The system had a tool catalog. This was dangerous knowledge for someone like me.
Pizza peel? Locked. "Demonstrate proper launching technique."
Stone floor tiles? Locked. "Demonstrate proper spacing."
Mixing bowls? Locked. "Combine three ingredients without measurement."
Each test took about five minutes. Each one unlocked a tool I could then buy with actual money. Each purchase felt like a small betrayal of everything I'd learned back home — why buy a mixing bowl when you can just use your hands?
Because the system mixing bowl was perfectly curved, slightly warm to the touch, and made the dough come together in half the time.
Fuck it. I bought the whole shebang.
The oven was the real priority. Brokk had done good work on the hood — the draft was clean now, the heat held steady — but fuel was still my problem.
I'd watched him inspect it before he started. He'd walked around the oven three times without saying a word. Knocked on the brick. Peered up the flue. Ran a calloused thumb along the mortar joints.
"System work," he'd said. It wasn't a question.
"Yeah."
"Good base. Chimney draft's wrong. Hood's undersized."
"Can you fix it?"
He'd looked at me. His eyes were the grey of fresh-cut granite. "Tomorrow."
"Done."
He nodded once and got to work without another word. I liked him immediately. Local wood burned too fast and left too much ash. I needed something that would give me consistent heat across a service.
I found the Ember-hard Wood option in the fuel section.
**Ember-hard Wood: +30% heat output. +45% burn duration. Minimal ash.**
**Cost: 2 gold per cord.**
Two gold. That was more than a farmhand made in a month. But consistent heat meant consistent pizza, and consistent pizza meant paying customers.
"I'll take three cords," I said.
The wood appeared behind the tavern — split logs with a faint orange glow at their cores, stacked neatly against the wall.
"Those are... glowing," Al said.
"They're just very good logs."
"Glowing, sir."
"Yes, Al. Glowing. Magic is a thing. Get used to it."
Al sighed. That familiar, beautiful, put-upon sigh.
I built the fire that afternoon. The Ember-hard Wood caught fast and burned steadily — a deep, even heat that radiated out in waves I could feel from three feet away. The orange glow at the core of each log pulsed like it was breathing. The oven hit 750 degrees in under an hour and held there like it was proud of itself. Perfect.
Then came the training.
"Al," I said, "I need you to learn the bell system."
"The bell system, sir?"
"I ring the bell. You bring the pizza out of the oven. The timing has to be exact."
"Exact how?"
"I have a way to track it. When the bell rings, you move."
Al frowned. "That's it? Just listen for the bell?"
"Just listen for the bell. Can you do that?"
"Yes, sir."
"Good."
Al didn't move. "How will you know when to ring it, sir?"
"I'll know."
"How?"
I sat down. We'd never talked about this. I'd never had to explain.
"Al, I read about a place once where they measure time so precisely they can track every grain of sand. Every breath. Every second. They have machines for it — clockwork that runs day and night. No shadows. No bells. Just numbers."
He frowned. "What do you mean by 'exactly'?"
"I mean every second. Every minute. All day."
"That's impossible."
"It's not. It's just clockwork. They figured out how to track time precisely, and then taught everyone to read it."
Al looked at the window. Then back at me. He picked up the bell and turned it over in his hands.
"So when I check the sun... that's not enough?"
"Not when a pizza needs exactly ninety seconds in a 750-degree oven."
"My whole life," he said slowly, "I've measured time by bells and shadows. And you're telling me there's a world where everyone just... knows?"
"Pretty much."
"That sounds..." He trailed off.
"Civilized? Terrifying? Both?"
"Both, sir."
I clapped him on the shoulder. "Welcome to the future, Al. Now learn the bell system."
He nodded, still turning the bell over in his hands. "Why bells, sir? Why not just shout?"
"Because a bell carries. Shouts get lost in kitchen noise. You'll always hear the bell."
He tested the ring. Nodded again.
We ran drills for three hours. I launched dough into the oven, tracked the count in my head, rang the bell, and Al pulled it out. The first batch was charcoal. Second was better. The third was almost edible.
By the end of the day, Al could hit the window consistently. Not perfectly, but close enough.
"The wood is ready," I said, "the cheese is made, the dough recipe is dialed in. I've got tomatoes that taste like sunlight and yeast that probably has opinions about philosophy. Tomorrow we open."
"Are we ready, sir?"
"Fuck no."
Al sighed.
"We're never going to be ready. That's the point. You open, you fail, you fix it, you try again. That's how restaurants work."
"And if we fail hard enough?"
"Then we run. Again. Find another town. Change masks. Start over."
Al nodded slowly. Picked up the ten-minute hourglass and held it to the light. The sand glittered — fine white grains that had come from somewhere in the system, probably milled by magic dwarves or something.
"I don't want to run anymore, sir. I want this to work."
That was the most honest thing he'd ever said to me.
"Me too, Al. Me too."
I went to bed with fire in the oven, cheese in the pantry, and flour in my hair. I lay there staring at the ceiling for what felt like an hour. The wood popped in the oven. Somewhere outside, a dog barked. I thought about Al, about how he'd staked his whole life on a baron's son who woke up three weeks ago claiming he could run a pizzeria. That kind of trust was either inspiring or suicidal. Probably both.
Tomorrow I'd find out if anyone in Dalton actually wanted to eat pizza.