With the dismissal from Professor Farstrider, I got up. I wasn’t sure she meant me when she dismissed the rest for a break, but this plan of the six I had met was well coordinated. Other children, -some with the same red hair as Moriah, others who wore the hard-spun handwoven clothes and leather slings that Alec wore- strode forth and bombarded the professor with minor questions.

We went up the stairs to the Tipsy Tavern and through an area I had previously understood as employees only. When Kenneth and Kieran waved at their Aunt Megan, she didn’t say a word to us. As we passed the cook, who looked like he might be related to the boys, he didn’t either.

Kenneth and Kieran led us through the kitchen and to a staircase that led down.

“Just a store room, don’t get one of your crazy outworlder ideas.” Moriah piped in when I hesitated.

The baker boys gave me a nod. “She’s right, it’s just the Tipsy Tauracean’s storeroom. We’re going to go stand guard though, in the case Professor Farstrider comes looking for you.”

I looked at each of them suspiciously for a moment, trying to make sure none of the childhood naivety that one would expect from a person my physical age was visible, and then headed down the stairs. None of the six kids followed me.

When I got there, I saw a man with thick long black hair pulled back in a well-kept ponytail. His face was clean-shaven, and his skin was lightly tanned. He was dressed in the dark green and gold uniform of the Darville family and the town guard, and his clothes were immaculate. Across his left arm was a red bandana, and at his left hip was a long straight hilt with the basket guard of a Renaissance-era rapier.

After a moment I realized it was a familiar face.

“Hello, Wade. I wanted to thank you again for your help in making me get over my sickness. I owe you a debt. In case you’ve forgotten me since then, I am Jose Porter. I’m Captain of the Strongbridge town guard. I am here to talk to you about your schooling. I am keenly aware that time moves on and I believe that our friend Lord Darville is moving a bit overly cautious in his plans for you and your advancement. After all, you will be competing with ten-year-olds and their allies from noble families and other powerful factions from throughout the kingdom in less than eight hundred days; or two years by local reckoning. And it will be both a challenge and a danger. I promise you that. Here, sit.”

He turned and headed towards the round, roughly carved round table that stood behind him in the store room. He sat on a smooth stool and gestured to one across the table to one identical. He didn’t say another thing until I had sat.

Before he could guide the conversation in this path he was trying to railroad us through, I struck first.

“Why the secrecy then? Sneaking me out of Professor Farstrider’s class?”

“Charles is our liege lord, but that does not make him the ultimate judge of what is good for you. Based on your age upon arrival, and mannerisms, I’m going to assume you were an adult when you were taken from home. You should be able to judge what’s good for your future by yourself.”

I gave a polite nod but wasn’t hooked. He wasn’t about to reel me in without resistance. “Okay, and? It’s annoying, to be taught to read and write like I’m on my first day of chemistry and it’s the letters themselves are rare and explosive chemicals.”

“You kind of are, but not until you take a class that specializes in that sort of thing. Maybe that’s her goal for you. You’re unformed and untempered clay as it stands, and I know you’ve not picked even your first class. Anyway, that wasn’t my point. I’m here to offer you more mentoring. Soon, you’ll be in the hands of the full faculty on hand for teaching here; and I’m offering more than the combat training that I’m responsible for as the Guard Captain.”

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“Uh-huh. And that’s all you called me for. And why would you offer to do that? I’ve already got Charlie mentoring me.”

Jose narrowed his eyes and let out a sigh. “Kid, I’ve known him for longer than I can think, and let me tell you that partner speech he gave you? You wouldn’t be the first. Probably won’t be the last either, but he’s still a feudal lord in a feudal world. He’s after what is good for his family and I’m just here to offer you other options. That’s all I’m saying.”

I put the palms of my hand on the table and moved to push myself up. “Right? And you don’t want him to know you offered that, I am assuming?”

“No, because he’d give me some kind of speech or supplications. Just the same as he’s trying to get allies and partners in this world; so am I.”

I pointed towards the staircase. “And you got a cadre of preteens and teens to distract Farstrider just so you could ask me that? If you’re about to be one of the teachers you could’ve asked me then.”

“Privacy; and the fact is people in the town already have some faintly good attitudes about you. Those kids came to me, asking why it was that you weren’t allowed down in town. I told them the basics, and what Lord Darville plans.”

I raised my eyebrow, “And that plan is?”

“To put you on a timer and thus a deadline. He plans to drag out the steps of things to make it so that you won’t be fully ready by the time the tournament looms.”

“He’d do that why? If he’s my sponsor in the tournament, doesn’t he suffer from that?”

“The rules don’t stop him from donating experience to you to make you grow, or otherwise expending extra resources to help you go. Before your first monster that doesn’t matter, but the system expects you to start showing responsibility for debts after that. He wants to get you in over your head so deeply you’ll be swimming for air until you forget any idea of making a way of your own.”

I eyed him dubiously, “And you know this why? Did he have some evil genius monologue reveal party?”

He sighed. “I know because he did it to me. I’ve been trying to work off debts to him since we arrived in this world and he picked up on things faster.”

That made some sense and almost vindicated my paranoia. I remembered the currency prompt telling me about experience points being more valuable than anything else. I didn’t have proof though, and I didn’t have answers.

“And them?” I said, pointing to the kids who had stuck their heads out for this. “What’s their stake?”

He smiled. “Taxes aren’t just gold, silver, copper or goods here, sometimes it experience points - and each of those kids wants to move to the true steps of their careers. Moriah, Calvin, Kenneth, and Kieran are the kids of large families and while they gain experience points from learning the basics, there are bottlenecks for them. If they can get past the bottleneck without their family’s help then the experience that would’ve gone to them can go to their siblings and cousins.”

He tapped the table. “Alec heard you were in trouble and wants to make a friend, he probably thinks you are braver than you probably are. As to Eris? She’s my daughter, and our goals are something I’m not willing to let out without knowing you first.”

For Alec and Eris that made sense, but the others? I had experience but certainly not enough for all of them to gain their true class and to begin working. It didn’t mean that I lacked empathy, they were kids in need of help and trying to help themselves and their families. But I wasn’t some kind of hero automatically, I didn’t even have a class yet. I was just a man stuck in a facsimile of his childhood body, and I hadn’t even been in more than one proper spar with Baloo the Cerbearus and Bagheera the Ossicarn.

“Okay, so making friends and allies for Eris and Alec. How does that allow me to help the others?”

“Well, you know Outworlders gain experience from a lot of sources others don’t, and can get quests, right? Well, we’ve got some special capabilities in this world’s dungeons too. If they help you and help me help you, you stand to benefit from a resource stream and experience stream that Charlie can’t block, and so do they. It won’t be immediate, I’ve got to get some real training on you and class options unlocked for you, but it’s an option I don’t think you can ignore.”

A dungeon crawl. There was only one response.

“You’ve got me hooked, I’m in.”