A brief walk later, Artyom arrived at the inn. The two-storey building was made primarily of stripped logs, its foundation fortified with cut stones neatly arranged in a running bond pattern with some kind of mortar between them, like most brick walls. A wooden sign was hanging from a horizontal pole seven feet from the ground. It was decoratively painted and read “Ruba’s Inn” in a wavy font that was closer to print than cursive. In other words, this was a stereotypical inn’s facade. “Would the inside be the same?” Artyom thought to himself, as he opened the door and stepped inside.

Not surprisingly, it was. On his right was the bar, consisting of a table made of ash-gray wood stretching several feet long, its back shelves stocked with a small yet colorful selection of bottles. In front of it were stools made of the same wood, with several people seated on them. On the left was a space filled with a few tables and chairs, a pair of elderly men seated at the front playing a game with dice. Off to the back was a staircase that led to the second floor, which probably had rooms for guests to sleep in. The people at the bar were a much more colorful group. Besides the older woman serving drinks behind the bar, the three sitting on the barstools were dressed very differently than anyone else Artyom had met here so far.

While the villagers wore lightly-dyed linen and wool clothes similar to Artyom, these three were dressed in brighter colors and choice materials. Closest to the door was a young man with blond hair and a chainmail shirt who carried a sword on his back. He had a jovial expression on his face and was in the middle of downing a cup of bright-red liquid in a single go. To the left of him was a young lady with medium brown hair shaped in a bun, wearing a sturdy leather mail dyed a leafy green with camouflage patterns and a bow on her back. She was cheering the swordsman on. And finally on her left was another young lady with hair as red as the man’s drink hanging loose. She, unlike the others, was unarmed, but wore blue robes with wide, vertical white streaks on the sides. The center streak of blue was decorated in various golds and greens in an intricate symbol. She was shyly cheering on along with the woman next to her.

As soon as Artyom walked in, all eyes were on him. Everyone had a look of curiosity, except for the lady serving at the bar who looked happy, and the swordsman who was still focused on his drink.

“Ah, hello there!” said the lady behind the counter, motioning Artyom to take a seat there. “Welcome to my inn! I’m Ruba, and you won’t find better service anywhere else in town!” Her facial features were softer than that of Chay and his farmhand, and skin much more pale.

“Thank you,” said Artyom politely. He wiped his feet on the welcome mat and made his way to the bar. He decided to take the seat two spaces away from the swordsman, just close enough that he could talk to the group but not make it feel like he was forcing himself upon them. Societal interactions could be very complex like that.

Just as he took a seat, the swordsman finished his drink and slammed the sturdy glass mug onto the counter. He turned to the two women next to him to see their reactions to his great feat before looking at Artyom.

“I’m guessing you’re from out of town as well?” asked the swordsman. “I thought my party and I would be the only ones!”

“You guessed right,” replied Artyom. “I just got here, in time for lunch no less.”

Ruba’s eyes lit up in remembrance when he mentioned lunch. “I have some fresh barley stew today! Along with some nice, crispy bread. You three haven’t eaten anything yet either, would any of you like some now?”

“Sure!” replied the swordsman. “We’ll take care of your job right after.”

“So these must be the new adventurers in town that Chey was talking about,” thought Artyom. “Are you all here to deal with the rat problem?”

“How do so many people know about that?” griped Ruba. “I try to be discrete about it but even you all from out of town know about it!”

“Uh, well Chay told me just before I arrived,” said Artyom. “And his farmhand mentioned it while I was on my way here.”

“Figures, this entire town is full of gossips!” cribbed Ruba. “But I can’t really blame them. If I was in their shoes, half the kingdom would know by now!”

The entire inn erupted in laughter, and even Artyom let out a chuckle. Fairytale Worlds were much livelier than where his missions took him. No wonder Sofia described it as a vacation. Too bad that’s not why he was here.

“Hold on,” said Artyom, halting the swordsman. “You’re going to go kill the rats right after eating?”

“Of course, we’ve been on the road since we woke up and we’re starving!” replied the swordsman.

“Even if they are rats, it can be pretty dirty work,” warned Artyom. “I’ve always been taught to never get into anything so messy right after eating a big lunch, because it won’t always stay put.”

The swordsman slightly paled at this, somehow noticeable despite his white, freckled skin. The lady with the bow did as well, but the one in the robes grew slightly wide-eyed at Artyom’s revelation and slowly nodded.

“Uh, thanks for the advice,” said the swordsman, getting over his disgust at the thought of losing his lunch. “Most of our quests haven’t been that messy, so I didn’t realize something as small as rats would be. I’m Saemial, by the way. Everyone calls me Sae.”

“Artyom, pleasure to meet you,” he replied back.

“And this is Pireni and Skeya,” said Sae, pointing towards the archer and lady in robes.

“Nice to meet you too!” said Pireni. “I’m the team’s ranger. Sae’s the meathead and Skeya is the cleric.”

“My official title is swordsman,” replied Sae, in slight annoyance. “Just because I’m the one who has to get near the enemy to attack, it doesn’t mean I’m dumb!”

The other two party members laughed at his response, Pireni sounding much more boisterous than Skeya.

“Nice to meet you, Artyom,” said Skeya, once their laughter had died down. “I try to help everyone do their best.”

“How innocent,” Artyom thought. “It’s kind of adorable.”

“It’s definitely nice to meet you all,” finished Artyom, attempting to end the conversation. He figured listening to their own conversations would let him learn a lot about the world and its people without giving himself away as a literal outsider. Besides, asking about the Fantastical World of Earth or any of the tropes associated with Earther summonings such as Dark Lords or Chosen Heroes could alienate him from others by making him look like a weirdo, making it harder to gain useful information later. If any of those tropes were in play in this World, people would start talking about it soon enough… hopefully.

The next hour of conversation between the adventurers contained none of those tropes. Instead, they talked about their trip into the village and all of the amazing, mundane sights they’d seen along the way. Examples include the wonderfully pristine lake they passed by, or the massive acreages of corn organized into near-perfect rows. Artyom was pretty sure they would’ve been fun to see in-person, but imagining the types of sites he could see during a car ride through rural America back on Earth didn’t do much to inspire his interest. The adventurers had decided to eat lunch then itself, and take on the rat problem in the evening before dinner. Artyom decided to eat as well, and luckily Ruba accepted one of his blank silver coins, giving him several stamped copper ones in return. Each of the coins had a picture of a crown and rough face on each side respectively.

The adventurers’ conversation continued, and just when Artyom had lost all hope on getting any useful information from their talks, they touched up on something slightly more interesting, and then something very interesting.

“Your barley stew is wonderful, Ruba,” said Pireni, “but your sparkle is something else! I didn’t have anything as good in the next town over.”

“Why thank you, dear!” replied Ruba, her face glowing in pride. “We brew it right here in the village, so we have the freshest bottles around!”

“In that case, I’d like to try some too,” said Artyom, deciding to find out what exactly this “sparkle” was. He was convinced it was probably booze, and mentally chided the adventurer team for getting drunk before a mission. He exchanged some of the copper coins he got as change for a glass of the drink. It was the same bright red liquid Sae was drinking when Artyom first entered the inn. He looked at it hesitantly, noticing that the color was almost cartoonish in its vividness, and that there were plenty of bubbles appearing in the liquid before rising to the top like in most carbonated beverages. But no soda he’d ever drunk looked anything like this before. He slowly lifted it to his lips and tasted a sip. If it was somehow poisonous to him or too intoxicating, he knew a spell to purge it from his body. He really hoped he wouldn’t have to use it, remembering its results from yesterday.

Thankfully, he would be safe for another day. The drink was soda, but none like Artyom had ever tasted either. It tasted like cherry, with a hint of sourness that didn’t fully qualify it as the hotly marketed sour variant back on Earth. The bubbles were indeed from carbonation, but at a level far greater than any soda he’d drunk, near-overwhelming even. Even more so than the one time he drank a cup that was freshly carbonated in one of those overpriced household appliances marketed in now-defunct airplane magazines. In other words, it was perfect. And the best part for adventurers, there was no alcohol, so they could drink as much of it as they wanted to before anything critical, if you ignore needing to use the bathroom. Artyom’s eyes lit up as he finished the last of the beverage in his cup, debating whether to buy more. That’s when the party dropped their second info bomb.

“Do you think there’s anyone in the village we can recruit?” asked Pireni to the rest of her party.

“Well, we have to find a spellcaster here first, and I haven’t seen any so far,” replied Sae. “And they have to want to join our party as well.”

“It’s definitely an opportunity to guide their conversations,” considered Artyom. “And the alternative is to sit through more meaningless gossip.” It didn’t take much more thought for Artyom to make up his mind.

“Hey, if you’re looking for a spellcaster, I happen to be one,” said Artyom calmly. Not a hint of any ulterior motive was carried in his voice. “A pretty good one too, in fact,” he added, humbly.

The three adventurers turned to face him when he said that, Skeya having to lean out of her seat to see him clearly. The looks of surprise on their faces was palpable, how their actual quest had seemingly been completed and the reward was right before their eyes. Sae was the first to come back down to Earth, or wherever they were, and break eye contact. He coughed into a balled hand and stood up, facing Artyom and giving him a look-over.

“You know, that’s very convenient. But will you be good enough for the team?” asked Sae.

“Come on, Sae. We’ve been searching for a spellcaster forever,” whined Pireni. “Let’s just bring him along and see how he is?”

“But we’ve got two missions we need to take care of here, I don’t want to drag someone around before we can get back to town,” Sae replied back.

“Excuse me, but what does going back to town have to do with seeing if I’m a good enough mage?” asked Artyom. The three were obviously novice adventurers, and he was sure whatever their requirements were, Artyom would be overqualified. But they could easily ask for a demonstration of his abilities here itself.

“To check your level, of course!” said Pireni. “There aren’t any scryers here, so we’ll have to bring you back to where there is one. All of us are double digits, so we need to make sure you’re up to snuff.”

“Ah,” said Artyom in realization. Many of the Worlds Artyom encountered had a sort of “Leveling System” in place, a pervasive force that introduced an artificial means of progressing in skill or power. Whenever someone practices something, they get better at it, either from their muscles strengthening or their mind better understanding the patterns and knowledge required to perform it. It’s common knowledge that practice makes perfect. What these Systems do is add another layer of progression on top of it. Someone practicing a particular skill or profession will be awarded with an arbitrary quantity of “experience” whose value is tied solely to the System’s judgement. Once enough experience is accrued, they will be exchanged for a “level” in that profession, granting an artificial supplement to its related skill sets. So if a swordsman practices sword fighting enough, they’ll gain a level in a [Swordfighter] class. This level will increase the swordsman’s strength when wielding a sword or their raw sword fighting abilities on a technical level. Yes, it does bring ethical questions to the table, such as the System’s ability to influence the swordsman’s mind in order to imbue greater fighting technique, but most of its beneficiaries don’t seem to mind.

From what Artyom had gathered during his missions, each World had its own unique System, if any at all, and the levels and advantages from one World almost never carried over to another. One World might have a class called [Swordsman] instead of [Swordfighter] which would function almost exactly the same, but one might award greater experience and thus easier levels based on something as arbitrary as the quality of the blade wielded. Systems differed like that, sometimes nonsensically so.

“Well, the thing is, I don’t actually have any spellcaster levels,” said Artyom honestly. “Yet. But I’m definitely a great spellcaster!”

Sae and Pereni gazed at him with incredulity, but Skeya only looked curious. So far, so good.

“Why don’t you let me show you,” offered Artyom. “I can tag along with you when you go to kill the rats, and you can see what I’m capable of then!”

“I dunno, are you really a good spellcaster if you don’t have any levels?” asked Sae, his skepticism unsatisfied.

“I think it’d be nice to have him along,” said a soft voice from the back of the group. Skeya poked her head out from the side so she would be able to see Artyom. “This is our first mission fighting, so having another person with us would make things better.”

The other two party members turned to regard her. They stared for a couple of seconds, which caused Skeya to look down in repentance, before Pireni clasped Skeya’s back with a grin.

“That’s a great idea, Skeya! We’ll have him tag along with us to deal with the rats and see what he’s made of down there.”

Skeya seemed to calm down at that and returned the grin with a shy smile of her own.

“Well, it looks like our minds are made up,” said Sae. “You can tag along with us to kill the rats. But don’t get in my way. I’m serious, my sword is sharp and I don’t want to accidentally hit you!”

Everyone who was listening laughed at the joke, the adventurers, Ruba, and the two old men in the back. Even Artyom couldn’t help but chuckle.