"A mountain. You want to climb a mountain. Why?" Mini asked, obviously being confused, why someone would want to climb a mountain. Folks in medieval times probably didn''t have time or the inclination to do such things just because they could.


    "Because it''s there. Also, it is said, that the view is extremely beautiful, and there is even a very nice ruin halfway up. A precursor ruin! Almost not ruined!"


    "Oh, that would make the stop an interesting one. NOT."


    "What would be more awesome, than what this mountain could provide? Oh no…" Prof should have already learned, not to ask Mini such questions – he knew very well, what the answer would be.


    "A fantastic orgy, riots, carnage, drinking, and of course, all these at the same time! I''m a city girl, not built for hiking up mountains. This isn''t fun!"


    "How large is your ''city'' back home, again?"


    "Around two thousand. But you don''t get the point! It has two thousand inhabitants more than this stupid mountain! It''s a huge center for civilization! It even has a few paved roads, not just goat trails!"


    "But your village doesn''t have almost not ruined ruins! Hah!"


    "It''s a town, not a village. And it has a very nice ruined castle! One of the previous dukes built it, saying, every proper Vampire territory has to have a ruined castle! It''s a bit drafty, and we can''t use it when it''s raining, but it has a very nice crypt. We even have a Ghost as a caretaker!"


    "Let me guess, every proper ruined castle has to have a ghost in it?"


    "No. He has a very good Skill-set for taking care of an artfully ruined castle. It was either him or an Ogre. The latter simply didn''t fit through the doors."


    "Sounds logical… Anyways, the mountain. You don''t want to hike?"


    "No way! Have ''fun''!"


    "Sharpclaw?"


    "Not interesssssted! Mountain high! Ssssharpclaw don''t likesssss high placesssss."


    Prof was on his own to conquer the mountain! Just like Hillary for the Mont Blanc, Amundsen for the Northwest Passage, or the guy, who conquered the Everest. Messner, probably. Of course, all those explorers had an army of servants at their call to do the actual heavy lifting, but they had a harder job to do too. Entering the unknown, looking for something else before finding the thing, that made them famous – all without the possibility of immediate evacuation by air! Or even cell phones and the internet!


    Compared to them, Prof had it easier: the mountain was barely three thousand meters high, and according to his guide, the goat trails reached almost to the summit. There were even a few rest stops, built by the Greenskins. Excellent as they were…


    But then again, the trail to the dungeon above Deadbranch also had a few constructed stops, so maybe Arkadian was indeed into hiking.


    Well, since self-propelled carriages weren''t invented yet, and one had to get Hogs drunk, so they maintained their lanes, hiking was the thing. One wanted to get cheese from the grocery store? Hiking! One wanted to visit relatives in the next village? Hiking! Getting some business sorted out in a different country? Hiking! Visit some all-inclusive hotel on the seaside for holidays? No, no hiking. Very few had the means and the time for a holiday in the first place.


    Almost like on Earth.


    But, what Prof was attempting, was still a first: he was probably the first Earth Human to conquer the mountain!


    That he knew of, at least.


    Trying to conquer a huge mountain on his own wasn''t necessarily the best idea someone in all the multiverses had – after all, the news back home was full of guys, who died on this mountain or that, and there were some historical anecdotes too! Livingstone on the Kilimanjaro, Franklin on Elbrus (or was it Terror?), Magellan on Mauna Kea – or look at Pompei: the mountain even came for a house call!


    Prof wasn''t exactly good at names to begin with, but he had the creeping suspicion, that some details started to fade away. For example, he couldn''t recall the exact date, when the Germans bombed Pearl Harbor.


    On the other hand, most of the names and places could be searched on the ''net back home, there was no need to burden the memory with random clutter to begin with.


    Anyways, all those famous explorers became famous by dying somewhere on a remote island or an unknown mountain, not by disappearing on a barely three thousand-meter hill not far away from civilization. All right, they may or may not have been eaten by the locals or their "friends", but the only one, who probably would eat Prof was Mini – and she most likely would keep him as an emergency ration till the last moment.


    Probably.


    Hopefully.


    As Prof set out to climb the mountain, the unmistakable sound effects of Mini having fun with her favorite loot from the Valley reached him. Good for her. As long as she occupied herself with harmless pastimes, the less likely she would get bored and start to do things, only she would classify as "fun".


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    The first leg of the hike was actually on a fairly good (for medieval times, that is) dirt track, leading up to a small hamlet. Theoretically, Prof could have driven right up to the settlement, but everyone knows, the start of a hiking trail isn''t the last parking lot, but the place commonly agreed to be it. Which may or may not be the last parking lot.


    Also, leaving a bored Vampire in a defenseless settlement wasn''t exactly a bright idea – Prof was intelligent enough to figure that out on his own. There were… patterns… he noticed.


    He sometimes asked himself, why he put up with Mini''s antics for so long.


    Oh yeah, she didn''t want to kill or enslave him, was actually a fun person to have around (when she wasn''t bored or got crazy), hadn''t bailed on him yet, and having her around enhanced Prof''s chances to survive till he got rich and toured the world. Also, getting Mini to do something, Mini didn''t want to do (like, for example, getting her to go away), was a futile endeavor.


    The hamlet in question could have been described as "picturesque" - if someone added a few centuries of development, good marketing, and the willingness of the locals to turn it into one of the renowned tourist traps. Not to forget, hand it over to any species, that wasn''t Greenskins, and thought, bunkers with columns and tympanums weren''t the peak of architecture.


    In the current state, it was just any Central European village out of nowhere, without any perspective, industry, or proper agriculture.


    It even had the stray dogs of unknown make and type – the only difference was, that here, the locals tried to catch the dogs. Prof suspected, they escaped the pens, where they were kept as meat animals – with pigs definitely not on the menu anywhere in Greenskin lands, something had to stand in. Well, poultry is almost vegetables, so the next best thing was probably dogs.


    There was probably still some kind of agricultural work to be done since quite a few Greenskins were leaning against their shovels, right next to empty plots of land, eyeing Prof attentively. Or all of them had rusted-close cellar doors and waited for Prof to be introduced to their wares.


    Either way, Prof just smiled and waved in to most friendly way he was able, and sped off in the direction of the mountain. Explorations to notable sights waited for no one!


    Walking along a mountain trail in the fall, without the constant nagging of his companions or pressing, world-changing events hanging above his head was relaxing, for once. Trees in full autumn colors – mostly yellow, but here and there brown, red, and purple – and complete silence. Well, silence, if one didn''t count the rustling of the wind, calls of birds of prey, and dead shrieks of random animals, currently being eaten by predators, or falling down some cliff face.


    At least Prof assumed, the sound effects belonged to those activities, and not to, say, mating, or collecting pals to attack a lonely Human hiker. Maybe he should put a few Skill Points into [Zoology] and [Monsterology]. And, since Arkadia was a fantasy world, maybe into the Skill that informed him about the behavior of plants too… Maybe there were carnivorous, mobile, or semi-mobile plants out there, just waiting for an ignorant Central European guy to walk into their maws!


    If Earth had such things (Prof was almost certain, there were), and Earth game developers could come up with a few (which they definitely did), there was no chance, Arkadia didn''t have them. The Administrator seemed to collect strange stuff from all over the multiverses.


    By the time he reached the almost not completely ruined precursor ruins, he had to realize two things. First, while his boots were excellent for walking around, they weren''t the best for hiking up a mountain on goat trails. While he wasn''t the most proficient hiker back on Earth, he knew, even the worst hiking boots from a discounter had these thingies on the soles, which made the boots'' grip better on uneven ground. Like slightly damp boulders on a mountain face.


    His high-class, very expensive medieval infantry boots had only a loose approximation of those.


    The second thing was that a Skill, called [Climbing] was actually not just for show, and helped immensely with things like, say, climbing a mountain. While Prof had 72% in that Skill, it mostly informed him, not to try to leave the goat trail.


    Prof missed the rudimentary prepared hiking trails from back home. Almost intact ruins on a beautiful mountainside would have been a prime tourist destination, including entry fees and…


    Well, all right, the medieval version was much better and less congested.


    The ruins were actually quite picturesque and would have made for nice postcards, pictures, and overpriced knick-knacks for tourists. Snuggled between a sheer cliff on one side and a probably once nice and cobbled plaza, it gave a nice contrast to the blue sky beyond.


    Well, currently gray and cloudy background, but the thought was what counted.


    From the architectural point of view, it probably once was a palace, an important governmental building – or, if Arkadia had gods, a cathedral –, built out of basalt or a similar stone (on a limestone mountain!), and it somewhat reminded Prof of that famous place in Vietnam – Angkor or what was its name. It had these conical towers, a lot more steps, than a building of its size should have, and richly decorated facades – well, one of the towers had fallen off the cliff, another lost half of its volume, leaving only three marginally intact, the decorations deteriorated at some point in the last couple of millennia, and most of the roof was gone too.


    Those precursor folks could build, no question about that! Not like those modern Human, Elven, or Greenskinian buildings! Prof was glad to have made the hike up there. Getting reincarnated into a different world, and just killing stuff would have been such a waste! One had to appreciate the local cuisine, architecture, culture, and sights – or else it was like going to France or Italy and dining at a fast food joint, and not even visit the Pyramids or Stonehenge or that Mousecorp castle!


    Prof was reasonably sure, he got the countries right – the fading details were, however, a little bit concerning.


    Walking around the ruins, he noticed, it was still inhabited. No wonder there, marginally habitable places were rarely left unoccupied for long, and especially not in medieval times. If it wasn''t random hobos declaring them their new home, it was bandits or cults, who killed the hobos off and declared the site as their new base of operation.


    It was also possible, the local nobles or the army found the places ideal for outposts, so they could hunt bandits and cults. According to lore, abandoned places were the prime location for hermits, wise men, or teachers, just waiting for main characters to teach them restricted, forgotten, or novel techniques.


    Sometimes, very rarely, ruins were even occupied by honest and hardworking shepherds, who didn''t want to make the trip back to their village every day, all the while directing their dumb animals along barely traversable trails.


    After all, why do all the leg-work, if there was an ancient palace just sitting there on prime real estate, halfway up the mountain?


    To Prof''s utter bafflement, he did not find hobos, bandits, cults, nobles (he wasn''t exactly sure even after all the time with the Greenskins if they had nobles or the Redcaps were considered as such), the Army, or some profound hermit.


    "Oy, there! Don''t touch my goats! Do you want to buy goat milk or cheese? I have a fresh batch ready!"