“So you are here,” Sir Hayek said.

  The knight stood with sword drawn and pointed at Charles and Rosemary who were trembling in fear.

  “I went out for a walk. Put your freaking sword away,” Jessica said as she beelined for the pot of pre-boiled water. It was taking everything she had not to look terrified, but she refused to give him the satisfaction of intimidating her.

  Sir Hayek sniffed. “You stink.”

  “It was a long walk,” Jessica said in-between gulps of water. “Is being stinky grounds for execution?”

  “Mind your tongue, peasant. I’m already in a bad mood. I don’t need sass from some delusional tart.”

  “Happy to see you on your way. How can I help?”

  He glared but sheathed his sword. The Serf family collectively exhaled.

  “I asked around about you. Apparently you’ve been convincing people to brew concoctions which scald and burn flesh. What mischief is this?”

  Jessica folded her arms. “Soap.”

  He sniffed again. “It’s not very good soap.”

  “I haven’t used it yet.”

  “Because it will burn your flesh?”

  She rolled her eyes. “No, it will not burn flesh. Saponification dilutes the lye with fatty acid esters.”

  Sir Hayek jabbed a finger at her. “Enough with the Elvish! I am giving you one warning and one warning only: Stop messing around with the alchemical arts or I will have you burned as a witch.”

  Jessica swallowed. As silly and stupid as the declaration sounded, there was nothing silly about Sir Hayek’s brand of kneejerk stupidity. Until she could prove she was really reincarnated, she had to assume he could and would act on it.

  “Fine,” Jessica said, “I won’t do anything more than I already have. But the soap’s out of the bag. The Barleyfielders know how to make it without injuring themselves. You should let them continue. Hell, have the king take a cut of it. Sell it for profit. Take some back with you.”

  He glanced at the wicker basket full of soap balls resting in a recess in the dirt floor. Picking one up with his mailed hands, he tossed it to her.

  “Rub it on yourself. I want to see for certain.”

  Needing to wash up anyway, Jessica poured water over her hands and scrubbed. Besides her scraggly nails, her hands were clean and free of chemical burns.

  “Very well. The soapmaking may continue provided King Capra and Earl Heinrich are supplied with one-tenth each of the produce. And a soapmaking house must be erected where all soapmaking is to be done and its production counted. Am I understood?”

  “Yeah, man, can I go to bed now?” Jessica said.

  “And I am taking some with me.”

  Jessica threw up her hands. “Sure. Why not? Our gift to you for all your hard work.”

  Sir Hayek gathered the entire basket and departed with it.

  Jessica sank into her pallet. “I’m so sorry about that. I didn’t mean to stick you with him.”

  Rosemary sighed. “Nothing for it. I’m just glad you and John are safe and sound. Junior said you went up into the woods the same time as some adventurers went lookin’ for a morkal. Charlie and I were worried sick! Don’t let my son drag ya off to any danger now. He’ll get ya killed looking for some foolish adventure!”

  Rosemary punctuated this by grabbing her son by the ear. Jessica opened her mouth to correct Rosemary that she’d been the one to drag him into danger, but the fewer people knew about Morkal the better. She shot John an apologetic look as he fended off his mother’s ire.

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  “Don’t go back there until some adventuring party kills that monster, ya hear?” Rosemary said, eyes grave.

  Jessica nodded. She intended to be back there quite soon, of course, but now she had to think about when and how to go without Rosemary noticing. Or John for that matter. She felt she owed it to Rosemary to keep him out of the scheme to move Morkal. Meanwhile, the subject was due for a change before John let anything slip.

  “Unrelated, but do you know how often adventurers die?” Jessica asked.

  Charles scratched his head. “Rarely. I ain’t heard of any in a long time. Not even from old age. Even the Emperor’s still a young man from what I’ve heard, and he’s been around for centuries. Y’all can still get killed by monsters though, but that hasn’t happened in gods know how long. There ain’t many monsters left after the Demon King.”

  No wonder Akuhara had been so scared, Jessica thought. He probably forgot he could die. She was hesitant to leap from that to the notion that adventurers knew death was permanent here, but at the very least they weren't operating as though there was a second reincarnation safety net.

  It also meant she didn’t know how old he really was. He looked like a teenage boy, and acted like one, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t really a sixty year-old man in a teenager’s body. All the super-powered adventurers with progression systems being stuck in puberty went a long way towards why they were so violent, competitive, and selfish. And horny, if Akuhara was anything to go by.

  Jessica rubbed her eyes. Every time she thought she was beginning to understand this weird isekai world, it threw her a curveball. Her brain needed time to defrag. She was even too tired to pretend she didn’t know what an ‘isekai world’ was.

  When she opened her eyes the next morning porridge was being thrust at her.

  “Ya didn’t eat last night so we made extra this morning,” Rosemary said.

  Jessica stretched and accepted the bowl. Her whole body was sore in a way no amount of fieldwork could induce.

  The food, meanwhile, was the best she’d had since arriving. In addition to the stewed barley there was some bacon and butter. Clearly not everyday things. What she would’ve scarfed down in front of a computer without a second thought became pure decadence. She couldn’t help moaning a little.

  Rosemary beamed. “That good, huh?”

  Jessica nodded and mumbled a compliment through a mouthful of porridge.

  “If you’re not careful, Charles’ll have you and Johnny out walking every day so he gets to have my bacon porridge.”

  “Mm whmd neffrgh!” Charles said from the bottom of his own bowl.

  With a rested mind and body the prospect of moving Morkal seemed much more doable, and the day’s threshing gave her time to think of how. As soon as work wrapped up Jessica slipped away without John noticing.

  Or so she thought.

  She made it as far as the road to the freeholder side of the hills before she heard:

  “Wait up! Ya didn’t even tell me you were goin’!”

  Jessica’s shoulders sagged and she turned around to John.

  “Your mom doesn’t want you coming up here.”

  “Yeah, cuz a’ Morkal, who we know ain’t nothin’ to fear!” he replied.

  Jessica clucked her tongue. She forgot sometimes that just because he was uneducated and talked with an accent didn’t mean John wasn’t smart. On the contrary, he picked up soapmaking immediately. Coming from academia, her frame of reference for intelligence was primarily the possession of knowledge, whereas John’s strength lay in rationally deducing things from incomplete information.

  “We know she’s not dangerous, John, but your mom doesn’t and there’s also…”

  Her face flushed. Maybe it was because of what was in the news back on Earth, but she was suddenly aware of how it might look if she and a teenage boy kept wandering off alone.

  “There’s also what?”

  “Nothing,” Jessica said, “but we can’t both go. It’s too suspicious. Especially since everyone in Barleyfield knows Morkal’s up there. They’re gonna wonder why we’re taking walks in monster-infested woods. How about a compromise: I’ll do part of it today and then I’ll tell you what needs to be done tomorrow. If anyone asks we can say we have no idea the other was going up there.”

  John deflated. “I don’t think I get it, but sure, we can do that.”

  With that settled, Jessica went by herself up the stream and into the forest. The trip from the barley fields to Morkal’s cave was a little over 45 minutes, but it felt longer after a day of threshing.

  When she arrived she found a new boulder rolled closed over the cave entrance. The tree trunk on the hill above was no longer belching acid fumes so she yelled down into the chimney and Morkal rolled the stone out of the way.

  “So I have a plan, but you’re gonna need to tell me how viable it is,” Jessica said as they made their way to the back of the cave.

  “Yes?,” Morkal said.

  “Do you think you could invent a way to reverse the toad spell?”