Finding West isn''t hard, is it? You look at the Sun, and if you know, what time it is, you can figure out the direction quite easily. Otherwise, you will go in any direction, maybe even West. So, finding West is allegedly easy. If [Navigation] is high enough, it should be even easier. The issue, complicating the supposedly easy task of finding West was manifold. For example, 75% in the relevant Skill was enough in places with a clear view of the sky and the Sun, but in a thick forest, where the Sun was obscured by leaves, haze, and clouds, it was… insufficient.


    Having a compass would have been quite helpful – while Shinead had two, both were magical pieces and weren''t built to point North (or South, West, East, or any fixed direction). It was nice to know, where certain people or such were, but a compass should also point to a fixed direction. It is what a compass does, after all.


    Unfortunately, the manufacturers of both pieces obviously thought, such basic functions were redundant for highly trained operatives. Those people usually could navigate unknown places quite well.


    With a little bit of mental acrobatics, she was able to reset one of her compasses. Now, it pointed directly at Greenskin lands. It was in the West, so the compass was pointing West. More-or-less. She was a genius to figure out that use!


    Of course, since she was an Elf, being a genius was a given, after all. All the voices in her head thought so too! They were – probably – Elves too, so it wasn''t a big surprise, every last one reinforced her conviction, that Elves were naturally superior.


    Well, the very last voice – most likely a non-Elf or a traitor – tried to convince her, that every sapient creature was equal and such nonsense, but Shinead ignored the deranged ravings of that one. Where would the glorious Elvenkind end with such ideas?!?


    Elves would probably transform into Humans, just with pointy ears, or some lazy, deranged, and perverted creature, like the Travelers'' home planet was full of. There was simply no way to abandon the trusted ways of Elvenkind for some sick ideology! Shinead was sure of that.


    Well, Shinead was a born Arkadian, and an Elf after all. New ideas were suspicious everywhere, not just on Arkadia, and if those new ideas were brought over by non-Arkadians from a different planet or multiverse, it was doubly so. Propagating new ideas was also suspicious, especially when the one doing so could prove with his Character Parchment, that he wasn’t exactly sound of mind. Or at least, how Arkadia’s Administrator viewed his ideas.


    Burning folks with ideas at the stake was a universal solution.


    Places with magic only made sure, the soul was captured or destroyed at the same time too. No use to get saddled with an undead with ideas, after all.


    Of course, Shinead only dealt with the issue in the most rudimentary way – not intellectually, but with a knife to the kidney. Acute metal poisoning usually made ideas go away in an expedited manner too. Unfortunately for her, stabbing a voice in her head in the kidneys wasn''t exactly easy to do.


    First, she needed a good mage to exorcise the voice and give it corporeal form – going stabby would be easy afterward. Finding a good enough mage, she was willing to let dig around in her head in the Valley, where there was a marked absence of sapients (i.e. Elves), was a lost proposition.


    Not, that anything was wrong with her head; every last voice in her head (including that traitorous one) agreed on that.


    Shinead had to admit, being undead had its perks. Not Perks, but everyday perks. Not tiring at all, not needing to sleep or eat helped her immensely in her pursuit of that depraved party. The distance, normal mortals would need two or three days to travel, she could do it in only one. Including slowing down during darkness in order to not run into random trees face first. Since she was a perfect undead Elf, she definitely didn''t run into trees.


    ‘Of course you did!’


    ‘Multiple times!’


    Moronic voices! What do they know about how to properly navigate dense forests?!? She just investigated those trees very closely!


    ‘Sure, you did!’


    ‘Yeah, how high are your Skills again?’


    The voices started to get sassy. Maybe she should get rid of them, after all. Reinforcing her importance and awesomeness was one thing, but sabotaging her thinking was another. Was this a committee, or what?!?


    Either way, it took a few days – while she wasn''t running into trees face first, no matter, how hard the voices laughed – to find the first traces of the perverts. It was in a city, previously belonging to the lowly Greenskins. Why those hoglovers were living in such decaying hovels, she couldn''t really understand. On the other hand, Humans were living in hovels, no proud Elf would put their swine into it.


    A few centuries or a millennia or two (or a magical cataclysm) weren''t an excuse to let proper buildings deteriorate in such a manner, so they were probably built this way. The city was probably the hoglover''s pride; everyone knew, that they lived in hide-covered tents, or fornicated in the mud! No wonder, they couldn''t build structures, that survived more, than a few years. Or a generation or two.


    That an Elven generation was a little bit longer, than of other species, Shinead didn’t care about. In her thinking, that minute detail only reinforced Elven superiority. Well, everything reinforced that – including but not limited to having hair, not having hair on the face, not getting hung up on having clothes, having campgrounds, or proper bureaucracy.


    This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.


    By this time, every last extra-Arkadian probably realized, something was wrong with Elves in general and Shinead in particular. Maybe, if someone would have warned those extra-Arkadians months ago, that dealing with Elves leads to lost teeth, that realization would have come earlier.


    Oh, wait.


    Either way… Shinead did find traces of her targets within those almost new, probably not-ruins. What she found, disgusted her even more. Those perverts had to go!


    What kind of depraved pervert would fornicate with Brook Hags in their "beds", and then kill them off? If those degenerates were Elves (Red Elves in particular), Shinead would have assumed, they successfully caused accidents to the sleeping Hags, but they were not, and Shinead knew the party well enough to come to the only possible correct answer!


    They were having multiple orgies! With the disgusting Hags!


    This was low, even for a Traveler! Had they no shame? No limits?!


    Shinead was glad, a Red happened to her and didn''t have to see that perversion of even the laxest of Arkadia''s tastes. Not even Humans would fornicate with a Hag willingly. At least that she knew of. She hadn''t exactly visited Human lands that much (and those visits mostly consisted of a few quick accidents, no study of the so-called culture was included), but she heard enough stories.


    Be as it may, this was another reason to get rid of Travelers, and this one especially. Including his harem of degenerates.


    Looking around the abandoned city, she found the Hag''s vault after a short time. It was clear, that the greedy bunch tried to ransack the accumulated wealth, but still left much behind. Shinead found piles of old Elven, Greenskinnian, and even Human currency, jewelry, weapons, armor, trinkets, and even magical clothes. All in different styles and ages.


    Judging by the piles and piles of discarded items, those losers weren''t able to identify the gear and were intelligent enough not to use magical stuff with unknown properties. Even those monkeys had some minimal sense, after all!


    Of course, Shinead wasn''t able to identify the gear either, but there wasn''t anything she needed, after all. She received passable equipment from that vulgar undead, and what use would be old currency in the barbaric West?


    ‘One could buy stuff with money.’


    Of course, one of the voices had to add its two Leaves. That particular voice was obviously an idiot, though. Why would a proper Elf pay for stuff, every marginally intelligent being would hand over for free? Or buy stuff, when she could take it?!? Preposterous!


    ‘Some of the gear looks good.’


    ‘Yeah, maybe you should bring a few. Someone could identify them!’


    The other voices were morons too. Equipping herself with lowly, foreign-made stuff?!? Dragging trash around?!? Was she a Traveler, or what?


    ‘Your current gear is foreign-made.’


    Shinead chose to ignore that comment.


    ‘That pile looks like Elven stuff. You could take those.’


    One of the more reasonable voices informed her. Rescuing high-quality Elven gear from their captivity in a foreign land and from the taint of foreign trash would be an admirable quest, she concluded. Maybe it would warrant a footnote in a book, or a paragraph in an expertise. Well, it wasn’t a legendary novel or an epic poem, but it was still something.


    ‘Dream on, babe.’


    And there was the asshole voice again. Why being so negative about everything? You don''t have the Skills for this, you aren''t fantastic that, not even a footnote for you! Hah! Normally, even if she didn''t get a novel on her own, at least nine short chapters or so would be dedicated to her, as it was her due! Who wouldn''t want to read about the exploits of a highly trained Red Elf operative, as she shadowed an evil (and depraved) Traveler? Uncovering millennia-old conspiracies, and avenging her Clan?


    ‘Yeah, that would be just awesome!’


    ‘Surely, everyone would be immensely interested in that!’


    ‘Better, than reading about, say, standing in line in the Department of Wagon Registrations’


    For some strange reason, Shinead felt, the voices were overly sarcastic. That feeling was reinforced by resonant laughter from maybe a dozen voices.


    But no, it was impossible, that the voices were laughing at her, they surely laughed with her, or because of some joke, she didn''t get. After all, she didn''t pay much attention to random voices in her head.


    That was actually a good choice – listening to random voices mostly leads to getting shot by the local constabulary or being put into a room with very soft walls. Neither the guards nor the healers are overly interested in you defending your actions by pointing to the nice voices.


    Well, Shinead could burn, maim and kill on her own, she didn''t need the encouragement of sassy, idiotic, or asshole voices.


    After a short discussion with the more reasonable voices, she collected a bag full of to-be-rescued Elven artifacts. She left the overly shiny stuff behind since everyone knew, the blinky stuff was just for show, the real treasures were the unassuming pieces. The same logic applied to one or two rusty weapons – if they were rusty, they couldn''t have been highly magical, and thus couldn''t have marked cultural significance.


    After all, she wanted to rescue important gear, not equip herself with overpowered stuff! She was good enough on her own, she didn''t need cheat powers!


    ‘Of course, you are just that good. Sure!’


    Even the voices agreed while laughing at the idea, she would need blinky stuff!


    Well, if she cared to ask a certain (or every last) Earth-expat, overpowered blinky stuff would be the way to go, if for nothing else, than to sell it as soon as a slightly better piece was found lying discarded on the corpse of a random villain.


    Also, rusty swords in a pile of magical and expensive stuff would raise quite a few flags – but again, they may just be very badly made basic gear without a rust-repelling enchantment.


    As a different party learned not so long ago learned, having someone with magical talents around was immensely important on Arkadia. How else would you plunder a hidden vault, and take only the most valuable stuff for any given weight? Not many had unlimited carrying capacity in a magically enlarged trinket.


    After stowing the rescued items in her basic backpack (she wasn’t able to get rid of the blood stains, not that she tried very hard), she set out to investigate, where her quarry went. Those morons weren’t going to kill themselves, after all.