What do you do, if you are out of nowhere, drunk, you are certain, no one would miss you, and your host just left the building to get a shovel?


    In a lot of stories Prof read, this was exactly the situation, where the Main Character defeated a nefarious cult or mass murderers, posing as nice and excellent villagers. And found closely guarded riches or overpowered magical stuff. Random Encounters didn''t wait for anyone!


    Prof and his party weren''t exactly stupid, and had already prepared for the worst to come: Sharpclaw was slinking somewhere in the shadows, while Mini was blissfully asleep in the arms of some of the Co-Leader''s cousins. Ehmmm… Mini pretended to be asleep while keeping hostages close to her chest! The hands still groping her… chest… was a surefire way to get the unknowing hostages off-balance! Absolutely!


    Prof himself was sitting at attention at the table, slightly swaying to throw the aim of any would-be sniper off. His swaying had nothing to do with the copious amount of booze he consumed while impersonating a news anchor.


    The Hogs, Sleepy, and Binky probably did what they usually did: standing around somewhere bored or munching on something or other. Hopefully, not on Greenskins.


    All the preparation the party did to fend off the evil cultists or sneaky villagers out to get rich and cull the number of moronic travelers was for naught in the end.


    Not because the villagers sprang a convoluted, nefarious trap, but because they were Greenskins. Putting random strangers into an early, unmarked grave was most likely un-excellent, and so wasn’t done by excellent folks.


    The shovel was actually needed to open the basement – obviously, the hinges were rusted closed, and no one had a high enough Skill in [De-rust: Hinges] or [Something similar]. Or no one cared enough to spend hours on their knees to scrape away the rust if a quick application of a shovel could open the trapdoor anyway.


    Folks were the same anywhere in all the multiverses, no matter the skin color or the species: if something still worked more-or-less, why make the effort?


    Of course, that attitude made more broken-down countries possible. Or the occasional collapsed bridge, the blown nuclear plants, and social unrest. Living in a perfect world, where the broken main waterline beneath the only transit road for a couple of dozen kilometers was repaired within a day – and not, say, almost two weeks – would be boring.


    With the basement open, it was time for some hard-fought battle of commerce! Pitting Skills against Skills, finding an unorthodox opening for a seldom-used Skill, or squeezing out the last drops of an obscure Perk! Fighting till the last iron bit! Or for.


    Prof drowned a fortifying potion, so he wouldn’t be declassed in the upcoming battle – sobering up was very important, when it was about money!


    He shouldn''t have been afraid of being out-commerced, anyway. Fleecing drunkards obviously wasn''t considered being excellent, or the Co-Leader wasn''t the best merchant, to begin with. Another possibility was, that Prof''s Gentleman Perk finally worked as intended (and he wasn’t surprised from behind by Parvenu), and the locals felt friendly towards him.


    That even included asking for a most excellent price for the goods Prof wanted to buy.


    A twenty-five-liter barrel of barely potable booze to fuel the Hogs, a few sealed jugs with that hot paprika booze, some dried small paprika as spices, and some this and that (if Prof could stock up on food, that reminded him of Earth, he certainly would) came up to barely two silver schillings. The Hog-fuel was actually used to remove paint by the locals, but filling it into the Hogs would be possible. They had a very high Endurance and Vitality, so liver failure was out of the question. Probably.


    What could possibly go wrong, after all?


    Well, the next day Prof found out, that fueling Hogs with cheap booze not only started their engines but also revved up the exhaust.


    “Misssster! Missster! Ssssharpclaw wantssss to walk!”


    The Kobold had something right with that sentiment – sitting not far behind the exhaust of two enormous Hogs, working very hard on producing the fantasy equivalent of methane (which was most likely just methane), was not exactly a comfortable position to be.


    At least keeping the drunken Hogs under control was much easier and the speed, they were traveling was higher too. Well, and they didn''t cause heart failure – or property damage – to others on the road. Next to their need for speed to reach the promised land of eternal nice weather in time, their need to conserve their finances was also of utmost importance. A few million wouldn''t last long if they (meaning Prof) would need to pay for damages caused.


    Wagon insurance wasn’t invented on Arkadia yet.


    Not, that any insurance would be willing to make a contract with Prof – he was just a catastrophic driver. Getting a driving license would be impossible for him. At least, if he didn’t do the time-honored thing of bribing the supervisor. With the Greenskins he could probably even write the bribe off his taxes.


    But then again, he was an adventurer and had tax exemption!


    Arkadia was fantastic! No overinflated paperwork, permits, licenses, speed traps, highway rules, or taxes!


    It was almost like home but without the constant need for bribing officials and getting his money off-shore. Not, that he ever did either of the two, he wasn''t rich back home, so the rules were to be followed to the letter.


    By the time they reached the next notable sight – a monument to a battle or other – Prof was slightly green from methane poisoning. He debated for some time already, if Greenskins were green because of the constant exposure to hogs, pigs, and swine, but concluded, that the species would most likely not sit right behind an industrial-grade source of… exhaust gasses.


    This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.


    “It''s a sword," Mini stated while observing the monument


    “Issss no ssssword. Issss broken pole.” Sharpclaw added from a slightly different point of view.


    “Oh, you are right. Let’s see… From here, it’s an arrow. And from here a cavalry charge.” Mini walked around the monument, commenting.


    “Well, it’s an excellent depiction of a multi-disciplinary image of the Battle of Stallion Head, made by the most excellent honored Redcap Erl?ser Dahlienpflanzer, utilizing the newest space-bending and wrapping techniques in novel ways.”


    “What?”


    “Dunno. I don’t understand half of the words myself. But this is what the guide says right here.”


    “So, in your own words, what is this supposed to be?”


    “All in all, I would say, it''s modern art," Prof concluded. Even Arkadia was not safe from modern art, it seemed. For some reason, he expected the whole world to be filled with antique or medieval-lookalike art, but obviously, the locals had ideas on their own. Greenskins in particular had a certain… realistic… approach to monuments and decorations.


    Prof should have been acclimatized to this, with every monument to a Meeting Place was either an arrow pointing down, an X, or – in the case of Sumpfigerort''s main square – a sundial. Even the latter wasn''t technically abstract art, but a repurposed monument to a sundial. Not to even mention the Greenskin building''s "decorations".


    Tympanums and columns did have a limit, where they looked good – Greenskins stepped over that border with utter confidence and annihilated every opposition.


    “Oh, I’m so sorry… What about this battle? Anything fun?”


    That was actually a very good question. Neither of them had any Skill Points in [History: Greenskinian] or any other social Skill to speak of, but Prof at least had an answer to the question. He just needed to dig up his introductory history book (it was written for kids, but was cheap to buy) and found the correct entry quite easily.


    “Soooo… After the death of the honored Redcap Grand Chief Stefan Gerstensohn, his evil son-in-law conspired against all the traditions of Greenskin, going as far as to enlist the help of wicked and depraved Treesquezers! He was prepared to overthrow the most excellent Greenskin way to govern themselves and wanted to appoint himself the sole grand chief. Gerstensohn''s cousin, however…"


    “Skip the boring infodump! Let''s get to the part, where body parts start flying!" Mini interrupted his lecture on a very important point of Greenskin history.


    “This is a history book for kids, not some adventure novel! There isn’t blood spurting from severed limbs!”


    “No sex either?”


    “No.”


    “Boooooooring!”


    “Coussssin won?” At least Sharpclaw was interested.


    “No, he died after fleeing the lost battle and got killed by villagers.”


    “Did he get feisty or insulted someone''s Hog?" That at least woke Mini''s interest


    “Actually no. He fled to the village of his enemy.”


    “What an idiot…”


    With that dispensed profound wisdom they got on the way again. After only a few minutes, they had to stop again; Prof had to refill the Hogs.


    According to his map and estimations, they were still almost a week away from the Southern border. The road, Prof wanted to take curved away from the main trading route; while shorter it entered a mountain range and missed most of the larger settlements, both in Ostwaldland and its Southern neighbor. The real reason to take the shorter road wasn’t time saved time – entering the mountains would cost them about the time, they would save because of the shorter distance – but sightseeing.


    Prof was assured, the mountains were a beautiful sight, full of picturesque ruins, pretty little villages, lovely waterfalls, and notable sites. Those were mostly commemorating battles, and a few burial grounds for notable people. Some were allegedly not even plundered!


    Their next few stops were…


    “It’s a tree!”


    “But it has cultural significance and looks actually nice!"


    “Boooooring!”


    “It’s a lake!”


    “Nissssse Lake! Ssssharpclaw sssswim!"


    “Boooooring!”


    “Seriously?!? This is just a hut! A boooooring hut!”


    “We aren’t here for the hut. We are here for the ruins behind the hut!”


    “Do they have undead?”


    “No, I don’t think they do.”


    “Is there an orgy planned to happen there?”


    “No…?”


    “Booooooring!”


    “A forest… Yeah, we haven’t seen a forest yet. You know, that I grew up in a place called Forestdeep?”


    “Yeah, but this forest has unusual rock formations, breathtaking meadows, and even a few awesome canyons too!”


    “Don’t you say! Sharpclaw, what do we say?”


    “Boooooring!”


    “Hey, Prof, look! Another picturesque Greenskin village! Who would have thought?”


    “Hey! This one actually looks marginally charming, with being built this way on the hill! It''s different than the last two!"


    “Wassss sssssree…”


    “It has even a statue on the main square! Come on girls! Where is your sense of adventure?”


    “Died because of boredom. Not even the best necromancer could revive it by this point.”


    “Hmmm… I think the next town has a house for pleasure providers…"


    “REALLY?!?! ONWARDS TO ADVENTURE!”


    “Sure, but we have one last stop before that.”


    “Oh, come on! Will be at least quick?”