After I decided to contact Shur, I asked for Qaton to come and call him to the compound.

Then arrived a man whose skin was as dark as he was tall, his build would probably lead one to conclude that he worked in a job that required little manual labor. Anyone who made that assumption would be correct because he was a prominent merchant in this town who had ties to the smuggling ring that I worked with.

He was currently helping me with spreading the sale of my matches, and I was meeting him again to discuss another venture that I was spearheading.

I grabbed a nearby chair I found in the warehouse and asked him to take a seat, for I had much to discuss with him.

“What’s this about?” he asked, curious.

“You know how the village currently feels about my matches, right?”

“Yes, I’ve noticed that the merchants that we ********* to have been more **** about buying new ***** recently.” he said, somewhat downtrodden.

“Well, I might have a solution which I need your help to implement.”

Upon the mention of a fix to our current predicament, he leaned forward and seemed more eager to hear what I had to say.

“Really? Do tell.” he said, with an intrigued look.

I explained to him how my business would operate, as mentioned previously it would have two parts.

A firefighting aspect and an insurance aspect.

People who bought the insurance would have the protection of the fire-fighting service, and if that failed they would be recompensed for any damages. However, I was also open to the idea that I could lend the fire service to the Yad, in exchange for a monthly payment.

Upon hearing all about what I had to say, the only thing he had to say in response was,

“That’s quite a novel idea, I don’t think I’ve seen something like it before.”

“I know.” I said in response, “but how has it not been thought of before?”

He seemed confused by what I had mentioned, but eventually he said,

“Well fires were probably too **** to start until now, so any houses that were burned down were ******* an unfortunate but unlikely ******** until the invention of your matches.”

Satisfied by that response, I began to start asking more important questions.

“Do you think this business idea is actually viable?”

“It seems sound enough, and with the added factor of the general uneasiness about arson lingering in the down, it has a good chance of succeeding.”

When he spoke, I noticed a dangerous look in his eye that didn’t seem to be there before. At first I thought that he was just a shrewd merchant, but I realized he was much more than that.

I picked up on the fact that he seemed to blatantly ignore the dangers before jumping into a new business idea, not unlike a gambler at a casino.

It probably should have been obvious given the fact that they agreed to help a foreigner with no track-record start a new business for a never before seen product. No person of sound mind would willingly join in something which showed no clear indication of its success. The only reason that Darat gave me funds in the first place was due to his desperation to rid the village of the Zi at any cost.

Shur didn’t even need any extraneous circumstances to take action, but his nature was what made him join my side. Up until now this didn’t seem to have done anything negative to him, but it seemed like he would eventually run into a stroke of misfortune.

However I couldn’t turn back now, so I continued to entice Shur by offering him adequate compensation for his help.

“I’ll give you five gold to start, so you have some incentive to begin helping me. But I have a question I need to ask you, how many households are there to sell to?

You might be reading a stolen copy. Visit Royal Road for the authentic version.

“I think there’s around three hundred forty households give or ****, with each having around five to six *******.” he responded.

“Two silvers are good enough for each family?”

“Well you have to consider that the ******* household earns maybe two to three coins, so that would be around thirteen percent of a family’s ******* income. So that might limit your reach to maybe two hundred to two hundred twenty ******** willing to pay for it.

After taking some time to do some mental math, I said, “That would be forty golds. So if we remove fifteen to twenty golds for salaries and equipment, thirty gold would be left.”

He seemed a bit unconvinced by my figures, saying “That’s probably a bit on the high side, since it will take time to ******** all those households to spend a decent ****** of their funds on something foreign to them.”

Seeing that he didn’t find my numbers realistic, I revised them a bit.

“Alright.” I revised. “So we can probably expect maybe thirty golds in the first month, if word spreads quickly and people take to the idea”

He gave it some thought and finally said, “That seems more realistic.”

After we decided on the basic numbers of the operation, I gave him his first task.

“I think I might need you to find someone to be the face of the insurance business. Someone who won’t just run off with whatever cash they have at hand. Maybe they can also be tasked to manage the fire-fighters as well.”

“I think that can be arranged, how much are you ******* to pay them?”

“I think a commission would be best, but if they worked hard they would earn around ten percent of how much they sell in insurance. So around two to three golds a month is what I would expect to pay them.”

Since I didn’t know the word for commission in his language, I decided to replace it with a word from English in the hopes that he would understand the meaning.

“I think I understand based on its context, but can you clarify what the word “commission” means?” he asked, his head slightly tilted.

“It’s where you sell something for someone, and get paid based on a percentage of what you manage to sell.”

“I see. I’ll get back to you on that person you want, I’ll see if I can find someone appropriate.”

With our meeting over, he began to stand up when he began to say something that he had forgotten to say.

“Wait a moment.” he said with a confused look, “Did you think about a location for the insurance company and the firefighting, it would be very short-sighted of you if you didn’t.”

If I were a bit less meticulous in my planning, I probably would not have been prepared for this question. Luckily though, I had an idea of where I was going to have the insurance company operate from.

“Don’t worry.” I said with an assured grin, “I have someplace fitting in mind.”

It was somewhere that I was very familiar with, and I planned to meet with Darat to see if I could use it.

Thirty minutes later…

After waiting a few minutes after Shur left, I finally found an opportune time to speak with Darat. He had finished with his work in the warehouse, and had decided to take a short break before going to another part of the compound.

I found him sitting on a bench at the back of the warehouse and tried to sit beside him as ordinarily as possible.

“Good afternoon, Darat.”

“Hamet.” he greeted, with a nod of his head.

I wasn’t in the mood for small talk, so I decided to ditch subtlety and get straight to the point.

"I have a question. Who exactly owns that house I used to use… before it burned down?"

Darat’s face darkened as he heard the words that emerged from my lips, it seemed to bring out some unpleasant memories.

“That would be Halel, the corpse that you saw that one time.” he said, solemnly.

Mentioning something related to Halel was definitely a mistake, but it actually made the previous events make more sense. The Zi were able to find me in that house because they were aware of Halel’s connection to it previously. But I could tell that this was a sensitive topic for Darat based on how he acted last time.

“Ah, anyway who owns it now?” I asked, trying to steer the topic away from Halel.

“Well no one, since he didn't have any remaining relatives in this village,” he responded.

This kind of surprised me, I thought that he would have at least had some relatives. Maybe a cousin or an uncle of some sort. But I overcame my initial shock to ask him what I really wanted to know.

“So, do you think I could reconstruct it for something I’m planning to do?”

He thought for a while and eventually he gave a response.

“I mean sure, if the Yad doesn’t make a fuss that is.”

This confused me at first, for I didn’t know why the Yad had any involvement in this issue.

“Why would he do that?”

“Well legally, all lands that don't have a direct successor should go towards the village administration. The same village administration that is headed by the Yad.”

Now that he pointed out the reasoning for his statement, it seemed a bit obvious in hindsight. Even in my old world, deceased without kin would often have their possessions and properties taken by the governing body. But now that I was aware of this issue, I thought that I could probably convince the Yad to let me use the land.

“I’ll deal with him if he makes a fuss. So how much do you think it would cost to make a sort of medium sized all-purpose building out of the old ruins of the fire?”

“Well for a building of around that size, it would maybe cost around three gold.”

While this was a lot considering the average person earned one gold every month, I had enough to afford it.

“Who would I need to talk to for that?” I asked.

“Well the masons don’t really need to get involved since the stone foundation wasn’t probably damaged by the fire. So I would recommend getting in touch with the carpenters guild to see what they can do for you.”

I was a bit taken by this, since I subconsciously assumed that there was some kind of construction company that would take care of this. But I should have realized that for this level of technology, this was to be expected.

“Where are they?”

He then proceeded to give me instructions on how to get to them, which I then noted down mentally. So now I was sure that I would be able to navigate my way to them.

“Alright, thank you.” I said, beginning to wrap up the conversation.

He seemed a bit curious as to what I was about to do with the old lot, for he said “Not so fast, what do you want to do with the lot anyway?”

“I’m planning on doing something to quell the village’s unease with the matches I’m selling.” I replied.

Even though my response left a lot to be desired, he seemed to be satisfied with it, however vague it was.

“Well good luck with that, just don’t make any more trouble for us. We don’t want a repeat of what happened last time with the Zi.”

His final words rang true in my mind, for I vividly recalled what happened the last time that trouble knocked on our doorstep.

“I’ll make sure that doesn't happen.”

As I said these words, I began to leave in search of the carpenters' guild.

My fervent hope was that they'd be helpful in achieving my goal because othewise, I'd be screwed.