First thing first, Foxy introduced herself. And laid some traps.

Introducing herself as an Adept at the High King’s Academy was technically true, she was considered as such, and let him known, she felt she owed him thanks. Of course, every last Human would be horrified by that, owing a favour from an Elf was considered equal to a slow and painful death.

The Human didn’t react in the slightest, so he was most probably not a local.

Probably not an Utter Moron either, they always tried to “Finish the Quest” or “Get to Follow-Up Quest” and demanded payment or EXP. Well, there was no Quest-System on Arkadia, and no one could hand out EXP.

The Human dodged that arrow too. He even thought to pay Foxy for the potions he drank! Foxy struck to the script and asked again to confirm. Sometimes the Utter Morons were just slow. Or the Heroes were greedy. Only the most stupid Humans on Arkadia would demand payment from an Elf – and those never left children behind to propagate stupidity. The Travellers even had a term for that, named after a famous sage. Dear Friend, or such, the translation was unconfirmed.

The next question established that the Human had no idea about loot contracts, one of the most basic thing every last adventurer or mercenary knew by heart from the very first day. She was almost completely sure she stumbled on her mark, but to confirm, she asked directly. The Human played stupid for a bit, but finally relented.

Yes, indeed, he was the Traveller she was looking for!

It was a bad idea to let the Traveller know, she was an agent for the Office – there were “incidents” early when the Office was established – so she stuck with her researcher persona. Every agent had one, most using a researcher too. Most Travellers were fascinated by science, and it was proven, they were more ready to help in scientific research. Other agents used an “oblivious bimbo” persona. [Acting] was a very useful Skill to have.

Foxy, in order to gauge his reactions, showed him how to exchange Character Parchments – and learned a lot from doing so. As with most Travellers, he was overwhelmed by the long list of Skills, and didn’t realise, what certain Skills she had on certain level meant. He wasn’t able to connect the dots. Why would an adept on the Academy have so high investigating Skills, that were more appropriate for an investigator?

He clearly didn’t know, how Arkadia worked.

He was still much better than a lot of others, spreading his Skill Points with at least minimal thought. It could have been worse. There were records of an utter moron, who managed to pump his [Blunt Weapons] to almost 300% on Level 1, collect or select a lot of Perks that made him smash his opponents with utmost force. But his other Skills were below 10% - some even going into negative, that was almost unheard of – and with an Intelligence and Charisma of 1, he was just an ugly imbecile. The only word he could utter was SMASH!

That was the only thing he was useful for: his handler pointed him at enemies who were in need to be SMASHed. What a waste.

This Traveller was much more intelligent and viable. He even started to dress the Dire Bear instead of stomping around shouting “Autoloot!” on top of his lung. Foxy has previously met such a Traveller – and dispatched him shortly later.

Foxy was curious, how the Human planned to preserve the meat for later selling, and he came up with pre-frying it. Smoking or salting it would have been a better idea, but here it became obvious to the Traveller that he didn’t have a high enough Skill to build a smoking shack, and haven’t brought enough salt. Or any.

More problematic was, that the Traveller spotted her Office-issued Bag of Holding. Foxy was already aware that there was no magic on the boring-named world, where most of the Travellers came from, so she wasn’t exactly hiding her stuff. That her mark spotted it so easily meant that he really wasn’t a complete idiot. Of course, Foxy wasn’t one either, so didn’t confess to the real properties of the bag. Most of her tools were kept there and taking them out was too dangerous in front of an observant mark.

The bag still had enough room to pack twelve portions of premium meat into it. She was a bit surprised that even after a month on Arkadia it was not clear to the Traveller, how large a portion of meat was. As far as she knew, it was a standard measure everywhere on Arkadia.

Their cooking spree went as it was expected: most of the meat was ruined, and what was not, lost quite in quality. No one started cooking up a Dire Bear with only 72% in [Cooking] – around 150% was the least if one wanted to preserve the quality, more, if extra effects were desired. In a well-equipped kitchen, out in the woods one needed an even higher Skill.

But hey, he at least tried.

Foxy got the feeling, the new Traveller had gotten some information about how Arkadia worked, but it was probably only a summary, without clear examples and descriptions. It was often discussed in the Office that maybe they should provide the Travellers with a Rulebook, written by the best authority on the System. Actually, such Rulebooks did exist, but were mostly kept by researchers. Everyone else had only shorter, less exhaustive versions, but combined with what everyone knew it was probably still better then what the Traveller had access to.

For the rest of the day, Foxy went through the list of questions every Little Sister knew by heart. It was standardised a long time ago to get a baseline of the Traveller in question, what he remembered from his previous home, who he was and how far he was willing to co-operate. First she asked for an essay to determine the Traveller’s ability to recreate or describe things from Turf (or Dirt, or whatever his world was called in their native tongue) and next she asked pointed yes-or-no questions.

She already ruled out Utter Moron and Crafter, so the only question was if the Traveller fell into Hero or the broad category of “Other”. That was the hardest category to pinpoint and needed the most investigation. Tourists were mostly harmless, Entrepreneurs needed constant surveillance (once such a Traveller successfully upset the markets in the whole of Fenria), Anti-Heroes and Villains on the other hand a quick dispatching.

No one needed a crazy person trying to conquer the world. Arkadia had enough of them on its own.

The last part of the initial investigation was to apply some dream magic. It was proven that dreams were more honest, and if the spells were applied shortly after a throughout questioning, some answers still lingered in the subconscious. Unfortunately, her Skill was quite low after losing so many Levels, so she could do only a cursory check while her mark slept.

Finishing the check and reviewing the interrogation, she was almost certain, the Traveller was no Hero. There was no evidence that he had any designs on “Saving the World” or “Free the Oppressed” or any other common idiocy heroes had (and he was missing the tell-tale Perks too), and he was most certainly no Anti-Hero or Villain either. He was too helpful for that.

He was obsessed with money and an easy life, and did want to see as many sights as possible, so he was either a Tourist or an Entrepreneur. Or maybe a Pervert. Foxy did hate those. Or a few other possibilities in “Other”. She needed to investigate further.

Next morning the Traveller asked her to identify a few magical items he found. Good. She did like identifying items, it was one of her favourite pass-times while in training. Not equipping unknown magical thingies did rid her of any last remaining suspicions the Traveller was an Utter Moron. Who would do that? What if that shiny warhammer was a cursed object from eons past?

The three trinkets weren’t much, only base-level stuff one could find in most larger cities with a little bit of searching. But, they were magical items, and useful nonetheless.

The next few days went by with further investigation.

The best way was to tell him about Arkadia and its System, and gauge his reactions. A lot could be learned from questions and reflexive interjections. He was obviously fascinated by how the System worked, about all the races and species on Arkadia, and some sights Foxy recommended. He was not really interested in how the Fenrian (or Elven) economy worked, he even told her, he had no intention whatsoever to enter into commerce – only to sell his loot.

When Foxy talked about how Humans could procreate with other species, he wasn’t that much interested either – and got visibly sick when Centaurs were mentioned. Not that Foxy ever saw one herself, they lived on Sfingia in the South, across the sea.

She was already quite sure, the Human was just a tourist, but something still bugged her about the whole situation. He was waiting for a female friend, who had some business to attend to somewhere in the area. However, no Human would be so stupid to “attend to some business” right next to a Red Clan Territory. That either pointed to criminal activities or another Traveller. In both cases it was Foxy’s duty to investigate.

Of course, if her current mark was caught up in criminal activities or other Travellers, he was no simple Tourist after all! The worst that could happen was another Hero’s Party! The last one was a couple of centuries ago, but the carnage that party brought could be felt for decades. If another Hero’s Party was in the making, Foxy had to act fast and decidedly.

One day the Human came back from another run in the dungeon and informed her, that his ladyfriend was back.

From the Clan Territory.

Damn. Travellers were sooooo stupid!