“Prof, those are not picturesque ruins of whatever, but a boooooring construction site!" Of course, Mini had to be annoying and point out the obvious. At least Prof was successful in changing the topic from how nice and fun needless violence was to tourism.

  “Ehmmm… Why are there scaffoldings and discarded building materials around? This is supposed to be a normal, picturesque ruin, with discarded building materials and trash lying around! Beggar girl! What's happening?" Prof was actually shocked. How could the locals hinder his innocent touring the world by trying to reconstruct the only structure worth seeing around town for their own selfish reasons!?! He even bought souvenirs and booze!

  He had to concede, however, that the stadium probably would have looked better, if complete. In its current state, it was just a multi-story empty ring, not dissimilar to that famous building in Pola, only with half of the ring collapsed. Strangely, the whole thing wasn't shaped like a pyramid. Probably some foreigner planned it; Prof had to check later.

  “Some lord decided, that letting the local Blood Ball team play on a common grassy plain wasn't the way to do it. One of the other beggars said, the team hadn't won a single match, since the stadium collapsed a hundred years or so ago. So, it was decided to rebuild, both the arena and the team" their volunteer guide informed them.

  Prof could understand the reasoning – rebuilding old sports fields was an excellent way to revitalize the economy, line pockets, and give enough circus to the masses, that they forgot, the price of bread was shooting through the roof.

  “Well, I hope it plays out for the local team…” Prof resigned “Let’s get back to the wagon and rest up. Only a day or two, and we will arrive in the promised land of eternal nice weather! Rejoice!”

  “YAY! No more sightseeing!”

  “Finally, I can become the Supreme Emperor!"

  “Ssssharpclaw missssessss sssssea!”

  “Mini, sightseeing isn’t over just yet! We will enter the corpse of a fallen empire! Everyone knows, such a carcass is just full of picturesque ruins! By the way… Is Fallaria an Empire or a Kingdom? In Fallarian, they use the same word for both.”

  “Well, my uneducated underling, Old Fallaria was indeed an Empire, but the new one is only considered as a Kingdom by most. Obviously, not by the Fallarians, they still think, they live in an Empire. Morons! Just wait, until I conquer all of West's End! I will show you an Empire! Now, enough chit-chat, transport me back to my carriage!"

  “D?nci, it's… ah, never mind. But I won't carry you back, you have twice as many legs as I do. Beggar girl! I just realized something: this whole stretch of land is called 'Seven Kingdoms'. There is Puglamento, which isn't a kingdom to begin with, Julia, Fallaria, Xaghra, Al-Sidhe, and Eleuthera. That's six."

  “Yes, and?”

  “Why is it called Seven Kingdoms?”

  “Dunno. It was always called that.”

  Prof debated pointing out the faulty logic in the naming sense, and argue that the locals should change the name to something less contradictory, but thought better of it. D?nci would conquer the whole neighborhood anyway – probably it would take only a couple of decades – and the whole issue will resolve itself.

  “Since we are broke, I can’t give you money in exchange for you guiding us through all these… few streets, but what about I give you food?”

  “Food would be nice to have. Can I bring my little sister too?”

  “Sure, why not? We are camping on the other side of the town, I'm sure, you will be able to find us. Get, collect your sister, we will start cooking in the meantime!"

  Well, cooking was an euphemism for what the party usually did with otherwise edible ingredients. For Prof, something more pressing always came up, so putting hard-earned Skill Points into [Cooking] couldn’t be done. For the rest of the party… Since ingredients couldn’t be stabbed or provided other kinds of fun, no one had the inclination to actually learn how to make enjoyable meals out of random stuff.

  This time, the basic idea was to make beans with onions and sausages.

  The result was some kind of slop, that could be mistaken for… something or else. Probably porridge.

  “I wonder, where the beggar girl is," Prof said, while handing a plate to Sharpclaw. Mini rarely ate food that Prof cooked, she preferred drinking mobile food. "This town isn't that large, she should have collected her sister by now."

  “Probably smelled this abomination, and ran away.” D?nci supplied “If you want to be my imperial cook, you should work on your Skills more. As you are now, you wouldn’t even qualify as a cook for my glorious armies!”

  “Because victorious armies march on their stomach?”

  “I don't think, marching on your stomach would get you far. Marching on the stomachs of your defeated enemies would be preferable. Maybe the footing wouldn't be so good, but…"

  “Idiotic bloodsucker! I mean, there would be a mutiny within a few days, if Prof would cook for other people. This is vile!”

  “Thanks for the encouragement, guys…”

  “Ssssharpclaw likessss thissss food. Better, than home!”

  If you discover this tale on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the violation.

  At least one party member liked the thing, Prof was doing instead of cooking – even Prof could barely tolerate the 'food', he was making. However, it was still cheaper, than eating in some taverns. Which mostly had porridge, and overpriced, bad to medium-quality stew.

  If there were even taverns, to begin with.

  Just as they were finishing consuming the result of the communal butchering of ingredients, Sharpclaw poked a claw into Prof's hip.

  “Little human, there! In busssshesss.”

  Prof had to strain his eyes to find the pointed-out little Human – there were only a few things, Sharplaw was better in (not counting stabbing folks in the kidney, hiding, and swimming, just to name a few) but her Perception was actually three Points higher. With the distribution of Stats, that was quite a difference. Who would have thought, that a Stat, that was twenty-five percent higher was… well… twenty-five percent better?

  Also, [Stealth] helped to find hiding people too, for some reason.

  Probably, because of the almighty System Administrator though, literal hundreds of Skills were enough (with at least three, that helped with hiding things and folks), there was no need to invent another one, that only helped with finding stealthed folks.

  Following Sharpclaw, the party indeed found a little girl, lying in the roadside bushes.

  “I don’t think, she is supposed to be this beaten up…” Prof surveyed the girl, of the age, where kids reached the hips of an adult. How old that was supposed to be, Prof could only guess. Maybe six? She was indeed beaten up, the few places, that weren’t covered by torn rags, were almost completely covered by bruises and lesions, with her left eye starting to swell shut. At least nothing seemed broken.

  “It’s almost in pristine condition.” Mini observed “Give it time, and it will be on its feet in no time! You know, there is this thing, called natural healing?”

  “Mini, ‘it’s’ a female, you know? Leaving an injured kid on the roadside isn’t nice. All right, let’s do some first aid or doctoring!”

  “Oh, you want to experiment on random, injured kids, you found on the roadside?"

  “Ehm, no, I don’t want to experiment on her, but make her feel better! What’s wrong with you?!?”

  “I’m bored, and we experiment on roadside victims all the time. It’s science!”

  “Yeah! And if there aren’t roadside victims available for important experimentations and rituals, we make some!”

  “NO EXPERIMENTATION!!!”

  “All right, Prof, no need to get loud! However, I would like to point out, neither one of us is good in [First Aid] and [Doctoring] or, well, in all the other Skills, that heal injuries and stuff. What you are trying to do is experimenting.”

  “Well, no. With such bruises, you do… ehmm… put some salves on them and… ehmmm… bind them up, and… ehm… dunno… do stuff?” Prof was reasonably sure, there was more to it than that. There were hospital series on the TV back home, and it was mostly putting on some salves and binding the injuries up. And after a little bit of dramatic suspense, the victim of the week walked out the door, just as the episode was ending.

  If untrained actors could do that, an awesome adventurer with 68% in [First Aid] could surely do the same.

  Prof engaged his unmatched Intelligence of 18 and fed a Health Potion to the girl.

  Potions in a magical world were indeed… condensed magic – the injuries visibly faded, and the girl looked much more healthy within a few minutes. Giving her a high… ehmm… barely medium-quality potion was probably overkill, Prof's cheap concoctions would have probably been sufficient too. He had around ten liters of the cheap one and two HP-stuff in empty booze bottles; some with added spiking, because he didn't wash the bottles completely. Who would have thought, washing empty bottles required a Skill on Arkadia?

  “You the adventurers, who promised food?" this was the girl's first question after she woke up. At least Prof assumed this was what was said, the girl spoke in a barely understandable dialect. The other possibility was, if they were Heroes, and wanted to eat her.

  “We are indeed adventurers, who promised food to a beggar girl and her little sister. Where is your sister? Who beat you up this much?”

  “Evil fat merchant! Abducted Chiara! Please help!” Leaving an innocent beggar girl (who obviously even had a name) in the clutches of some evil-doers wasn’t gentlemanly, so Prof immediately started giving orders.

  “Sharpclaw, try to find the girl and the merchant! Mini, get the poor girl some food! D?nci… ehm… try to look cute. Cute-ish, at least. No, that won’t work… Just sit somewhere out of sight.”

  “Prof, I’m not a serving girl. Get the food yourself.”

  “You can’t order me around, peasant! I won’t sit around, because you told me so! Instead, I will go to my carriage and have a nap!”

  “Yesssss, Misssster!” At least one person was ready to follow Prof’s instructions.

  With D?nci sauntering over to Prof’s wagon, and Mini just leaning against a tree, arms crossed, it fell to Prof to escort the girl to the fire pit, they used as a kitchen.

  “So, tell me, what happened!”

  The explanation probably would have been easier to understand, if the participants knew a common language well enough, and the girl's education had covered the part, where it was instilled, that talking and eating weren't done at the same time.

  What Prof could piece together, was that a fat, evil merchant abducted the beggar girl, because she didn’t want to become his plaything. The little girl, Francesca by name, was beaten up as a lesson. Probably. Or the guards were just bored.

  Based on Francesca’s description, the merchant had a remarkable similarity to the other fat, evil merchant, Prof had the displeasure to encounter earlier that day.

  It was possible, however, that being fat was a default for medieval merchants – not having to do backbreaking work in the fields every day and just skimming off the fruits could indeed lead to being overweight.

  If it was indeed the same person, the party should have provided him with an educational beat-down. All those stories on the 'net back home did get something right: if an arrogant noble took offense at your existence, you didn't pull the punches. Instead, you taught the loser, who his daddy was and bribed the constabulary and judges to consider it self-defense.

  That way no innocent bystanders were hurt – not counting careless Skill-use, accidental collateral casualties, and environmental damage – and the economy was invigorated too.

  Anyway, Prof felt slightly responsible for what the merchant did. If his party members didn't laugh about him, and annoy the impartial judge – who was incidentally the relative of one of the parties – to drop the charges and not even follow the Foresteans' recommendation on how to handle the issue.

  He wasn’t feeling guilty enough to storm the merchant’s compound or dungeon or whatever, but maybe he could send one of his slightly unhinged companions to have a little bit of fun.

  Preferably, while everyone had a rock-solid alibi.