchant contact, to make sure the news of the matches were spread to different villages all across the region of Spania. And sure enough, this resulted in more outsiders coming to visit the village of Murgi to buy what I had made.

In addition to that, I also trade matches to other local merchants to increase my reach which also increases its demand. But all of this just exacerbated a problem which had been haunting me since the very beginning.

I’m just one person.

There would reach a certain point where I would have to either tell my clients that I don’t have enough matches or I would have to hire someone else. The problem with adding someone to the match manufacturing operation is that they would have to be entrusted with knowledge of how to create the special ingredient in my matches.

The rest of what is needed to make matchsticks— sulfur, charcoal, wooden sticks, were things that were readily available in this world. But potassium nitrate is something that only I knew how to make in this world, seeing as I have seen no evidence to point to the contrary. Even if someone knew that I had been purchasing horse excrement to use to make matches, they wouldn’t know how to synthesize the substance with it.

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So if I had to reveal my plans to someone else, that knowledge would have to include potassium nitrate.

“Maybe if I just had them do everything except the potassium nitrate?” I thought.

Upon further examination, that probably wouldn’t work. This was because I used the same setup for both the match manufacturing and the making of the nitrate. So if I wanted to keep it a secret then I would have to do it somewhere else and I really couldn’t think of another private place to do it since the experimentation house burned down.

I tried wracking my brain for a few more minutes until I had decided that the effort wasn’t worth it for now. This was something that could be put off for later, since it wasn’t too time sensitive.

I finally continued with my usual tasks, which was making a tally of all the income and expenses that had occurred over the last week. It was a position that required a lot of trust, because if I was a bad actor, I essentially had the ability to leak vital info pertinent to their inner workings. But since I couldn’t understand their language at the time and was relatively competent in mathematics, they saw it fit to give me the role.

The thing that they failed to consider was that I would come to learn more of their language. And after being taught by Qaton and recognizing patterns in their documents, I was able to acquire a deeper understanding of the group’s situation.

For instance, I noticed that recently their income has been going down. I didn’t know why at first, but I soon remembered that it probably had something to do with the recent Alham supply chain disruptions.

From what I could tell, the smuggling ring had connections in many towns all across Spania. This was so that they could illegally import Alham to export and in doing so make a profit. I wasn’t sure who they exported the Alham to, for I was kept out of the loop, but I knew they must have been wealthy based on the amount of gold coins that the group had at their disposal.

Anyway, as said in a previous meeting, some entity was messing with their trade routes to acquire Alham from themselves. Meaning that they either bribed the contacts illegally or they quietly stole Alham under the nose of the merchants that the smuggling ring worked with.

Either way, this caused red flags amongst the members of the group. So, they made a commitment to find out who was behind the discrepancies. I could tell that they intended to make good on their word because I also saw a rise in operating expenses which included transportation fare as well as various traveling supplies.

Based on how I had not heard any chatter about whether the culprits were found or not, I assumed that they had not yet been located. If they were to be found, I would probably know based on the energy of the compound.

An hour later…

After I finally managed to compile the results of the various documents that I had access to, I had nothing but time. I figured that this was just as good a time as any to start figuring out how to solve the problem that the Yad tasked me with.

I needed to think of a solution to how to prevent the matches from becoming seen as a severe safety risk to the village.

To answer this problem, I needed to ask a more fundamental question.

In my old world, why wasn’t arson a more common occurrence?

Well for one thing, most places weren’t as dry as this village. I was only able to light buildings as easily as I did because of the noticeable lack of humidity. Secondly, there were security cameras literally everywhere on Earth, so any culprit was likely to be apprehended.

Unfortunately for me, these things could not be changed in this new world for I had no control of either the humidity or level of technology that this world had.

I needed a better question to ask, like “Why don’t people in my old world fear arson as much as this town?”

Well for one, there were services to prevent fires from reaching the extent they did in the town. Fire-fighters were one such example, they were specifically tasked to solve situations such as these. More often than not, flames didn’t spread as far or grow as large as they did here because of the work that they did.

Another reason that I could mention is the institution of insurance companies also alleviated the people’s fear. In my old world, insurance plans were made to protect the clients and make sure that they are compensated in case of an incident. In exchange for their protection, they pay a sum of money to the company to purchase said insurance. This was possibly another reason why people on Earth didn’t constantly live in fear of arson.

This gave me an idea.

While I couldn’t do much about the general aridness and lack of security cameras the village suffered from. I could have implemented things such as fire-fighters and insurance. After saving some currency that came from the matchmaking business, I found myself with a lofty sum of fifteen gold coins.

While it wasn’t much compared to the wealth of the Yad or what the smuggling group made, it was more than what the average laborer would earn in an entire year. Thus, these funds could be used to create and establish fire-fighters and insurance in the town.

It would work by getting a small sum of cash from each household that signs up, then offering them compensation in the unlikely event that any of their properties burn down. In that case, monetary contributions would go to them in order to allow them to pay for the construction.

How the fire-fighters would fit into this, is that they paid to limit the damages of the insurance owners and be ready for action at any time day or night. I would have to use some of my funds to create a sort of area for them to be stationed in and materials like buckets, ladders and axes would also be necessary. Hiring and training qualified personnel was another of those things that required funds and effort.

While these actions benefited the community, I couldn’t say that I didn’t see the irony in this situation. What would you think if you heard of a matchmaker selling fire insurance, except that they were a callous profiteer. This kind of rubbed me the wrong way since I was profiting off of fear that I created three months ago, but if it relieved the fears and anxiety of the townsfolk then I had to do it.

Well the fears over the matches kind of lowered the demand in this village, so maybe I really was a callous profiteer.

But this was also why I couldn’t have anyone know of my connection to the potential insurance business outside of maybe Shur and anyone inside the smuggling group. While the Yad had been nothing but gracious to me, I couldn’t risk him getting a piece of info that he could potentially blackmail me with. If I was outed for being behind both an insurance company and a matchmaking business, I knew that nothing good would happen as a result.

So I decided to contact Shur privately, in order to see what I could do with my fifteen gold pieces.