Well, a cheese-seller, right next to a tourist destination could be called a bandit after all – even if tourists and tourist traps weren''t invented on Arkadia yet. The dirty-looking Goblin, standing in between a herd of blankly staring mountain goats (Prof wasn''t exactly sure, if they could be called Mountain Dire Goats or not, but they had horns at least), didn''t help with the not-bandit feel of the situation either.


    Prof at least hoped the Goblin had pants on…


    Transforming a palace of untold age and profound cultural relevance to an extinct species into a shed for goats was strange, but not unheard of. Where once dignitaries dined, schemed, and fornicated now goats laid their berries, and the once impressive carvings of folks doing important-looking stuff were now used to dry clothes or fix dividers onto. Prof tried to make out, what kind of species the builders were, but every last carving was weathered into being unrecognizable. He could only determine, the precursor species was most likely bipedal.


    Or had bipedal pets, they thought cute enough to make carvings of.


    It was possible, that Prof was looking at the pre-medieval version of cat memes.


    "One kilogram of basic goat cheese would be for thirty groschen, these flavored ones are for forty, and the extra spicy ones for fifty. I have soft and semi-soft of each." Prof was interrupted in his musings, how past glory could fall by the Goblin''s urgent need to do commerce.


    "Hmmmm… The extra spicy looks good, what are the other flavors?" goat cheese wasn''t Prof''s favorite, but the price was actually quite good to make a pass on the purchase. Besides, buying unregulated, untested, and uninspected food from a random goatherd secluded in the mountains was safe, no? What could probably go wrong? He had high poison resistance!


    "Basil, garlic, dill, marjoram, and rosemary-basil-garlic. Everything collected on the mountain!"


    "Would it be possible to get a taster of the garlic and the mixed one? Semi-soft, if possible."


    "Of course, selling without a taster wouldn''t be excellent, wouldn''t it?"


    If there was one thing, Prof would miss in Greenskin lands where the locals drive to be excellent. Where telling someone, he wasn''t excellent was one of the gravest insults, leaving even a shred of doubt in one''s excellence was unthinkable. No cut-throat swindlers, crooks, or lawyers anywhere! Well, there were lawyers, but those had to be certified by the Thieves'' not-Guild and had to follow the rules, so they were mostly tolerable.


    "This is fantastic!" the cheese was indeed the best, Prof ever tasted – both back on Earth and on Arkadia. Of course, on Earth, he didn''t have the money to buy gourmet food and had to satisfy himself with the cheaper stuff. On Arkadia, he mostly didn''t have the money either or didn''t want to fork out the extra funds for the high-class food. Even after he was informed, the good food gave nice bonuses.


    "I would hope so! I have 450% in [Cheesemaking], and the milk comes from a rare breed of Southern Dread Ibex!" to Prof''s complete and utter surprise, the ruins harbored a hidden grandmaster, after all. After completing a long and arduous quest chain, Prof would have access to the most precious hidden knowledge – for making cheese. Prof wasn''t interested in either the long quest chain or becoming an expert in converting liquid animal sweat into solid animal sweat.


    "450%? How come, you are living here in the mountains? With a high Level Skill like that, you could make a fortune in any city, and buy a luxury mountain retreat!"


    "So, I should move to the city, work myself to the bone, so I could buy a nice home in the mountains, and enjoy my retirement in peace?"


    "Exactly! Oh, wait…"


    "Yeah, you aren''t so dumb for a Pinkskin. Besides, I own half the mountain, and the Southern tower was renovated a hundred years ago."


    Well, Prof should have seen that coming. Retired grandmasters usually were rich, and didn''t need the advice of random tramps. Even if the random tramps were extremely rich themselves. Rich in the sense, that they had a lot of shiny pebbles, they couldn''t sell.


    In the end, Prof purchased a dozen wheels, deciding, grandmaster-made cheese for that price was a bargain. Looking at his purchase, he realized, he should have made the transaction on the way back, not while he still had a lot of climbing ahead. His Stats made him a world-class athlete in Earth terms, but lugging a dozen kilos of stuff uphill was still not a bright idea.


    "Ehmm… Dear grandmaster of dairy production, would it be possible to store the cheese here for a time? I''m still on the way to the summit…"


    "Why do you want to go to the summit?" the Goblin looked quite perplexed. Prof could answer the question only in the same way, as he answered Mini.


    "Because it''s there. If you don''t climb them, what other uses do mountains have?"


    "Youngsters… Let''s see. You can build picturesque homes and castles on them, or you can herd Dread Ibexes there, or…"


    "You can climb them. Usually, mountains have fantastic views, almost like a map, and it''s an achievement to get to the top!"


    "I see. So you can brag in bars about all the hills and girls you conquered?"


    "Exactly!"


    If you come across this story on Amazon, it''s taken without permission from the author. Report it.


    "Youngsters these days… Be my guest. If you come back late, I will leave your stuff outside."


    Continuing up the mountain, Prof soon reached first the pine line, and not much later the tree line too. While the highest mountain in his country back home was barely a third in height (and he could reach the summit by car), he suspected, that pines usually made an appearance a little bit higher and gone extinct even higher. Why this particular mountain had those important lines where they were, Prof had no idea. He probably needed a Skill or another that specialized in alpine altitudinal zonation or something in that vein.


    He didn''t exactly care, anyway.


    He was there for the athletic challenge and the promised view, not to write an essay about plant life.


    When he reached the snow and cloud line at the same time, he did stop to ponder the wisdom of his expedition. He wasn''t cold – his suba and the Lumberjack''s Shirt made sure of that – but enjoying the view, a high mountain provided was not easy, if said view was obscured by low clouds.


    Walking around alone on a secluded mountain, where he couldn''t even see his hand in front of him was the prime situation, where Snow Golems, Ice Sprites, Yetis, Frost Salamanders, Tundra Mammoths and such made their presence known. Prof''s [Monsterology] – however strange ways it worked – informed him, that all those critters were real on Arkadia. It would have been more helpful if the Skill also told him something about the habitat of those monsters.


    He very much suspected, that Tundra Mammoths lived somewhere in the tundra, and not on some mountain in the temperate zone, and Yetis were most likely at home on really high mountains, not a three thousand-meter hill.


    That left enough critters, which could make his day worse.


    Either way, he was close to the summit, turning back because some nefarious clouds and esoteric monsters, which may or may not be there were just lazy. Prof forged forward!


    The last hundred meters of elevation were a constant uphill battle. Every step, Prof had to defeat perfidious ankle-deep snow, overcome devious hidden rocks, and triumph over… well, the rising elevation. All the while the visibility was like thick fog.


    Well, Prof was walking through a cloud, after all, and the difference between a cloud and fog was just how far from the ground they were. On the other hand, Prof was technically still on the ground, so the cloud was probably moonlighting as fog anyway. Not, that Prof was any good in [Meteorology], but the issue presented quite a good philosophical question: if you were standing on the ground in a couple of thousand meters up, do you walk through fog or a cloud?


    Either way, on the last few meters, Prof defeated even his worst enemy on the mountain too: the cloud posing as fog.


    The view was probably worth the effort to climb up the mountain: clouds (they were above ground, so they weren''t fog, that was for sure) everywhere, blanketing every last piece of geography Greenskin lands could collect. Only a peak or two pierced the cloud cover.


    Well, the view was probably good for someone, who specialized in clouds, their creation, swirling or layering, but for Prof it was almost a complete bust. He hoped to upgrade his Mental Map a little bit, or at least enjoy a spectacular view, but all he managed to get was slightly damp and nearly freezing feet, and a few peaks for his map – and even the latter were only indicated in grayscale.


    Most annoyingly, when he started his climb, the summit was still visible.


    In order to immortalize his achievement, he carved a ''Prof was here'' into a vertical piece of rock, and started his descent.


    As he neared the end of the snow, he noticed, that the cloud – he decided to call it that and not fog, he was quite far from normal ground, after all – started to thin out. Indeed, by the time he was halfway down the mountain, the summit was bathed in radiant sunshine again.


    "SERIOUSLY?!?!? COME OOOOON! MY LUCK IS AT 16!!!!" Prof let his frustration be heard by everyone nearby. Not that Goats, and… Lynxes… and Giraffes… and… Alligators… and other critters usually living on mountains gave a damn. They probably were used to frustrated hikers already.


    That Prof''s high Luck wasn''t enough to prevent insidious clouds from collecting just when he conquered a peak, irritated him to no end. If Arkadia had gods, Prof would have been certain the local weather god messed with him just for shit and giggles. Well, there was a chance, that Prof was indeed lucky, radiant sunshine could have messed up his day quite easily. No way to know, how Arkadia''s ozone layer worked.


    On the other hand, maybe the very nice and certainly not evil System Administrator just decided, it was time to counter Prof''s ultimate cheat power, that his Mental Map was. What kind of cheat power could be countered by mere clouds?!


    Mapping quite a bit of real estate just by climbing a mountain and enjoying the scenery was, indeed, quite a cheat. The whole cartographic industry could be brought to its knees if Prof found a high enough mountain.


    Well, and learned how to draw maps… Or anything.


    By the time he reached the ruins, it was starting to get dark – he may or may not have miscalculated the time needed to do the hike. He wasn''t looking forward to finishing his expedition in darkness. For some strange reasons, medieval societies (even the excellent Greenskins) didn''t feel the need to provide illumination to random goat trails down some out-of-the-way mountain.


    Not, that the need was recognized on Earth either…


    "You are just in time, I was about to call it a day." The hidden master of dairy products informed him "I was confident, you wouldn''t fall off a cliff or something, but it is still excellent to see you in one piece."


    "Yeah, about cliffs… Someone could install guard rails, so tourists wouldn''t fall to their deaths. Or at least put up some warning signs."


    "Why would we do that? If you don''t notice a cliff right ahead, a guardrail won''t save you either. A multiple hundred-meter drop is quite noticeable, no?"


    "But wouldn''t be excellent, not to let unobservant folks die from carelessness?"


    "Actually, no. You see, if your Perception is low enough not to notice a cliff just sitting there, or you are careless enough to walk off said cliff, you messed up your Stats and Perks really well, and wouldn''t be excellent. No big loss."


    Prof started to think, that Wiseass was a species trait for all Greenskins, not just something Wolfgang picked up on the way.


    "Here is your cheese. I forgot to tell you, what they do, please excuse my forgetfulness. So, let''s see. This one gives a bonus to [Climbing], this one gives you extra stamina, this one raises your basic speed this one repels snow and helps you move through ice and snow. And this beauty here… the Missus will thank you profoundly. Wink-wink. Enjoy!"


    For some strange and unfathomable reason, Prof''s right eye started to twitch. There was probably a reason, why a grandmaster of cheese was living on a secluded mountain, and not turning big stones into small stones with a re-education brigade somewhere.


    Selling Viagra in cheese form to unsuspecting strangers was most likely un-excellent.


    Oh, and not telling folks, out to conquer a mountain, the other products would help with the endeavor wasn''t excellent either.