*Lucas*

Resisting the urge to grab his shoulder, Lucas ignored the two ladies confused looks as the carriage pulled forward. He had a rough grasp of the situation he was in, even though it was ridiculous to the point of insanity. These people summoned him with the expectation of getting a warrior of some sort, and they expected him to work miracles. A fucking tall order to begin with, and the fact that he couldn’t fight was the least of the reasons.

Lucas was not particularly afraid of fighting, but he mostly viewed it as pointless. Why bother to learn martial arts in a world that had guns? Not that he had ever even held a gun, a diagnosis of depression meant that getting a gun license was completely impossible for him.

So he asked questions about their agriculture, disease rates, and nutrition. Did they rotate their crops, what kind of crops did they rotate, how did they fertilize, where did they get their water, how much would a peasant eat in a day. The ladies became increasingly confused, but Lucas became more and more confident that he could carve out a position for himself here.

How would he meet their expectations and gain their support to find a way home? Lucas had a hero of his own to look up to for an example.

In the modern world, Lucas got his degrees at the University of Minnesota in the United States. He chose that school because it was the alma mater of a man named Norman Borlaug, who, as far as Lucas was concerned, was the greatest human to have ever lived.

When he died in 2009 he was credited for having saved over one billion lives due to his work in the field of agriculture and genetics. And that was only the tip of the iceberg. His work combatted starvation and malnutrition throughout the world and championed causes to prevent deforestation and environmental degradation.

While working on his doctorate, Lucas could not help but try to follow in this brilliant man’s footsteps. While he could not honestly compare himself to this great man, after all, he was creating his own business rather than saving the world, Lucas spent years travelling to the most desperate places on earth. There he applied the lessons that Doctor Borlaug had spent his life uncovering and also learned a great deal about agriculture in general.

In a modernized country farming benefited from the most advanced machinery and fertilizers, as well as teams of scientists of every field from chemistry to zoology. But the places he visited, mostly Pakistan and certain areas of Africa, did not have the stability nor infrastructure to support such technology. But people needed to eat, and as wars and violence pushed people from their homes, their were more mouths to feed than ever before.

If he was honest with himself, the work had terrified Lucas. He had been full of zeal to pursue the path of his “hero,” but had not realized just how terrifying it was. Even worse than threats of violence towards himself had simply been seeing starving people, children, knowing that back at his research camp he would have a full meal waiting for him.

Lucas had decided then to use the profits from his company to fund research for places like this, to eliminate hunger from humanity altogether. Frankly, he had to promise himself that or he would not be able to sleep at night remembering those gaunt faces and malnourished bodies.

Regardless, his line of work required a knowledge of farming, much more so than someone would expect when asking. And in his time in some of the poorest places on earth, he had found that often the first thing to do was to teach the locals about the basics of what was called the Agricultural revolution, and then moving from that to start working on multiline crops and selective breeding in crops.

The ladies answered his questions and he sat back to think about the answers. Disease, starvation, and malnutrition were rampant problems in this world. Or at least Lucas thought so, from what he could see the Ladies were almost boasting about how low the rates were. It was fascinating how they could find such an incredible mortality rate to not only be acceptable, but impressive.

Lucas smiled as he began to form a plan. Sure he couldn’t fight worth a damn, but he wouldn’t need to. He would lower mortality rates across the board and improve nutrition and health throughout the human kingdoms. The spike in population would mean larger armies, and the larger armies would push back the demons without any need for him to put himself in danger.

It was a rough plan, sure, but it would suffice for now. As he settled in and gained influence he would likely be able to introduce other types of reforms from his own world. With the right push, he could accelerate this world towards the next stage of civilized development.

As to how to get home, Lucas hadn’t a clue. Yet. But he would continue questioning and investigating, and when he got the chance to leave he would jump at it.