It is a well-known fact, that steroids puff up the user after prolonged use. Arkadia’s Administrator most likely fed magical steroids to normal steroids, just to inject the resulting concoction into poor, innocent poultry. Probably there were traces of fantasy-cocaine, fantasy-meth, and a few other fantasy-drugs in the mix too.


    At least Prof was reasonably sure, chickens didn''t grow a meter tall, weighed probably a few dozen kilos, and had evil red eyes and beaks, that could cut battleship armor. And were currently dipping blood from a slain dog.


    Well, it was probably a dog.


    Of course, Prof slightly exaggerated. The flock of bloodthirsty enemies they were facing were at best knee high with a weight of only a few kilos, and the beaks most likely could only cut through thick tin foil. And the dead probably-dog was of the lapdog kind.


    “Oh, look! A Dread Rooster! Do you know how rare they are?” Mini was most likely trying to save some critter, threatened with extinction by desperate adventurers “Mine! Imagine the bragging rights after I kill it! No one saw a Dread Rooster near my estate for a century or so!”


    Or not.


    To everyone’s surprise, the Dread Rooster was indeed close to Prof’s estimate for the rest of the flock – a dozen Dire Hens.


    Thirteen Elites, all in the Level 5 to 9 range, would indeed pose a serious danger to a peasant militia, maybe even an army patrol. Such a horde of poultry would make soup and meatballs, maybe even sausages or a barbeque out of normal folks… well, most likely not a barbeque, the chickens would need fire for that. But, since chickens were the closest living relatives to theropods, and a T-Rex probably wasn’t that different from Dragons…


    Anyway, the extremely dangerous dragon relatives could turn every unprepared local, trying to make a name for himself or impress some maiden into the menu of a restaurant.


    Unfortunately for them (and locals, who wanted to help maidens with farm work), there was a well-prepared, over-geared, and highly trained adventurer party around.


    That party was indeed around somewhere – probably a few villages over, drinking the stock dry – leaving the field clear for Prof to do heroic stuff. And heroic stuff they did!


    “Binky! Fetch!”


    “Sleepy! Attack! Attack, I said! MOVE!!! Kill stuff! Come on! Free, fresh food there! Don’t chew on my ears! Eat the chickens! Why won’t he attack?!?”


    “Headshot! ‘Cause your [Animal Training] sucks. You haven’t even tried to play with him! Nothing! Having a Nightmare is more work, than occasionally feeding him some Gremlins! Headshot!”


    “He is a fucking predator! See prey, kill prey, eat prey, that is all, what predators do! Prey! There! Eat prey, stupid horse!!!”


    “Misssster sssstop playing with sssstupid horsssse! Misssster kill chicken!”


    Obviously, Sharpclaw was better in [Human Training], than Prof was, since right after the order, he left his reluctant mount to do what he wanted and waded into a pitched battle with his axes at the ready.


    Well, into one-sided slaughter.


    Binky, as every trademarked Cheat Power, already dispatched most of the poultry, the rest was taken care of by well-placed headshots and daggers to the… not exactly to the kidneys, but to important body parts. Only the Dread Rooster and a Level 7 Dire Hen remained.


    “The Rooster is mine!" Mini reminded everyone, exchanging her crossbow for her saber. "Bragging rights, here I come!"


    Prof felt slightly silly for approaching an overgrown chicken with not one, but two awesome magical axes. It was a chicken, after all. There was probably an approved way – even on Earth – how to make poultry not-living most conveniently, Prof, however, did not know the trick. He was a city guy and usually found chickens already slain and packaged up in stores. The chickens, the Greenskins provided him with in Castle Seeblickstein were for The Chopper to get blood, not the normal way either weapons or fowl were used.


    “CLUCK! Cluck-cluck-CLUCK!” the hen informed him in no uncertain way about something. If Prof had [Speech: Chicken], a Skill he was more-or-less sure existed, he would have understood the meaning. He guessed it nonetheless. It either meant ‘Gimme corn!’ or ‘I will gut you, mofo!’ As a punishment for speaking foreigner, Prof kicked the offensive animal in the face, concentrating on a Critical Hit.


    He shouldn’t have done that.


    101% in [Unarmed Combat] was about enough for a drunken bar fight, where hitting the enemies was mostly optional, but it was insufficient for an aimed kick against a quite high-Level Elite wild farm animal.


    Prof knew very well, that there was mathematics, regulations, and wizardry with numbers behind all the rules, governing Arkadia and all those flashy numbers on his Character Parchment.


    He even had read most of the Third Edition and supplements, and those books included charts and possible outcomes for every action.


    For example, if one tried to do a Critical Hit, there was a chance for Critical Failure too – actually, the chance was there for every action, but with Criticals, they were more pronounced. To stay with the example, if one wanted to kick something small and agile in the face, there were deductions for size, defense rating, the aimed hit, and a few others. If, for example, the Skill governing the action was too low, the result could be quite catastrophic – like a broken or dropped weapon, a blown-up kitchen, or dying animals.


    Prof just fell on his behind.


    Actually, if not for his high Agility and Dexterity, he would have faceplanted into both of his axes. Neither were classical rebar but would have caused him to visit the afterlife office.


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    The poor men''s dragon seized the opportunity and attacked the prone Prof immediately.


    “Die! Die! Die! Damn winged rat! Girls, some help here?”


    Without his axes, Prof was almost helpless – even if he could draw his dagger, which he couldn''t, because he was resting uncomfortably on it, his Skill with that kind of weapon was exactly like his [Unarmed Combat]. That left him with his fists. Or more precisely his right fist, he needed his left to keep the bloodthirsty fowl out of reach.


    “Girls!?! It wants my eyes! Help! Please?!?”


    “Ssssshould help?”


    “No, he is a big boy, he got this. If not, and is killed by some random boring critter, it wouldn’t be that much of a loss. Besides, it’s funny. Jerky?”


    “Thankssssss!


    “I can’t hit it hard enough!”


    “Choke the chicken already! Come on, Prof, wrap your hand around it, and the result will come on its own!”


    Luckily, Prof was too preoccupied with staying alive against the deadly assault to comment on Mini''s proposal. As deep in the gutter it was, with a slight alteration, it was surprisingly viable. Instead of molesting the breast with one hand, he shifted both to the neck, squeezing as hard as he could. Indeed, even relatively high-Level Elites needed to breathe, and soon Prof was holding a limp body in his hands.


    “That was soooo… embarrassing!” Mini clapped in the background “Sharpclaw, applaud! The apprentice adventurer just defeated a chicken! Awesome!”


    “It was a Level 7 Dire Hen! It tried to eat my eyes out!”


    “Yes, and? It was a chicken! You killed more powerful monsters, what’s your problem?”


    “A chicken tried to kill me! Back home, that doesn’t happen! We eat chicken!”


    “Still not seeing the problem. It''s either eat or be eaten. You didn''t hang yourself up when those thingies in the Domain, or the cats, and spiders, wolves, and thingies in the Valley tried to eat you! You had no problems with the Slimes either!"


    “We didn’t have most of those back home, and the rest we didn’t eat. Well, there were folks, who eat spiders and cats and stuff, but not generally. It is a principle: we eat chickens, not the other way around. Wild thingies either run away or get extinct. No one eats us, and definitely not chicken! That is it.”


    “Oh, hear, hear, Sharpclaw! It’s a principle! How many thingies would eat a Kobold?”


    “All.”


    “All right, Mini. How many critters would eat a Vampire?”


    “If given the chance? Probably most carnivores and omnivores, but we don’t give them the chance. We choke the chicken, beat the meat, squeeze the lizard, and generally abuse the shit out of everything. Vampires are superior that way.”


    “I think, Vampires are perverts. Or is it just you?”


    “I’m certainly not a Pervert! See my Character Parchment! Does it say anywhere, that I''m a Pervert? No? See, even the Parchment says, I’m not some deranged crazy!”


    Prof wanted to point out, that Mini''s Character Parchment clearly stated, that she was a deranged crazy but thought about the benefit of telling that to a Sociopathic, Narcissistic, Nimphomaniac just in time. He had to admit, that Pervert wasn’t one of Mini’s faults.


    Strangely.


    “I see, Prof, you bow to my superior intellect and oratory! What now?”


    That statement could have been deconstructed quite easily, simply by stating, that Prof actually had a much higher [Convincing] and about the same [Oratory]. The Character Parchments were irrefutable proof, even before the court. Also, Prof''s Intelligence was higher, and so he realized sooner, that there was no use in arguing.


    “What now? I tell you what now. Now it''s time for revenge! No chicken is going to eat this tourist, but this tourist will definitely eat chicken today! Mini, Sharpclaw, prepare a fire!"


    Starting a campfire in the Domain and in most of Earth countries probably violated a plethora of rules, as it was hunting and cooking endangered species, but Puglamento either had none of them (probably a reason, why The Plan wasn''t gaining ground; fining foreigners was a trusted and guaranteed income for the state coffers), or no one cared to implement them (most likely a reason, why The Plan wasn''t gaining ground).


    While Prof dismantled his catch (and Mini plucked some characteristic feathers from the Rooster), he realized an important point.


    “Say, Mini. We are in a civilized country, and there ought to be patrols, and monsters should be extinct for some time already. How come, that a flock of Dire Hen is terrorizing a fox farmer?"


    “If we were in Forestdeep, that would be normal. We take care of our environment, if we hunt dangerous stuff to extinction, they wouldn''t provide enough danger to us, and we would turn soft and complacent. Besides, it''s funny to release some droll monsters on the villages of the next estate. It''s common courtesy."


    Prof was already certain, he wouldn''t visit Forestdeep for the foreseeable future, but he was always surprised, at how far Foresteans went, and what ''common courtesy'' entailed there.


    “I doubt, this shithole is organized well enough to do that. Well, and it''s boooooring. So, either the common corruption made the patrols look the other way, or the flock migrated from somewhere else. Well, it also could be a random magical influence on normal fowl, that could happen. One day, you have a cute little Terror Tiger, and the next day, it eats your leg. Happened."


    Of course, if the pet in question had a name, where both ‘Terror’ and ‘Tiger’ were included, it shouldn’t have been a surprise that it had a snack. Probably no random magical influence was needed for that.


    In the case of the Dire Hen, they also could have been the machinations of a bored System Administrator. Or, if Prof were the protagonist of some mediocre novel, the brainchild of the author, trying to write a marginally funny scene and type a few chapters worth of words because he had no better idea.


    However, Arkadia had a very competent and fair Administrator, who wouldn’t stoop so low as feed overcharged steroids to random poultry, and Prof wasn’t living in a trashy novel.


    Prof had some ideas about how a whole Dire Hen could be made edible over an open fire –seasoned generously with hot spices and a stick through the posterior. He only hoped, his still-low [Cooking] was up for the task. On the other hand, it was a chicken, there was nothing easier to cook, than a chicken. Everyone could do that!


    As their meal looked ready, they were accosted by a local.


    “Miau!”